Twisted: Flash Fiction

Warning Signs

Jonathon "Jay Bird" Jones Jr. had never amounted to much of anything. Waking up on the floor of an abandoned shithole was just par for the course.

Rubbing the back of his neck, he stretched and popped the soreness out until it only made things worse. Thirty-three? Shit, more like fifty-three. Apparently, twenty years of drugs and alcohol does that to a person.

Jay blinked his surroundings into focus. They weren't much to look at. Peeling wallpaper, broken furniture, moldy garbage... graffiti. When you've seen one crack house, you've seen them all.

His head screamed at him, so he sat back down. Groaning, he closed his eyes and dug his fingers into his temples. He began his usual task of wading through the black sludge coating his brain to retrieve any inkling of the night before. Also, whether or not the cops had been called.

After a few minutes of intense, nausea-inducing focus, it started coming back to him. Some foreign circus deal with a bunch people in strange costumes had set up in the fairgrounds a couple days ago. Nothing exciting ever happened in this damned town. A show full of freaks had seemed like the perfect opportunity to rustle up a little fun.

That's right, hadn't he been chatting up that gypsy girl last night? She wasn't really a gypsy, just some twenty-something carny with weird, too green eyes—the shit they can do with contacts these days—and a decent rack.

What had the sign above her table read? Faites votre choix?  Whatever the hell that meant. He didn't speak Spanish, or whatever fucking language it was.

Cupping his hands over his eyes to block out the light, he tried extracting more memories of the night. He saw himself watching the girl's hands moved around the crystal ball in circular motions and, knowing him, fanaticizing about them making their way around something else.

Oh yeah, now he remembered. He'd thought he'd seen her pupils turn into spirals as she peered down into the glass. He also remembered thinking it was probably the two cans of Pabst and half a bottle of Jack Daniels that was making him see things.

Jack always did that. It was his poison of choice on the nights he went out. Without it, he'd have a hard time getting it on with half the women in this town. Okay, more than half. Three quarters if he was being honest. Not that he really looked at their faces anyway, but still.

"I see a window... and a wardrobe. Future and present," she'd said.

"Speaking of the future," he'd hiccupped. "How's about you and me--"

"Also a door and a fireplace. Yes, the past and the unknown," she'd cut him off. "Do you believe in changing one's own fate, Mr. Jones?"

"Sure, why not."

"Would you like the chance to change yours?"

"Hell yeah. What do you say we change it right now?"

Her lips had curled into a smile as she reached across the table. From out of nowhere, she'd jabbed a tiny dagger into the tip of his finger. Before he could pull it away, she'd leaned forward and started sucking on it.

She'd walked around the velvet-clad table and pulled him up from his seat. When she'd seen the bulge in his pants her smile had gotten wider. With those crazy eyes and red lips, she'd looked like The Joker... but only for a second.

It was all coming back to him now. She'd led him into the woods at the edge of the fairgrounds, and he'd thought if going into some creepy-ass woods after midnight meant he was going to get a piece of tail, damn right he'd follow her.

Plunging in deeper, Jay strained to pull up details of the wild, kinky sex they must have had next, but he drew a blank instead. Figures.

After opening his eyes again, Jay scanned the room more closely. There was an open window to his left and a wardrobe against the wall to his right. Wardrobe? His heart began to thud. Didn't she mention something about a wardrobe... and a fireplace?

He craned his neck back and over his shoulder to see a fireplace full of ashes. His stomach lurched, but a deep breath and the voice of reason coaxed the vomit back down.

She wasn't a real gypsy for Chrissake! There's no wardrobe of the past or fireplace of the future or whatever bullshit she was babbling about. You can't change your fate so just get up and walk the fuck out, Jay.

"You gotta stop doing this to yourself, man," said Jay out loud as he picked himself up and headed toward the door.

The sound of scratching stopped him cold.

Before his eyes, jagged letters scrawled themselves across the door, paint and wood shavings falling to the floor in piles. He stood transfixed, the contents of his bladder running down his leg as the deep gouges slowly and methodically spelled out out a foreboding message.

IT WAS FRENCH, ASSHOLE

CHOOSE WISELY