Eleanor was down to her last five dollars. It had all begun as a joke. She remembered laughing as she tugged Mark to the door of the fortune tellers shop, stepping through the beaded purple curtain, not noticing the three or four beads that fell to the ground at her touch.

Her last laugh caught in her throat when she sat down at the small table and caught her distorted reflection in the large glass ball at its center: she could see herself, completely disheveled, swollen, red-rimmed eyes, haggard, tangled hair falling into her face.

“Tell me how to stop it!” She screamed at Miss Raven.

She came back day after day, week after week. She lost track of time. She burned sage in her home. She bought crystals. She went to other psychics. She prayed. She had palm readings and tarot readings, and everything she could think to try.

Nothing worked. She was haunted by herself in every mirror, in every glass window. She shattered her phone when its screen also showed this broken nearly unrecognizable woman.

This must end. She found herself walking back to the first psychic. Where was the damn place? She walked up and down the street, retracing her steps for hours as the sun sank in the sky. She mumbled to herself, or screamed, where the fuck are you Raven? She felt the fear boil inside. What could she do?

She pulled at her hair, her long fingernails catching in the tangles. Suddenly, she heard movement in the alley across the street. As she stepped closer, she caught a glimpse of purple beads, glinting in the faint light of the nearest street lamp. She flung herself down the alley, yanking the beaded figure towards her. She was incoherent, the fear bubbled into rage, unchecked and pouring out of her. She pounded the figure, screaming, “Make it go away!” She grabbed an item from the ground and began bashing the figure with it. After a few moments, she collapsed to the ground.

A bright flashlight seared her eyes, a deep voice “M’am…are you okay?”

Eleanor barely heard him. She lay, curling into herself, a bloodied crystal ball clutched in her right hand. Next to her lay the dead body of a homeless woman, cloaked in a makeshift blanket of discarded beaded purple curtains.

The officer again tried to engage Eleanor, who was looking with glazed eyes at the crystal ball in her hand. She began to laugh, hugging the ball in to her chest as if she were cradling a toddler. “I guess it was all in vain.”