by Deborah Evers

Created on: January 21, 2011

Shelly had never been to a fortune teller before.  Heather, her best friend since first grade, had chided her into going.  It's not that Shelly didn't believe; she did.  She even thought that there were some people out there who were sensitive to such things.  She just didn't think that a woman that went by the name of Genie could be all that accurate.  Shelly assumed that this woman was probably just 'telling fortunes' as a means of making money. 

The fortune teller surely looked the part that she played.  Genie had her salt-n-pepper hair in some kind of a loose bun.  Hair fell wildly around Genie's face.  She looked to be in her late-sixties or early seventies.  She was a short woman and a thin one at that.  She probably only weighed about 90 lbs.  She had about twenty crystals that she wore about her neck.   There were rings on all nine of her fingers.  Where her left-hand pinkie finger should have been there was not even a stub.  So the fortune teller wore only nine rings.  Genie motioned for the girls to sit down across from her at the mahogany table that held her crystal ball.

Shelly crossed and uncrossed her legs nervously under the table.  She was surprised when Genie reached under the table to place a bony hand gently on her knee. 

"Don't be frightened, my dear child," said the fortune teller, "you will be just fine.

Shelly didn't feel like she was going to be 'just fine.'  In fact she had a sudden urge to run.  She shot a quick glance at her friend, Heather, who appeared not to be experiencing the same sense of dread as Shelly was.  Genie closed her eyes and placed her bony hands on the crystal ball.  Shelly looked over at Heather again; but, Heather was fully concentrating on the crazy-looking woman.  Did she really think that this nut-job was gonna tell us our futures?  All of a sudden Shelly realized that the woman hadn't wanted their payments upfront.  This seemed odd to Shelly.  She was a little apprehensive; but, kept her feelings to herself.  She was determined to ride this out and see what was going to happen, if anything.

Finally the woman who called herself Genie opened her eyes.  Shelly gasped.  Genie's eyes had turned from brown to a brilliant, emerald green.  It was at that moment that Shelly started to stand, grabbing her best friend's hand. 

"Sit down girls," the fortune teller shrieked in an odd-sounding voice, startling them.

Suddenly it felt like the room was spinning.  Shelly tried to reach for Heather or for whatever she could grasp.  She found nothing.  In an instant, the little old woman was behind them.  The room was still spinning and filling up with billowing, green smoke, making it next to impossible to see or even to breathe.  Shelly heard Heather cry out at the exact same moment that she felt the old, woman's bony fingers puncture her neck from behind.  Shelly didn't even have time to scream.  Her lifeless body flopped over the chair and clumsily fell to the floor.

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