Out of Luck

Patrick chewed on the eighth and final piece of ham on his plate and to his horror, it was also tough and stringy. This was the third time today he’d sliced up ham into bites and asked his girlfriend, Samantha, to put half of them on his plate at random. The look on her face said that she was just about done with this nonsense. The first time she’d done this, five of six were tough, the second it was seven out of eight.

“Well Pat, I’m going to go get ready for my interview. You know, something actually important and not some childish delusional pseudo-crisis.” Patrick followed Samantha with a pleading look as she stood up and went to her bedroom to change.

Normally, one would easily disregard such oddities, but these last few weeks had been anything but regular. He agreed that the idea he was for whatever reason cursed sounded insane. So what? It was just some stupid ham. This also happened with coins or dice, however; coin flips would almost invariably turn out bad, and it was the same with dice. The consistency of it frightened him the most, that and that he felt alone in his predicament. This really was happening and next to nobody took him seriously, including Sam. Friends were either dismissive or concerned for his mental wellbeing. Some even thought this was some moronic ploy to receive attention, as if he was some histrionic teenager.

In addition to the frighteningly consistent bad coin flips, just this week he had lost his wallet twice, he had missed about 10 bus rides by a few seconds and his rent had almost doubled. Yesterday, he messed up three whole drinks, and he had barely ever made wrong drinks in his three years working as a barista. After the third one, Felicia, a friend and the other barista he often shared a shift with, asked him if he was all right and if he needed to leave early. She was one of the few who hadn’t outright mocked him when he told her about his situation, which gave Patrick some comfort. Then there was the car accident. Four days ago, he avoided an out of control bus by mere centimeters. He was still shaken from that.

“Sam, you can’t deny something is going on. You may think its nothing, but I don’t. I can feel something has been off since that time. All of this began right after I was there that day.”

“You started noticing the fact that you’re kind of unlucky after that day. And anyway, you’re saying that you went to a tarot reading gypsy who cursed you? Right.” Samantha said from the other room. A few silent minutes later, she came out of the bedroom wearing a perfectly ironed violet green business shirt paired with business skirt and heels. She had her long blonde hair in a tight bun. She did not look like herself in that. A few days ago she had been wearing yoga pants to work on the regular. She sat down in the opposite chair.

“Look, Pat, I... love you, but you have to start acting like an adult, you’re 22 now. We adults don’t believe in magic and curses. You went to some woman who gave you a palm reading and told you some mystical mumbo-jumbo and now you see bad shit at every corner? Snap out of it Pat.”

“Tarot session. It’s different.” – Patrick said with a smile.

“Oh, well, you should have said so. That changes everything.” - Sam wanly returned his smile.

Outside, Sam gave him a half-hearted hug and they went their separate ways, she towards work, he towards his rented studio apartment. What awaited him was a long walk along a darkening main street, chilly with the autumn air. Of course, he thought, he couldn’t blame Samantha for not taking him seriously. There she was, preparing for what was probably a life-changer and he was here losing hair over how ham acted weird around him. He had been like that for weeks – aloof, agitated and jumpy. Maybe this wasn’t real after all. Maybe it was just some mental health crisis he was going through, maybe he would have to start going to some shrink again who would stuff him full of meds and he would end up addicted to Xanax.

It all started with that damn woman, the tarot card reader in the mall. She had recently moved her ‘parlor’ into a stuffy 'box' with a glass front that some expensive clothes brand used to rent. Patrick worked at a coffee shop on the opposite lane of the third floor. ‘Tough luck’ he thought when he was on shift one day and noticed the store was emptied out and gutted of its display shelves. The only item left inside was the employee’s desk, a bare, creepy silhouette that stood in the dark against the gray cracked plaster, the dangling power cables wrapped in insulation tape looking like protruding claws. A few days later, a new owner had claimed the box. He never saw the transition, the change just happened: two tall, large curtains in a garishly colorful oriental style enveloped the glass walls to the sides of the door in waves and ripples. The face of that damn Woman stared directly at him from a large poster taped to the door. She was tan-skinned, wearing copious amounts of colorful makeup and was wearing a smile that attempted to make her look wise and mysterious. There were words on the poster, in a large comic sans font: “PALM READINGS; TAROT SESSIONS; MEDIUM SERVICES;” Patrick had never heard of oracle’s parlors in malls, but he supposed it was just some avant-garde project some weirdo cooked up as a business idea. One evening three weeks ago, his shift ended too late to catch the 7 o’clock bus home, so he had one whole hour to screw around in the mall before the next one. He was curious about the new oddity that had appeared opposite his workplace and he decided that he would take a look inside, just to see what it was all about. A door ringer sounded as he stepped through the door and he was immediately overwhelmed. Tall, aged wooden rafters replaced the old ones, making the already stuffy box feel almost claustrophobic. A stupendous amount of trinkets covered the shelves from top to bottom – rows upon rows of tightly packed rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, rosaries and so much more - some of these were placed nearly one atop the other. They were made of colorful stones, metal or woven from fabric, many bearing various religious or occult symbols, some of which even Patrick recognized. He wasn’t very knowledgeable about the religious or mystical, but he at least knew what a dreamcatcher was. And by God, there were a lot of dreamcatchers. They hung by their thick threads which disappeared in shadows above. There were glasses and jars and vials in all shapes and sizes, some containing various colorful liquids, ceramic and porcelain statuettes of what Patrick presumed were mythological characters. He saw crystals and stones, charms and periapts. He even saw what he thought were Hookahs. Patrick’s head spun, from both the mind-bogglingly magnificent array of stuff and the harsh smell of scented tobacco. Black wallpaper with a pattern of alternating red and blue diamond shapes covered the side and back walls and the soft carpet that spanned the entire box had an intricate geometric pattern that framed a large blue pyramid with an eye in its center. The pyramid pointed towards the door and the eye stared at anyone who stepped through. The previous employee’s desk had been replaced with a large oak table and behind it sat the same woman from the poster outside, arranging jewelry on a rotating display stand. There was a set of stairs behind her, which were probably fake as there was no way the place housed a second floor. As he walked among the clutter, a severed left arm on one of the shelves caught Patrick’s eye, it was severed at the forearm and was missing a ring finger. It felt real when Patrick touched it, or at least that’s how he imagined real flesh would feel like. The hand was dried and preserved like a mummy’s.

“Welcome to The Third Eye, my boy.” Patrick thought the name terribly cheesy.

The woman said without turning from her work. She had a vaguely middle-eastern sounding accent.

“Tell me if you need anything.” Patrick thought the name terribly cheesy.

“Thanks, I’m just looking” he answered, still a bit overwhelmed.

“And what is it that you’re searching for?”

“Nothing in particular, just… looking.” Patrick dreaded that she would start pressuring him into buying something.

“You don’t even know what you’re searching for, but you came in anyway?”

“Looking for. That’s what you mean, right?”

“Looking, searching, bah! They mean the same, don’t they? If you are looking for something, you are searching for it, no?”

“Uhm, no, they can’t always be used inter…” - the Woman cut him off – “Don’t be shy, boy! My favorite customers is one who knows they don’t know what he wants. You’ll be surprised how many people come here lying to themselves about that very thing.”

“So, you’re supposed to be a fortune teller?”

“Yes, do I not look like one? Or did you expect something else?”

No, in fact, she looked too much like a fortuneteller. She was middle-aged, plump, wore a red dress with a thin translucent blue scarf around her neck and chest, her hair was a fiery scarlet. Her cheeks were powdered red and her eyeshadow was a deep marine blue.

“No, you… you look exactly the part.”

“Well then, now that we’ve both agreed that I am a genuine fortune teller, how about I read your fortune in the cards?” They hadn’t touched on whether she was genuine or not. She stood, put the rotating stand aside, adjusted her chair and sat so that she was looking directly at Patrick.

“How much is this going to cost, because I…”

“Let us begin.” Patrick sighed and sat down in the opposite chair. As much as he hated to admit, he was genuinely interested. In front of the Woman was a deck of large, thick cards, their backs had an intricately patterned frame on a dark brown background. She slowly and smoothly shuffled the deck and drew the three top cards, then set them beside one another and flipped the one to her left face-up. It bore a depiction of a spire viewed from the bottom, ascending towards a vortex of clouds at its peak. A fire was raging from the only visible window and a golden-haired woman was falling from it, her locks concealing her face.

"The Tower" the Woman said," is a symbol of destruction and ruin."

 Patrick frowned. "Aren't you supposed to tell me I'm going to be rich in 10 years and have a big happy family? I thought that's how this worked." The Woman simply continued.

 "Whose ruin, we do not yet know. It may be yours, yes, but not necessarily, and not entirely. The tower is especially a symbol of ruin for those who have become too prideful of their accomplishments. It harkens back to the original, the first - the Tower of Babylon."

She flipped the second card. It depicted a very pale gaunt man in profile. He had sharp features, completely black eyes and was dressed in a long black robe frayed at the hem. He held up an ornately decorated sickle as if it was a weapon. The Woman touched the face of the card and for a moment, the look on her face shifted.

"Death" she said softly.

 "It almost sounds like you have a grudge against me or something", Patrick said nervously.

"Death not in the literal sense, boy. This Death represents change. The cycle of life, the cycle of all our lives. In order for something new to be born, something old must first perish to make room.” Patrick scratched the back of his neck nervously.

"So ruin, destruction and death. Great. What will the last one say, that I’m going to hell or something?"

"Let’s hope it won't be the Devil." The woman said smiling with a mouth full of brown teeth and flipped the last card. It depicted two young people, a man and a woman, one with black and one with brown hair, their hands intertwined. "The Lovers. Two things, bonded, inseparable.” She paused for a long moment.

“Great, is that it?” Patrick was now itching to just get up and leave.

“No, of course not. There is one last step. Close your eyes and give me the palm of your hand.”

Patrick reluctantly followed her instruction. When he closed his eyes, he felt her hand over his.

“The first of three will burn you like a flame, until the second of three appears as a great calamity to overshadow the first. If the test is passed, the third of three will appear, to grow in the ashes left behind.”

Patrick felt a stab of pain in his hand. He screamed and snatched it away, opening his eyes. There was a trickle of blood coming from the center of his palm. The Woman had a dagger with a bloodied tip in her hand. “What the…. Are you insane??”

“Your fate is now sealed. The rest is up to you. You may go.” Her voice was suddenly impassive, her glare was intense, petrifying.

“Damn right I’ll be going, you insane witch! I’m reporting you to the police!”

“Don’t bother. You will be coming back only once more, and there will be one other person with you. Hopefully the right one.”

Patrick stood up and stormed out of the place.

This was three weeks ago. Yesterday, Samantha had failed to get her promotion. Today, she had broken up with Patrick by phone call. She told him they both clearly needed a break to settle things in their lives. Now, Patrick was on the third floor of the mall, staring at the Woman smiling her wicked smile from the poster on the tinted glass door. He was still trying to process what had happened. It had to be the curse he tried to rationalize. But even if it wasn’t, Sam wouldn’t come back and he knew it. Things hadn’t been going well between them lately. He had seen it coming, but he had refused to face it and now it had just crashed into his life. It felt somehow hollow, however, like just another crumbling fragment of the decaying building that was his life as of late.

 “And what might you be doing here on a Saturday morning?”

Patrick snapped out of his stupor and turned to see Felicia, short, with brown curly hair and a large, bright smile. She looked completely different with her hair down and without her usual barista uniform. Patrick liked the look much better.

“Oh, uh... hey Lish. I’ve just got some business that needs taking care of. What about you?”

“Well, it’s my day off so I decided I would just wander the mall for a bit. Weird, I know. Other people have actual plans for their weekends….” She trailed off for a bit, looking almost embarrassed. “Seems like it’s yours too. So is your “business” here?” She gestured towards the Third Eye.

“Yeah.” Patrick cursed at himself for admitting he was visiting that place for the second time. “Ehm, I have to talk to the person inside. I have to confront them about something.”

“Oh, it’s about that isn’t it…” They both looked down for a few moments. “Want me to come inside with you? People tell me I’m a great emotional support. Unless you want to be alone, of course.”

“I wouldn’t want to bother you on your day off.”

“Oh no, it’s fine. As I said, no plans.” She shrugged and smiled again.

And so they went in. The place hadn’t changed at all, same clutter, same wallpaper, same strange carpet. Felicia whistled, looking around in astonishment.

“This is insane. I never saw them moving any of this in.”

Patrick went straight for the Woman, still sitting behind her table. As she turned to look at him, he kicked the chair away and slammed both fists on the table.

“What the HELL did you do to me?”

The Woman just stared back at him in genuine surprise. After a few long moments she smiled widely.

“You’ve done it boy. You’ve passed the test.”

“Test? What test? Look, I'm sorry if I said or did anything to offend, but I don't think I deserve whatever you've done to me.”

“Deserve being alive today, you mean? You did that with your own strength.”

“Being… alive today?”

“Yes, you did nearly miss a meeting with death four days ago. Your own luck managed to avoid that. All you needed was a little nudge.”

“You mean the bad luck I’ve been experiencing…”

“It is how the universe works, my boy. There must always be balance. Those like me, however, can occasionally tip the scales. Avoiding your death is worth a few weeks of trouble, don’t you think?”

Felicia was looking at them both back and forth, completely confused.

“Now go, you must complete the last step. Go and live a good life, boy.”

“Just tell me it will be over now, please.”

“It will be, boy, once you two are through that door. Just go, both you and Felicia.”

“Wait, how did you know my name?”

Before Felicia got an answer, Patrick just turned and nodded towards the door.

“What was that all about?” Felicia asked once they were outside.

“I’m… not sure myself.”

“Want to tell me about it over some coffee? It’s always better when you share what’s troubling you with someone.”

Patrick’s head was still mayhem, but he was beginning to understand now, the meaning behind it, behind the cards.

“Sure, I’d love to. I have one bizarre story to tell.”

“Starbucks?”

“Absolutely.”

They left, and behind them remained the dusty, gutted old box, with its cracked plaster walls and lonely employee’s desk.