Minerva the liar, p.1
Minerva the Liar, page 1
Minerva
The Liar
Psychic State Book 3
Copyright © 2022 Page Turner
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For those who weren’t believed when they were speaking the truth
Exit Strategy, Exit Wounds
In the land of liars, truthtellers are heretics.
-Darren Delvecchio, Beautiful Liars International
“We need to talk exit strategy.”
Minerva Cantor startled at the sound of her supervisor’s voice. She looked up from her stack of reports. Exit strategy? That was an overly serious thing to say. If she weren’t so busy, it might even be concerning to hear. That sounded like termination talk.
But a person who is buried in work doesn’t exactly have the emotional or attentional bandwidth to worry properly, so Minerva didn’t. Instead, she interpreted this dire pronouncement as a joke.
“I don’t have time to get fired today,” she said and smirked.
“That’s not funny, Mini,” her supervisor replied.
Minerva cringed at his use of that nickname. She’d been called Minnie as a kid. That was her dad’s name for her. Well, when they’d still been talking anyway. Minnie always sounded particularly wrong coming out of the mouths of her male coworkers.
As the only woman in her department, she’d put up with a lot and had tried to be understanding of the fact that she would likely always be an outsider, especially in a male-dominated industry like marketing. While her coworkers had never been openly sexist with her, they did seem to like finding reasons to pick on her. One reason was her height. It was curious because this was the first time Minerva had ever encountered this form of teasing. At 5 feet 4 inches she was fairly average height for a woman, but on a male-dominated team with most of the members easily over 6 feet tall, she was suddenly considered short for the first time in her life.
Highlighting this, her colleagues spelled her nickname “Mini.” That was how her supervisor even wrote it on the team sales printouts, ever eager to remind her that she was the miniature member of the team.
Perhaps if that had been all, she might have been able to move past it, to laugh it off with the rest of the team, but the perception of her as small didn’t seem to stop at height. Sometimes they treated her as though she were practically invisible. Over the past year, she’d pitched three separate initiatives to her colleagues that were all met with crickets in the boardroom only to be resurrected a few weeks or months later by another member of her team to great applause.
But that’s my idea, she’d think, seething every time it happened. She fumed every time someone spontaneously got a great “new” idea that was actually hers.
When she’d tried to open her mouth to protest, the voice that had come out was quite small. In those moments, she’d felt tiny yet again. Miniature. The incredible shrinking woman.
The first time someone had stolen her idea, it was on the Melrose Cigars campaign. She’d gone directly to her supervisor then, who regarded her with bewilderment. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” her supervisor had said in the exact tone that indicated to her that he did but just didn’t want to admit it and thought she was being a nuisance by coming to him.
“It was my work. That storyboard looked just like mine,” she had said, more firmly.
Her supervisor had shrugged noncommittally. “All storyboards look alike if you really think about it.”
Minerva had groaned. “But it was my catchphrase, too.” She put up her hands and moved them apart as though spreading out an invisible banner. “All smoke, all fire.”
“Brilliant, right?” her supervisor had said.
“But it was my idea! That was my line!” Minerva had protested.
Her supervisor had shaken his head. “No, yours was something different, wasn’t it?” He rubbed his chin. “No smoke, no fire, I think it was.”
“No,” Minerva had said. “All smoke, all fire. I have the old drafts in my desk if you’ll just take a look at them. I have proof. I can show you.”
“That won’t be necessary,” her supervisor had said. “I don’t want to foster that kind of work environment, where people are afraid to put ideas forward since it might have a passing resemblance to something they’ve seen in the past.” He’d shrugged. “There are no new ideas, after all.”
“Well, I don’t think it fosters a good environment if people are passing other people’s work off as their o–”
“Calm down,” her supervisor interrupted. “There’s no need to get so upset.”
She gritted her teeth together. She wasn’t losing her cool, but now she might. Telling someone to calm down might just be the best example of reverse psychology in action; as a directive it nearly always has the opposite effect. “Calm down” has a way of hitting people squarely as “hey there, please lose your shit – with a quickness.”
Minerva struggled against this, knowing all too well that if she lost her cool, she’d be immediately labeled as too “sensitive” or “dramatic,” words that her coworkers never used on one another but easily slung her way.
“Look, Mini, you need to be a team player. Stop being so sensitive.”
Yup, there was the S-word. Sensitive. She quietly seethed, hoping her rage wouldn’t boil to the surface where it could be detected and punished. Outwardly, she assured him she wasn’t bothered. She was only just saying. Of course she wasn’t bothered.
And as she backed out of the office after this failed attempt to address the first creative theft, it dawned on her that in an effort to defend her emotions – and by extension her sanity – she had lost the ability to address what she had gone in there to talk about in the first place: The plagiarism of her ideas.
She’d learned an important lesson that day. She wasn’t going to get the credit she deserved on this team. While her supervisor was typically polite and professional with her, he wasn’t someone she could turn to when she needed someone in her corner to fight for her.
She was on her own.
And now here he was, years later, standing in her office, stony faced and throwing around that dire phrase – “exit strategy.” He was in fact being more dramatic than she’d ever been, although he’d thrown the D-word at her many times. There was a Bingo card in there somewhere, in the predictability of the criticisms he and her other male co-workers levied against her. Criticisms, Minerva noted, that she’d never heard before on a more co-ed work force.
This
And now here he was, lingering uncharacteristically, talking about exit strategy. Coupled with the earlier request for an end of the day meeting, it was concerning. A bolt of fear coursed through her. Could it be? Could this be it? Was she getting fired?
No, she thought. Stop that. Keep your cool. It’s probably nothing.
“I’m just trying to get the job done,” she said.
He said nothing.
She was right to be afraid, Minerva realized. There was something off about this whole situation. Playing it cool wouldn’t cut it. “You’re serious,” she said. “When you say exit strategy… you… you really want me to leave.”
It had to be something else. A joke gone too far. A miscommunication that could be worked through. After all, she’d been with the firm for several years now and had always done good work. In addition to not being credited for her ideas, she was making less than her colleagues, something she wasn’t supposed to know but had figured out on her own via sheer resourcefulness.
She wasn’t just overworked and underpaid. She was a bargain really, a steal. A steal who had been repeatedly stolen from and had hardly complained despite the unfairness.
How much lower maintenance could you get?
She had voiced her fear, hoping he would reassure her. But that didn’t happen. Instead, her supervisor nodded, and her stomach leapt.
He was serious. He did want her to leave.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “Why?”
“You’ve seemed unhappy here for an awfully long time,” the supervisor said.
I didn’t know happiness was in the job description, Minerva thought. Aloud she said nothing and just stared at him.
Her supervisor stared back.
“I’m not a quitter,” Minerva said finally.
“No one thinks that,” the supervisor replied, sliding a paper to Minerva across the desk.
Notice of Termination.
“Security,” he said, one quick word spat into a phone. In one smooth movement, the supervisor turned around on his heel like a swimmer making a wall turn.
As she followed Security down the hallway, Minerva sized him up. He was a pokerfaced man the size of a vending machine.
Whatever would you buy from him though? She wondered. Something strong. And bad for your digestion.
“What?” Security said.
“I didn’t say anything,” Minerva replied.
“You laughed.”
“Did I?”
“You’re way too cheerful for someone who was just let go,” Security said.
“Have you ever been fired?” Minerva asked him.
“Let go,” he corrected her.
“Let go?” she said. “No, I wasn’t let go. I was fired.” Normally, she wouldn’t have argued, but today was different. Being let go – damn it, fired – had altered her perspective. She was out of fucks.
“People aren’t fired. Guns are fired. Not people.”
“Is that what you think?”
Security didn’t respond.
Minerva suppressed the laughter brewing in her throat, and the tension from holding it in became more and more powerful as she stepped into the open air, the laugh scrambling to escape from her like a rogue hiccup.
And as it did, she missed the sudden wall that came out of nowhere and hit her.
Cotton. Expanding further. Can sweaters grow? Minerva wondered as whatever was sitting in her mouth continued to yawn and pull at every nerve and yanked at fibers even further down into her throat.
She thought of those strange toys made of superabsorbent polymer that children dropped into water and watched grow. It was an uncomfortable feeling, visualizing one of those toys pushing down her throat and out to the walls, fed by her saliva, filling her, suffocating her.
In the distance she heard a band practicing. Fourth graders probably, judging by the skill level. Invested more in making noise than establishing a cohesive arrangement.
On the other side of her, she heard a mix of murmuring voices punctuated by metallic clanging. Someone was moving furniture maybe. But light furniture. They weren’t dragging bureaus across an apartment floor. No, they were moving smaller objects perhaps, or items on wheels.
Then her nerves sang, drowning out what she heard in her ears. So many nerves singing that she couldn’t isolate where the sensations were coming from. She felt a mix of pain and pressure.
Pain.
Pressure.
Which one is pain? Which one is pressure?
Her basic proprioceptive sense whirred to life, letting her know that she was lying down. Not a lot of information, but it was something.
And there was light. But not enough light. There was the suggestion of light, what a person might perceive if they’d been told about light in passing but had never had the opportunity to experience it firsthand themselves. The shadow of a form cast across a lit screen.
Pull back the screen.
I can’t.
Is it really a screen?
It wasn’t a screen, she realized. It was more of a muted sun. A yellowed fabric stretched tightly across a drumhead.
The screen was her… eyelids.
Those she could pull back. And so, she did.
She didn’t see anything at first because the room was so bright, but as her eyes adjusted, Minerva knew exactly where she was.
A hospital room.
I’ve been in an accident, she realized. She glanced over at her arm. An intravenous line was inserted and active. Dripping pain meds and normal saline most likely.
A nurse walked in. “Good morning, Miss Cantor. I see you’re finally awake.”
Minerva nodded.
“I’ll let the doctor know. He’ll be very pleased. We weren’t sure whether you’d come out of it,” the nurse said.
Come out of what? What happened to me? Minerva thought. She looked purposefully at the nurse, hoping her eyes would convey the message. Speaking was out of the question with her mouth and throat otherwise occupied.
“Oh right, your pain meds,” the nurse replied, misinterpreting the look. “I imagine that’s why you’re awake at all. You’re completely out.”
What happened to me? Minerva thought again. She was doing her best to broadcast it at the nurse. Minerva certainly didn’t believe in psychic powers, or anything woo-woo or spooky like that, but she’d heard of magicians called mentalists who could powerfully affect people with the power of suggestion. A mentalist could get someone to pick a certain option simply by silently moving their own lips to prime words in the subject’s imagination.
Perhaps, if she focused her intent powerfully enough, she could do something similar with her eyes. Especially with a nurse as the target, someone who was used to dealing with patients who couldn’t communicate. Surely, there was no one better equipped to receive such a message.
The nurse nodded as if she understood. She hung a new bag on the stand next to Minerva’s bed. “Nighty night, Miss Cantor,” she said.
Nooooo, Minerva thought, as she slipped back under the influence of the sedative, violently blanketed by sleep, feeling very much like a parakeet might if you draped a towel over its cage in the middle of the afternoon while he still had an awful lot on his birdbrain and more trilling yet to sing about his birdly concerns.
