Photos & illustration: Alex Tomoff

The carnival was in town. This was its last stop for the year. November fog was like a delicate satin, so thin—almost caressing the skin.

Black fat crows gathered on the wires above people’s heads, cawing.

Everyone wandered directionless—directionless but happy. Everyone—the rich and the poor, the young and the old—was a child now; even the very old had the spark in their eyes. Was it happiness, was it curiosity, was it memories from distant ages? Who knows?

People’s heads were lighter than air. Few skinny kids with heads like lollipops ran around with red balloons in their hands.

Barrel organ. Music from a barrel organ was coming from somewhere. Anywhere people went, they heard that barrel organ. In every corner of the carnival, people could hear it in the air, as if it was coming from afar, as if it was running away from them—as if it was nowhere.

Two boys stood in front of the fortune teller machine. This cracking and puffing thing would give advice or reveal what life had to offer in the future. Drop a coin, press a button. Wait. And find out what was coming in the next three, five, or ten years. Or maybe today?

They were curios. They giggled.

One little slip read: Career, career, if you stop drinking beer.

The other read: Stop acting like a hound dog or you’ll end up broke.

The boys laughed at their fortune slips. They’re true, what you can do? The boys laughed and moved on to the other carnival attractions.

A third boy waited behind them. It was now his turn to drop a coin and see what the machine had for him. He limped ahead and leaned his crutch on the wall. His head was trembling. He couldn’t control it. He put his hands on his cheeks, tried to make his enormous head stop twitching; other boys often made fun of him, telling him his head swung like a balloon in a wind tunnel. The kid dropped the coin and waited.

Nothing.

The machine got confused. The machine didn’t know.

He waited.

Nothing.

Nothing yet.

Still nothing.

Finally, the machine made an angry noise and loudly spat out something, as if it tried to get rid of the boy, telling him, Get lost!

Nothing was on the fortune slip. It was blank. Empty. White.

In that slip, the boy recognized something he had already seen in his dreams. The whiteness of that slip was just like the inside of the coffin he saw in his dreams a month ago. The boy wasn’t surprised. The boy didn’t get upset. The boy sighed, put the slip in his pocket, took his crutch and limped to the next attraction.

The fog and the crowd engulfed him.

He disappeared.

The machine made a strange noise; it sighed in relief because the boy was gone. All its lights flashed at once then faded one by one. A spark glinted, and the machine died down. Hushed.

Another kid approached, holding a lollipop. He dropped a coin and pushed the button, but nothing happened. Only his coin loudly rolled from the metal coin box and came back to him. The kid licked his lollipop and jumped away to the next carnival attraction.