Third story for June
The third story for June at www.shortshortshort.com is, as I said in the introduction, based on the meaning of a Tarot card. In this case, I didn't say which card because this is one of the two cards that people bring a lot of preconceptions to. This story is based on The Devil, which represents not evil per se, but the temptations of superficiality and materialism. (The other card that tends to give people the heebie jeebies is the Death card, which is meant to represent cataclysmic change and a recognition of one's limitations. I'm over-simplifying, of course.)

Falling for material temptations is a sort of spiritual enslavement, but one of the features of the Ryder-Waite deck's Devil card is that the man and woman who are enslaved by the Devil are wearing very loose chains around their necks. They could free themselves just by lifting the chains and walking away. But they don't. And neither does Sienna, the character in the story, just walk away from the material pleasures that she has come to expect from life.