Write by the Cards: Day Twenty Three
A Confrontation
If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is my daily work for my Write by the Cards: 30 Day Challenge that I’m hosting. Learn more here. Scroll down to the end to see my behind-the-scenes commentary and source material.
The character had no choice but to confront {draw a card}.
The Queen of Swords
The literary world had perfected the art of self-congratulation. June knew this because she was living proof of it, perched at the edge of a velvet-cushioned chair as another champagne flute hovered dangerously near her husband’s face. Martin Salinger, literary icon, beacon of modern fiction, blah blah blah. The man who couldn’t string two sentences together without accidentally plagiarizing one of her grocery lists.
The room applauded as he finished answering a question about “his process.” Something vague and self-important—an anecdote about writing by candlelight or communing with the muses on their front porch. June didn’t bother listening anymore. She had heard it all before. Candlelight? His office was in the basement, and the most he’d communed with were the termites chewing through the floorboards. But nobody here cared about facts, only myths.
Across the table, a journalist from the Boston Review leaned forward, her eyes glinting with curiosity. “June,” she asked, “what’s it like being married to a genius? Do you ever feel inspired to write yourself?”
The table tensed. Martin’s smile stiffened, the corners of his mouth fighting to stay aloft. June felt the room shift toward her, dozens of eyes waiting for the dutiful wife’s answer. She smiled, a sharp little crescent of teeth. “Oh, I’ve dabbled,” she said lightly. “But who has time? Martin’s brilliance keeps me plenty busy.”
The journalist laughed politely, but June caught the flicker of something behind her eyes—a curiosity too sharp to dismiss. Martin swept in with a laugh, deflecting the conversation. “She’s being modest,” he said, placing his hand over hers. It felt heavy, territorial. “She’s my first reader. Couldn’t do it without her.”
June turned her hand palm-down, trapping his beneath it. Her smile didn’t waver. “That’s right,” she said. “He couldn’t.”
The evening dragged on in a haze of clinking glasses and laughter pitched just a little too high. Martin’s voice rose above the rest, retelling the story of how his first book had “saved” their finances. “We were broke,” he said, throwing an arm around June’s shoulders. “I mean, ramen-for-dinner broke. And then, boom—The Crimson Hour. Everything changed.”
June felt her ribs tightening, corset-like, beneath his arm. The Crimson Hour. She remembered every sleepless night spent at her typewriter, the keys clicking until her fingers ached. Martin had handed her a manuscript that was more skeleton than story, a brittle framework of clichés and half-baked ideas. She had done the rest: flesh, muscle, heart. She had built it for him.
And now here he was, still holding the receipts like he’d paid the full price.
June’s laugh was soft but icy. “I think you mean everything changed for you.”
“Hmm?” Martin glanced at her, distracted, before turning back to his audience. He was too drunk on the attention to notice the edge in her voice—or the edge in her smile.
June looked down at her champagne flute, watching the bubbles rise to the surface, pop, and disappear. Something had shifted in her over the past few months, though she couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment. Maybe it was last year’s awards ceremony, when Martin had forgotten to thank her in his acceptance speech. Or maybe it was two weeks ago, when he’d left her draft covered in red pen marks and asked her to “tighten it up” without so much as a “thank you.”
Or maybe it had always been there, growing in the dark like mold beneath the floorboards. A quiet, creeping rot she could no longer ignore.
She looked up at Martin, laughing loudly at something the journalist had said. His hand gestured in wide arcs, the way it always did when he was inflating himself. She imagined slipping a needle into his side, watching him deflate like the overstuffed balloon he was.
June set her glass down and excused herself, smiling as the journalist’s eyes followed her across the room. She could still feel Martin’s handprint lingering on her shoulder like a brand.
•••
June used to love the sound of a typewriter. There was something satisfying about the metallic snap of each key, the bell-like chime as she reached the end of a line. In the early days of her marriage, she’d sometimes sit at Martin’s feet while he clattered away, her head resting against his knees as if the rhythm of his “work” were enough to soothe her.
Back then, she believed in him. Or maybe she just wanted to believe in him.
Martin’s first book had been a mess. No, mess wasn’t the right word—messes had potential. His draft had been a graveyard of half-finished metaphors and lifeless characters, buried beneath piles of overwrought prose. But he’d been so earnest when he handed it to her. So hopeful.
“Be honest,” he’d said, sitting on the couch across from her as she flipped through the first twenty pages. He was sipping coffee from one of those heavy mugs he collected, the kind with cheesy slogans like World’s Okayest Husband. His knee bounced nervously. “It’s good, right? You can tell me if it’s good.”
It wasn’t.
But she hadn’t told him that. Not exactly. Instead, she’d stayed up that night—her first all-nighter in years—rewriting the clunky dialogue, fleshing out the bare-bones plot, reworking the descriptions so they didn’t read like something cribbed from a middle school English essay.
When she handed it back to him the next morning, bleary-eyed but triumphant, she’d half-expected him to notice the difference. To thank her for the hours of work she’d poured into fixing his disaster of a manuscript. Instead, he’d kissed her on the forehead and said, “I knew you’d like it.”
And that was the beginning.
The rest had happened so quickly it felt like a blur: the email from a small publisher, the phone call about a book deal, the contract Martin signed while she hovered in the background, unseen but proud. She told herself it was their success. That she didn’t need her name on the cover to feel accomplished.
But then the reviews started rolling in. Brilliant. Visionary. A once-in-a-generation talent. Critics fawned over Martin’s “unique voice,” his “emotional depth.” At their first book signing, a woman had leaned across the table and whispered, “You’re a genius.” Martin had laughed, bashful, and muttered something self-deprecating. He didn’t correct her.
By the time the second book deal came around, it wasn’t a “favor” anymore. It was a job.
June remembered sitting at their wobbly kitchen table, the draft of The Crimson Hour spread out in front of her. Martin hovered nearby with a beer in hand, spouting ideas that sounded like he’d cribbed them from a soap opera. “What if the detective has, like, a tragic backstory? Maybe his wife died. Or his dog. People love dead dogs, right?”
Her pencil paused mid-sentence. “Are you serious?”
Martin shrugged. “You’re better at the details, anyway. I’m the big picture guy.” He gestured vaguely, spilling a little beer onto the floor. “The ideas man.”
June had laughed then—sharp and bitter, before she could stop herself. “The ideas man,” she repeated under her breath, shaking her head.
She rewrote the second book from scratch. She rewrote the third, too. By the fourth, she had learned to stop asking for credit.
At first, Martin had been grateful. Effusive, even. “You’re amazing,” he would say, pulling her into a hug after reading the latest chapter. “I couldn’t do this without you.” But the gratitude faded as quickly as it came, replaced by a sense of entitlement. He stopped saying “thank you” and started saying things like, “I need this on my desk by Friday.”
And June, like a fool, kept delivering.
The moment that stayed with her most, though, was the rejection letter. Not his—hers. She had sent a short story to a well-known literary magazine, one she’d been dreaming about for years. It came back with a polite but generic “not a fit.” She’d been crushed, curling up on the couch with the rejection in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.
Martin had found her there, halfway through the bottle. He glanced at the letter and chuckled. “You’re too emotional for that kind of audience,” he’d said. “You’ve got talent, but your stuff is… I don’t know. Too sentimental.”
He said it like he was trying to help, but June could still feel the sting of it, all these years later.
That was the day she stopped writing her own stories.
Now, looking back, she wondered how she hadn’t seen it sooner. The way Martin had taken her creativity, her ambition, and twisted it into his own success. He hadn’t just stolen her words; he’d stolen her life.
And the worst part? She’d let him.
June stared down at the typewriter on her desk, the keys polished smooth from years of use. The sound of it no longer soothed her. Now, it sounded like a gallows drum, a countdown to the moment when her patience would finally, irreversibly, run out.
She reached for the manuscript on the desk, running her fingers over the first page of another Martin Salinger novel. The lie had started with love. But love was nowhere to be found anymore.
She opened the drawer and stared at the penknife she’d placed there a week ago. It gleamed in the lamplight, small and sharp. Just like her.
•••
The house was quiet, except for the rhythmic tapping of June’s nails against the desk. She stared at the manuscript in front of her, the words blurring together as the sunlight faded through the bay window. This was the ending—her ending. The last page of Martin’s latest masterpiece.
It was good. Too good. She hated herself for how good it was.
Somewhere upstairs, Martin was pacing. He always paced when he was about to deliver one of his monologues about “the pressure of genius” or how the critics just didn’t “get” him. June smirked bitterly. Genius didn’t pace. Genius sat its ass in a chair and did the work, bleeding onto the page until there was nothing left.
She had done the bleeding. Martin just soaked it up like a sponge.
“June?” His voice called down the stairs, casual and infuriating. “You almost done?”
She closed her eyes, inhaling slowly. The words on the page seemed to pulse under her gaze, the weight of them pressing down on her chest.
“Yeah,” she called back. Her voice sounded thin, stretched.
Footsteps on the stairs. Slow, deliberate. Then he appeared in the doorway, leaning casually against the frame. His sweater was rumpled, his hair a mess of careless waves. If she didn’t know better, she might have thought he’d been working. But his hands were empty. Always empty.
“You’re a lifesaver, you know that?” he said, his tone light. “Seriously, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
June didn’t answer. She just stared at him, her fingers gripping the edge of the desk until her knuckles turned white.
Martin crossed the room, picking up the manuscript without asking. He flipped through the pages, barely skimming. “This is good,” he said, nodding approvingly. “Real tight. But…” He paused, tapping his chin like some kind of dollar-store philosopher. “I think the pacing in chapter ten could use some work. It drags a bit. Maybe punch it up with some action?”
June’s pulse thudded in her ears. “It’s fine the way it is.”
He looked up, startled by the sharpness in her voice. “Whoa, no need to get defensive. It’s just feedback.”
“Feedback?” She laughed, low and bitter, shaking her head. “You don’t even know what happens in chapter ten, do you?”
Martin frowned, his brow furrowing as if she’d spoken in a foreign language. “What’s gotten into you?”
What’s gotten into me? The words ricocheted in her mind like a bullet. She wanted to scream. To throw the typewriter across the room. To grab him by the collar and shake him until he finally—finally—understood what he’d done to her.
Instead, she stood. Slowly. Deliberately.
“Do you ever feel guilty?” she asked, her voice eerily calm. “Even a little bit?”
He blinked, genuinely confused. “For what?”
“For taking credit for something you didn’t write. For stealing years of my life and calling it your legacy.”
Martin laughed, a sharp, incredulous sound that cut through her like broken glass. “Jesus, June. You’re blowing this out of proportion. I didn’t steal anything. We’re a team. You’re just—” He waved a hand vaguely. “—better with words. I’m the idea guy.”
“The idea guy,” she repeated, her voice hollow.
“You’re making it sound so sinister,” he continued, rolling his eyes. “I’ve always given you credit. You’re my muse, for God’s sake. My first reader. My—”
“Your ghostwriter,” she finished for him.
He flinched at the word, his mouth tightening. “I’m not having this conversation,” he muttered, tossing the manuscript onto the desk. The pages fluttered, scattering like dead leaves.
June stepped forward, blocking his path. Her heart was pounding, but her voice was steady. “You’ve never written a single word worth reading, Martin. Not one. And you know it.”
He stared at her, his jaw tightening. For the first time in years, she saw something in his eyes that looked like fear.
“What are you trying to say?” he asked, his voice low.
June didn’t answer. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Instead, she turned and opened the desk drawer, her movements slow and deliberate. The penknife glinted in the dim light, small but unmistakably sharp.
When she turned back to face him, Martin took a step back, his face pale. “June…”
The sound of his voice only made her grip the knife tighter.
“Go on your retreat,” she said quietly. “Leave me the pages you want written, and I’ll finish them. Like always.”
He hesitated, his eyes darting between her face and the knife in her hand. “You’re scaring me,” he said finally, his voice cracking just slightly.
“Good,” she replied.
The silence stretched between them, taut and heavy. Then, without another word, Martin brushed past her, his steps quick and uneven as he climbed the stairs. The door slammed behind him.
June stood there for a long moment, the knife still clutched in her hand. The house felt unnervingly quiet again, as if it were holding its breath. She walked over to the desk and picked up the scattered pages, her fingers trembling slightly as she straightened them into a neat stack.
When she looked down at the manuscript, something shifted in her chest. The words didn’t feel like hers anymore. They felt like bricks in a wall, heavy and suffocating, trapping her inside a life that no longer fit.
June set the pages aside and stared at the penknife, turning it over in her hands. She’d taken it out of the drawer on impulse, but now it felt different. Solid. Real. A small, sharp solution to a problem that had grown too big to contain.
In the distance, she heard the faint creak of the basement door opening.
•••
The basement smelled damp, like old stone and mildew, the way it always did after a rainstorm. June descended the stairs slowly, one hand trailing along the wooden railing. Her other hand held the knife, its blade catching the faint glow of the single overhead bulb.
Martin was hunched over his desk in the corner, facing away from her. The typewriter sat in front of him, pristine and unused, a set piece in the theater of his genius. His shoulders moved slightly as he scrolled through his phone. A beer bottle stood half-empty at his elbow, already sweating in the humidity.
He didn’t hear her.
June paused halfway down the stairs, her bare feet pressing into the cold wood. For a moment, she simply watched him. There was something almost pathetic about the way he sat there, slouched and oblivious. He didn’t look like a literary icon or a visionary thinker. He just looked small. Ordinary.
She almost turned back.
But then she thought about the years she’d spent down here, hunched over that same desk, pouring her heart into novels that didn’t even bear her name. She thought about the way he had dismissed her, diminished her, over and over again until she’d started to believe it herself.
Her grip on the knife tightened.
“Martin,” she said, her voice cutting through the stillness.
He startled, his head snapping up. “Jesus, June! You scared me.” He turned in his chair, frowning. “What are you doing down here?”
She stepped off the last stair, the knife glinting in her hand. “We need to talk.”
His eyes flicked to the blade, then back to her face. He laughed nervously. “Okay… what the hell is this? Are you drunk?”
“No,” she said calmly. “But I’m done.”
“Done with what?” He leaned back in his chair, trying for nonchalance, but his voice betrayed him. There was a slight tremor in it now, a crack in his usual confidence. “Is this about the manuscript? Because if it’s about chapter ten, I was just—”
“It’s not about chapter ten,” she snapped, her voice sharp enough to cut.
“Then what?” He spread his hands, feigning exasperation. “Come on, June, spit it out. You’ve been acting crazy all day.”
She took another step forward. “Crazy,” she repeated softly, the word curling in her mouth like smoke. “You’ve been calling me crazy for years, haven’t you? Any time I get upset, any time I ask for something more, it’s always the same. ‘June’s crazy.’”
“That’s not—”
“Shut up.” The words came out cold and flat, and to her surprise, he obeyed.
For a moment, the only sound in the room was the faint hum of the dehumidifier in the corner. June took another step, closing the distance between them. Her fingers were trembling now, but she kept the knife steady.
“You’ve taken everything from me,” she said, her voice low and trembling with suppressed rage. “My work. My time. My life. And for what? So you could play the genius while I rotted away down here?”
“That’s not fair,” Martin said quickly, his voice rising. “You agreed to this, June. You said—”
“I said I loved you,” she interrupted, her voice breaking. “I said I wanted to help you. I didn’t say you could bury me alive.”
Martin stood suddenly, knocking over the beer bottle. It hit the floor with a hollow clink, spilling foam across the concrete. “This is insane,” he said, his tone sharper now, angrier. “Put the damn knife down. You’re being dramatic.”
She laughed—soft, bitter, and utterly humorless. “You think I’m being dramatic?”
“Yeah, I do,” he snapped, stepping toward her. “Jesus Christ, June, grow up. Do you know how many people would kill to be in your shoes? To have the life I’ve given you?”
She stared at him, the knife trembling in her hand. For a moment, she thought about lowering it. She thought about all the nights they’d spent together in this house, the years they’d shared. There had been good moments, hadn’t there? Laughter, love, dreams of a future that seemed so bright once.
But those moments felt distant now. Faded. Like something she’d imagined.
Martin took another step forward, his voice softening. “Come on, June. Let’s just… let’s just go upstairs and talk, okay? We’ll figure this out.”
His hand reached for her arm.
And she moved.
It happened faster than she expected. A single, fluid motion—so natural it felt like instinct. The knife slid between his ribs with an awful, wet sound, and Martin gasped, his eyes wide with shock.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
June felt the knife handle in her hand, warm and solid, and beneath it, the tremble of Martin’s body as he staggered back. He looked at her, his mouth working soundlessly, as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.
“June,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “You…”
She didn’t let him finish. She twisted the blade sharply, and he crumpled to the floor.
The room was quiet again.
June stood over him, the knife still in her hand. Her breath came in shallow, ragged gasps, and for a moment, she couldn’t move. Her eyes locked on the blood pooling beneath him, dark and viscous, spreading across the concrete like ink.
Her ears buzzed, and she realized she was waiting for something—for a feeling. Relief, maybe. Or guilt. Or grief.
But there was nothing.
Only a strange, eerie calm.
She crouched down slowly, pressing her fingers to the side of his neck. No pulse.
The knife clattered to the floor as she exhaled shakily, her hands sticky with blood. She stared at his body for a long moment, her mind oddly blank.
Then, finally, she stood.
She wiped her hands on her dress, smearing red across the fabric, and stepped over him. The basement felt smaller now, the air thick and oppressive. But for the first time in years, the weight on her chest had lifted.
The body could wait.
She climbed the stairs, one slow step at a time, and closed the basement door behind her. The house was quiet again, filled only with the faint hum of the fridge and the ticking of the clock on the wall.
June walked to the sink and turned on the water. She scrubbed her hands, watching the blood swirl down the drain in thin red ribbons. Her reflection in the kitchen window was pale and shadowed, but her eyes… her eyes looked sharp.
She dried her hands on a towel, straightened her shoulders, and walked to the desk where Martin’s manuscript still sat. The stack of pages was crooked, a few corners dog-eared from when he’d dropped it.
She sat down and smoothed the pages.
•••
The house felt different now. Quieter. Not the kind of quiet that soothed, but the kind that pressed down on you, heavy and watchful. June sat at the kitchen table, staring at her hands. She’d washed them three times, but her skin still felt sticky, like the blood had seeped in too deep to scrub away.
The clock on the wall ticked steadily, indifferent. It was late—nearly 3 a.m.—but she couldn’t bring herself to go to bed.
Martin was still in the basement. She’d left him there, his body folded awkwardly on the concrete like a discarded marionette. The blood had started to congeal before she’d forced herself to look away. She knew she should go back down and finish the job—figure out where to put him, how to clean up the mess.
But not yet.
Instead, she turned her attention to the laptop in front of her, the cursor blinking expectantly on the email draft. She had typed and deleted the opening sentence three times already. Now, she stared at the blank screen, her mind racing.
Dear Susan, she tried again, addressing Martin’s editor. Martin’s health has been declining for some time now, and he’s decided to step back from public life to focus on his work.
She paused, tapping her fingers against the keyboard. Too formal. Too clinical.
Hi Susan, she typed instead. Wanted to let you know Martin’s feeling pretty burned out these days—he says the pressure’s getting to him. He’ll be working from home exclusively for the foreseeable future. No interviews, no appearances. Just writing.
There. That sounded right. Casual enough to be believable. Vague enough to avoid suspicion.
She hovered over the send button for a moment, her finger trembling slightly, before pressing it. The email disappeared into the ether, and with it, the last trace of Martin’s autonomy.
June sat back, exhaling slowly. The house was still too quiet. Her eyes flicked to the basement door, the edges of it glowing faintly in the kitchen light.
For a moment, she thought she heard something—a faint creak, like the sound of someone shifting their weight. Her breath caught, and she stared at the door, her heart pounding.
It’s just the house, she told herself. Houses made noises. They settled. They breathed. But as the seconds stretched on, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was moving below.
Finally, she stood. The knife was still on the counter where she’d left it, gleaming faintly under the light. She picked it up, her fingers tightening around the handle, and walked to the basement door.
She opened it slowly, peering into the darkness. The faint hum of the dehumidifier greeted her, steady and mechanical. Nothing else.
But the smell of blood hit her immediately, thick and metallic, filling her nose and mouth. She swallowed hard, her stomach twisting, and closed the door again.
Tomorrow. She would deal with it tomorrow.
June returned to the kitchen, dropping the knife onto the counter with a dull clatter. She poured herself a glass of wine—Martin’s favorite, from a bottle he’d been saving for “a special occasion”—and carried it to the living room. The manuscript was waiting for her on the coffee table, its pages neatly stacked.
She picked it up, her fingers brushing the corners of the paper. The title page stared back at her: The Hollow Hour, by Martin Salinger.
For years, those words had felt like a knife in her chest. Now, they felt like something else entirely. A mask she could slip on and off. A shield.
She flipped to the first page and began to read.
•••
The days that followed passed in a surreal blur. June worked methodically, clearing away every trace of Martin’s presence. She scrubbed the basement floor until her hands bled, hauled his body into the trunk of his car, and drove deep into the woods to bury him. She picked a spot far off the trail, where the roots of an ancient oak twisted into the soil like gnarled fingers.
The digging took hours. Her muscles screamed with every shove of the spade, but she kept going, fueled by something dark and relentless. When she was done, she stood over the grave, her breath visible in the cold night air.
“Goodbye, Martin,” she said quietly. Her voice didn’t tremble.
Back at the house, she burned the clothes she’d been wearing, watching the flames lick and curl around the fabric in the fireplace. The smell was acrid, sharp, but she didn’t flinch. She sat on the hearth until the last embers died, staring at the pile of ash that remained.
June thought over and over about the ways she knew murderers got caught. Had she done a good enough job of removing evidence? Had she forgotten anything?
Later, June sat at the desk in Martin’s study—or her study now, though she hadn’t quite gotten used to the idea. The typewriter sat before her, polished and gleaming, its keys worn smooth from years of use. A single lamp illuminated the room, casting long shadows across the walls.
The manuscript was finished. She’d sent it to Martin’s editor earlier that morning, wrapped in an email that was warm, professional, and just distant enough to sound like a man retreating into himself. The editor had replied almost immediately, gushing about deadlines and the brilliance of the new book. It’s a masterpiece, Martin, she’d written. You’ve outdone yourself.
June had laughed at that. A low, bitter laugh that faded quickly into silence.
Now, she stared at the blank sheet of paper loaded into the typewriter, her fingers hovering over the keys.
She had buried Martin three days ago, but the weight of him still lingered. In the faint creak of the basement door. In the corners of her vision where shadows seemed to gather and twist. In the sound of her own breathing, shallow and uneven.
The first sentence came to her suddenly, unbidden, and her fingers moved on their own.
Martin Salinger lived for his stories. In the end, they were all he had left.
The words startled her, and she froze, her hands hovering over the keys. For a moment, she considered ripping the page from the typewriter, crumpling it into a ball, and starting over.
But instead, she smiled faintly and kept going.
Hours passed. The clack of the typewriter filled the room, rhythmic and steady, a metronome for her thoughts. The story flowed from her like blood from an open vein, dark and unrelenting. She barely noticed the time slipping away, barely noticed the ache in her fingers or the growing pile of pages at her side.
It wasn’t until the lamp flickered that she paused, her hands still on the keys. The bulb sputtered once, twice, then went out, plunging the room into shadow.
June sat there for a moment, her breath shallow. She reached for the desk drawer and pulled it open, fumbling for the matches she’d left there. Her fingers brushed against something else instead—something smooth and cold.
The knife.
She froze, her hand resting on the handle. She had cleaned it meticulously, but the weight of it still felt the same. Heavy. Familiar.
Her throat tightened, and she quickly withdrew her hand, grabbing the matches instead. She struck one, the tiny flame springing to life in the darkness.
The shadows on the walls seemed to shift as the light flickered. For a moment, she thought she saw something—movement, just behind her shoulder.
She turned sharply, the match burning close to her fingers, but there was nothing there. Just the empty room.
She lit the candle on the desk. The soft glow filled the space, pushing back the dark.
“Get a grip,” she muttered to herself, her voice hoarse.
But as she turned back to the typewriter, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t alone.
•••
The next morning, the house was bathed in sunlight, the kind of crisp, golden light that made everything seem sharper. Cleaner.
June stood in the kitchen, sipping her coffee as she stared out the window. The oak tree in the backyard swayed gently in the breeze, its branches casting long shadows across the lawn.
She had slept for the first time in days. Deep, dreamless sleep that left her feeling hollow and weightless. The kind of sleep that felt like falling.
Her phone buzzed on the counter, pulling her from her thoughts. It was an email from the editor.
Hi Martin, it read. Just wanted to say thank you again for sending the manuscript. Everyone here is buzzing about it—we’re already planning the launch. Hope you’re taking some time to rest—you deserve it.
June smiled faintly, setting the phone down.
Rest. The word felt foreign to her now, like something she had read in a book once but never truly understood.
She turned away from the window and walked to the desk in the living room, where the typewriter still sat. The pages she had written the night before were stacked neatly beside it, their edges slightly curled.
She flipped through them, her eyes skimming the words.
Her fingers brushed the final sentence, and she paused, reading it again.
In the end, a sword is only as sharp as the hand that wields it.
Her lips curved into a small, sharp smile.
That evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, June sat in the backyard with a glass of wine. The air was cool and smelled faintly of rain, the kind of night that made everything feel just a little softer.
She raised her glass in a silent toast.
“To you, Martin,” she murmured. “The man behind the curtain.”
The words felt strange on her tongue, but she said them anyway.
For a moment, the wind shifted, rustling the branches of the tree. June’s smile faltered, just slightly. She thought she heard something—an echo, faint but familiar. A laugh, soft and mocking, carried on the breeze.
She turned toward the house, her eyes narrowing. The windows stared back at her, dark and empty.
It’s nothing, she told herself. Just the wind.
She finished her wine, set the glass down, and walked inside.
The door closed behind her with a soft click, and the house swallowed her whole.
Behind-the-Scenes Commentary
I have been patiently waiting to get the cosmic nod that it was time to use this deck for this challenge. The concept of what Todd Alcott has done with this deck is AMAZING and there are 78 different directions to go in with it — many great from the start. So… I was worried I would mangle this up, especially since I love this version of Queen of Swords.1
You know what though? I think I did a bang up job. If Todd ever reads this, I’d love to hear his thoughts.
Also, as I was writing, I was very much channeling the untold story of Anansi’s wife, Aso from the stories. She is really the mastermind behind his schemes and cunning. I’m sure she often wished someone would step on him and she could get the credit she deserved.
Source Material
“The Queen of Swords tells the story of June Salinger, wife of a wildly successful novelist. What the world doesn't know is June's husband is a talentless loser, and she is the one writing her husband's bestselling novels. When June finally tires of her husband receiving money and glory for her work, she murders him in the basement of their New England home. She covers up the crime by continuing to publish novels under her husband’s name, claiming he has become a recluse. The Queen of Swords card is about an independent woman who can think for herself.” — From Todd Alcott’s Horror Tarot Guidebook.