Delilah knocked nervously on the psychic reader’s front door. She nervously looked around behind her, being quite embarrassed to be here. She detested the nearby roar of traffic on the major thoroughfare behind her. The car drivers could see her when they drove past, if they chose to. They might have thought her a desperate and hopeless woman — which she indeed was.
Why can’t the traffic just go away, this really is embarrassing. Why am I shaking so. I’m such a loser to have to come here. She suddenly stopped her dreary thoughts. Now was the time to change her life and get answers. It seemed that being a nice complacent person wasn’t good enough to get her what she wanted in life. She felt raw, numb and desperate; she needed an easy instant solution to change her fate forever.
Every time a car whizzed past her back, she felt paranoid with nonexistent looks and laughing disapproval from the cars’ drivers. It had been this way most of her life. She was born during a retrograde of the planet Mercury. In short, this meant she’d have a very difficult and despairing life. She did not know she was born during such an unlucky life sign. Soon, once inside the psychic’s home, she would find this out. It would not be so bad if that tacky Psychic neon sign wasn’t hanging outside her home window for all to see. Whatever happened to privacy. God, this is so embarrassing. Everything is so out in the open these days. There are no secrets left. She knocked again at the front door with her small left fist, this time more forcefully, with urgency.
She turned to look at the mass of homebound rush hour traffic when she heard a woman’s voice, “Yes, come on in.”
Delilah didn’t hear the door open and was surprised to see this tired average looking woman standing at the front door wearing a black t-shirt and frumpy shorts. The woman was a bit overweight with tired-looking eyes. She didn’t seem to have any special powers, she looked like an average woman.
“You must be, Delilah.”
“How did you — ” Delilah realized that only a psychic would know her name without asking directly for it.
“Honey, I’m in the business of knowing,” she shot back at Delilah. The psychic pulled her black top down over her fattish stomach. “Pay me now, please.” Delilah nervously, quickly paid the hierophant a crumpled wad of paper bills. The psychic then shut the door and in so doing, created a room of total darkness, with no light. Even the PSYCHIC neon sign was shut off now.
“Is your electricity out? Why no lights?” queried Delilah.
“It’s best this way. I can see perfectly well in the dark. It is the same as seeing with lights on. Born with the gift,” countered the psychic. She led the hesitant customer by the arm into an unseen chair. Delilah was surprised at the bone chilling coldness of the psychic’s hand on her arm. She would have been more surprised at what she might see if the lights were on. Yes, it was best this way. No lights.
“Give me your hands, Delilah. We’re sitting at a table. Put your hand on the table and I’ll read your palms. In the dark, it’s like reading Braille. Don’t worry, dear. You worry far too much,” and let out a hearty deep laugh. The coldness of the psychic’s breath reached across the darkness onto Delilah’s face. Delilah felt as if her face was suddenly covered with frozen ice.
There was a feeling in the dark Delilah couldn’t quite place. Geez, I feel I’m being watched by someone else. Right here in this room. My forehead is freezing but my hands are burning up. And is there someone else in this room watching me? She felt the psychic run her ice cold fingers over the lines on her palms. It was obvious the psychic was trying to read the lines on her palm. But why do so in the dark? She could make a mistake.
The psychic touched the desperate woman’s palms. Yes, the man she wants loves a different woman. That is why this woman knocked at my door. Delilah wants the man with dark hair to love her, not his current wife. Delilah wants this dark haired man for herself. She wants his wife out of the picture. The psychic stopped and sharply turned her head to the wall behind her. To the psychic, the room was filled with light. It was not dark at all. She turned her head to the wall of eyes behind her. She glared at one particular eye and hardened her gaze at it. She thought-spoke: “Oh, shut your eye! You don’t need money for food to eat anymore as I still do. Stop being a do-gooder and leave me be. I didn’t kill you completely. You can still think and blink. You will live forever. I need the money right now. I’ll just erase her fate line on her palms and rearrange some other lines and she’ll be set. What’s the harm?” The wall of eyes started blinking madly in disapproval and fear. Delilah had no knowledge of what she would see if the psychic’s indoor lights were on at this very moment. She would become insane if she knew.
“Delilah, I know you want to be with that dark haired man and want his wife out of the picture.” Shocked, the desperate woman felt a growing shock spreading throughout her body. It kept her glued to her chair.
“I can do this easily. But there is a price to pay.”
“But, I already paid you with money!”
“No, you fool! Not that price, but the real price to change the fate of all three of you that will be involved. What will you give to be with this dark haired man? How badly do you want his wife out of the picture? Do you want eternal love from this man?”
“Oh, yes! Yes, I’ll do anything!” Delilah’s lips began to tremble in desperation.
“That’s all I needed to know,” replied the psychic in the darkness. The wall of eyes knew what was next. As she spoke, the dark haired man’s wife fell down dead, just a few miles away from the psychic’s home. Suddenly, Delilah’s arms and legs could not move. Her vocal chords froze. Then the psychic went to work cutting out Delilah’s left eye. All the while, silent screams came from the wall of eyes begging for the psychic to stop this unendurable madness of watching another desperate person make the same single mistake they all had when they visited this very psychic. A lesson none of these tortured souls could ever forget. For isn’t the eye the mirror of one’s soul?