Magic 8 Ball

Concentrate and ask again

The magic 8 ball gives relatively spooky answers for being so kitsch. It feels like the most Hasbro form of sorcery even though I’m pretty sure that title belongs to the ouija board. Despite the commercial qualities, I’ve trusted it more than I’ve trusted myself based on an experience I had some time in the future from now. When all seemed lost it was my guide.

I asked it again if I was going to be happy.

Ask again later

It was just another way of saying no.

The old witch lied to me when she told me how to rewind the clock. It was a lot of steps, and somewhere along the way she misspoke. It makes sense since she was dying, but I wish she wouldn’t have told me anything at all. Because every time I tried before, all I managed to do was make time go faster.

No one over the age of thirty would want that. We all want it back. Some young man must have come up with making time go more quickly. A young man full of dark magic. There’s certainly enough of them around.

One night when I was endlessly happy I decided to try again. To rewind, or at least pause things just for a moment. I hadn’t done that for a long while. Well, I blinked in the wrong sequence and found myself a year and a half into a failing relationship. The man was someone I’d been on a single date with the night I decided to try and rewind the clock. It was sweet, he’d brought me flowers and we had held hands. Like a character out of a Cassavetes film, he had waxed on about love. I had been the scoffer,

“I don’t know if I believe in love at first sight.”

Me, the practicing witch, had laughed and said. Of course I had to pay a heavy price.

By the end of the evening a little part of me I knew would grow did believe in love at first sight. That was a thing I had only felt once before. They say that it can happen once, maybe twice in a lifetime. I just wanted to savor my second and last chance.

You can imagine my surprise when I opened my eyes to realize that we were together and that he does not love me. My chest hurt so badly when I woke up. I turned on my side and saw a photo of him on my nightstand and immediately knew the score. That he had clung to me in a sea of misery like I was the lone life raft. That the clutch was not from love but from fear. That happens more than the real thing.

No one ever loves me for long, and that’s just luck of the draw. It’s always a deep fleeting feeling which comes and goes but is never constant. And that’s usually how it starts for me. I’m not sure at first but by the time I am, they have changed their mind.

Not too much about my house is different. Of course, he’s moved in here so there are decor changes. And there are more things than there used to be. In particular, on my trinket shelf is a magic eight ball. He’s not here to ask, so I assume that it is something I bought or found and wanted to keep on display.

That’s when I asked it if I was going to be happy and became rebelliously resentful of it’s cryptic answers.

“Am I wrong about this? When he comes home will I discover I’m wrong. He does love me and I’m jumping to the wrong conclusions?”

I turned it over and flipped it back.

Cannot predict now

Maybe my question should have been simpler than that.

I pace around the house and open up my cupboards. Here is a real change to the house. No snacks. I opened the refrigerator. No drinks. No food hardly. I flipped a lone yogurt over and read the expiration date. Looking at the calendar on the wall, the yogurt should be sprouting hair by now.

I don’t know how things could have gotten so out of hand. I’m noticing all of the dust, the grime covering the sink and the dead leaves on the floor. Looking out the window, there’s snow on the ground. I haven’t swept for months.

The pain in my chest hasn’t gone away. It’s rippling down my entire right side. An alarm goes off. My phone. With the alarm is a note that I’m supposed to ‘take medication’. It’s in the medicine cabinet. An orange bottle full of tiny white pills.

Do I take these because of something I did to myself?

The white die in the magic eight ball drifts to the surface.

Most likely

There are not texts on my phone about work. In fact, there are not texts at all. The conversations have been deleted.

Before I can begin to investigate, the front door is opening. The man I just held hands with stands in the door way and looks at me as though I am a full bag of garbage he’s pledged to take out but kept putting off.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the little mirror by the door. Sure, I’m a bit unkempt but I don’t look remarkably changed. Sadness plays across my face, though I can’t understand why that alone would produce such a look of disdain.

It’s such a difference and I know him so little, that it is impossible to speak. With the magic eight ball in my hand, I head to the bathroom and shut the door, locking it behind me.

It took a trip this far in the future for me to learn my lesson. I have learned it. You get what it is that you seek. Self destruction takes all kinds of forms.

If I try again, can I go back? Will it work this time?

Without a doubt

Comes the answer back.

And so I put my faith in a plastic toy and for the first time reversed time. Sometimes even witches need a bit of advice.