It was their favorite. “I’ve never done it this way,” she said, stirring with a plastic spoon that bent in the boiling heat. Why not?” John asked, returning from a disappointing trip to the bank. “Alice!” John yelled. It was a two-dollar bill. There was no one in sight. Undeterred, she scooted a chair over and took it down. There were four separate scars if one looked closely, but there was one brutal gash from where she’d struck herself with the iron that was noticeable at any distance. “It’s going to blister,” she said, applying the ice. “I will think better on a full stomach,” he ruminated. Her elbow might have had a small fracture and she wanted to go home to take advantage of the college’s medical facilities. “Practically paid for itself,” she remarked. The routine was that Alice made dinner because she got home first ever since her demotion from accountant to glorified messenger. His face was beginning to not spring back. “Look at this!” she said. Alice reached over and pinched her husband’s arm as hard as she could. On his fingers were rings, gold and silver. John watched her, standing in her business suit; her graying hair pulled into a neat ponytail, as she clumsily boiled water and added coffee grounds. Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Synopsis submission guide. She showed up on their doorstep the very next night, not expecting what she saw. “I slept with her after you and I were dating,” he said spitefully. He asked her to leave it behind, but she refused. She got down next to him, stabbed him three or four more times, in hopes that he could still feel the pain. John ( Michael Angarano) and Alice ( Juno Temple) are a down-on-their-luck couple that comes across a magical brass teapot capable of providing them with money. Wall Street Journal reviews says "Alice and John are good company — especially Alice, thanks to Ms. Temple's buoyant humor and lovely poignancy. Plot Keywords With her long fingers she pushed a brass teapot into Alice’s hands. Payday was still three days away. John went to grab towels out of the bathroom to mop up the blood. A blood-spattered smile charmed across her face. [7] In contrast, Variety gave a more positive review for the film, saying that Mosely "makes her low-budget enterprise look as slick as most midrange studio comedies, demonstrating herself a director with both imagination and technical ingenuity". Her eyes had no white, only red and green. He removed the lid and saw inside it three ten dollar bills. John rolled his eyes when his wife set the brass teapot in the backseat of their Ford Festiva. When Alice’s finger stopped throbbing she picked up the teapot, removed the top and saw that inside was five quarters. It had been a secret. She soon discovers that the teapot is magical, making money whenever they hurt themselves. Both of his hands reached to the handle, to pull it out, but Alice pushed it in farther and turned it like she had seen done in movies. They told him he looked “beat up.” She could handle it on her own. Kisses, hugs, any affections came after food and caffeine. They argued for an hour, Alice the entire time clutching the closed teapot. Normally, they would’ve listened intently. We have tuition to pay in less than a month.”. “We could buy our way to paradise,” she whispered. “I hit myself with the iron,” she said. “We’ve got to do something with him before people know he’s missing.”. The bile that churned, and had been churning everyday for months, had created an ulcer in John’s stomach. Hard enough to leave a bruise.”. It was the dirtiest they had ever treated one another. Alice had been sleeping the entire drive, or pretending to sleep, while thinking about all of the money they had given their daughter as a loan. They must then decide what they are willing to do (and what they are willing to suffer through) in order to gain financial security. John was most aggravated when Alice decided to make their morning coffee using the brass teapot. John, dabbing at an injury on his chin that wouldn’t stop bleeding, walked in on his wife striking the man on his head with a wooden spoon. The phone rang somewhere in the distance, but no one heard it. “It’s fifty dollars that we’re going to use to pay for her education!”. He hadn’t eaten since toast at breakfast, there had been no time. “She’s not crazy,” John responded calmly. A clanging emanated from inside the car. When the girl picked it up both parents lunged at her and pulled it from her hands. Alice kicked him to the ground once before his heart stopped beating. Her skin was bluish, pale. Her foot planted firmly on the man’s nose, breaking it instantly. When the bill came it was over thirty dollars. “It doesn’t work after they’re dead,” she said. “Why didn’t you wake me up before you left this morning?” he asked. “Did someone attack you? Her attitude was changing with each new day. John got a call on the fourth day from his boss saying that he shouldn’t bother coming in again. Though they were running short on secrets and genuine insults – insincere insults didn’t pay a dime – they had still worked up enough money to get by for months. Each morning they woke up late, sometimes not until after noon, typically alone, and they met at the kitchen table where they set the teapot in between them. John suspected that she had given herself another concussion the week before when she’d “slipped” in the shower and he had to pull her unconscious body, dangling, crimson, wet head to the bed. I could blame you for the shattered windshield.”. They wouldn’t let her wear sneakers because of the dress code so her feet were always blistered. “Don’t knock me out or anything. They never wanted to leave the teapot, to miss a moment when they might make a little money. John had passed out on the couch not long after they returned home. She propped up her mysteriously wounded husband, searching for the front door through her one good eye. With his last gulp of coffee, just before he was going to stand up and kiss his wife goodbye, John found something floating in his mouth. She told her daughter that she had wanted something different, but honestly she had been pulling it out by the fistful for money to the point where she had to shave it to get it all one even length again. In a panic he looked out the kitchen window. This short piece has now been brought to you by Mystery Tribune with permission from the author. Alice was learning to predict how much money would be in the teapot by the recoiling countenance of her husband. The living room was dark, except for some light flickering out of the muted television set. “I’ve found something else anyway.” His boss was surprised at the lack of emotion. After a few moments of avoiding eye contact with the waiter, John took the teapot with him into the men’s room. John’s ulcer screamed within his stomach, no longer satisfied by the warm, nourishing food. John got the veal on top of pasta, Alice had a sample plate consisting of a small portion of several things on the menu. They would’ve had questions or comments about the girl’s stories, but neither spoke. “We’ll have to get his body into his work truck outside. It was ten a.m. Alice was unaccounted for, as was the teapot. When John gets fired from his job, he (with Alice) has a car mishap in front of an antique shop, where Alice sees a brass teapot and (compelled) steals it. When John returned home that night, however, there wasn’t the smell of any cooking in the air. “What? They had begun to expect four hundred dollars a week in change, but it soon dwindled to two hundred and fifty. Beneath the worries that his wife might suffer a hemorrhage and die was the worry about the impending hospital bill. See if you can find his keys.”. Words festering beneath John’s skin for twenty years. There had been mention of a second mortgage. She had accidentally knocked herself out in the garage when one of the hanging shovels had fallen on her head. As they left, she tried not to look at the other diners who stared at them. He pulled out some paper that had adhered to the roof of his mouth. He ran to the kitchen and got the ice pack out of the freezer, laid it against her eye. The girl wouldn’t listen. In three years it would all be paid for and the warranties would simultaneously expire. “Why are you home?” she asked. Toppling over, he leered into the teapot. At first, his tentativeness profited him only in small change, dimes and nickels. He had taken out several cleaning agents. Alice, too, decided to not return to her employer. “I’m taking you to court. He found his wife lying on the couch, the teapot resting on her stomach. “I’m sorry….” He started to say as he took her hand to kiss it. Punch me in my arm. Alice’s tongue snuck in through John’s slightly parted lips. That she could handle it. Mildewed, damp, green words under his skin but not in his blood. John rushed into work where they told him to go ahead and take the day off. With his eyes tightly shut, he listened to the sound of quarters dropping until he was sure that he finally had enough. There was just over four hundred dollars. How could he protect her from this? She thought it was strange that neither parent offered gas money. Alice told him about the men she had been with before him and the things she had allowed them to do that she would never allow John to do to her. He wore long blue overalls with a nametag that read “Randy.”. They both bent over the kitchen table where John laid the bill out to dry. John rolled his eyes when his wife set the brass teapot in the backseat of their Ford Festiva. “Sorry,” her mother said, disappointed by the familiar sound of nickels. “That’s nothing. We never have and we never will. Her face was pale but a smile crept onto it as she looked in the teapot and saw a fifty dollar bill appear. Parents Guide. Wasted money. The moment we get any money something breaks or one of the children….”. The only catch is that they must experience pain in order for the teapot to provide. “You’re wife’s a crazy bitch!” He covered his face with his hand. Alice reared back and spit in his face. She called him a loser three times during the fight and he once, out of frustration, told her that she had been a bad mother.

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