Finding fault

MERE MORTALS: Things are bad. Right? You, like me, look’n for work? Shit! We be lucky if we ever work’n agin. God damn COVID thing gonna cause economic collapse. This shit seems to have come out of nowhere.

THE FATES: They’re so scared. It’s just so much fun to know what they don’t. How the flap of butterflies’ wings in Argentina can change the weather, and a lot more, in NYC. How the stroke of a pen on a mortgage in a Poughkeepsie bank can literally bring the world down.

CASANDRA (dressed as Adam, sorry, a man): I know my wife wants this house; and I sorta want it too...but I have this reluctance to sign...I’ve got a feeling bad things will flow from this signature.

NARRATOR: Yet, Pandora signs. Yep, you heard that right. The signer is really that body-snatching Pandora, slyly occuping Adam-sorry again-a man, as Casandra, just to have some plausible deniability in case things go wrong. Pandora’s sneaky. The pen inking the signature to that mortgage is laden with Pandemonium dust, the latest addition to her box of tricks. She wonders how it will affect humanity.

THE FATES: Oh that mischievous Pandora. She’s just too fun. Dressed as Casandra! Too rich! Sowing Pandemonium whilst blaming that ole stick in the mud, Cassandra. It’s always “The sky is falling!”; “Got some bad news for you!” with her.

NARRATOR: Adam -sorry.sorry.sorry-A man, finished signing and set the pen on the desk. Went to the restroom and washed his hand thoroughly(He’d lost the other in a Saudi oil deal gone wrong) ‘Out, damned spot!’ drifts through his head as he washes his hand. He exits the restroom, then the bank, feeling apprehensive. Butterflies in his stomach.

The next customer, Wei Ming, a diminutive woman from Wuhan, China, sits down at the desk, picks up the pen to sign some documents regarding her purchase of ‘The New World Order’ dojo; this Poughkeepsie purchase becoming the latest addition to her ‘The New World Order’ franchise empire. After signing, she absentmindedly slips the Pandemonium pen into her pocket, hurries out the door signaling to her driver, “Quick. Quick. To Newark airport. I want to catch the next flight home“

Pandemonium dust, which turned out to be a slow starter, thus arrived in Wuhan.

Let’s Fast forward a few years.

COVID-19: Don’t blame me. Blame Pandora. Bitch! If she just hadn’t dusted that man’s mortgage-signing pen with Pandemonium dust I wouldn’t be here. I’m just the messenger. Or blame that guy in the Poughkeepsie bank. He’s not without culpability.