By Akansha Bhattacharjee
Possibilities, in thousands of accumulated stars shone brightly, in the tenderness of what is called a sky.
The fortune teller of the Century might be a good guesser of all that is deemed as destiny but she is still a Woman.
Rocking back and forth in a crocheted sweater at dusk is what makes her thoughts fall in a line but she still is a Woman.
She paces quickly in the darkness of her den as she thinks of her ways to get to him.
The apple of her eye that chokes her every night and sins her desires is what needs to be dealt with.
He appears whenever she asks for him and, sometimes, even when she doesn't, mostly in surreal dreaming tendencies of the night and day.
“What else can a Woman do?”
Her friends tell her.
But she wants to tell the world to stay away from snuffing out her lights and her madness.
Sweltering hypocrisy gathers on her porch like miasma as she tries her forthcoming rights to banish what is ‘evil of the mind.’
Childish plays with incense, cinnamon sticks and garlic outside the door never stopped the Devil from letting love play its games.
He is already here, disguised like the lovechild of The Blessed Thee, to knock the senses over; like the vases filled with chrysanthemums on her window tops.
“It might be a time for conducting the dissection of what is claimed to be a ‘possibility’”.
The fortune teller of the Century sat down with her fancy ink bottle and a raven feather, crispy tip yet silk like smooth. It poured her controversies in red ink, perfect media like storms.
It wasn’t blood, but just rose petals sitting long overdue in acetone which would dry up in her pages to leave no evidence.
“A high profile love interest was never a safe choice when it comes to leaving testimonies”
She wondered, with her curious eyes and a melancholic amygdala what the bulleted points to analyze her emotions are.
All the tendencies out on cards and books filled with all that clouds her sense of justice.
“Time to retreat” a vacation from her muddled reality to a period of blankness.
The goodness of a cookie now tastes too sweet and a bit diabetic for the Fortune teller of the Century.
A storm raged outside.
She lay down on her bed at nine in the night, her table now a home for all the acetone written pages and leaked feelings.
Her windows vibrated and jerked her up from a disturbed night’s sleep every once in a while.
She got up a few times throughout the night, as if awaiting a disfigured demon or her high profile love interest to maybe drop down for a ghastly yet mesmerizing visit.
But none came.
The fortune teller of the Century sees herself sitting in a wooden cushioned chair now, her back against the darkness and across a face she knew so well.
The face across was tense, smooth musculature creating a sleek jaw line and apple cheeks. Big eyes widening as he takes in the Fortune teller. A moss green sweater draped over his broad yet loose fitted shirt underneath.
He was exasperated but appeared sharp and slighted.
“Where am I?”
He voiced, his tone tired and hoarse, questioning the quite obvious displacement of his reality.
The distorted and crooked table between her and this man, the lack of a clock and a deep darkness around wasn’t helping with any orientation to senses either.
The fortune teller tried to keep her calm as she realized the existence of such cosmic possibilities alive beyond her expectations.
The same table filled with rose-acetone inked pages and her feelings now was bare and felt ominous standing wobbly between them.
“What is the last thing you remember doing?”There was such a mad look in the eyes of the famous and coveted man that now he simply appeared to be a mere human.
“I-Who are you again?”
The fortune teller of the Century was taken aback; clearly he was conscious and reacting very well.
This was no dream,
Or maybe it was. There’s no way to know it in the present moment.
“I am a human at the very least”
The fortune teller looked ethereal in his eyes, like a wisp of white light that would dim and fade away way too quickly if he didn’t keep check. The possibility of drugging and abduction went through his mind but he disposed them as the human in front of him looked threatened as well.
“I was…. sleeping”
He inquisitively delivered his answer with a pent up sigh.
Slowly the fortune teller tried to get up from her chair and walk towards a possible end of the room she was in but as she tried to lift, her footing gave way and she fell back to her chair.
‘Yes, a dream conjunction’.
“Listen to me, very carefully now, this is a dream”
The fortune teller’s wide eyes matched his, like a fawn’s meeting a fox’s and it was quite unnerving.
“It feels real!”
The man exhaled with a shudder.
Now that the fortune teller’s dream paved a way for her to meet the man she wanted with such fervor, she felt unsettled. Like all her desires drained away and his shocked face left a tinge of guilt in her mind.
“I am not doing anything purposefully!” she cried out in a whisper.
“Yes, I sensed so”
The mono-line was said more to herself but his soft response made it more acceptable.
“But I’ve been here before”
There was a lapse in the atmosphere around as every breath thickened and eyes tingled. The two of them started coughing and the transparency now evaporated turning every sight opaque as clouds of smoke filled their senses.
“Try to wake up! There’s not much time”
There was a cognizance and the fortune teller realized what was happening.
Something more than a simple dream conjunction, a dream trespassing and she was to go through the nightmare of someone else, someone she dearly fancied.
As the spirit of the fortune teller advanced in its practice of telling fortunes of others, it simplified and expanded itself.
Now, her soul was capable of passing time and space without much restriction imposed on it as it depleted itself of harm and destruction holding in its intention, neutrality.
The fortune teller of the century was a woman of power; she chanted her beads; wore a rosary; prayed to the Eastern winds; saged her space and worshiped the Gods that graced the Earth with beauty and mercy.
Every morning she looked at people’s eyes, saw their features, took a note of their aura, threw a few grains of rice on her wooden board of divination, pulled cards, checked their star charts and gave them advice or predicted either a fortunes or the lack of it.
The Fortune teller of the Century practiced an art that was ages old and disgraceful in its considerations by the modern man of science.
This year she predicted the fortune for the governmental elections and of eight pregnant women with an uncanny accuracy.
The man across is a pianist, a passionate knightly presence, with a feverish popularity that now tortured him in his nightmares. The pianist rose to fame a decade ago and his skills are worth the noise.
He sees the fortune teller now, in his dreams. The deadly poison of his nightmares spread quickly all over the space and in his veins. Small tender blemishes of blues and greens spot his fingers quickly and he sees the nightmare taking form.
The fortune teller of the Century confused him further.
‘Who is this woman and why is she here’, is what he wonders.
Usually it’s just the pianist and his fears alone as he faces an unknown, strange goriness as a shadowed figure tries to snatch his soul away after playing Bach’s ‘Concerto for two violins’ on his childhood piano every other night.
Lost in thoughts, the room began to rotate demanding the pianist’s attention.
The wooden round table that interconnects the pianist and the fortune teller, in this dream trespassing, kept changing. There was a shift slowly as the space around them tilted and tipped, reality distorting and the objects of the room changing.
A silver candle holder stood with a blazing flame and the sinister shadow it casted on the floor was monstrous.
Threat choked the pianist and his diligently skilled fingers trembled.
The fortune teller decided to remain silent. Reaction and involvement in someone else’s dream would make those nightmares her own.
Her desires and soul that connected so sharply to the pianist has brought her here; a Universal comeback as a result of personal space invasion, of wanting too much of something that was not yet her own, of prying open to know what she isn’t supposed to.
She gripped her rosary beads tightly as she prayed to the Eastern Winds to protection all that requires so and for the ‘highest good of everyone and everything involved’.
Her wise mind scolded her irrational desires of recent longings but her fast heartbeat feared for the pianist and his pallid face.
The fortune teller’s false pretense of courage was crumbling down and her eyes strained on the dancing flame, flickering to and fro between it and the pianist’s insipid face.
Her cheeks were pink and sweat lined above her upper lip. Her rosary beads shook on her wrist as she mouthed a prayer with her eyes closed.
There was zero tension on her whole face and her eyes, when they opened, resisted looking anywhere but at the flame and they were glassy, as if distilled, and lacked emotions.
‘Was she some angel, a savior for rescuing him out of this misery?’ the pianist’s ears rang.
A feeling that the pianist would go berserk operated in the fortune teller’s mind but her fortune telling third eye sensed that he was stronger than this.
They were still sat, but now in a room with drawn sullied curtains, old antiques of generational wealth, dilapidated wood of useless cupboards, stuffed toys, a broken train on a rail track and an old, open-lid, grand piano. It appeared like an attic which was also the playhouse of a young child.
A shadow now appeared on the wall behind the piano, akin to the slouch of an old man, lurching towards the piano. The seat in front the piano depressed as if some non-physical being sat on it and the keys on the piano and the pedestals underneath were being struck and pressed, rapid in motion, to reproduce the melody of Bach once again.
There was a murmur of silent whispers from the pianist’s lips and a wish to be saved.
The pianist took shallow breaths as he tried his best to not start running and he focused rather on the new companion in this shared misery. His companion tonight avoided glancing to the shadow, like the pianist always did.
By now the fortune teller knew a few things.
That neediness to know more than what is already available is a divine law breaking, an offense; that the pianist’s somber eyes were hidden behind his cheerful ones in the auditoriums where he played; and that fear was still an emotion she felt.
But she tried her best to not lose in the face of fear and demons.
There was a sense of resignation in the pianist as he decided to succumb to his fears.
“Fight, fend for yourself!”
The fortune teller fiercely struck the pianist with her words.
The pianist closely observed the fortune teller, the determination in her widely blown out eyes was awfully intrusive; like she could read and look inside his mind and his fears.
“I am afraid!”
An exasperated scream boomed as the shadow stopped playing the piano.
“I might lose my fame, my success, my abilities, and my music!”
Senses were overlapping quickly and the fortune teller was losing her grip on the real aspect of this unreal occurrence.
“Then fight hard for it, to keep it, keep going and don’t stop!”
Her rosary beads jingled in her left wrist and the pianist looked with utter confusion at the insolence of someone being so rude and ordering him around.
But her words were true, after all she is the Fortune-teller of the Century.
The pianist looked at the piano, the shadow seemed to fade.
“Who are you?”
The fortune teller shook her head vehemently refusing his attempts, her eyes now tender and warmer.
“My presence is already an intrusion big enough to bring unnecessary changes, just pay heed to what I said. The further you delay, the further we get stuck here”
The fortune teller had no intentions to stay as she threw caution at him, albeit the presence of her cherished companion was alluring.
The pianist nodded his head as he tried to shake himself out of this maddening reverie.
“Ms….Ms, Ms. Meira”
The fortune teller of the Century woke up with a heavy jerk, sweat had seeped through her night clothes and the sweet stench of it left a confused, melancholic feeling inside.
She felt as though something significant was lost, something similar to sadness clouded her.
A rapid series of knocks rang on the front door at the entrance of her white cottage house. The Fortune teller sat with an uneasy stomach and felt tiring waves travel from her neck to her shoulders and beyond.
It was morning already with a gleaming Sun and he shone splendidly on all of the fortune teller’s daisies and lilies.
The pianist’s fears, the shadow demon and the table that connected them, all were gone, vanished like her dreams and she was supposed to clear her room of last night’s work to read fortunes again.
“Yes, a moment please!”
Later that day, the news on the radio telecasted the headlines of the day in the fortune teller’s house,
“And the last for tonight, Pianist Eash, the International Ettore Pozzoli winner of the second last competition has been hospitalized by his managerial staff as he woke this morning with a high fever, parched throat and on the verge of collapse. He apparently ‘had nightmares and trembling fingers’. His fans and loved ones pray for his well-being”
The news headlines ended for the night leaving a sharp bitter aftertaste in her guts and chills down her bones.
It was true then, the Fortune teller of the century and the Pianist she fancied had a dream conjunction. A shared dream where the fortune teller’s desires connected her to the Pianist’s nightmares.
Although a rare occurrence, the fortune teller had heard of such dream conjunctions but she wasn’t aware her mind could do so, conduct such an advanced level of divinatory practice.
Maybe it was her fancy for the pianist that led her to it and maybe the pianist needed her to work through his fears.
Probably the pianist would forget her or already has forgotten all about her, even though the tension of that dream remained inside of him.
The fortune teller went to bed with her book on energy remedies and her pouched bag of protection. Her rosary beads wrapped around her wrist shielded her from all that was unwanted.
The fortune teller’s house was white and filled with flowers. Her good vibrations and luck brought all types of cats, dogs, birds and at times the nearby village cows with their calves for fodder and water.
A letter box for receiving mail, also painted white, stood outside her main entrance where the postman came early in the morning to deliver the mail. The fortune teller of the Century never received much mail except her bills and invitations to parties.
As the fortune teller dreamt peacefully of her concerns alone that night, the break of the dawn saw the postman on his bicycle stopping at the gates of the fortune teller of the Century. He carefully drew out the letter from his parcel bag and dropped it inside the Fortune Teller’s Mail box.
He took a good look at her house checking the morning glories that were now in full bloom.
The town was asleep and so was the fortune teller without the knowledge that later that morning she would be reading a letter addressed to her for a fortune reading at the ‘Eashan Residence’ and that a car would come to pick her up at sharp three in the afternoon on Monday of the next week.
She was to empty her schedule for the afternoon and evening and would be paid with full imbursement by Eash, the pianist, for the unduly trouble he would cause her.
By Akansha Bhattacharjee
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