Seven Minutes

Eddie was bored. He’d just started a new job in a new town, and he wanted to take a walk. He wasn’t the particularly explorative type and it was burning hot outside, but he was already desperate to spend his break anywhere but his office. He shuffled through the empty downtown, keeping cool with a large bottle of iced water. He was certain he had walked in a straight line away from his office building, but the sheer number of monotonous beige rectangular buildings made it seem as if he’d been walking in a tight circle all along. That is, until a sign on one of them caught his eye.

“Curious about your future? Want to see what lies ahead? Visit us in room B14 and have your fortune read! $5 for 5 minutes!”

Eddie didn’t believe in fortune telling, but he was bored, and making fun of a phony fortune teller seemed like as good of a time as any. Plus, an office building like that had to have good A/C, especially in the basement. Eddie shrugged his shoulders, and stepped inside. As far as he could tell, it was the same as any other office building. The sign on the wall had the names of banks, small oil LLCs, and a number of other upstanding businesses, with an unfittingly proper looking plaque at the bottom reading “Lisa’s Future Services”. He scoffed, and wondered how a fortune telling business ever got a room in a building like this. Regardless, he headed down the elevator to the basement floor.

When he entered room B14, all of his senses were assaulted at once. His nostrils were the first hit. A plume of smoke engulfed him, the smell of a dozen different varieties of incense barely veiling the scent of plastic and cleaning fluid. Next were his eyes, attacked from every angle by vivid purple cloth, vivid purple paint, and vivid purple decorations. It was more purple than anyone would like to look at, only tolerable because the room was dimly lit by several candles scattered about the room. At the room’s center was a small purple table on which an old woman was leaning, dressed in yet more purple. Her clothes were elaborate, thick folds of fabric hiding even the shape of her body and a thin purple veil to hide her face. Elaborate as they were, they were very clearly made from a cheap material, giving an appearance less like an arcane prophet and more like a Spirit Halloween costume. She was absentmindedly tapping away at the game she was playing on her phone, far too busy to pay any mind to the man standing in front of her.

“Excuse me.”

“What?”

She glanced up from her phone, seeming inconvenienced.

“I’m here to get my fortune read. Five dollars for five minutes, right?”

She set her phone down, even more inconvenienced than before.

“Sure. Sit down, and pay in advance.”

Eddie obliged in both. The woman before him set a large ball carved from amethyst onto the table and began whooshing her hands around it without gusto.

“I see you’re feeling very conflicted. There’s something in your life that’s troubling you deeply.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. It was true, he had his problems – even more so than usual right now – but the same could be said for every person on Earth. Even so, he figured it would be more fun if he played along at first.

“I guess.”

“I see…a woman causing you this trouble.”

“Nope. I don’t have any women in my life.”

“Ah, so it is the lack of women in your life that troubles you.”

“Not really. I like being single.”

“Perhaps a friend?”

“Nah, I don’t really have any.”

“You’re self conscious about your looks.”

“That’s a very rude assumption.”

Eddie tried to hide the fact that he was getting more amused by each question. The old lady didn’t try to hide the fact that she was getting more annoyed by each answer.

“Oh, you’re one of those, aren’t you”, she asked with a vicious sneer.

“I get guys like you all the time, thinking they’re so funny, coming in here to make fun of me. This is my living, and if you’re gonna be rude, then you can-”

Just then, her body went completely stiff, slamming her palms against the table and her back against the chair. Eddie could barely tell that her eyes had rolled back in her head before every candle in the room went out simultaneously. From the pitch black, he heard three different voices speak at once.

“August third, twenty twenty-five. Two thirty-four. Seven minutes.”

When the candles relit themselves, the woman was hunched over the table, seemingly having forgotten what had happened before and after the candles had gone out. Eddie was shocked, completely frozen in his seat. Then he grinned.

“Woah, that was awesome! You gotta tell me how you did that! I mean, I get you probably just have a speaker hidden somewhere for the voices, but how’d you do the stuff with the candles?”

“Your time’s up. Have a nice day.”

“Woah, wait, I paid for five minutes. It’s only been three.”

“I’m rounding up.”

“You’re rounding up from three minutes to five?”

He still wanted to know how she had done the trick, but she had already resumed the tapping of her phone, marking the end of the conversation. Eddie sucked his teeth and took his leave.

Eddie stepped outside, relieved to be free of that smoky room, even if it was still blazing hot outside. He had been pretty disappointed in his reading. It’s true that he didn’t believe in it, but it would have been more interesting if she had at least broken out some tarot cards or something. The only really interesting part of it was when the candles went out. Could she have used trick candles to bring them all back? Sure, but how did she get them all to go out at once? With perfect timing, no less! The more he thought about it, the less he understood it. One minute had passed.

He hadn’t yet even thought of what the voices had said yet, but when he considered it, it almost seemed to ruin the trick. All it said was a time. It didn’t say what was supposed to happen, to whom, or how. Anything could happen in seven minutes. He could roll his ankle. He could find a lucky penny on the sidewalk. He could meet a cute dog to pet. The possibilities were endless, but he guessed the idea was that if literally anything interesting happened about seven minutes from when he left, he’d say, “wow, I guess she was really legit after all”. What a dumb idea. Two minutes had passed.

Then, he thought about what had happened before. She had figured out his game, and she seemed pretty upset about it. Maybe that was her way of getting back at him. She’d give him this time, and he’d freak out, thinking “what could this mean?” It was all just a silly ploy to make him panic. If someone really bought into that stuff, they might even think the implication was that they had seven minutes to live, but Eddie thought that was ridiculous. He took a big swig of his iced water, only to find that it was empty. He could have sworn he had at least half the bottle left, but he must have absentmindedly drank it all at some point. He went back to thinking about the fortune. Really, she should be careful doing that sort of thing. She could cause some real trouble making someone think they were going to die soon.

Just then, he saw something moving along the concrete. It was a huge brown grasshopper being carried down the sidewalk by a horde of ants. Normally Eddie wouldn’t have spared even a second thinking about this, but his breath caught in his throat. An omen like this after a prediction like that…no. It’s ridiculous, the old woman had been messing with him, and it was perfectly natural for ants to carry their food back to their nest. It’s nothing but sheer coincidence. Three minutes had passed.

Eddie knew why this was bothering him so much. His doctor had warned him about it when he got his diagnosis. He had a mental illness that caused him to see patterns where there weren’t any, and to become more anxious and paranoid about them than the average person. This kind of thing got to his head more often than he’d like to admit. That’s all this was: his pattern seeking brain putting him on edge, just like the old woman had wanted. Breathe, Eddie. His heart rate slowed. He began to sweat less. He began to feel more calm. So calm and so focused on breathing, in fact, that he hadn’t realized that he had entered a crosswalk before the light had turned green. He heard honking and the screech of tires just in time to look up and to his left. He saw a black mustang with the top down - no doubt one of the numerous wealthy CEOs that worked in a nearby office on his way home early. He then noticed it was barreling straight for him. Four minutes had passed.

He dashed out of the way just in time, the black car speeding past him. The driver raised his middle finger at him, but Eddie was far too busy to notice. He had gotten out of the way in time, but had tripped over the curb and landed face first on the sidewalk. He straightened his arms against the ground to lift himself, but he couldn’t stand. His heart was racing, his face was beet red, his brain was scattered. It was taking all he had not to panic. “That confirms it”, he thought. “It’s too many coincidences, too many signs. That woman knew what would happen, or maybe she cursed me. It doesn’t matter now.” He looked back at the road, where his now-smashed water bottle had been left. “Is that how it happens? Dehydration? Do I have to walk through these office buildings until the sun finally kills me? No, I have to keep moving. I’ll survive, and I’ll see that it’s all in my head.” He stood up and checked his phone with shaky hands. The time was two thirty-two. Five minutes had passed.

He got the same feeling now that he did before, that he was only walking in circles - only he was far more afraid of it now than he had been before. He picked up his pace, desperate to see his office building. He wasn’t sure why, but he was certain that if he could just get inside his office, he’d be safe. Whatever was after him wouldn’t be able to get to him there. He just had to get back to his building. Eddie was completely panicking, his breath rattly. He knew he now had less than two minutes to get back to his office. He had to. He broke into a full sprint. He didn’t know where he was, but he had to be getting closer, right? Six minutes had passed.

Eddie’s breath became quicker by the second. He couldn’t stop running. His chest tightened. He couldn’t stop running. It hurt. He couldn’t stop running. By now he had to have less than a minute, and he was certain that he would die if he didn’t make it back to his office in time. As hard as he tried, his steps slowed.

“No!”, he thought.

“I don’t want to die here! I can’t die here! I won’t let that woman…that woman…”

As hard as he was trying to keep going, his footsteps slowed, then stopped. His legs felt like jelly. He collapsed against a nearby stoplight and slid to the ground.

“I have to keep moving. I have to get there!”, he thought, but his mind grew fuzzy. His chest became even tighter than before. He called out for help, but nobody answered. Eddie was alone. He grabbed his chest. His arm hurt. Eddie was feeling sleepy. His head rolled down against his chest. He fought as hard as he could against unconsciousness, but his dizziness overtook him. There, slumped against the traffic light, Eddie faded from consciousness. Seven minutes had passed.