She pretended that the answers came from Tarot, but she didn't need a deck of cards to tell a person's past or future. It came to her in mental pictures, blurry at first and then slowly coming into focus, like Polaroids. When people said they were assaulted with memories of terrible things, those were usually functions of the regular mind, just recorded images of what they wanted to forget. But Elizabeth saw things she hadn't witnessed first-hand.
Because of that, she was a withdrawn woman with no designs on friendships or romantic partnerships. After twenty-three years of seeing beyond the limits of place or time imposed on normal people, she was tired of bothering with trust and hiding what she knew, of having the intimate details of their lives to come, or even their ugly pasts. When her mother got a cancer, Elizabeth knew it long before a doctor detected a lump in her breast. She saw it over coffee and eggs. When her cousin was killed overseas in a boating accident, she was struck by the knowledge while she bleached her whites at the laundry mat. In the water sloshing around her clothes, she saw his bloated face floating in the ocean before the family knew he was missing. The final straw was more ordinary. A boyfriend cheated with the blonde who served pizza and beer at his favorite pub. Elizabeth saw his hips working between the girl's legs before he came home smelling of unfamiliar perfume.
It never seemed like her gift let her predict mundane things.
Why it cut through the noise to the juiciest bits, she wasn't sure, but that was simply the fact of the matter. It turned a decent profit, though. Elizabeth advertised in the classified section and in new age stores. Once she got a fortune right, she had a loyal customer. They made appointments to stop by her apartment, where the dining room had been draped with tapestries and smelled of incense and candle wax. All of that was for the mood, just like her cards, a beautiful art nouveau deck she wrapped in cloth after each use. A first-time appointment made her fifty bucks. Anything after was worth a hundred.
Some days, she awoke with an uncomfortable feeling in her gut. Like many psychics, Elizabeth wasn't able to clearly see her own destiny. Instead, she got an acid stomach, nausea, and a heavy sensation of dread. It always passed as soon as the bad thing happened, like when she tripped coming off the el and broke her ankle, or the day she was laid off from her bank teller job. On those days, she unconsciously mimicked her customers by second-guessing all her choices. Should she leave town for a few days, or was that where the bad thing happened? Should she cancel her appointments? Hunker like a shut-in behind closed window shades? Sleep through it and hope there wasn't a building fire?
Ultimately, Elizabeth was the defiant type. After a few hours of chewing her thumbnail, she always washed her face and left the apartment. Destiny, even so ordinary as a fractured bone or lost job, couldn't be avoided forever, and she was convinced the sour stomach was half as bad as whatever life could dish. She'd rather meet it headlong than cower and prolong the inevitable.
This time was like that.
It started in the shower while she rinsed out her hair. It came on so suddenly, she had to sit down on the side of the tub and let water get all over the floor. After an hour of moping, she made up her mind to dress and go outside. She spent all day at the park in the mild weather, curled up in an aluminum folding chair under a flimsy umbrella that clamped to the frame. She drank a fast-food milkshake to soothe the lining of her stomach. All day, the feeling persisted, but no one approached to harrass or steal her knit bag, and she wasn't struck by a car when she finally packed it in at sundown. At the foot of her apartment building, she studied the metal staircase, which she used to access her fourth-floor apartment. Long ago, it had been overcome with rust. The bolts securing it to the building were loose, so that it tilted the slightest bit when she ascended to her door.
This is it, she thought. She could picture it so clearly. As she reached the fourth flight, the staircase would tear away from the bricks. She'd land hard on the asphalt. She'd be pinned until a neighbor called the ambulance. There'd be blood coming from her head, a hematoma on her brain. They'd have to cut her skull open to let it swell. She'd spend weeks in the hospital, racking up bills that wouldn't be covered by insurance. Her father would come down from Ann Arbor. He'd sleep on her couch and water her plants--
The pinch caught her by surprise. A sting like an insect bite on the back of her neck. Elizabeth slapped it and drove the tiny dart in further. A haze of artificial sleep made the rusted staircase swim and tilt towards her. But it wasn't the staircase falling, it was her, tottering drunkenly toward it before she struck her face on the ground. The aluminum chair and its sad umbrella were trapped beneath her.
Four hands and twenty-two fingers scooped under her armpits and lifted her up. Elizabeth's flip-flops came off as her feet dragged the ground on the way to the station wagon. The Collector brought down his gun and lowered his aching body in the driver seat.