Night Terrors

Night Terrors

I hear them. No matter where I go. I feel them. I see them. They lurk around corners, waiting for me. They call to me. Wherever I am. Whatever I do – day in day out. I dare not answer. But how I want to – especially to him. 

He tosses my hair. He strokes my face. I feel him slide across me as I close my eyes, part of me praying he leaves yet dreading it too. When I hear him whisper my name, I know what he wants, but I hide away. What would befall me I know too well and yet not well enough.

He goes away, but he always returns. Always.

Magnifico, a so-called fortune teller and harbinger of my doom, set me on the path of such torment that day.

He sat behind what looked like a $10 plywood table. Just a foot off the ground, the table was topped with a thread-worn runner that didn’t quite stretch across it.

Amanda and I faced him in a canopy tent at a traveling fantasy fair where “fantasies come to life.”

The tent was held up by a single splintered spike jammed into pitch black soil. The tent tarp sported a family of holes, not unlike the patch of shag carpeting thrown on the ground.

“Tell me my future,” I said.

“Tell me your past,” he said.

“What does my past have to do with my future?” I said.

“You are very young,” he said.

Even with one eye covered by a black eye patch per my gypsy pirate costume, I easily saw his pink, smooth skin slipping over his golden rope sash that looked like a curtain accessory.

It clashed with his orange top and black stretch headband with a silver medallion emblazoned across the forehead while his pink, perfectly bald head peaked through.

“So ladies, please, let’s begin,” Magnifico said. “What brings you here? What vexes you?”

My eyelashes snapped back and forth across my black eye patch that suddenly felt uncomfortable.

“Kayla’s afraid of heights,” Amanda said, leaning into me. “As long as I’ve known her. How long has it been? Let’s see. Gosh, that’s a good question you asked. I think it’s eight years now. Or more maybe. I can’t remember. But you should tell him about that.”

“I’m not afraid of heights,” I said.

“She said you’re afraid of heights,” he said. 

“I’m sorry, I should’ve let you tell him that,” Amanda said to me and then turned to Magnifico. “I do that to her sometimes. I go on and on, but she should tell you. She can tell you better than I can.”

“I live on the sixth floor. I work on the 8th,” I said. “I love rollercoasters – the higher, the faster, the better.  Or flying. I always take the window seat, so I can look out the window.”

“But…” he said.

“But,” I said. “In certain circumstances, I don’t like heights.”

“Like?” he said.