9. Spendthrift

Maggie spent money faster than she could make it, but her painted pine cone collection was crucial to her quality of life, and if going in to credit card debt meant sustaining the flow of immersive, transportive moments that she shared with each new delicately decorated cone of pine, she would have no qualms sacrificing her future to feel whole amidst the present.

Years, pine cones, and bills piled up around Maggie, leaving her only with only one apparent option: she would have to kill the pine cone artist to increase the value of her collection. It so happened that no one really knew of Juniper’s work, no one really cared that he had “committed suicide”, and no one really wanted to buy any of his pieces from Maggie.

It only took so long for Maggie to pay off her debts now that she had no new pine cones to purchase. The day she had mailed in the final payment, she attached fishing hooks to all of her painted pine cones, stuffed them in two large gunny sacks, and spent the night hanging them on the branches of every tree she saw along her walk to the police department.

The people of the neighborhood were tickled with wonderment the following morning, but would never know of the misery that preceded the spectacle: a city’s forest of ornate trees.

 

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