LJ Idol, Season 9, Week 9: Keep Calm and End This Meme
"Spirits of the other realm," Esmeralda the psychic bellowed through the black curls of her hair, "knock twice if you can understand me!"
If spirits of the other realm were anything like Jason, they probably wouldn't, due to Esmeralda's thick Eastern European accent. Eventually, though, they worked it out, because the table thumped, wobbling the crystal ball and seven candles that decorated the center. After a pause, it thumped again.
To Jason's right, Carla the retiree squeezed his hand. "Ralph," she whispered, "is that you?"
"Silence!" hissed Esmeralda. "Communing with the departed is a very delicate task!"
"Yeah, Dad totally came here from heaven to kick a table," said Mickey the adult son.
"Shut up!" snapped Lana the sister.
"I said silence!" The psychic continued, "I seek the soul of Ralph Eisenberg! Ralph, is it you to whom I speak?"
The table thumped harder this time, accompanied by a cold, dark, creeping mist.
To Jason's left, Trevor the hippy squirmed giddily. He and Annie the significant other were the next séance on the schedule, and it was clear they were about to get their money's worth.
Mickey, however, was still not convinced. "Are you all really buying this shit?"
"Michael Allen Eisenberg..." Carla growled.
"The energy of your faith is the only thing keeping Ralph Eisenberg in this world," Esmeralda instructed her audience. "You must focus on him."
Jason tried, but the only thing he could focus on was Esmeralda's corset. This changed when an impatient gust of air burst into the room, snuffing out every single flame. Overhead, a lonely electric bulb flickered on and off, and something pounded on the table like a caffeinated monkey on a pair of bongos. Everyone jumped, but none would break the circle of hands.
"Ralph Eisenberg!" she shouted through the wind. "Give them a sign! Make them believe!"
When the crystal ball floated off of its bejeweled stand, Mickey said, "Whoa."
Carla, Lana, Trevor, and Annie concurred with their silence.
Jason, on the other hand, noted how the orb swung back and forth in the breeze, just a little, like a dying pendulum. When he squinted, he could just make out a brief flash of light glinting off what appeared to be fishing line.
This was it; this was his opening. He sprang to his feet and leapt onto the rocking table, balancing with the slick precision of a surfer in a hurricane. With a well-practiced move, he whipped a pair of scissors from his jacket and cut the cord.
The crystal ball didn't move.
He swiped his hand above and below it, but still it hovered there.
When the reality of Jason's actions struck the men and women around him, they all gasped. And when the reality of the orb's actions struck the men and women around him, they said either "Oh, my God!"; "Oh, my word!"; "Oh, my lord!"; and, in the case of Carla, "What the fuck?"
Jason himself said, "Oh, come on!"
The globe lowered itself back onto its stand while the wind he'd once assumed blew in from an air-conditioning vent swirled into a furious vortex. The séance-goers clutched each other's hands more tightly; they'd even closed the gap he'd created with his stunt just forty-five seconds earlier. "Ralph, please calm down!" Carla begged. "He's not with us! He's just some asshole!"
"Spirit," yelled Esmeralda. "Be gone!"
At once, the light ceased flashing, the mist dissipated, the table fell still, and the temperature rose to normal.
"Goddammit!" whined Jason the professional skeptic.
Jason was terrible at his job. This didn't mean he lacked skill, though. On the contrary, his levels of intelligence, deductive reasoning, charisma, and tenacity were among the highest in his field. His tools were top-of-the line, including digital recorders, infrared cameras, a well-stocked portable chemistry lab, the scientific method, and flashcards of all of the logical fallacies. The problem was that, in seven years, he could never disprove a supernatural phenomenon.
Not once.
There was the haunted ranch in Nevada that really was haunted. There was the Bigfoot sighting in Oregon that really was a sasquatch. There was the lake monster in Michigan that really was a sea serpent. There was the mystery cabin in Arkansas that really did defy physics. In New England someone had taken pictures of what they'd claimed to be fairies, but were very clearly insects--except that fairies photographed in certain lighting looked exactly like insects. And so on. The closest Jason ever came to a successful debunking was a series of crop circles and UFO abductions in Kansas that turned out to be the work of elves with really large heads.
A roadside palm reader in southern Florida should have been a slam-dunk. Instead it was just another air-ball.
"I am very sorry, my friends," Esmeralda told her audience, "but I am forced to ask you to leave. Please call me tomorrow on the telephone, and I will return your money. I am very sorry, but this interloper must be dealt with immediately."
Jason tried to slip out with the other customers, but Esmeralda slammed the door in his face. When she finally spoke, she banished her accent as quickly as she'd banished Ralph. "Just what the hell are you trying to accomplish here, asshole?"
"My job?"
"Well fucking done then!" She tore off her wig, revealing a mousy brown pixie cut, and yanked off her clip-on hoop earrings. "What the hell am I supposed to do now? You've ruined me!"
"I just proved you're the real deal!" he said while she wiped her lipstick off on the back of her hand. He noted, with dismay, that the shedding of this costume didn't extend to her corset. It was probably too much to hope for anyway.
"What am I complaining about?" she shrieked. "What do you think is going to happen now that they know that, not only can I summon ghosts, but that they can actually talk to the living, one-on-one? Nobody wants to know what the dead really have to say--they're fucking dead! They have no reason to be polite anymore!
"Not to mention, everything I do spits in the face of Judeo-Christian-Islamic-Hindu-Buddhist-whatever beliefs. Who's going to protect me from the fundamentalist assholes knocking on my door? You?"
"I thought you were full of shit," he told her. "Honest!"
"I know, I know," she sighed. "Like you said, you were just doing your job. I just wish you weren't quite so good at it."
"I just wish you were better at faking faking it."
They laughed.
"Your name's not even Esmeralda, is it?"
"Amy," she replied.
"I should probably go back to my hotel room and lick my wounds," he said.
"Wait."
He waited.
"So, um," she mumbled, "you, uh... you want to get a drink first?"