The Fortune-Teller's Past

“Ow!”

Ollie yanked back from the cage, dark red welling up in glistening beads on his finger. The rabbit looked up at him with pale pink eyes, soft white nose wiggling with cunicular innocence. A few drops dripped onto the bars as Ollie latched the little door shut and descended the step ladder.

Keeping a rabbit in a birdcage was, in Ollie’s opinion, exactly what Miss Xulie was all about. The whole trailer was the same way; haute couture hung up like posters, Christmas lights as extension cords, pens on a clothesline stretched over the desk. Miss Xulie had a way of doing things that made Ollie wonder why he’d never questioned his mundane little world before.

It was also clear, from the single chair and the narrow bed, that Miss Xulie had lived alone for quite some time.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Miss Xulie said, studying her face in the mirror Ollie brought for her. “Swear to God, fuck these hospital lights. Don’t do that, sweet baby, don’t romanticize me. I ain’t a damsel up a tower, I’m a fucking mess.”

And that was classic Miss Xulie, as well. “You look beautiful.”

“Liar.” A little over a day since her heart attack, and her make-up kit was the first thing she’d asked for, wanted bad enough to trust Ollie with her keys. Now that she had it, Miss Xulie winked at him, then turned her attention back to her contour, gliding over aging skin with practice and intention. “I do appreciate this. Hope you didn’t see nothing that shocked your Mormon sensibilities.”

Ollie shrugged, scratching at hair that started summer as a buzz cut, and was already, for Ollie’s father, far too long. “It’s been an educational year. I did see something I had questions about…”

“Oh, lord.” Miss Xulie looked up from the mirror. “Bedroom or bathroom?”

Coughing, Ollie fought the hair-trigger on his blushing cheeks. “No, um,” he unfurled a small poster he had carefully rolled up in his jacket. “I guess, rec room?”

The lip liner clattered out of Miss Xulie’s hand. “Where did you find that?”

“I-I’m sorry,” Ollie shivered. He started to roll up the poster again, but Miss Xulie took it from him with heavy hands. “I-I thought it was…it was on the desk…”

“It’s fine.” Despite the half-done make-up, the hospitalized performer looked frayed, crambazzled, and so much older. “I guess you recognized me.”

Sweat slicked Ollie’s palms. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.” Miss Xulie held the rolled-up poster between them. “This is not your first clue that I used to be a man.”

“Uh, no,” Ollie confessed. “Just…that you used to be a ghost hunter.”

One notorious eyebrow arched into the air. When Ollie started his summer job at the boardwalk carnival, he was utterly enchanted by the fabulous fortune-teller. While it was true he had never met a black trans coffee drinker before, what really fascinated Ollie was her gracious acceptance of emotional truths, her foul-mouthed wit, and the way she held space for people who were still figuring themselves out. Miss Xulie had a carefully-constructed persona, but was also open about her vices, so that the freight train of cigarettes, alcohol, and boardwalk fries slamming into her aorta was practically predictable.

The poster, though, showed a team of edgy young nerds posing in the mist, with a uniform of black jackets and smug expressions. The so-called spiritualist of the group, Alec Xander had a muscle shirt and a goatee beard, along with muted, youthful versions of the long lashes and high cheekbones that Miss Xulie used make-up to accentuate. “Paranormal investigator,” Miss Xulie corrected. “And that was a long time ago.”

“No kidding!” Ollie sat down on the foot of the bed. “You had a reality TV show! How does that happen; what was that like?”

“It wasn’t my show,” Miss Xulie muttered. “Listen, kid, I put all that stuff behind me. Wasn’t as fun as it looks.”

“It looks so cool!” Ollie insisted. “Did you ever see a ghost?”

“Listen.” The voice, cold, humorless, was so much deeper than Ollie had ever heard before. “I put this part of my past away. Not because of who I am, but because of what I saw. What I know. What no one should ever have to live with.”

Ollie didn’t want to stay on this stranger’s hospital bed, but he didn’t know if he was allowed to stand up again. Miss Xulie kept him there with her penetrating gaze, then turned her attention back to the mirror.

“I’m gonna tell you this,” she said, blending smoke around her eyes. “Because I know you, and your dumb ass is going to look it up anyway. Out of the original cast, three of the five of us are dead.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not finished.” Miss Xulie flicked through her shadow palettes and picked up a silver disc. “The show’s contract wasn’t renewed after the executive producer committed suicide. The sound designer stabbed a pair of scissors into her ear. Nobody escaped without scars, not one of us, and we bought the rights and buried it in 2006.” She tapped a brush against the hard plastic, releasing small clouds of glittering dust. “There are no copies. No DVDs, no merchandise, no advertising. Do you hear me, Ollie? That poster shouldn’t exist.”

The curl of white paper lay dormant on the bed. “How—”

“Something put that there. For you.”

Ollie squinted over the mirror’s frame. The face he knew was slowly emerging, one brush stroke at a time. “You’re messing with me.”

Miss Xulie shrugged. “I get it. You know fortune telling is bullshit. Probably suspecting a couple other things are, too.” Ollie had never talked to her about religion, but summer was over, and he was still at the beach. “But I’m sitting here fresh off a heart attack, with my house keys in your pocket, and I am not bullshitting you. Something saw you. You have to get away from me.”

A chill dripped down Ollie’s spine. “Is that why you’re all alone?”

“Focus, baby. Not about me.” A manicured nail tapped the poster. “During the show…we really did try to track down creditable leads. Not that we necessarily believed them, but somebody did. For the show, I talked about spirits and cryptids and demonic infestations, but most of those have a basis in natural phenomena. Tactile hallucinations, infrasound, ergot poisoning. I can see your eyes glazing over.”

“Little bit.”

“For three seasons, we found nothing,” Miss Xulie said. “Then, something found us. And it amused this thing to hunt us, to stalk us, to drive us insane. It turned us against each other. Ruined our lives.”

Ollie traced a finger over the cold curve of the mirror. “What was it?”

Miss Xulie closed her make-up case. “It was evil.”

Hunching forward, Ollie tucked his hands under his arms to fight the goosebumps. “And it’s been chasing you ever since.”

“Ha!” Miss Xulie barked. “No, I caught it.”

“You what?”

“I’m amazing,” Miss Xulie explained. “I do my research. And I keep it in a circular cage, binding it inside an unbreakable ring.”

“Unbreakable?” Ollie couldn’t remember if he put the step ladder away. “What if someone, um, didn’t know what it was, and opened the cage?”

With an affectionate suck of her teeth, Miss Xulie patted his hand again. “Aw, sweet baby. The cage doesn’t trap it, the circle does. To break that, you would need something inherently powerful, like belladonna or holy water, or…”

The fortune teller froze. She lifted Ollie’s hand, studying the rabbit bite on his finger. "Or the blood of a virgin."

The hospital lights began to flicker.