Page 11 of Magpie
My eyes grow wide at the sight of a man wearing a dark suit, a top hat on his head with an ace of spades sticking out of the side. He looks like the ringleader of some cursed circus. He smiles at me again, teeth flashing in the moonlight, and my mind is instantly filled with the image of a wolf.
For one moment, I falter, the ghosts of my friends calling out to me, begging me to come back to them. For one moment, I wonder if they are begging me to come back tomyself.
I shake those thoughts away, feeding them to the abyss inside me, and I walk toward the smiling man.
Out. I am getting out.
“Can you show me the way out?”
He is still gesturing to the seat in front of him. Gripping the back of the chair, I make no move to sit, instead waiting for him to lead me to the exit.
In the blink of an eye, the man pulls out a deck of cards as if from nowhere, like he plucked it from a pocket in the air. They are larger than normal cards, black as soot with the image of a gleaming silver skull adorning the back of each one. He shuffles them quickly in his gloved hands, the flashing of the cards making it seem as though the skull is winking at me.
With the deftness of someone who has done this hundreds of times, he bends and cascades the cards, flipping and folding them over each other in a dizzying pattern. Without thinking, I move to sit in front of him, entranced by the cards as they spin and flash their silver skulls at me.
He sets the deck in front of me, cutting it into two piles. “Choose,” he instructs.
A slow, creeping fog has enveloped my mind since the moment I locked eyes with the smiling stranger. It is alluring, and calming, and it promises to numb me so entirely that I never again have to feel the anguish of my hollow life. I blink, a silent tear trailing down my cheek as I reach forward. I put my hand above the pile on the left.
At once I hear Tim and Jessica, their voices sounding as though they are standing behind me. Spinning around, I do not see them in the attic, but I hear them perfectly. They are excitedly discussing our final year of college, the apartment we all plan to move into. Their voices lap over each other, spilling from one topic to the next, a detailed map of our lives laid out before me. Behind it all, I swear I can hear them calling to me, begging me to come back.
Frowning, I turn back to the table and move my hand over the pile on the right. I feel nothing. Complete and utter emptiness. It’s like the numbness has claimed me entirely, and it is so blissfully quiet. These cards call out to me like a dying echo, whispering dark promises to me. Touching that pile, I push it across the table toward the man.
That gleaming smile never leaves his face, seeming to grow wider as I remove my hand and wait. He turns his gaze from me, focusing on the cards in front of him. In one sweeping motion, he spills the left-hand pile off the table, my breath catching in my throat as the cards flutter to the attic floor. There is something so final about the action. Plucking the remaining pile off the table, he begins flipping over cards in quick succession.
The images are different from any tarot deck I have seen before. Once, on a dare, Jessica and I had our fortunes read by a carnival worker. She gave us some vague reading that could have fit any number of scenarios. Jessica was enthralled by it, chatting about it for several weeks after. I found the whole thing absurd, forcing myself to not roll my eyes as she associated every action in her life with a simple deck of cards.
These aren’t like the ones the fortune teller used, however. They are covered in scenes of people dancing around a fire, a moon cutting through the dark night, a weeping girl surrounded by a pool of darkness, and lastly, a bird. It is the same black-and-white bird on the key I still hold in my hand, but this one has a red thread knotted around it, holding its wings down. I’m leaning over to study the pictures closer when the man begins to speak.
“I see a life half lived,” he says, shocking me into sitting back. He flips more cards over, their images flashing before my eyes. My lips part, the ghost of a gasp escaping, as I realize the cards are allme.
He flips over one depicting me walking down the sidewalk leading to our shared classes, Tim and Jessica on either side of me. Their faces are sketched with big, bright smiles, but my face is blank. No eyes, no frowning mouth, no features at all, but I know it is me.
Another card flips. This time we are at graduation, our billowing black gowns flowing around us. Jessica and Tim have elated looks on their faces; I’m standing slightly behind them. I frown, noticing the sketch of me is hazier, more muted.
Another card, then another. Tim is proposing to me, down on one knee with love shining bright in his eyes, and I am blurrier. Jessica is standing beside me, placing a veil on my head, and I am translucent in the image. My life flashes before my eyes: I see my career begin, vacations come and go, a perfect white picket fence in front of the smiling couple holding the keys. And with each card, more and more of me disappears, until only the ghostly outline of myself remains.
Something drips onto my hand. Reaching up to my face, I realize I am crying.
“What do you want?” he asks, shocking me out of my stupor.
I hastily swipe the tears off my cheeks. “I want to get out,” I croak, my throat tight. Clearing it, I repeat in a stronger voice, “I want to get out.” I wait, expecting him to answer, but he just looks at me. “Are you listening to me? I said I want to get out!” I all but scream, anger flooding my voice, tears streaming down my cheeks again, my eyes locked on the hollow version of myself on the cards.
“What do you want to get out of?” he asks, his voice soft and inviting, like a gloved hand caressing my face.
“I want to get out of this life!” I shout, for once speaking the words I have kept locked tight inside of me. I sweep the cards off the table, unable to keep looking at the ghostly image of myself,the destiny that waits for me at the end of a carefully planned life. A life I no longer want to live.
His lips split apart in another smile, and I get the image of blood-soaked fangs in my mind, but I ignore it. There is a darkness radiating off him, and the darkness inside of me rises up to greet it.
“You’ve been tied down, your wings clipped, your freedom stolen from you,” he says, moving his gloved hand forward and brushing the tears off my cheeks. Even through the gloves, his fingers are icy cold, sending a shiver racing down my spine. A soft voice is crying out in the dark recesses of my mind, begging me to fight, but his touch quiets that warning sound.
Swallowing against the lump in my throat, I bite my lip, holding his gaze hard, desperate for him to continue.
“I can give you back your wings,” he breathes, grabbing my hand and turning it over. He trails his fingers down my closed fist, swirling over my wrist. His featherlight touch dances over my skin, beckoning me, and I oblige. I open my hand, exposing the key with the black-and-white bird, my blood smeared across its feathers, a deep maroon in the dim light of the attic. “I can free you from the cage of your life.”
“How?” I ask, my voice sounding strange in my ears, almost terrified. I know, somehow, deep inside of me, that I have been wanting to get out for a very long time. That I would leap at any offer to escape.
“Give me your key, and I will give you the world,” he whispers, his hand hovering over the key in my palm, not touching it. There is a wild fierceness in his eyes, an obsession written so clearly across his face that it shakes me to my core. The voice that has been begging me to fight, pleading with me to not submit to the creeping numbness, nearly bursts through the haze in my mind. I have to look away from the heat of his gaze,glancing down at the key in my hand instead. His fingers twitch, as though he is fighting the urge to snatch it.
