Crystal ball

' show me the future' she said holding the crystal ball in her hands.

She paused to use the vape to give more ambiance, as she expected nothing happened. "Did I ruin it by not believing it would happen hard enough?"

The crystal ball lay over a pillow. She picked it up along with the rest of the clutter around it on the table.

As she walked toward the room she felt a prick on one of her fingers and a drop of blood got absorbed by the ball as she held it.

She put it away and picked up a book. Her room was illuminated by the glow of Christmas-like lights hanging around the bed.

Inside the closet, the ball glowed red and started showing images. The glow changed to white and a hand reached out from inside the ball.

The hand with the ball at about elbow height lifted the ball and started moving toward the doors.

Pushing slowly against a door the hand noticed there were no more lights on in the bedroom. Without making a sound the hand pushed the door open and jumped to the floor.

The crystal ball broke, and a cloud of smoke grew larger and larger. She woke up startled to find a human shape emerging from the cloud on the ground.

Before she could say a word, the shape moved taste toward her and covered her mouth. " shhh I've come to warn you".

With eyes wide open she looked down to see the pieces of the ball scattered around the ground.

The woman saw it was safe and took her hand off her mouth. " shhh, I don't have much time" the woman grabbed her hand and started to write on it with a marker.

From the smoke on the ground, another hand started to emerge. The shadow of a long arm with long fingers.

It reached out of the smoke up into the ceiling and slowly bent at the elbow looking for leverage to push up and out the rest of its body.

" Cover your eyes, " said the woman turning towards the shadow. As she closed them she started to see from the woman's eyes.

A curved back started to emerge slowly like something was pulling it back into the smoke.

The woman extended her left hand where she had carved with a spell the symbols on her fingertips. From the center of her hand, a light started to shine and the shadow started to squirm revealing under it the body of a man.

The shadow wrapped around it even harder as the woman walked closer with her hand pointing towards it.

She kept her eyes closed as the woman instructed but she could feel the light flash around her.

The man opened his eyes and looked at her but before he could say something, she put her hand on his face and sent him back down the smoke on the ground.

The woman made a fist and held her hand like it was hurting.

"You can open your eyes now," said the woman

She moved her hands from her face and looked at the smoke on the ground still slowly flashing.

The woman opened one side of her jacket and grabbed a notebook dogeared, old and with lots of loose pages.

" I can't show you the future but I can give you this," said the woman as she handed her the book

A cultural growl started to sound from the bottom of the smoke in the room. Louder and louder by the second. " you will need the book sooner than you think," said the woman as she turned to face the smoke.

The woman put her other hand forward and a tattoo of a star, she had in the middle of her hand became alive and started to turn.

The smoke in the room started to move towards it and disappear.

The last bit of smoke left the room and she closed her hand, opening a pocket from her jacket she crushed the smoke that became ashes and let it fall on it.

" don't ask to see the future again," said the woman as she grabbed the space around her and covered herself with it and disappeared.