He had always been a fraud, a confidence man with a gimmick complimented by sleight of hand. For him, tarot was theater: a little flourish when dealing the cards, a dramatic pause at the right moment, and a story told carefully enough to snare a client's hope. Never too sweet or too bitter, but a story told by a man clever enough to read a face yet cruel enough to sell hope disguised as prophecy. The tips were always generous, and it didn't matter if the predictions came true, the clients were always happy in that moment.
But one wrong turn down one wrong alley changed his fate forever.
He wasn't looking for the Market, but it found him nevertheless. Ducking down an alley to avoid the furious husband of a client he has scammed earlier, he found himself on the outskirts of the the most unusual market he had ever seen. Creatures that shouldn't exist milled about, haggling over goods that defied explanation or reason. He slowly back peddled, struggling to believe what his eyes were seeing, when he saw it.
A stall, unattended. At its center sat a single black box, lacquered and etched with the unmistakable pattern of tarot. It called to him. Before he could question if he should or shouldn't, his hand closed around it and slipped the box into his coat, quickly turning and leaving the Market unseen by its patrons. Halfway-down the alley, his pace turned into a jog until he was back in the surroundings he was used to. He looked side to side, thankfully not seeing any unhappy husbands. He turned back to the alley, but it wasn't there any longer.
Had it all been a hallucination, his mind playing tricks on him? He felt the box in his pocket, and realized it was still there. Frowning, the tarot reader quickly made his way back home as his mind pondered any sort of reasonable explanation as to what the hells had just happened.
He did the first reading the next day with his newfound deck. A noblewoman, convinced that her husband was having an affair, seeking proof. He spun her the tale she wanted that to hear, that he was unfaithful but that he would be caught in the act and that she would get her share of his fortune in the separation. He was shocked to read in the papers later that week that her husband had been found dead in his mistresses chambers, stabbed by her jealous lover. The noblewoman inherited everything.
"An odd coincidence," he laughed and told himself. But the coincidences didn't stop there.
"Your rival will suffer great loss, and your shop will flourish!" His rival's warehouse burned to the ground days later.
"Your child's gifts will be revealed." The girl sat at a piano left abandoned on the side of the street, and played like she’d trained for years.
"Your son wants you out of the way." A murder plot was uncovered, and the boy confessed.
The tarot reader seemed skeptical, but soon crowds flocked to his shop. Any tale he spun, eventually came true. People found gain or loss, rewards or ruin, true love or heart-break depending wholly on his mood. If he spoke the words as he drew the cards, the fortune was made manifest.
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So, he began to test the limits of such fortune summoning.
"You will discover a long lost brother, unbeknownst to the family." A bastard son emerged, with the elderly father unable to explain his uncanny resemblance.
"You have a hidden talent for archery." The blind man split a bullseye with each shot, his gut telling him when to release each shot.
"Beware the goose." She was attacked and later died after a rabid goose's assault in the park the next day.
No matter how absurd or impossible, his predictions came true in one way or another. He had more money than he could spend, society's elite sought him out, he was known about the region as a prophet. But curiosity is a dangerous thing. One night, drunk on spirits and filled with false pride, he sought his own fortune in the cards.
"What is my fortune?"
He drew the first card, and tried to speak his own fantastical tale, but was speechless at the first draw.
"The Wheel of Fortune, Reversed." he said, quietly. The meaning was obvious, and he almost stopped, but felt compelled to keep drawing.
"The Tower." A major life change, something was about to radically change in his life. When paired with the previous card...
"Justice." He sighed a breath of relief that it wasn't reversed, yet pondered the meaning still.
He was sweating, yet dared to draw one more. Maybe if he didn't speak the words, none of this would come true. His fingers quivered nervously as he drew the final card.
An empty card. A blank, perhaps. A sign that he would make his own fortune? He didn't have time to ponder the meaning before there was a loud knocking sound on his door.
Thud.
"I'm closed!" he yelled back, startled by the loud noise. He was sweating through his clothes, but allowed himself a nervous laugh.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
"I said come back tomorrow!" his voice cracked, annoyed as he stood up to put away his cards.
The handle jiggled, as black smoke made its way through the keyhole. The lock clicked on its own, and the door slowly swung wide to reveal an unusual looking fellow.
Impish long ears, eyes that glowed red against the night, and an ominous aura as he stepped into the tarot reader's shop. He was dressed nice at least, wearing an elegant looking purple vest with a white dress shirt and neatly pressed slacks. But his face shook the tarot reader to his soul.
"Well, my dear fellow, it looks like you've been busy." this strange fellow mused. "That makes two of us. Very busy indeed."
The fortune-teller tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat.
"Sit, I insist." the man stated ominously, and the fortune-teller found himself thrown back down into his seat by some unseen force. "My name is Mepho, and I believe you have something that doesn't belong to you." The fortune-teller gulped again, trying to move his arms to hide the cards but again, his body refused to obey. He sat there, wide-eyed and shaking as Mepho approached him.
"Reading our own fortune, mmm? It looks incomplete." Mepho stated, motioning with his hand to the blank card. "Let's fix that." With a flick of his hand, all the cards but the blank swirled about the air, circling the room in a violent spinning motion. "The Wheel of Fortune, reversed. The Tower. Justice, hmm.. I like that one. And lastly..."
Mepho's extended a single finger, long and gnarled as he pointed to the fortune-teller. The blank card lifted off the table, floating in front of the fortune teller's trembling eyes.
"The Fool."
The card slapped against he fortune-teller's forehead, and he screamed as he was sucked inside the card. It was over in an instant, and the previously blank card now featured the fortune-teller with a horrified face, clad in jester's gear.
"How fitting." Mepho smirked, and with a roll of his wrists, the cards returned to the box, with *the Fool* inserted neatly into the deck, lost in the shuffle. Mepho picked the box up and sighed, as if the entire ordeal bored him.
The shop was silent when he left, the door locked and everything neatly put back together. People whispered about where the prophet had disappeared to, what had become of this talented young man.
If you listen closely on that street, you can hear a laugh. Thin, cracked, occasionally mixed with sobbing. The sound of the Fool.
