Would you like to see your future?

“Would you like to see your future? I warn you; it is never what one expects!” I had never put much faith in the sideshow attractions at the county fair. This was new to me. Our Podunk town never ever would have allowed a fortune teller to have any access to us good ol people. Us good God-fearing folk. Never. I was amused. Never believed that any of this could ever be what it is cracked up to be. However, here I am, and I’ve just been given the warning of all warnings. Is she for real? Part of me laughed, another was scared shitless. In a tent right out of every movie that leaned on the old clichés of Gypsie! Crystal ball welding, scarf wearing rotund! Mysterious, women in bad lighting. It was right here. No way that this could possibly be what the movies foretold. No way. This was a production, with props. This was a caricature of a movie fortune teller. This was laughable! My skeptical side won out. I chuckled and responded. “I’ll play along!” I expected a crystal ball, on a table, uncovered theatrically by a quick snatching away of some cloth over it. Instead, she looked deeply into my eyes, and asked” are you sure? “Her, hand was held out, open palm, as she asked this. She managed to pierce my recently found bravado, and I wavered. I wasn’t so sure after all. Pride is the bastard son of Satan. I would never admit to being afraid of anything, but I was. The battle was now my admitting my fear, and changing course, or pride, standing up, and inviting whatever dreadful thing that my fear could imagine. I of course chose pride. Backed with false bravado. “My future, is what I asked for, my future is what I shall have!” I hoped to sound brave, nonchalant. A little boastful British air about my words. It all was betrayed by my knees knocking under the table, and a slight quiver of voice. Very slight. I quelled it so fast, I believed that it was impossible to register to anyone. Her look told me elsewise.

“I will paint, and you will watch.” she said, menacingly, and of fact. Shook me to my very being. What? No crystal balls. No séance? No rigged shaking of table and chair? A painting? My confidence rose again at this juncture. How could I be afraid of someone painting?  Visions of the Afro guy, and happy trees and birds filled my head. They clouded my rightfully placed foreboding. “So, to be clear, you are going to paint, I am going to watch, and by this, you’ll tell my future?” “Not at all.” She spoke. “I will paint, and fate will speak your future, I am but a vessel.” I often find myself wishing that I had just gotten up and walked out. My hackles were raised, my dander was up, my intuition was at red alert. My most quiet inner voice, was shouting. Leave! Did I not mention that pride is Satan’s spawn? “Come with me!” she said, as she got up from the table. She deftly threw aside a curtain and revealed another room. “Sit here she said, gesturing to a wooden chair that looked ancient, knotty wood. Rough. Right out of Hansel and Gretel, or the album cover for Tea for the tillerman. I sat. I looked up, and before me was a canvas stretched, ready for paint.  A stool and a painter’s pallet, sat between me and the canvas. The gypsy women took up a brush and peered at me as she sat on the stool. “Last chance.” I couldn’t speak but nodded, as proudly and defiantly as I could muster.

“I am the painter to the canvas, a vessel channeling, the canvas is your medium, it will speak to you and only you!” She spoke grandly, without theatrics. I wish that she had been theatrical. Perhaps I’d feel less foreboding. “What you see is for you to see, I will see swirls of colors, without form or face. You will see things.” “Among them, your future your future, not all, but enough.” My palms were so very sweaty, my forehead, cold and clammy. Fear lies just below the surface of everything. My bravado, a poor, and very thin veil. A nervous chuckle escaped my lips, its sound surprising me. “Tell her no” By the zombies, wafted through my mind. Too late. The gypsy women didn’t speak another word, she applied paint to canvas. My eyes widened, as I began to see snippets of my childhood, whirling up from the brush, in technicolor. Swirls, I am at the Philadelphia Zoo, holding my mother’s hand, as we examined the elephants. Swirls, my 10^th birthday party, beaming at the military action figure, popular at the time. Swirls 13 sneaking behind the shed with my neighbor Princess, sharing my first French kiss, as our hands fumbled with each other’s clothing, previously unseen body parts and unknown erogenous zones, being found. Swirl, 17, losing my virginity in the backseat of my brother’s mustang. It continued this way. Memory after memory swirling up from the brush, as the gypsy continued to dab and apply paint to canvas. I hadn’t noticed, but my fear had been replaced by wonder, with intermittent pangs of guilt, regret and sadness. It was at once thrilling, and mystical. I was quickly catching up to my current life, and I felt fear making its reentrance into my consciousness.

“That’s my wife.” Not sure if I said this aloud, or that I spoke so very loud in my consciousness that I couldn’t tell the difference. Its what I thought, when I first saw her, at a party, 3^rd year Virgina state university. Id transferred there after 2 years at Stevens university. She was first year. That day was on canvas, soon after our meeting, later making out and later still, marriage. Our first-born David, our second Joy. Fear gripped me, as the events of yesterday were up now. Dropping David off at Virginia state as a first-year student. I’m not so sure I want to see anymore. I tried to scream out, STOP, nothing came out. I sensed that she knew that I wanted her to stop, doubt was completely removed, when she spoke without stopping her work, or turning around. “I warned you! it is too late, I cannot stop, once started, it must paint to the end!” There I am at the outside of the tent, looking smug with a skeptic’s sneer. There I am entering the tent. I tried to get up, to run. The knotty, and knurled chair suddenly became animate. It wrapped me with newly formed branches sprouted from the knots and strapped me down. I tried to close my eyes when the next swirl showed me seated as I was. Fresh horror filled me when I could not perform this simple act. My choices were narrowed to one, to watch my future unfurl, good, bad, and not indifferent. I’m, indeed, very vested.

“Why were you so afraid to see the ending of this future painting?” Wait! Where am I? How did I get here? These and many other questions raced through my mind. I looked around. Hey, I recognize this place! It’s my therapist office! It all must have been a horrible dream!  The relief was palpable. I felt the underpinnings, of my old pride welling to the surface. I knew that stuff was a bunch of crap! I almost chuckled, it was stifled by the nagging question, how did I get here? “What is the last thing that you can remember?” “I was in the Gypsy’s tent at the carnival.” “What was the last thing that you remember seeing in your painting of your past?” I was about to enter the tent, no, I was seated in a rough chair, strapped in by the chair itself.”  “Let’s have more details. What were you wearing?” “Jeans, a white tee, and sneakers.” Do you remember when you dressed in this attire?” “Yes, I do, Saturday morning before breakfast.”  “What else can you tell me about that day?’  My son and I were preparing to take the Drive to Virginia, for his freshmen year at Virginia state.” “Recount the day for me please. As much as you recall.” “Like I said, I got up, took the dog out, made breakfast for me and my son. We packed up the last of his things and left the house at about 11am. We unpacked. I took him out to dinner and headed home.” “What else do you recall?” “I got in the car and started driving…Doc, how did I get here?” “We have been trying to help you. You haven’t accepted our help.” Hey, what’s going on! Give me a straight answer to my question!” We tried that the last several times.” “What do you mean the last several? How did I get here?” “Tell me again, what were you wearing that day?”  “I’ve already told you! jeans, a white tee, and sneakers, why are you asking again?” “I’m asking again, so that you may see what you are wearing now!” I looked down at myself, my tee shirt was hanging wide open, as if cut by scissors, my jeans in shreds. There was blood on them and my sneakers, I reached up to feel my face, and felt a mangled mess, my fingers gaining entrance, where my right eye should have been. How is this possible? “Is this some kind of trick? “Are you playing some type of sick game?” “I assure you that this is no game.” “Tell me about the gypsy lady in the tent, how did she look? What did you see when she held out her hand for payment?” I suddenly remembered, her palm and fingers were skeletal, they had no skin. “What about her eyes?” I recalled her eyes, I thought that they were reflecting the candles light, but in fact each iris was flames of themselves.

“What about me, you called me Doc, you know me yet, when was the last time you saw this office?” “I don’t know I don’t remember.”  “You do remember!” You remember reading the newspaper that morning!” It hit me, Id read in the paper, some 20 years ago, that my therapist, had committed suicide, with a shotgun, his daughter found him in the front yard, laying over a tree stump. “Look at me!” “NO”! I tried to get up, this chair held me as the last, with long metal loops this time, that stretched from its arms and legs. “You will see this time, and you will know” “I DON’T WANT TO KNOW! IT CAN’T BE!” My therapist turned toward me; the entire left side of his face was gone from the chin up. I screamed! “No! I can’t be!” “Yes, you are quite dead.” As dead as I am, as dead as the gypsy women, as dead as everyone who has tried to get you to see. You will live in an endless loop, each more graphic, each more terrifying, because you know the outcome. You just will not see. Until you accept your fate, and by it, accept your afterlife, you are damned to an outer innocence, with an inner knowing from the start, that you are dead!” This time a gypsy, and a doctor, next time …. “Nonoooo!”   BOOM! Suddenly! A loud crash, tires screeching the dashboard is in my face in seconds, glass is flying, lights turning, over, and over, and over. It is so very dark, and I so very cold…

Hurry son! let’s get moving! I am proud of you! Move in day at my alma mater! Let’s get a move on! I’d like to be back home before dark......