Welcome again to the October Frights Blog Hop! Here is a short story I wrote for open mic a year ago. It was inspired by a couple friends if mine and things they'd said about writing the things that hurt and doing the scary things...
TWO OF WANDS, REVERSED
“Why am I dead inside?”
“I’m a fortune teller, not a shrink,” she says, smiling with all four of her golden teeth.
“I feel like you should know better than any shrink—about souls,” I say, interlacing and unlacing my fingers. I can smell my own cologne over the heavy incense in the gypsy’s tent. I have over-applied it again. I lick my lips. The old witch it squinting at me thoughtfully.
“I’m a performer,” she says at last.
“An artist!” I interject. “Artists have souls.”
“More so than other people?” she asks with a chortle.
“They are more aware of them,” I say, tracing patterns on the ornate tablecloth, “or they display them. Especially performers.”
“No, we hide them and put on a display of falsehood,” the gypsy corrects me. “We are pretenders. Perhaps we lack souls and thus overcompensate. We are trying to make everyone believe we have souls, just like them.”
She smiles and sits back, crossing her arms, as if she’s won. I scowl and dig my nails into the tablecloth before me.
“Do you want my money?” I ask.
“In verity,” she replies. “The question is this: do you want lies?”
“Then you do admit to knowledge,” I say, sitting up and pointing at her triumphantly.
“I know how to play you, like a fine instrument,” she says with a shrug. “I am a performer. The best.” I slump back in the old chair with a huff.
“You do not wish to rephrase your question?” she asks, taking out an ivory snuff box.
I scowl as she takes a pinch and inhales it. I bite my lip and interlace my fingers once more. What does she mean? Rephrase? What do I want to know? The gypsy sneezes violently all over the table between us. She chuckles with her golden teeth flashing. I almost get up and leave. She can’t help me anyway. God, my cologne is so strong. Why did I use so much?
“What happened to my soul?” I ask at last.
“Ah…” she says. “So you don’t have one. Are you an artist?”
“Yes. I’m a writer,” I sniff, wringing my hands in my lap. “But I had a soul.”
“Before you became a writer?”
“No,” I say. “I’ve been a writer for a long time, and I’ve always had a soul.”
“How do you know?” she says, cocking her head.
“I’m sure I don’t know!” I snap. “I only know the absence of it. Not quite a cavity…not really a hollowness. Just that I…I feel like some integral part is missing. You never know what you have till it’s gone, they say.”
“Who are they?” asks the gypsy.
“Are you going to answer me?” I ask, sitting up straight again. “Or keep asking me questions?”
“I need information to inform my fabricated response,” she says, winking.
“I’m wasting my time,” I growl, standing.
“Or maybe you’re wasting mine,” she says with a smile. “Sit down and I will answer one question. Just one.”
I work my jaw silently, gripping my left wrist in my right. The gypsy continues to smile with all three golden teeth. Three? She waves a hand and a candle appears in the center of the table, burning with a sputtering red light and giving off a sticky scent of apricot. I blink and she laughs.
“People only believe their eyes,” she says, “but the eyes can be fooled.”
“And hearts?” I ask.
“Is that your question?”
I shake my head.
“You didn’t really come here for a laugh, did you?” she asks. “My favorite customer. One question. Though I cannot promise you that you will like the answer.”
“I don’t expect to,” I grumble, sitting reluctantly back in the creaky old chair. Incense and the candle-scent swirl around me and I fancy that a haze glitters around the table and the little ball of red candle-light. The tent beyond grows dark.
“You wear a lot of cologne,” she says. “And you are insecure when you talk.” She points to my hands, lying before me on the table.
“What’s that got to—” I break off because my hands are interlacing their fingers again. I force them still and look the gypsy in the eye. They are not one color. They seem to cycle drunkenly through all the colors of the rainbow. I can’t hold her gaze.
“Where’s my soul?”
“Is that your question?”
I take a deep breath and choke on my own cologne.
“I haven’t paid you yet,” I say.
“Haven’t you?” she cocks an eyebrow. “Quit stalling. I don’t have all day. There are more customers.”
“I didn’t see any outside,” I say, wrangling my hands again. I clutch my knees to stop them from moving.
“I should get paid by the hour, then,” she says, setting a deck of cards on the table and splaying them out to one side, then the other in a fluid motion. Back and forth, back and forth, like the tide. “Just look inside yourself and ask yourself: what is it that you want to know? Why did you come here?”
“How do I get my soul back?” I ask, leaning forward and searching for her rainbow eyes behind her grey fringe. She does not look up. Her hands move the cards like a magician, they flow and ebb. They stop, she flicks a card over.
“The answer to that,” she says, “lies in the previous question: what happened to it? Which lies in the first question: why are you dead inside?”
“But I only get one question,” I growl, gripping the edge of the table.
She slides the card across the table and leaves it in the pool of bloody light from the candle. It’s upside down. It’s got a picture of six golden coins on it. Each coin has a different laughing face on it, and they all look strangely familiar, but I can’t say from where.
“You’ve let your art stagnate in greed and worries. You’re worried about that book signing and your reception. There’s another author who’s doing better than you. Your art is your soul. It’s dead, riding on trends, riding on popularity.”
She flips another card and scoots it across to me. This one is right side up, with a picture of an infantile creature in hose and puffed sleeves and bearing a gigantic golden chalice.
“I don’t know what the heck that means,” she says, shaking her head. “Doesn’t really answer where your soul went. Ah. But it does describe your soul. Your art is good. It’s deep and passionate. You mean it—or you used to. It’s gone. But not utterly lost, I think.” She grins at me again. With two teeth this time.
I blink, losing my train of thought for a second. “Your teeth—”
“Don’t you want to know how to get it back?” she doesn’t wait, but flips a third card.
She slams it down in front of me. Another upside down card with a crying man on it, holding a long staff that is broken in twain.
“That doesn’t look good,” I say, swallowing.
“Ha!” she says. “It never is. There’s darkness in you. There’s a little bit in all of us. Pain and things. All that jazz.”
“What do you mean?” I snap, looking up at her with a scowl.
“You know what I mean. You need to be honest. Forget the accolades and the reviews. And for God’s sake, stop wearing so much cologne!”
My hands twist each other in anger.
“Your soul is dead because you let the world crush it down when it wants to rise. You let it go, pushed it out, because you were afraid of it.”
She has only one tooth now.
I swallow. “I am not afraid of it, or I wouldn’t want it back, would I?’
“Bah!” she says, picking up the card with the broken staff and throwing at me. “Then why is your art restricted? Dig that soul out,” she picks up the cup-bearer card, “it never left! It’s still there!” she throws the card at me. “Stop caring what the public, or even your mother thinks! Let your soul back out, let it draw up the life from within, even the ugly stuff, especially the ugly stuff. Pain is how you know you’re alive. Find it and write that shit!”
She has no teeth.
She throws the last card at me. The six of coins. It cuts through the flame of the candle and extinguishes it in a puff of smoke.
“It’s up to you to turn that card around,” her voice says from the dark.
And see the rest of the blog hop below!
