Bad Feeling

Have you ever had one of those nights where it just seemed like nothing good could possibly happen? I mean seriously nothing good. Like, if you survived this and they sold the movie rights it was so wild that you just knew somehow Seth Rogen was going to be involved in the film?

That kind of crazy night?

If you have, please come see me at my shop on Jefferson Street so good old JP can give your fortune a little polish, cuz it sounds like you need it.

That’s me, by the way, JP, the fancy fake psychic with real magic powers over people’s fate and fortune.

Now, if you haven’t had the kind of night I am talking about, then strap in, because I am about to take you on a wild ride like you’re joyriding with your drunk stepdad after he had a fight with your mom.

So, first of all, let’s be clear that I am not perfect. I like to think I’m a good guy, but I am not to be trusted. I say this, because I have vices. Now, I’m not talking about anything crazy like the usual meth heads that hang around my home town. Even I have limits, and if I was going to do something mind altering, I know this crazy witch that lives out in the sticks that dabbles in black market Fey goods.

I’ve heard… things.

Anyway, my vices are way more mundane, despite being a part of the more magical side of things. I like to make money, for starters. I mean, this is America, after all. We have to make the Founding Fathers proud, right? Like they say, “something something Alexander Hamilton, something something not throwin’ away my shot.” Or whatever.

It’s why I run my little shop down by the mighty Mississippi and give out fortune cookie quotes. It’s why I dabble in the morally grey practice of using my magic to change a person’s fate for the right amount of cash, even when I know the fallout is going to be epicly awful for someone.

As much as I like making that cash, I have the ironic habit of gambling with my earnings regularly. When you can alter the fortune of things around you, a good game of craps or poker puts the random right back into things. I love the rush of losing control.

Yes, I could spoil the fortune of everyone at the table to guarantee a win. I won’t, though. That would be cheating. Even morally grey and cowardly con artists have their limits. Besides, if I did that then people would get suspicious and not play with me. Small Town, Iowa only has so many shady poker games going on, so I play it safe.

And no, I can’t just buff my own fortune here and there. I have found only two people in the world who are immune to my powers and I am one of them. Also, that would still be cheating for all the above reasons.

That all being said, I have to admit that the cards don’t always like me as much as I like them. I lose more than I win most of the time. Okay, all the time. In fact, I should probably seek professional help for my gambling. I wouldn’t have nearly as many problems as I do regularly if I gambled less or at least gambled better.

Which is why, in a twist of fate, when this weekend started off like it did, I should have quit while I was ahead.

The Friday night poker game was taking place in the back room of a place called the Paddleboat. What can I say, people on the Mississippi love their river boat history. Mostly, the crowd wasn’t too bad. There was a banker, a lawyer, a couple drug dealers, a used car salesman, and little old me. Clearly a reputable game taking place.

Hell, who am I kidding? We looked like a session of Congress.

I walked in and almost walked back out. One of the dealers, Lil’ Wiggy (you cannot make this stuff up), didn’t particularly care for me. I shined a fortune for his brother last year and it didn’t go as planned. Long story for another time.

On top of that, I just had a feeling like maybe I should just go home and close out my day with some Cherry Garcia instead. I’d had a decent night at the shop since it was going into festival season. Nothing brings suckers into the psychic like the smell of pumpkin spice and a few Halloween decorations. Anyway, I did still owe a few people money and I could pay a few debts instead.

Then someone waved at me right as I heard them shuffle the deck. That sound got my insides all buttery and all sensibility went out the window. Besides, if I won a few hands I could make enough money to pay off more people.

It was the responsible choice, really.

I lost the first hand. It was almost enough to make me call it an early night and invite my friend Evan Walker to the Cherry Garcia party.

But the banker made a joke about the little guy wanting to quit so early.

Pride dictated I stayed for another hand.

When I won the next hand on two pair and a cheesy bluff, Pride got loud and sounded a lot like dollar signs.

That bad feeling in my stomach got louder, but never loud enough.

After that, I kept winning. It was wild. A few were miracle hands like a royal flush, but most were close call wins by technicality. It wasn’t long before I had tripled my winnings and cleaned the second drug dealer, James, out of everything he had for the night.

He was, shall we say, upset. He yelled some rather colorful slurs at the table and started to leave. By the look in his eyes, I felt like he was going to burn the bar down.

I was laughing at my turn of luck while the banker bought me another round.

That bad feeling was what I chased the shot with. It hit me in the stomach like someone had switched my cheap whiskey for absinthe. For the first time all night, I really started to listen.

I looked up and saw that Lil’ Wiggy had gone to talk James out of tearing down the Paddleboat just for spite. He had one arm around James’ shoulders and they were talking in hushed tones by the door.

Then they both looked over their shoulders at me. At the same time.

Not that I didn’t appreciate the attention, but both those guys had bad juju in their eyes. I stood up in a hurry. The room flipped over like a rookie trying to play Flip Cup. Which is to say that it all went end over end too many times and I ended up on the floor.

I think I heard the banker holler an apology as I saw James’ boots get real close, then real fuzzy, and then I blacked out.

The bad feeling came back to wake me up as a pounding in my head. Regardless of what may have been in that last shot, I should add that my slight build comes with a delicate constitution. I don’t know how long I had been out, but I was immediately hungover.

I opened my eyes, but everything was still dark, but in that way that it seemed bright, but it was dark instead. If I believed in all the old omens and things I would compare it to an eclipse, but I won’t give my relatives the satisfaction. I tried to move, but my hands were tied.

I groaned.

I heard movement like someone crunching gravel as they announced that I was awake.

I immediately regretted being alive.

A moment later, someone with meat hunks for hands grabbed my jacket and hauled me up to my knees. On the gravel. The combination of sharp rocks in my kneecap, bad feeling playing mental self-abuse, the sudden movement, and the raging hangover was too much. I was about to toss all the cookies.

“Hurl.”

It was all the warning I could manage before I started convulsing.

Someone grabbed my hair and pulled my head back.

“What did you –”

I spewed like the worst urban myth of Coke and Mentos. Right in the guy’s face. It smelled foul. So I cranked out another liter of bile, sour alcohol, and late night bar nachos. They did not taste as good the second time around.

Grabby must have agreed because he stumbled away from me trying to yell something, but ended up in the grass nearby unleashing a technicolor yawn of his own.

I knew that last part because when Grabby fell away from me, he accidentally snagged the blindfold I was wearing. Which is why when I reigned in my stomach and tried to see where I was, I squealed like a startled Pikachu to discover the light I had expected was a pair of headlights right in front of me. And not the old fashioned yellow country headlights. These were the white-blue way too bright to be legal LED midnight road rage headlights.

I fell away from the car like I’d been shot. Hell, I wished I had.

I heard Grabby choke out something about “in his mouth” and I almost smiled.

Then James was in my face.

“You ain’t got Hep-C or nothing, do you, freak?”

“Yeah,” I moaned, “I’ve got a raging case of Kiss My Ass.”

It just popped out. Total reflex. I’m guessing so was James’ reflex to punch me.

He yelled at someone else to clean up Grabby. Then he was back in my bruised face looking grumpy.

“Only reason I haven’t dumped you in the river is because Wiggy says you're a freak that can work some crazy shit. And since you clearly cheated your way into all my cash, I figure you owe me.”

Great.

James wasn’t local. He came down from Chicago to check on some drug connections he had in Small Town. Lil’ Wiggy seemed to have used my parlor trick as a way to get James all fired up and get back at me. He probably thought I wouldn’t survive the night.

Given how badly James’ breath reeked, I was back to wishing I didn’t survive myself. For now, I just nodded.

“Listen up, freak. You’re going to do your thing and make it so I can go back to Chi Town and take over the crew I work for. If you can’t, then I toss you and I take my friend to have a chat with Lil’ Wiggy.”

His “friend” was the shiny pistol he revealed in the waistband of his jeans. There was no good way for any of this to go.

I should have gone home to Cherry Garcia.

I wanted to tell him that what I do wasn’t going to work the way he wanted. That was the same sort of thinking that started the whole mess with Lil’ Wiggy in the first place. Yeah, I fixed his brother’s limp like he wanted, but the new ‘limp free’ future came with a side of literal ‘hit by a bus before the week was out’. Lil’ Wiggy blamed me, even though I read him the disclaimer, but he was never too sure how to convince everyone that he was right without sounding crazy.

Not everyone buys into the swapping futures superpower.

Somehow, I didn’t think James wanted to fine print right now, so I just tenderly nodded again.

“I need my hands,” I added.

This was both true, and incredibly painful to say. I could feel the colors oozing into my jaw.

He pulled the pistol out and waved it at me as a silent threat, then moved it to the back of his waistband so I couldn’t reach it. Then he untied me. He was taking this in stride. I figured he had some experience with magical “freaks” back in Chicago where they were way more common than most non-believers would, well, believe.

I sat back up and made sure all the chaos of the night had sobered me up enough for this to work.

“What about my money?”

I was supposed to keep that thought inside my head. Instead, I blurted it out like a moron. James just raised his hand like he was gonna take another shot at me.

“Okay, okay, no money. Just another Saturday night for JP, got it.”

Have I mentioned that I’m a coward?

“Alright, let me see your hands. Palms up. Please.”

He complied.

I took his hands in mine and felt the way his fortune flowed around him. I could see how it connected to Grabby and the other goon. I could see he hadn’t had the best luck himself lately. Looking deeper I could see that little magical pearl of his future. I couldn’t make out any details. That would take too long. I just needed to concentrate on his station in business, life, or both.

“What do you see, freak?” he said, sounding just a little threatening.

Yeah, Jimmy here isn’t new to the magical community. Too trusting.

I almost did what he wanted. But that bad feeling came back. I wasn’t ignoring it again. So, since I was already tapped in, I worked my own tricks instead.

“Well?”

“Sorry, Jimbo, looks like you’re just shit outta luck. Try the fortune cookies at the Family Buffet.”

I won’t repeat the words that came out of his mouth next. If I ever doubted he was mixed up in Chicago gangs and drug trade, that string of expletives would have cleared it up. I’ve met actual goblins that aren’t that foul.

James yanked his hands away and immediately went for his gun. I threw myself backwards into the grass. As James tried to pull the gun from his pants, something snagged.

I am not an expert, but what happened next is best described as a kerfluffle.

The gun went off.

James was probably glad it was no longer tucked in the front of his jeans. Or at least he would be later while nursing a GSW to his right glute. For now, he just screamed and fell over. When he landed, the gun went off again. I think the second bullet missed James, but it did shatter one of the headlights on his car.

There’s my public service for the week.

Grabby was laid on his back trying to recover from his embarrassing fluid transfer and seemed to barely register the gunshot.

Goon #2,however, jumped up to check on James, but managed to step just right into a slick puddle of poker night vomit mixed with gravel road dust. His feet left the earth at impossible speeds. He flailed through the air cartoonishly and managed to kick James in the face just before he hit the ground and slammed his head back into Grabby’s unsuspecting groin.

I just unlocked a new magic power: create Three Stooges.

Put it in the records.

All three men yelled and hollered, nursing a wide range of injuries. In the chaos of the bleeding cheek, they seemed to forget little old JP in the grass slowly creeping back into the shadows. I heard them pile into Winky the road rage machine and slam the doors as they peeled out across the gravel.

In a minute, the night was quiet except for a few late year toads and a wounded psychic groaning at how much trying to laugh had hurt his jaw. Now I was beaten, bruised, still partly hungover, and miles from town with no ride.

If it had started to rain, I would have just opened my mouth and drowned slowly. What luck I had left, however, kept the skies clear for me to pull myself together and hobble back to town.

Next time, when the bad feeling starts, it’s me and Cherry Garcia. No questions asked.

I’m totally fan casting Seth Rogen as Goon #2 in my movie biopic, by the way. He has to be in there somewhere.