Thirty years. Thirty years I've been toiling at this job, pitifully collecting meager pay for my insightful "visions." Weeks of solitude may sometimes pass by before I can get my next pay from a curious wanderer ensnared by the mystification of deceit. Some come for laughs; I can hear them mocking me as they exit the place, returning to their privileged lives while laughing to my expense. But I'm used to it. I can't change the fact that I do this sort of thing for a living: putting on a turban, gluing long fake nails, covering myself in strange make-up.
Every. Single. Day.
I have a few regulars. They actually believe what I say. I played a few ridicules on them a while back. Yet they still came back, to my surprise, completely unaware I was at fault, but rather asking me to console with the spirits again. I stopped playing jokes – the guilt ate away at my heart for months – and I rather try to do my best with them. If I can't see much, then I'll try to lift their poor, down-spirited hearts back up with hope again – it's the least I can do for $8.99.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not a fraud like people think I am. I might not be as powerful as my ancestors were but I can still see smudged fates and people's inner auras. Some days, if a customer is clearly a good-hearted soul with a genuine curiosity, I can peer into his near future and identify some certainties and details. It's hard. Makes my head hurt like hell. But at least I don't play a sham like others do. For most customers, I don't put so much effort. It only goes to waste anyway. I used to believe that if I tried hard and they realized I was the real deal, they'd come back again, which meant more business. But people only shrug my words away, uncaring for my efforts or well-being. It's fruitless, really. People don't believe in such things anymore. They believe in technology. Statistics. Politics. They concern themselves with the flaws that persist with those "certainties," and brush away any mention of supernatural, since that is "just a huge flaw in itself," as I heard a passer-by once comment. I don't blame society. This is the era of modernization after all. And some doubts arise in me on whether I'm actually real – magic wise – or whether it's all a delusion. But then I look to how many people believe and place their hopes in a god – who has magic powers and supernatural abilities too – and I once again believe I am not a sham, I am sane and part of this world just like anybody else. They may throw sticks and insults at me, my call me names, but I will not resign from what I know is truth until they dissolve ALL belief to the supernatural.
Am I happy? Not really. I always wanted to be a school teacher. But my mother and father disallowed me to get a proper education after primary school, in fear I am become learned enough to escape from this cage I was brought up in, and still live in. They wanted me to continue their line of psychics, marry a psychic and raise a psychic child and confine them to the same life. But I have no wish to do that. If I can, I want to escape. I want to leave and go to college and be able to live my life. I see those women marches on the news and I want to proudly say, "I stand by all of you too!" Unfortunately, my hands are tied. I have little money, other than to pay for rent and food, and the nearest college does not give any financial aid to anyone. Not only that, but I have no skills that I can use to get another job. I'm stuck in this hole with this stupid purple ball as my only friend.
