From the End of the World

By Ben Sizemore

          By this time tomorrow night, dusk would be settling on one more crossroads where the Carnival would set up magically, where they entered another world entirely.  Life was suspended, and they became someone, or something else for the time that the lights burned like will-o-the-wisps.  

The rides would turn and wheel, the game hawkers would whip out insults and truth like braided copper.  People would change irrevocably before the night was through.  It would change everything.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ben Sizemore
• Release date: May 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393883135

Book preview

1)

The Fortune Teller sat on a folding chair, having a conversation with a black and white border collie.  She poured herself a cup of coffee from a thermos as Annie stepped out of the car. 

"Hi, I’m Annie Hatfield, from the Ferry Herald.  Are you the Fortune Teller?  The woman remained engrossed in her mutterings to the dog so she prattled on. I don’t have a photographer with me.  If they like what I get they might send one out after the interview." 

Annie raised her eyebrows, her head inclined forward.  Hello?  Her eyebrows climbed higher still, and a smile labored over her face.  The country was impeaching Clinton, and she was covering a Fortune Teller. 

Annie looked around and wondered at the odd circumstances imposed on the interview.  Why outside of town?  At a crossroads?  She dug in her pocket and retrieved the Post-It scribbled directions, and half turned.  The road signs declared that she was in the right place.  Stillwell and Becket.  Annie shielded her eyes with a raised hand.  Red-winged blackbirds weebled on the barbed wire, belting out their warning songs.  Her eyes rested on one nearest her, as it hopped sideways to clean its beak on a rusty barb.  Its dark eye was like a bubble of black ink.  She imagined the bird as ink bottle, tipping forward and opening its beak wide to allow the ink inside to pour forth until it soaked the roadside ditch, spilling over the edge of the road and sending her frantically back to her car. 

The dog cocked its head to one side, looking first at the woman and then at Annie.  It sniffed at her, its nose bobbing in the air.  It wagged it’s tail and nudged the woman’s coffee cup with its nose.

I know!  Gimme a minute!  The woman said, switching the cup from left to right and shaking her hand.  She gazed into the bottom of her cup, spit into the remains and dumped it into the road dust between her flip-flops. 

It was the dust of endless summer days coming to a close, of combines trundling home from the fields, and sex after forty-hour weeks. 

The woman stared for a moment and shook her head, emitting a high crooning sigh.  What fortune?  She said.  Always the same. 

She stood and the dog stepped back, cocking its head and wagging its tail lazily. She rummaged from one pocket to another, finally producing a worn deck of cards.  Her fingers teased at the green rubber band and it leaped to circle her wrist. 

Sleight of hand.  Maybe this will go somewhere after all. 

The woman shuffled the cards, her hands running on muscle memory.  The edges of the cards blurred with those of her hands.  Jesus, she was fast.  Annie frowned, her eyes fixed on the cards as she listened to the sound they made. 

She remembered her father clothes-pinning the ace of spades to her bicycle; could still hear the card humming like rifle-fire against the spokes.  This was the sound her heart made when she remembered those summer evenings, just beginning to cool. 

She blinked long and suddenly sleepy. The air in her lungs felt sluggish.  Her chest rose. It was labor. It fell back gratefully.  She blinked again, slower still.  The woman cut the deck and flipped a card over.

The birds rose in a flurry before settling into place again, and Annie returned from the handlebars of her banana-seat bicycle to the card. 

The Tower.  The woman showed it to her casually, between thumb and forefinger, the way you would carefully show a photograph of a long distant relative.  Annie looked at the card and gasped. 

The border collie whined, like the beginnings of some strange engine, rough and reluctant.  The red-winged blackbirds lit from the barbed wire and beat their way toward Cooper’s Ferry, pulling the air from her lungs.  The wind from their wings caught the sound of the dog’s whine and magnified it.  Annie heard ripping paper, waxy and brittle.  It filled the air.  She put a hand to her chest, her fingers trembling.  They felt hot through her sweater.  She drew ragged breaths, the air feeling like needles, and she remembered she had read that more women die of heart attacks than men. 

Then the image on the card began to move.  It looked like the leaning tower of Pisa, except that it wasn’t, leaning that is, and then it did. 

The neutral colored sky grew gray and stormy.  Clouds thrashed with thunder and lightning.  Large sections of stone wall shattered, falling from the side of the Tower and hammering to the ground.  This far away they sounded like shots from her Grandfather’s rifle.  A plinker, he called it, and the stones plinked out of the Tower as though someone was indeed taking them out, one after another. 

Kids did that to windows with slingshots or rocks she knew, but not with the practiced and deadly accuracy in the way the stones dislodged and fell, as though there was a defined chaos in progress below.  And it was below. 

Annie flailed in her seat, feeling as though she were falling over the edge of the Tower.  She lurched backward, scrambling for purchase on the back of a Ferris wheel car.  The wind was cold, and she rolled her eyes at a foreign sky as it turned on her with wildfire lightning and immediate thunder. 

She turned in her seat, looking first at the lap bar that had kept her from falling, and then at the horizon, where there seemed to be fire, and an approaching line of smoke.  She tried to sit up, but her limp body refused and lay back in the car.  She lolled her head around to look at her spartan surroundings.  The air that lifted off of the stones was damp and smelled of age.  Her teeth were locked as if welded, her knuckles sharp and white, and then she screamed as the Tower lurched forward, leaning over with gruesome determination.  She clutched at the lap bar as the car skidded, carrying her to the edge of the Tower. It thumped against a short wall, and Annie settled her weight low in the seat and leaned back.  It was enough to keep her from tumbling into the abyss, but not enough to deny the view. 

Annie drew her lips back, and hissed cold air over her teeth as people began to fall from the Tower.  They tumbled like seeds to the ground below. Some of them lay where they fell; others were struck by lightning as they stumbled and struggled across the landscape, stumbling to unfinished poses on the charred ground. 

Out of one of the holes appeared the Fortune Teller.  She sat in a battered wooden rocker.  She rocked over the edge into space and back into the Tower.  She rocked out again and craned her head around to look at Annie and laughed.  She put a pipe between her teeth and the blew a smoke ring into the air, where it lifted and floated into Annie’s face. 

The pressure in Annie’s chest multiplied, pushing its way into her head.  She let go of the lap bar, her hands rushing to her head.  Then the lap bar released, and she tumbled from the car, clutching at the nothing.

The world turned over, whipping past her eyes in brief intervals.  She saw the dog running across the blackened grass.  He clambered over fallen stones, picking his way closer to the Tower.  Annie continued to careen end over end, seeing him closer still, now at the base and leaping onto the pocked side of the wall and galloping up the slanting side of the Tower.  She reached out.  Help.  Please. 

The ground rushed toward her.  Then the border collie filled her vision, his muzzle vast and grinning.  His breath was hot.  She felt his paws against her chest.  He whined and licked her face.  The sensation of falling slowed, replaced by a floating sensation, and the sky over the Tower began to lighten. 

The gaping fissures grew in and closed over with smaller stones that glittered in the emerging light. 

Her vision receded, pulling her back to the horizon, crossing through the smoke and then the fire itself, as the stones and scorch marks on the ground began to fade.  ​

The Fortune Teller flipped the card over and retired it to another spot in the deck.  The rubber band leaped from her wrist to encircle the deck once more. 

Annie rested her mouth against her forearm and screamed until saliva ran down her arm.  When she finally released her captive breath she coughed, wracking her chest.  She felt light-headed and sucked air into her lungs.  She focused on her breathing, slower now, a little more even. 

The woman whistled as she rose and folded her chair.  The dog ambled after and then stopped, trotted back and nudged its cool nose under Annie’s hand. 

Her palm rested on the warm head of the dog.  She looked into his one green, and one blue eye.  The sun came out in the end. 

Annie watched a green eye disappear and then reappear behind the slide of dark flesh and fur as he winked. 

Jax!  The woman yelled as she walked.  Jax ducked his head from under Annie’s trembling hand and bounded away with a bark, tearing off down the road, raising dust and dead weeds as he went.  He stopped to bark at a rabbit spooked by his passage, his legs and tail stiff in reproach.  He turned and looked at her, dog-smiling, and then launched after the woman and her thermos, closing the distance in what looked like frames of a film, cut to show increments of motion.  Now further, and now further still, skipping ahead until he settled into a trot beside her. 

Annie stood in the crossroads and looked at her directions on the yellow Post-It.  Stillwell and Becket Rd.  The wind picked up and chilled her arms, raising her flesh in sharp peaks.  She opened her hand and the note stuck to her forefinger by the now fuzzy strip of glue before a gust snatched it away. 

The yellow note turned and flew into the ditch, then lifted again and was coaxed further on.  The birds were gone.  The air around her tasted stale and dry.  The wind picked her hair up and threw it over face.  She closed her mouth and dragged it away from her face. 

Annie shuffled to the car, and leaning over, expected to vomit, but the nausea passed.  She opened the door and sat heavily behind the wheel.

She had left the keys in the ignition, and they swayed and clinked against the steering column.  Annie closed her eyes and drew in as much air as her lungs would allow.  The steady clink and clank of the keys sounded like the approach of heavy machinery, and she raised her right knee and stilled them.  It was quiet now, but it felt like something was coming.  She rocked the door shut, and started the car. 

A Tower.  A Fortune Teller.  A Dog.  She cruised along the two-lane highway, trying to capture and distill her thoughts.  For the first time since she left the crossroads, she touched her brakes tentatively, and peered ahead. 

She turned down the radio, and Janis faded into the background, whispering her  cries.  Take another little piece of my heart now, baby....

Go on now...  take it.  Annie mouthed.  She peered through the windshield like a dog scenting something new on the wind, her eyes narrowing when she saw the tent. 

2)

Ayoung man sat in front of the canvas tent.  His flannelled arms were crossed almost as if he were asleep, but just as Annie decided that he was indeed asleep he raised his head and sat forward.  He listened to someone in the line, staring intently into their face, and then pointed to a cardboard sign.  It read $1.  The man stared at the sign, and digging in his pocket, straightened out the