Contest #197 winner 🏆

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Fantasy Sad

This story contains themes or mentions of suicide or self harm.

 

Normal people don’t have destinies.

 

Of course, I never tell them that. When they come into my shop, I take their palms solemnly—after I take their payment, $25 cash or card—and stare into the blankness of their futures with undue reverence. Day after day, year after year, they come: the businessmen and the soccer moms, the mailroom clerks, dentists, and hairstylists of the world. The politicians and the theologians, too. The young and the old, the hopeful and the hopeless, the sceptics and the true believers. They all come and its always the same.

 

“Can you tell me my future?” They ask me.

 

“Maybe,” I reply with a smile. No one likes a cocky psychic. “Let me see your hand.”

 

I pull them by the wrist and squint. “Ah,” I say, as I hum and haw over their meaningless folds, creases in skin that are nothing more than creases, places for sweat and dirt to collect. “Ah.” I usually do this a couple of times for dramatic effect. For $25, nobody wants instant gratification.

 

While customers squirm in front of me, I read the only legible parts of them, which are their presents and their pasts. “Your heartline tells me that you are restless,” I impart to the man with the imprint of a wedding ring on his finger. “You have struggled to find romantic fulfilment in your partner, and you worry that you will never be satisfied.” To the woman whose cell phone is always ringing in her bag, I say: “Look here. Your lifeline is weak. This means that you lack independence and are yearning for autonomy. Your life is not your own right now, and you’re worried that you’ll never get it back.”

 

People are always worried about something. They come to me because they want me to voice their fears, to render them legitimate by saying them out loud.

 

They want me to voice their fears and then they want me to predict their resolutions. “These are turbulent times, but they are temporary.” “Your fortunes will shortly turn.” “Your suffering is almost over.”

 

They want me to give them hope and, for $25, I’m happy to oblige.

 

Normal people don’t have destinies because they have choices. They are presented with an infinite number of decisions, which unfurl an infinite number of paths. Paths that run through time like the roots of a tree that won’t stop growing. Paths with millions of interconnecting nodes and nodules. Paths that can take them anywhere. For most, there is no grand design nor divine intervention fuelling their trajectory; there is only the physics of life. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. In the same way, people tend to keep on living, making choices, designing their own futures.

 

Normal people don’t have destinies and that is a blessing, because it means that nothing is impossible. Anything—literally anything—can happen. That’s why my “fortunes” sometimes come true. Customers return to me certain that I had predicted their future when, in reality, they just happened to make the right itinerary of choices to lead them to where I'd said they’d go.

 

It goes without saying that that’s good news for me, because it means that they will come back again and pay another $25 for another educated guess.

 

Normal people don’t have destinies.

 

But you, Customer 12, are different.

 

You come in just as Customer 11 of the day is leaving. I know that you don’t have an appointment, so I don’t bother to ask (I may have been blessed with the gift of sight, but I don't need to use it because I also have a watch. A glance at its face tells me that it is almost one o'clock, and I never book anyone in before my lunch break). Instead, I settle for: “how can I help you?” I try not to sound annoyed as I think of the burrito waiting in the microwave under my desk.

 

You ask for a palm reading. “That’ll be $25,” I tell you. “Cash or card?”

 

While you fumble for your wallet, I take a moment to examine you. I try to complete a standardised checklist for you in my mind. A believable fortune is based on information, so I gather all that I can find.

 

You are male. You might be thirty or forty, but you could be older with a youthful face. Your clothes are similarly nondescript: white t-shirt, black trousers, black tennis shoes. You aren’t wearing any jewellery and you don’t have any visible scars or tattoos, either.

 

Okay, Customer 12, I think to myself, You aren’t going to make this easy for me, are you?

 

You are completely and utterly unremarkable.

 

That, in itself, should have been a sign.

 

You pay in cash, which means that I can’t catch a glimpse of the name on your credit card, and then you follow me through the door to the divination chamber. Usually, customers ooh and ahh over the décor in here—swathes of dark velvet and damask wallpaper, curtains, beads, crystals, and curios of all kinds—but you don’t seem particularly impressed. I wonder if you can see the divination chamber for what it really is: a storage room at the back end of a strip mall storefront, as opposed to a retreat into the exotic arms of fate. But if you are sceptical of my powers, you do not say so, so I launch into the script: “Take a seat,” I rasp. Everyone seems to think that a psychic ought to have a husky voice, so I always drop mine an octave or two to give the people what they want.

 

You sit across from me at the table and stretch out your palm before I ask for it. New customers are usually a little nervous, tentative in the face of astrological wisdom, but not you. You seem like you know what you’re doing. When I take your hand in mine, your skin feels dry and cool.

 

“This isn’t your first reading,” I announce, trying to earn some premonition brownie points with you. The sooner I can convince you of my psychic aptitudes, the better.

 

You rebuff me with a twitch of your lips. “Yes, it is,” you say. I can already tell that you will be difficult to deceive, and I wish that you would just play along. Normal people usually want to believe.

 

I take your nonchalance as proof that you are lying. Fine, be that way. It’s your $25 you’re wasting. I try to redirect: “What do you hope to learn today? Is there anything specific that you seek to find?”

 

“No, not really.”

 

Oh, come on. You’re making me dig. I widen my eyes in an attempt to look sincere. “Nothing at all? There are no pressing questions in your life that need resolution? No uncertainties blocking your path? Your palm will be easier to read if I know what I’m looking for. Futures are never straightforward, you know. They are murky, even for those of us who can see them.” Give me something, I beg you silently, anything.

 

You pass me a smile, but it almost looks sad, somehow. For a second, I’m hopeful. Sometimes, people need to be prodded a little before they open up. Are you divorcing? Filing for bankruptcy? Battling a scary diagnosis? I hold my breath in anticipation, but you leave me disappointed.

 

“I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble with mine,” you assure me.

 

Another dead end. Great.

 

I try not to roll my eyes at you. “Okay, I’ll do my best.”

 

Normal people don’t have destinies, they have emotions. Waves of them, oceans, currents, cacophonies—that’s what we psychics try to read. So, when I reach for your open palm, I prepare myself for a familiar drenching. I prime myself to be submerged in everything that you have felt, are feeling, or could ever feel. That is the closest thing to a destiny that I have ever experienced: a thrashing of cogent and tangent potential energies.

 

I hold my breath and wait for it. But when I touch you, I feel only one thing.

 

 Frustration.

 

It starts in the pit of my stomach and builds. Builds until I want to scream, until I’m trembling, until every shred of me seems to become it. It’s an infection, this frustration, bacterial, viral, feral. It moves into my body, and it takes up residence there. It wraps around my insides like a snake waiting to feed.

 

It hurts.

 

I gasp before I can stop myself, but you don’t flinch. You don’t even seem surprised. You try to pull your hand away, but I can’t let go. In that moment, holding onto you becomes the only thing stopping me from ripping my hair out, from gnashing my teeth until they break. Holding onto you becomes the only thing keeping me from slamming my face into the table, from trying to prize open my skull to release the pressure by allowing some of this noxious frustration to escape. If I let go of you, I am afraid that I will let go of myself, too, so I burrow my nails deeper and deeper into your wrist until you bleed.

 

Normal people don’t have destinies because they have choices.

 

Normal people don’t have destinies and that is a blessing, because destiny is tyranny reified and deified. It’s powerlessness and anguish. It’s the violent eradication of choice.

 

Normal people don’t have destinies, Customer 12, but you do.

 

You have never had any possibilities, only certainties, and you have bounced against the confines of the pre-set track you’re on until you have bruised black and blue with desire. Every time you move, you meet resistance, and it has pressed down on you until you are exhausted. It has strangled you—it is strangling you, it will strangle you—into submission.

 

Everything that you’ve ever done, you have been meant to do. And the worst part is, you know it. You are meant to be here now, and you know it. You are meant to bleed, and you know it. After this, you will leave, and you know that wherever you go next will be the place that you are meant to be. And as you tumble from right place to right place, you will eventually find yourself asking: if everything in your life is predetermined, is anything about you really you?

 

Is any joy that you feel organic? Is any emotion, or whim, or fleeting thought spontaneous? Or has it all been pre-decided for you by some unseeable, unfathomable force?

 

Normal people don’t have destinies, but you do, so you’ll never get to know where you end and where fate begins.

 

You’ll never know if you love your wife because you love her, or because you are meant to love her. And you do love her, so one day you will start to worry that you are robbing her of a more genuine form of love that she deserves to inspire in someone who could choose not to love her back.

 

And when this question finally consumes you to the point that you can't even stand to touch her, you will wonder if you destroyed your marriage or if this, too, was the brutal hands of destiny at work.



One day, you will contemplate ending it all, but you will know that killing yourself will not be escape, or solace, or rebellion. If you do it, you will know that dying was fated and if you do not, you’ll know that living was fated. So, you won’t bother.

 

Instead, you will wake up every day and you will do whatever it is that you are meant to do. You will go on and on and on. You will go on, and you will doubt. You will never trust yourself. You will never be sure of anything except that you have a destiny, which means that you’ll never be sure of anything at all.

 

I’m still shaking when you finally pry me from your wrist. Your touch is surprisingly gentle, and when you look at me, your expression is contrite. “I’m sorry,” you say, and I can tell that you mean it. You knew that this would happen, but you didn’t have a choice.

May 08, 2023 01:11

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113 comments

Lila Monroe
23:24 May 19, 2023

Wow, this is chilling. Love it!!!!

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Gabee Hail
20:51 May 19, 2023

I love the way you used every word in it, the story had a grasp on me from start to finish, every word. And all the discourse about fate - it's very intriguing the way you described it here. Such a great job! congratulations for the win!

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18:49 May 19, 2023

Great story HR and a Worthy win! Congratulations!!

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René Ruano
17:40 May 19, 2023

loved it.

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ANDERS BECKMAN
17:35 May 19, 2023

Wonderfully written, very deep. The use of 2nd person POV is extremely powerful, and the story transforms from an almost nondescript(in the best way possible) mood to a intense and resoundingly sorrowful mood. Wonderfully written, HR.

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Micah Thompson
17:23 May 19, 2023

wow this is amazing

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Hollie T
17:12 May 19, 2023

This is a great story! I was pulled in from the first line and enthralled throughout. I read tarot and identified with so much of this. Thank you for submitting - congrats on the well-deserved win!

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17:09 May 19, 2023

I had no idea which way this story was going to go, and I couldn't stop reading. I loved everything from the powerful imagery to the concept itself and of course how beautifully it was written. Well done!

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C. J. Peters
16:58 May 19, 2023

I love your take on a scene of someone visiting a psychic only to receive an ominous reading told from the perspective of the psychic this time! The story of this psychic who is certain that nothing is certain encountering someone who seems to be suffering the torture of determinism was an incredibly engaging and at times frightening read. Well done and congrats!

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Sophia Gavasheli
16:48 May 19, 2023

I really like how this story shifts, from the descriptions of normal people to Customer 12, and especially the contrast in how you describe people who have choice vs people who don't. I kind of thought customer 12 was the narrator themself, and that would have been such a twist to know that a psychic can't escape their fate, but the fact that customer 12 is not the narrator and has a set destiny made the ending pack so much more punch. Your command of language is amazing. Keep writing! My favorite line: "Objects in motion tend to stay i...

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Mary Bendickson
16:29 May 19, 2023

Welcome to Reedsy! Step right up and win the trophy!🏆 Nice job.

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16:18 May 19, 2023

Very engaging, great use of language. You brought up one of the great existential questions, is everything predetermined? I'm left wondering why Customer 12 is so different than the others. Will be waiting for destiny to deliver an explanation.

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Protagonst ‎
17:18 Jan 30, 2024

It makes you think. Maybe you are like Customer 12. And the story is supposed to make you realize that your destined to do every single thing that you do.

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Chanan Lareche
15:50 Dec 20, 2023

This had a nice flow, great imagery, and almost poetic. I liked the recall if "normal people don't have destinies" bit.

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William Duke
20:34 Dec 06, 2023

I like this, but I don't think you're finished with it. Or maybe I just don't think you should be finished with it. There's something bigger missing, something to make it consequential. So when I say I don't think you're finished, I hope you fill it out because it's worthy of your time and effort. It's nice work.

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Jeana Budnick
21:27 Nov 07, 2023

Wow! That was a gut punch and I loved it!

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David Denning
18:41 Nov 07, 2023

Normal people don’t have destinies. Of course, I never tell them that. When they come into my shop, I take their palms solemnly—after I take their payment, $25 cash or card—and stare into the blankness of their futures with undue reverence. Day after day, year after year, they come: the businessmen and the soccer moms, the mailroom clerks, dentists, and hairstylists of the world. The politicians and the theologians, too. The young and the old, the hopeful and the hopeless, the sceptics and the true believers. They all come and its always...

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Belladona Vulpa
16:40 Aug 27, 2023

Excellent story, it kept my attention from beginning to end. I like the imagery you created, how you paint the characters in general, and the nice choice of perspective, which gives us a glimpse of the "backstage" in a sense. I found the mention of the burrito funny and made the psychic character more relatable, who also is hungry and wants to have lunch, like any "employee". Logical explanations and the use of theatrical effects are a nice combination. I like also how you repeat "Normal people don't have destinies" because of the many choic...

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03:00 Aug 25, 2023

Excellent story. Normal people don’t have destinies because they have choices. This may be true in developed countries but for the children of lesser God its not true. They don't have choices Rather than have destiny But That's too Destiny of ...... ....

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Amira L
21:04 Aug 06, 2023

This is making me question my own reality as I know it. This has me shocked. Good work HR

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