The Aftermath of an ***

I stepped back and asked, "Who are you?"

The man had to duck his head to get through the door. He towered over me and when he walked forward I mirrored his steps by moving my feet backwards. He was a predator, and I was his kill. I bumped into the table.

"Get out of my house," I demanded.

"Come now, you need to give me a reading. If you don't, I hear the consequences are not so pleasant."

That made me stop. Only fortune tellers and their masters knew they had to keep serving and reading futures for a reason. "Who are you?" I asked incredulously.

"I'm just a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy." His voice leaked like oil. "Now how about that reading?"

"No," I answered.

And like oil, when he found his match he combusted. His black eyes narrowed into slits, and he moved faster than a tiger as he grabbed my neck and pulled me up to see him eye to eye. My feet dangled off the floor.

"Alright, I'll give you your fucking future," I gasped through my closed air-way.

"Good," he said and dropped me.

I bent at the waist and coughed and wheezed for air. I watched him walk over and sit down in the kitchen chair. He was gigantic. He made my already-too-small house look like it belonged to a bunch of dolls.

I took up slowly and cautiously walked over to him. I made myself make eye contact with him. He wore a black cloak but had the hood down so I couldn't see his face.

"Well?" he prompted, gesturing for me to sit down.

"I do my readings in the back," I said in my professional voice that was void of any emotion.

"Ladies first," he said and followed me through a beaded doorway into a darker room filled with silk pillows and candles. I motioned to the wooden chair and table. He looked around with a slight smile on his face as he sat. I took my own seat on the opposite side to him.

There were two things that had to happen for me to read someone's future. One: soul payment. I received a tiny portion of their soul. It was nothing. They wouldn't miss it. Two: I looked into their past. Fortune tellers, or at least my kind, can't see one's future unless they understand the past first.

I closed my eyes and put my hand out in front. "Put your hand in mine," I told him.

Focusing strongly on all five elements I slowly pulled myself in and made myself one with the stranger.

Within seconds I saw his whole life. His name was Oris. When he was a younger man he loved animals, especially reptiles. They were the cause of the deep scars on the side of his face. His mother sold witches in the black market. She wasn't his mother though. He grew up in an orphanage until he was twelve.

There was something wrong with what I was seeing though. The past was taking a while to get to me, like it was swimming through pea soup. I could sense that there were pieces missing. Had he suffered from amnesia?

Suddenly something yanked me forward, causing me to fall.

I drowned in the pitch black hole, swallowing nothingness and choking on it. By the time I realized this monster did not have a soul, it was too late.