By Iris Cherryapple
Mabel marched purposefully forward, consciously ignoring the spectacle of the carnival all around her. She halted in front of an ornate, glass-enclosed booth with an silk-draped manikin inside. She had seen the fortune-telling machine every year since her childhood, each time the carnival came to the small town where she had lived her whole life,, except for the four years she had gone to the small college just ten miles away. Her coin clinked into the unseen cash box, and as a needle scratched violin music from an invisible cylinder in the box below, the fortune teller jerked into life. The lacquered wooden lips behind the glass mumbled up and down. A voice like sandpaper on thin glass said, in dubiously accented English, “Ask what you would know.” Mabel’s fingers tightened around her purse straps, and she whispered, “How to get revenge.” She jumped slightly as the assembly of carved wood, silk scarves, and fake gold jewelry twisted back and forth as the music accelerated, and with a clack, a small card emerged from the slot below. The grinding voice said, “Take this card. It is yours and yours alone,” and then was silent. The artificial mystic was once again still.
The card emerged face down, the back covered in decorative patterns framing an illustration in the center. Mabel saw that it was a cartoon of a white gloved hand with a fancy lace cuff holding a dagger, index finger against the blade. Mabel turned it over and began to read:
“Incantation to cause anguish and ruin: This spell reaches the wretch by spoken word conveyed from lips to ear, lips to ear, in a chain of whispers. Speak it to another, and they shall be compelled to do likewise, and so on, If the last runner in this baleful relay is a ghost…”
“Ghost?” Mabel paused, smiling at the blunt matter-of-factness of the absurd proposition.
“…then the miserable consignment may even reach the renegade who makes a coward’s exit by suicide.
Whisper what follows in the ear of the seventh person encountered after receipt of this bitter blessing, and the words shall travel like a needle in the heel, insinuating its way to the heart. Know also that the infernal tax levied for this transaction is heavy indeed. If you remain willing, proceed with all your black heart, in sure and certain knowledge that revenge shall be yours.”
And then the spell itself followed: a nonsense rhyme that seemed to have no meaning. Mabel recited it in her mind again and again until the words were embossed on her consciousness. As she repeated the gibberish, she thought, “No reason to feel foolish; so what if I’m playing a silly carnival game? It’s not real anyway, probably. And if, somehow it does work… Hadn’t he already made me look like a fool in front of everyone? So foolish that I had to leave and never go back. If only it works…” Then suddenly, she felt it. An irresistable compulsion to repeat the nonsense rhyme to someone. The seventh someone. It was time.
She turned to walk down the midway, counting people as they passed. Five…Six…Seven… She grasped a man’s coat sleeve and pulled close to his face. Older, in his sixties, still handsome, with freshly clipped hair and barber’s talc on his neck. “He’ll do,” she thought, as she leaned into his peppery aftershave. He looked and saw Mabel’s lowered eyes, her pink-painted lips drawing closer to his cheek. She saw his mouth start to spread into a surprised smile, which faded as he heard the rehearsed words. As the last breathy weapon slipped from her mouth to the man’s ear, she glided her hand down and away from his arm in release. Mabel stood and watched as he walked, at first slowly, then faster down the midway, his lips moving, counting people as he went. She lifted her hand to see the card once again, but it must have slipped from her hand; it was gone.
Taking a cleansing breath, Mabel turned toward the shooting gallery, where she bought tokens. She put her purse aside where she could see it from the corner of her eye- because you can’t trust anyone these days- and took up the tethered rifle that launched ball bearings. “The lady’s up! Pick yer next victim!” barked the man in the straw hat. As she rested her elbows on the high bench to take aim, she thought, “No longer the fool.” Before each pull of the trigger, Mabel continued whispering the small, silent prayer she had learned by heart as she launched each missile toward its deserving target.
