Doomed From The Start

Jonathan stared at the tattered, discoloured tent and gripped his clammy, shaking hands. 25 years ago, he’d been at this same spot as a kid – the snot-nosed, candy floss munching, baseball cap wearing little shit that he was. He’d waited for his dad to come out of the tent from his fortune telling session. When Jonathan had asked Dad about his fortune, he just laughed it off.

Dad died not long after.

Jonathan knew fortune telling was bogus as an adult, and yet, he couldn’t turn away. Coming here wasn’t originally the plan –  the bus broke down, Jonathan was hungry after a hard day’s work, and the carnival was nearby. Perhaps it was fate.

A woman, about Jonathan’s age, popped out of the tent with a cigarette. The light illuminated her hazel eyes, which shone brighter than any of those tinsy lights in the carnival. Something about them deeply mesmerised him. She had the same eyes and that silhouette from the figure he’d seen under the tent in his childhood, but he didn’t recognise her face. There was no way this was the same person that told Dad’s fortune.

“It’s rude to stare,” she said, touching up the long, frizzled hair that gently rested on her bony shoulders.

“Ah, sorry. Who are you?”

“I’m Esme, the fortune teller in this tattered, discoloured tent of mine.” 

“I mean…” Jonathan rubbed the back of his head. Did she just read his mind? ”It’s not too shabby, I suppose.” He looked at her blouse and slacks – if it was in any other setting, she probably would’ve passed for an accountant. “I expected you to look more like a gypsy.”

“Romani is the socially acceptable term there, which I’m not, by the way.” She rolled her eyes. “But I’m a professional here. I am a bona fide fortune teller since I can see the future, though of course, there’s no way you would believe that.”

“It’s gonna take a lot of convincing, yeah.”

“I know.” She dragged a puff from her cigarette, then exhaled. “And no matter what convincing I do, it won’t pay the bills, you know? I’m self-employed, I have to make ends meet somehow. I haven’t even made back the money used to rent the space in this tourist trap.”

Jonathan’s hand drifted towards his wallet, which he swatted away. No, he wasn’t going to give her a penny.

“I saw this tent before when I was a little boy,” he said. “But there’s no way you would’ve known.”

Esme quirked an eyebrow. “Did you go for a fortune telling session yourself?”

“Nah, Dad did, though.”

“Well, perhaps it’s fate that you came here on this day.”

Jonathan crossed his arms. “You don’t really believe in that crap, do you? I chose to come here.”

“No, you came here because the bus broke down.”

“How do you know about that? Did someone tell you?”

“The stars told me all. I believe that we’re all products of the choices made for us by some unforeseen hand. There has to be a reason we’re all here.”

Jonathan was too sober for this, but somehow, this felt like too much of a coincidence to pass up. He drew out his wallet, letting his curiosity get the better of him.

“Well, how much does a session cost?”

“Five quid.”

Oh holy smokes, that was a lot. But never mind. “Fine, go ahead.”

Esme put out her cigarette and guided him to her tent. Somehow, it was bigger on the inside than on the outside, housing two chairs and a table for those two to sit in. With the curtains drawn, they were completely cut off from the carnival except for the screaming outside. The only source of light was the crystal ball in the centre, draping their faces in blue.

“So, how does this work?” Jonathan asked. “You gonna do your swirly shit?”

Esme rested her hands on her chin and closed her eyes.

“It’s not swirly shit – I take my work very seriously, and you need to, too. Most people aren’t prepared to have their futures told. Think about it. Knowing what’s going to happen in a period of your life you can’t control is rather scary, isn’t it?”

He couldn’t help but nod.

“So, not many people really want to know their future. But you, you’re different.” She smiled. “I see that spark in your eyes. Your desire to know what lies ahead for you. And because I know you and your future, I also know your past.” Her eyes flickered like strobe lights. “Ah, yes, it’s coming to me. You… do you live on your own?”

It went without saying, but he nodded regardless. 

“Maybe you moved away from your parents, or one of them died.”

It was long enough ago that he wasn’t upset to think about it, but it still left a sour taste in his mouth. “You’re right, my Dad died in a motorcycle accident, a month after we came here. I was very young as well.”

“And your mother… are you estranged?”

“Barely talk to her anymore, though she hasn’t really given me a reason to.” 

“So you live on your own, with no partner, and you seem bitter about the path your life has taken. You work as a janitor at Tesco’s, getting your socks damp with dirty soap water. You come home, barely make enough to cover your rent, and spend your nights binge watching Gogglebox on your phone, washing down your pot noodles with cans of Carlsberg. Am I in the right ballpark?”

Jonathan’s blood froze. “Wait, how did you–”

“I told you, I take my work very seriously. Do you believe me now?” 

Jonathan shifted in his seat, tempted to bolt out of the tent and never come back.

“I believe you’re a stalker. That’s the only explanation I have for any of this shit.”

“I’ve never met you before,” she said with a face that would’ve turned Medusa to stone. “I don’t know specifics, like your address; I only see the bigger picture of things.”

Jonathan didn’t respond. He wasn’t reassured in the slightest. His instinct told him to run. But he couldn’t. Her eyes penetrated his mind like a cattle gun. He was too deep into this session to quit and not get his money’s worth.

“Alright, I believe you.” Jonathan took a deep breath. “Will you predict my fortune, then?”

“Depends on what you want me to predict.”

“You know, if I get rich, if I’ll ever be successful, if I’ll ever get some bitches, all that jazz.”

“I’m not too optimistic about your success with women if you call them bitches.”

“Are you here to judge me or read my fortune?”

“Right, of course, you want to get down to business.” She tented her fingers as if she was about to make an important deal with him. “I’d love to tell you your future. But how far do you want to see into it?”

“I wanna see myself ten years from now.” Jonathan sighed. “You’re right about me being bitter.” He clenched his fists. “God owes me big time for the shit hand he’s dealt me. For taking Dad away. For trapping me in some dead end job at Tesco’s.”

“And what are your aspirations?”

He wiped the sweat from his brow. The tent was stuffy; plus, this was starting to feel like an interrogation. “I dunno. Taking a business course, I guess?”

“What kind of business? You don’t seem very specific on your kind of enterprise, and you don’t strike me as a very entrepreneurial soul.”

“I don’t care. I just want anything that’ll take me out of this dump.”

“Hmm, interesting.” Esme closed her eyes, caressing her hair. “So, you want to know if your business ventures will lead to anything, and you want to know if you’re in a different place from where you are now.”

“Well, yeah.” He had nothing left to lose at this point. “So, go ahead, do it.”

“Alright.” 

The tent fell into silence for a moment. Esme continued stroking her hair. Jonathan picked out a bit of earwax as he waited. He started checking his phone – it was already six o clock. The rest of the park outside still bubbled with chaos and merriment. He was done with dwelling in the unknown. If he had his future decided for him already, then–

Esme’s eyes snapped wide open like a yawning crocodile.

“In the course of ten years, you will end up taking those night classes at the King’s College. You will graduate your course and do reasonably well in your course… but it won’t lead to anything, as you do not have a vision for your business or what your audience is.”

Jonathan squirmed in his seat. Great, even his fortunes sucked.

“In fact, once you graduate, you shall return to the life you knew before, except you will leave your current job at that Tesco’s, only to end up working in the same job cleaning up at a beer distillery instead. At some point, you will meet a woman in your life at a pub, her name is Charlie Ball, and in a drunken haze, you end up getting her pregnant.”

Jonathan’s temple twitched. His blood turned to ice. His nails scraped the table.

“Ten years from now, you will be stuck in the same job to provide for two of your kids, called Emily and Wogan, who are five and two respectively, and you’ll be living with your family in a council estate. You will develop athlete’s foot from your job as well as back problems, which you’ll regularly go to your GP for. You won’t get along well with Charlie, who you sometimes beat when you come back home from your pub crawls with your work friends, and–-”

“Stop!” Jonathan screamed. He stood up, breathing in and out, in and out, feeling the tent cave in around him. “What the fuck are you saying, you psycho bitch?”

“I’m just telling you your future.”

“How is this my future? You’re telling me this is all that’s there for me? How the hell do you expect me to believe this?”

“If you don’t believe it, then why are you so flustered–”

He flipped the table to the side and grabbed the neck of her blouse. Her expression didn’t shift at all, still staring at him with those fish eyes.

“Jonathan Davis-Matthews.”

Jonathan abruptly opened his mouth, about to ask Esme something else, yet his words couldn’t come out. Like an invisible force stopped it. He had never told her his name.

“From the moment I laid eyes on you, Jonathan, in your little suspenders and your dress shoes, I knew that you’d come back here, 25 years later.”

Something tingled his spine, like cold honey trickling down his back.

“Don’t bullshit me like that, there’s no way you would’ve been here back then!” Spit from his mouth sprayed over her face. 

Esme blinked, returning to that nonchalant look of hers. 

“I also know you had a cone of candy floss in your hand when you looked into the tent.”

“Big whoop, it’s not weird for a kid to eat it around carnivals.”

“You also had that red baseball cap on, the one your father, Wayne, won you from a duck fishing game. Oh, and he died in a motorcycling accident not long after, which I also saw coming by glancing at him. Am I right?”

“You’re lying… making up a bunch of crap about my future. Yeah, that’s it.”

“Oh no, this is all true.” Esme stood over him, placing her hand over his shoulder. She looked like a giantess. “I saw myself in the same place, 25 years later, telling you your fortune now. From the moment I saw you, I knew exactly how your future would play out.”

“Shut up,” Jonathan croaked, pawing at his face. “Just shut up.”

“Your fate is predestined. You’re the kind of person that does not change easily, one who’s secretly content with their mediocrity, someone who doesn’t do anything to better themselves while also crying about how you want to find something better. That’s plain to see even without seeing your future.”

He inhaled and exhaled, inhaled and exhaled. He couldn’t breathe. Jonathan let go and sat down under a dizzy spell, clothes sticking to his skin in a cold sweat. This was all true. About him. About his mediocrity. How could he even begin to deny Esme? 

“If you want further proof, then this is what you will do tonight once you leave this tent.” She grabbed the collar of his work shirt and craned his head up so he could see her. Before she spoke again, Esme bit her lip so hard that she drew blood. “You will take the G bus, as you’ve always done, presenting the ticket to the bus driver with your right hand. You’ll put on Atmosphere by Joy Division, you’ll see a drunkard waddling in at the stop outside Toby’s Carvery. Your headphones will run out of battery and you’ll be forced to listen to the babbling of those passengers.”

“I…” In between heavy breaths, he managed to choke something out. “Then I’ll take a different bus.”

“You won’t, because the future has already been decided. You’ll act as if I never told you your fortune. Now, when you leave the bus, instead of going home straight away, you’ll go to the local shop and buy a six pack of Carlsberg and a bar of Dairy Milk. Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You will be playing on the radio there. You’ll say ‘you’re welcome’ back to the cashier as they thank you for your patronage. You’ll return home, crack open your shitty beer, and you’ll go to the living room and put it on the ottoman.

“You’ll swill your Carlsberg as you browse through the All 4 app on your phone. You’ll decide to watch Gogglebox, as you always do, and after you eat, you’ll fall asleep on the settee with your half-opened can in your hands. You’ll wake up the next day with dried beer spilled all over your shirt. Oh, and the next day, you’ll leave your bag behind on the bus to work.”

She said this all without taking a single breath. He said nothing, and felt like he was about to suffocate.

Jonathan stumbled out of the tent without turning back and limped to the exit of the park. He stood in place by the smokers and the loitering teens, with his world spinning around him while people chatted and laughed. This was all a bad dream. He needed to wake up. He slapped himself, only to get suspicious stares from the rest of the crowd. No, keep it together, John!

This wasn’t going to happen. He wouldn’t do as Esme told him. How could she have that grip over him? There was no way this was all true. There was no way this was the life that awaited him. What would he do? How could he live it the same way after this? He wished he hadn’t known. He wished he forgot. But he couldn’t.

Before he left for good, he looked back at the tent. Esme stood beneath the canopy, draped in shadow. It was then that he recognised her from his childhood, just from the shape of her silhouette. Of course. She was always watching over him. She always would.

Jonathan waited at the bus stop in a daze. Instead of waiting for the G bus, he waited for any other bus that would take him back home, like the L bus. But he waited and waited, 40 mins, an hour, two hours, before the G bus showed up on the L timetable anyway. He presented the ticket with his right hand, since that was his dominant one. He put on his headphones, trying to drown out the noise of his thoughts, but that was all he was left with when the Bluetooth disconnected. A man coming out of a pub entered the bus on the next stop and sat in the reduced mobility seats, singing to himself. Jonathan was forced to listen. 

He left the bus at the stop near the local McColls shop. Ed Sheeran’s bland voice blasted through the crackly radio. He put the items in his basket. He paid the cashier and made that old slip of the tongue from his retail days. As Jonathan came out of the shop with his hand gripped around the plastic bag, he saw a car approaching his side of the road at a high speed. 

The one thing he didn’t ask Esme was how he’d die. She never mentioned anything about death in her recap of the next ten years. If Jonathan was going to be stuck like this for the rest of his life… 

He had to stick it to Esme. He still had self-control. He still had free will.

Jonathan jumped into the car’s path.

The loose cans of Carlsberg rolled across the concrete.