Behind the Face

The sign on the fair booth read ‘PSYCHIC READINGS’.

“I’ll catch up with you in a minute,” I told my mother.

I wanted to believe in a promising future, having dropped out of college single, overweight, and depressed after not having obtained my ‘MRS.’

A voice from the inside the booth startled me. “You,” she said. “You look like a Jane.”

I gasped. She didn’t have a normal face: irregularly-shaped circles for a nose, bird-like slits on the sides of her head for ears, and eyebrows singed off, leaving a thick line of scarring above her big blue eyes, a perfect circle of porcelain skin surrounding each one.

“Y-yes,” I stammered. “How did you know?”

“I’m Matty Nevans.” Her mouth twitched as she pointed at another sign. “The reading costs five dollars.”

I paused, then opened my purse.

When she lifted the tent flap, she revealed a long, dimly-lit room with a concrete slab floor. When she closed it, the crinkly walls transformed into perfectly flat mirrors and Matty disappeared. I tried to reopen the flap. It wouldn’t budge.