You’re reading part two of “Would you like some more help?”. If you’d like to catch up, you can find all the chapters from part one here and the first chapter of part two here.
If you’re up to date, but need a little refresher, this might help.
Elodie’s last chapter was chapter 23.
Life was unusually quiet after the dinner. Elodie focused on preparing, among other things, twenty autumn bouquets for the church. She chatted with her colleague, Anna. She enjoyed the sun during lunch break, as she sat on her bench at the park. Squirrels were not dancing around or styling her hair, but life was pretty good. Surprisingly good.
She didn’t know what she had expected. It’s not like Roxanne was a movie-like villain with a master plan. She just seemed like one sometimes. Elodie shook herself out of her mental production of The Little Mermaid. It was good to have legs. She ate the last bite of her baguette with salmon and got up.
As she was walking towards the nearest trash can, two members of the Philian congregation walked past. That’s when she noticed the first subtle change: in the way they greeted her. In the way their eyes did not match the warmth of their smiles.
The direction they were coming from was the flower shop. Which could be a coincidence.
Don’t be paranoid, not everything is about you. Maybe they’re just having a bad day. Life is not a movie or a book.
Yeah, it’s way worse.
Elodie switched back and forth from walking too fast, to face whatever was coming, to walking too slow, because there was nothing she could do anyway, so whatever. She also tried to switch from internal dialogue to internal monologue again, to feel a bit less insane. Stress did work wonders when the goal was to turn a quiet person into a wreck.
She knew what was going on as soon as she entered the shop. Anna didn’t meet her gaze when she said she had just received a letter she needed to pass on to Elodie.
I’ve got to do some admin stuff in the back.
Sure.
As if they had not been talking about bucket lists and, more specifically, starting a stray cat orphanage together in the morning.
***
There’s something about being treated completely unfairly — or feeling like you are — that causes people to lose, at the least, a certain filter.
Elodie had spent several years filtering shit to the point of it looking like water. Not drinkable, but almost. Similar to being extremely thirsty and imagining drinking from the bottle of a stranger on the bus or a puddle on the ground, throughout the years, she’d gotten very close. The termination letter removed the filter. Without it, everything was contaminated again, which felt overwhelming, at first, but liberating soon after. She found strength in the absurdity of what was happening.
You’re breaking up with me? Cue the hysterical laughter.
The Philians were a sect. A brain-washing, propaganda machine without the redeeming underlying qualities of some religions’ positive moral lessons. She would make sure everyone knew. She wasn’t going to sit there and allow another generation of beautiful, smart people to live a life where they sought community and love but unknowingly excluded those who were different, all while funding the lavish lifestyle of the leadership, even as the money was tight for themselves.
Sure, as Elodie would eradicate the weed of the Philians, two more sects would spring out somewhere. That was no reason for inaction, though.
She dressed however she wanted, took the bus, walked three minutes and reached the entrance of the Philian Center of Joy. Three uniformed men were standing guard. Some sort of militia-cosplaying weirdos. Still, that seemed a bit exaggerated.
What the hell is going on?
Lady, we’re going to need to ask you to just leave, without making a scene. You wouldn’t do yourself, us or anyone a favor.
Did Roxanne hire you just for me?
The guards looked at each other and shared the look employees around the world shared in front of Karens.
No, you’re just a side mission. Now, please, just leave.
I need to talk to some people in there! Now!
This is your last warning. Leave.
No point in making a scene. It’s rare that loud and violent people have anything valuable to say. Elodie still had her voice, but she had been silenced. She felt stupid for all this build up. As she walked past her bus stop, she wondered what the guard had meant when he had said side mission.
Not unlike many years ago, as she opened her phone to check the news, her life and the world felt like they had changed from one moment to the other.
I love Elodie’s chapters her attempts at going with the flow but life and work and the world not flowing how she’d like it to.