By Russell Nichols
In four minutes, I’ll be dead.
I didn’t plan to go down like this, but you know what they say: Make plans or don’t make plans, God hocks a loogie in your face regardless. So here I am, dripping with holy spit in Jackson Square. Here I am with a splitting headache, where the woman responsible for my fast-approaching expiration operates her projection booth. “Spoiler Alert!” she calls from a raised platform. “Don’t hesitate—your fate awaits!”
This morning I flew in from L.A. with only a carry-on. I came to expose a fraud. As I slipped through crowded Decatur Street, “Do Whatcha Wanna” brass and drums bounced off low clouds. A gust from the gulf delivered a mixed bouquet of fried dough, dead fish, and manure—the latter of which I found, in speech-form, oozing from the moving lips of one Joséphine Smith, now known as Dabria.
“Spoiler Alert!” she called to passersby. “Step into my booth—see the vital truth!”
The booth, appropriately, looked like a gold porta potty. Dabria stood beside it, a glorified carnival barker. I wanted her to see me, but not yet. Standing there with my head down, I was surprised at how long the line was. Did all these people really want to know the exact date and time of their last breath? Not that I believed in any of it, but wouldn’t that kill the mystery? Evidently some people didn’t mind. They came from all over, each with their own valid need to know: cancer patients, gang members, school teachers, new mothers, old lovers, narcissists, masochists, and the “just very, very anxious.”
Dabria, at fifty-two years old, wore a purple corset and skeletal face paint, gray locks spilling from under a top hat adorned with goggles. The line moved fast. When the light flashed green, the next person stepped into the booth. Each reading took less than sixty seconds. Many came out crying. Some laughing. Others fell to their knees, singing glory hallelujah. A few bailed before their turn, pulling a disappearing act like my mother did after Dad died.
“Spoiler Alert!” Dabria called out. “Don’t delay—get your life expectancy reading today!”
My heart cartwheeled the more I thought about that day years back, Dad’s upside-down, bleeding face in the rolled-over Explorer.
“You nervous, huh?”
The voice came from a sleepy-eyed old man in a tweed suit standing in front of me. Tweedy nibbled on a beignet. “Pressure is perfectly normal,” he said, expelling puffs of powdered sugar. “Means your body’s security system is on point.” I looked away, praying he’d leave me alone. “Whatcha got in the bag?”
“My dead father’s hair.”
“I see.” He gazed at the scars on my head. “So Papa went marching with the saints, huh? And you came here with that bag o’ DNA to find out if Miss Dabria’s world-famous projection booth woulda seen it coming, huh?” He smirked. “I had the notion to try that with my ol’ lady—God rest her soul. But figured I’d feel it out myself first.”
Trumpets blared in the background. I had to change the subject stat. “She used to be a doctor, you know. A surgeon. But she quit to pursue her calling as a charlatan.”
Tweedy looked at Dabria and shrugged. “Well, I can’t speak much to the lady’s past, but I’m hoping she’ll help me amputate my future.”
I didn’t see that coming. “You don’t wanna live?”
He laughed. “Look here: I’m ninety-nine years old. I done lived through world wars, hurricanes, and a pot of hot gumbo dumped in my lap, twice. I’ve seen it all.” His weary eyes squinted at the three-steeple facade of St. Louis Cathedral. “All I do now is feast on sweets till that chariot comes for to carry me home.”
The light flashed green. Tweedy’s turn. He strode inside.
The man had me beat by seventy-eight years. I hadn’t “seen it all,” but I had seen enough—namely my father dying instantly, and my mother, who couldn’t handle my traumatic brain injury, abandoning me in that hospital room.
I stepped to the front of the line. “Surprise.”
Her blackened, skeletal eyes opened wide. “Arthur?”
“I brought you a gift. From Dad.” I pulled out a clear case with coils of dark hair from my carry-on. “We’ll see how ‘all-knowing’ your little booth is.”
“The booth doesn’t work that way.”
“The booth doesn’t work any way. And—spoiler alert—when I’m done here, neither will you.”
She laughed. “If you doubt the great Dabria, step inside my magic arena!”
The door opened. Tweedy came out, shaking his head. “Ten decades down, one to go.”
The light flashed green.
I charged inside. As I held up the hairs to be scanned, my hand trembled. Just my body’s security system, I reminded myself. There was a chime. The results, read out loud, projected on the walls.
Arthur Smith: Your date of death is… today. Your time of death is… in six minutes.
This was a trick. Had to be.
I darted outside. “What did you do to me?!”
“Not I.” Dabria reached up to the heavens. “Forces beyond moi.”
“You rigged it!”
Dabria leaned in, using her bedside-manner voice. “I’m sorry things didn’t go the way you planned, son.” She stroked my scarred head. “That’s life.”
I pushed away her hand and scrambled around a brass band marching through Jackson Square. The world started spinning—or I was—and my vision blurred. In that moment, I thought I saw Dad, upside-down, bleeding from the mouth. I ran to him, to save him, to be the hero this time—
But it was only Tweedy, his lips smeared in cherry syrup from a sno-ball. “How long you got?”
The disorientation from seeing Dad who wasn’t Dad made me stagger back, smack into a tuba—the blunt instrument clocked me in my already traumatized head and knocked me to the ground, so here I am now, counting down the seconds to my last breath.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Your descriptions are so vivid!
Have you been to Jackson Square or did you draw the whole thing form your imagination?
Thanks, Rose. I have been before, but it was long, long time ago.
AWESOME!! XD
well written. kinda creepy.
I appreciate you checking out, SC.
Nice twist! I didn’t expect Daria to be his mother.
Glad you dug it, Arlan. Thanks for reading.
Wow! That was tense and eerie!
Good read
Liked the setting and the setup. Vividly brought to life.