This story was written for an Ed Davis writing class.
My new friend, Jessica, wanted to go to a Gypsy camp and have our fortunes read. I agreed, largely because I wanted Jessica to transform beyond just a friend, so I’d pretty much do anything she’d want us to do, other than genitalia piercings. None of that for me.
The Gypsy camp was located on a farm just outside of town. Tents, buses, pickup trucks, and minivans littered the fields. Jessica seemed to know where she was going as she led us to a tent with a gold moon painted on it. She stepped inside, and I followed. An ancient woman, with gray hair down to her hips and a toothless grin, sat in a well-worn leather chair. A coal fire burned on a round platform in the center of the tent. Animal skulls hung about strategically. The old hag tossed some sickly-sweet incense into the fire, and a hazy, bluish smoke filled the tent.
“Our fortunes, please,” Jessica said.
I shrugged.
The old woman reached behind her and pulled out a copper bowl. “Twenty dollars each.”
“WHAT!?” I howled.
Jessica rapped her knuckles across my temple real hard. Yes, I’ve learned more than once how hard Jessica can hit. She claimed she studied Ninjutsu, and it’s all about hitting other people’s soft spots with your hard spots. All I knew was it worked. Still, she had this brown and blonde hair cut real short, plus the nicest breasts I’ve ever seen.
Jessica and I each put $20 in the bowl, and the old hag stashed it in a rusty iron chest.
“My name is Myra. Let me see the girl’s hand first.”
Jessica held out her right hand, and Myra began to caress the lines in her palm. Myra spoke in a soft voice. “You’ll live well into your eighties, but your health will start to fail in your sixties. You’ll have two children, but not by the man you’re with.”
“Drat!” I whispered.
The Gypsy woman released Jessica’s hand and reached out for mine.
I provided my hand, and Myra traced along the lines of my palms and fingers. It sent a kind of shiver up and down my spine. Myra whispered something, closed my hand, and pushed it away.
“What?” I asked. And yes, for the record, what is my favorite word.
She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “Your future forks too many times to be sure of anything.”
“What a waste of $20!” I said.
Myra’s eyes opened wide. “You want me to lie? Do you want me to tell you about every possible fork and where it leads? I could spend a year talking about all the different forks in your future, and there’s no telling on any one which way you’ll turn.”
“I want my $20 back!”
Myra glared. “No refunds!”
“This is a sham.”
Myra smiled. “You really want your money back?”
“Of course.”
Myra fumbled around in the iron chest. She pulled out a sack of something and the twenty. She dumped the sack onto the fire, and it filled the room with a noxious cloud of yellow smoke. She said a little chant in a language I’d never heard and handed me my twenty.
Jessica and I ran out of the smoke-filled tent. I drove her home. I leaned over to kiss her.
She pulled back and whispered, “No, we’re done.”
“We’re just getting started, baby-doll.”
“No. Myra said we’d never have kids together. Why go any further.”
I tried to nuzzle in close to kiss her and my kiss landed on her shoulder. “Gypsies have been wrong before.”
Jessica opened the door and climbed out. “She put a curse on you, stupid fool.”
She slammed the door shut. I drove home. Curse, my ass.
A few days passed while I hunted for a new woman. You know, going to parks watching for women with big dogs, going to the grocery store at odd hours not buying anything in particular. I would go to bars, but alcohol is poison. Except Long Island Iced Teas, those are mostly iced tea anyhow.
I came home from work one day, and in the space separating my screen door and main door, a snake.
About two to three feet long, brown with tan diamonds running down its back. I ran. Well, in truth, I screamed, then I jumped, then I ran. I made it back to my car and drove to a payphone. One of my friends kept snakes as pets, so I figured I’d call him first. He didn’t answer. So, I had to call another friend. He came over with his camera and six-year-old daughter in tow. The snake was gone when he opened the door though.
“I had to get up from my nap,” the child said. “And there’s no snake.”
Yeah. A snake. And my friend didn’t get any pictures. I’m sure it was the poisonous variety too.
Another week passed, while I stalked different parks and grocery stores. I was on my way to the kitchen for a nice cold beverage, and the faintest of hissing caught my ear. Another snake, this one well over three feet long and solid black, was just chilling on my countertop. I started to back away. It started to move towards me. I ran out of the house. Brilliantly, I forgot my keys but remembered to lock the door. I didn’t even have my wallet on me. Luckily, I’m old friends with a locksmith, and I called him from a neighbor’s house. I’m on good terms with my neighbors. Very important.
My locksmith friend, George, showed up in good time with a toolbox. “There’s a snake inside?”
I nodded.
“I’ll unlock the door,” George said. “But the snake is all you, man.”
“What!”
“Grab a brick, and brain the stupid thing, or are you afraid of a little snake?”
“Of course, I’m afraid of a snake! Snakes kill to eat!”
“You said it was black, right?” George pulled a simple little gun-shaped tool out of his toolbox and inserted it into my door lock. He clicked it a couple of times and twisted it. “You’re unlocked. The only black snakes we get around these parts are constrictors. It’s not poisonous.”
“It’s huge!”
“All the more reason you have to deal with it and not me. Call animal control if you’re that much of a pussy,” George said.
“Thanks for unlocking the door. Got any plans on Saturday?”
“Saturday, hmmm…”
“There’s that new zombie movie. I haven’t seen it yet.”
“I’ve seen it, but I’ll see it again, if you want,” he said. “Matinee on Saturday?”
“Yeah, I’ll call you.”
George winked at me. “Are you going to kill the snake?”
“I’m calling animal control.”
“HAHAHA!”
George left, and I went back to the neighbor’s house to call animal control. They arrived pretty quickly.
Two of them stepped out of the van. One said, “What’s the problem?”
I wondered which one was the comedian. “There’s a big-ass snake in my house.”
“How many feet is a big ass snake? What color is it?” The second man said.
“It’s at least eight feet long, a foot around in the middle, and it sits up like a spitting cobra.”
Both men laughed.
“It’s maybe three feet long. It’s solid black,” I said. “It’s in the kitchen. Ignore the pot plants in the back bedroom.”
Both men glared. One hissed out the words, “If we find pot plants, we’re calling the sheriff.”
“The stuff is entirely medicinal.”
“It’s still illegal in this state.”
“Oh, well, we’re real close to the border with Canada.”
Both men glared at me again. I think they practiced that. “Please get the snake. You won’t find any pot plants.”
“We had better not.”
They bagged the snake then drove off with it.
I didn’t sleep well that night.
In the morning, I ate my typical breakfast of Greek yogurt and cereal. I had work, but not for another hour. I poked around on the internet reading the news. A very low hissing sound grated against my ears. I turned. In the doorway to my den, a slender green snake with red eyes perhaps two feet long lay in the entryway.
I pondered my options while the snake inched its way into the room. I was still barefooted, but I chose flight. As I ran past the snake, it bit me on the foot. I stumbled and fell. The pain was unbelievable. I mean, I could describe it, but you wouldn’t believe me. Honestly though, I don’t have a very high pain threshold.
I crawled to the phone and dialed 911. The snake came after me for another nibble, and I bashed on it with the fireplace poker until it stopped moving. It felt good. I put the carcass in a brown paper sack and went outside to wait for the medics. The ambulance came and took me to the hospital. The doctor wanted to know what kind of snake it was, and I said, “The mean kind!”
“No, what color, did it have any markings.”
I smiled. “I have it with me. It’s in this paper sack.”
The doctor looked in the bag. Then he started punching up websites on the internet. “These aren’t native to this region. Not even to this continent. It’s a Willow Asp, native to India. Relatively poisonous. You could lose your foot or your life, if we don’t treat it.”
“So, give me an anti-venom and send me home.”
The doctor shook his head. “We don’t stock this anti-venom at this hospital. I’m going to have to start calling other hospitals.”
He started making calls. The pain was bad, so I whimpered a lot.
The doctor finally said, “Good, Good. We’ll fly him to you.”
The doctor turned to me. “Ever ride in a helicopter before?”
“No.”
“You’re going to love it!”
They wheeled me to the helicopter, and strapped me in. A paramedic rode with me in the back. We took off. “Willow Asp? Native to India?”
“Apparently.”
“You know India is the ancestral home of Gypsies.”
“What do you know of Gypsies?”
“I have a little Gypsy blood in me,” the paramedic said. “My great grandfather was a Gypsy.”
“What do you know about their curses?”
The paramedic’s face darkened a notch. “You don’t want a Gypsy curse on you.”
“Yes, I’m beginning to understand that.”
“Just have it taken off.”
“How?”
The paramedic pointed at my swollen foot. “It’s all so simple. Find a Gypsy camp, find a seer, and pay a modest fee.”
“How much of a fee?”
“Most will do it for a few hundred bucks.”
“Ha! Screw that. I think I’ll pick up snake hunting as a hobby instead.”
Check out Winter’s Line on Amazon. A story about a young man who becomes a lawman.