GOBLIN TICKET

After work last Friday, I went to the Goblin Market, a restaurant where goblins, formed from baked earth, were scattered among ancient books that lined the restaurant walls. I took a seat at my favorite table close to the balcony doors, though there was no balcony. The doors were a facade for an illusion of beauty beyond the goblins’ focused stare. If I had opened the doors, I’d have fallen two stories down into a dumpster or lay sprawled across a pile of rocks. The doors were locked.

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Miguel showed up. If I had moved to another town, sooner or later, he’d have found me. I went out with him once because he said he was terminally ill, a pathetic lie. He wasn’t even sick.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said and sat down at my table. He opened a box of cards. “Tarot reading?”

I’d been watching goblins on the shelf above my head and sipping chardonnay. Difficult to look away from eyes that pierced my thoughts.

I glanced at Miguel. “I don’t like tarot cards. They’re evil.”

He ignored me and placed the cards in some crazy pattern across the white tablecloth. He looked like he knew what he was doing.

“I don’t want a tarot reading,” I snapped at him.

He shrugged and presented a death card, an image of a skeleton. A glimmer of fear stirred within me, though Miguel said the death card meant a new beginning. A new beginning meant the end of something else. What could that possibly be? The end of me? Well, he finally got something right.

“I have a present for you,” he said and dug around in his pockets. “Wait. I’ll be right back.” He got up and left.

I’d been drinking too much wine, smoking too many cigarettes. My heart was pounding. My doctors advised me to get rid of my vices but doing so would give me only a few years. Why suffer through withdrawals? Wouldn’t really matter one way or the other. What’s the point?

Miguel rushed back through the restaurant toward my table. I could hear him, that fabricated laugher, excusing himself as he maneuvered around tables. He was good- looking and charming to the unknowing eye. Dark hair, dark eyes, tanned, muscular physique. A real looker. If one didn’t know him, he was really quite compelling. A real shame. He’s a sociopath.

He sat back down and put a small gift box in front of me. “Open it.”

“I don’t want it.” I was annoyed and tired of the pretense.

He grinned. “Come on, open it. You’ll love it!”

I knew if I didn’t open it, he’d nag me, he’d never leave.

It was a ring, a glittering diamond ring set in gold.

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

I couldn’t believe it. How many more ways were there to show him I wasn’t interested? I sensed an atmospheric shift and started sweating, coughing. Nausea.

Even the goblins were stunned, eyes shifting. I watched them on the shelves. Repulsed. I glanced at the balcony doors, somewhat expecting them to fly open. Wishing for a whirlwind to suck this mess out of my life.

“Miguel,” I finally said. “I’m dying.”

His eyes fluttered. Then, a slight smile appeared. “Oh, you’re kidding, right? Hey, I’m so sorry I pulled that bullshit on you. And he laughed that infectious laughter until people sitting at the next table laughed along with him, and people at another table joined in, and so it went.

I left the restaurant, Miguel sitting there in the glitter of his diamond. The goblins’ problem.