By Luke Flanagan
(TW: Brief mention of self harm)
Norilsk, Russia is the northernmost city in the world. Six hundred and twenty-one nautical miles to the north, on the west side of October Revolution Island, Cassandra Skowroński sat in a plastic folding chair clicking her mechanical pencil and watching the lead march out. Carefully sliding it back into the pencil with a finger, she scribbled a few more words on a piece of paper, then folded it and wrote, “predictions (personal)” on the back. There was a quiet series of knocks on the door, reverberating inside the corrugated steel hut.
“Are we almost ready?” a voice asked from outside. “T-minus fifteen minutes.”
She had a black bag, made for the war in Afghanistan; it contained a toothbrush, three rolls of toilet paper, a six-pack of bottled water, and a copper-colored evening dress which she’d managed to roll into a tight ball in the side pocket. She sighed, shrugged, and pulled the dress over her head, securing it with a belt. Then she put on the largest, puffiest coat she could find.
“You can come in,” she called.
Peter B—— entered, hidden beneath silk and cashmere, graphite-colored hair subdued by a large fur hat. “No offense, Cass, but you look like you haven’t slept.”
“I’ve never slept more than four hours. And you’re the one who dragged us all up here and now our sleep schedules are ruined.” She waved a finger in his direction.
Peter smiled and opened his hands. “You make it easy on them; they’re not gonna believe you. They wanna be dazzled.”
He glanced around and noticed the walls. “Are these … are these all … did you scratch them into the paint? What did you use?”
Cassandra held up a single finger, nail worn down to the flesh and covered with green specks. “I can’t keep them in my head. They hurt. And I ran out of paper.”
He covered his mouth, opening it once as if to speak but quickly closing it. She stood and walked out, holding the door for him.
The arctic wind embraced her, pushing her back towards the hut, away from the building. He handed her a pair of sunglasses, which reduced the wall of painful whiteness to a mere curtain.
She saw his head swing slightly towards her as they walked. “Are you going to tell the truth this time?”
She shrugged. “Probably.”
“Where are we going to give the money? Strike fund?”
“Strike fund.”
The building came into view, a blot of olive drab in the whites and blacks of the tundra, like algae on marble. The flagpole was unadorned.
Peter pointed to a tightly-folded bundle of red fabric next to the door.
“Very carefully done, that. One of these things is not like the others.”
Behind the building, just past a sign reading “посадочная площадка метеорологической станции,” was a sea of helicopters, a hive of black and red hornets for a moment gone dormant. He pulled the door open and motioned her inside.
Florida had been transported to the Arctic Circle and it slapped Cassandra in the face. A mess-jacketed waiter standing in the small anteroom held out his arms for her coat, which she gave after a few seconds. Peter laid his coat on top of hers, and his scarf on top of that, straightening his burgundy velvet jacket and pressing a twenty into the man’s outstretched hand.
“Thank you, Mr. B——,” the waiter said, and departed.
Cassandra tripped as the concrete floor transitioned abruptly to varnished hardwood. He strode into the room, blocking her from view as she regained her balance. The doorway was overgrown with white plaster and gilding, and she could see a crystal chandelier bolted to the steel rafters. There was a black silk bow tie around every neck and a champagne flute in every hand.
She caught snatches of conversation, despite the silence radiating from her.
“… have we bought off T—— S— yet? Honestly, she’s practically a commie—”
“… You know, I really think we could get a Hyatt Regency up here if we just make nice with Russia and dynamite the glacier. How much would you pay for seal steak? Keep in mind they’re endangered; you can taste that, I’m sure you can. It would be a lot, right? Oh, come on, it’s a better idea than anything you’ve done with Facebook.”
“… tell you what: as soon as we colonize Mars, I’ll give you your own country. No? Still not interested? Your loss.”
There was a small stage at the far end with a lectern atop it. They cleared a path for her. Only one person intruded upon it, walking backwards to avoid obstructing her. She couldn’t decide if his hair looked more like Augustus Caesar’s or a five-year-old’s. He blinked rapidly and laughed reflexively. “Thank you, Cassandra, for your advice. It got me some very good deals. That’s not to say that I didn’t value the other feedback, because I did, I’m just saying that—okay, goodbye.”
Jeff B— took the man by the arm and patted him on the shoulder like a parent trying to hide his disappointment.
She reached the stage and did a little hop to get up, tracing letters in the air with one finger.
“Thank you, Mr. Z———, for that ringing endorsement,” her guide said, smiling slightly. “As you know, I’m Peter B——, son of Warren B——, here to host this year’s prophecy auction.” He produced a champagne flute from who knows where and gestured with it. “I figure we might as well get the divisive categories out of the way first.” He moved towards the lectern and pulled a cue card from his jacket pocket.
“Which Policies to Back,” he read. “Assuming Congress can still pass laws next year. I’m kidding, of course—we can make them cooperate, ’cause we know everything. We’ll start at a million dollars.”
Every single hand rose.
“My, my, seems like you learned your lesson from last year. Do I hear two million? Three? No, this is gonna take forever. Do I hear a hundred million? A hundred and fifty? Going once, twice, sold! to Governor B——.”
A wavy-haired man with an American flag pin in his lapel stepped forward, expectant. Behind her back, Cassandra traced several four-letter words into her arm.
Peter waved the man back gently. “Just like last year,” he said patiently, “the prophecies will be delivered after the auction is finished and the money is in our account.”
Cassandra’s eyes lost their focus and she twitched her head. She kept tracing words into her arm. Her breathing quickened and she bit her lip. Peter kept talking, selling advice about stocks and deals and reputations.
She walked up to him quietly and tapped him on the shoulder. He held up a finger to the room and turned his back on them. “What is it?” he whispered.
“I thought I could make it,” she said, “but I can’t. Do you have a marker or something? Please, it’s starting to…” She shook her head. He pulled a sharpie out of his back pocket and handed it to her.
“I have another one in case this runs out,” he said. “But please try to make it through. It’ll only be another hour or so and then you won’t have to see them for a whole ’nother year.”
She ripped the cap off and set upon her arm for a full twenty minutes, sighing as if she were being exonerated of a crime. When she finished, she looked up.
“And now the last category,” Peter began, “Marital Tranquility. Let’s hope this year will be better than the last for this one. Shall we start with a million dollars?”
The room was silent and still.
“Nobody? Not anyone? Don’t you love your wives? Or husbands, Ms. M—— and Ms. … actually, I think you’re the only one with a husband, Ms. M——. Or the only one who still has a husband, anyway; I should’ve gone into divorce law. Sorry, that was in poor taste—I know there must be some tension in the room. Seven hundred fifty thousand, then. Anyone for seven-fifty? Six hundred? Five hundred thousand dollars. Come on, Elon; you make that much every twenty minutes. Four hundred thousand?”
One hand slowly climbed above the throng, beginning as part of a shrug but eventually finding its own.
“Thank you, Mr. Z——.”
“Of course, I mean, I just, you know, ahem.”
She glanced at her forearm, now mostly covered in purplish-black ink, and flipped over her arm, beginning to write on the other side. Peter looked at her and motioned her forward. He put back the cue card and pulled out several sheets of lined paper.
“Cassandra will now write the predictions,” he said. “Let’s give her a minute, shall we?”
He hopped off the stage, arms outstretched, forcibly turning the people nearest him away from her. She took the paper; he motioned her towards a side room.
The room had not been converted; the walls were grey and everything was covered with dust. She braced the first sheet on a radio set and closed her eyes, putting marker to paper. It took only a few seconds for her to begin writing. She had filled them all within a minute and written names neatly on top.
The light from the doorway turned to shadow. She opened her eyes.
Jeff B——’s pate shone with perspiration. He did not look at her. He put his hand on the doorway, as if casually.
“If there’s one thing,” he said, “one thing I’ve learned from my workers, it’s that you don’t need to pay for something they can’t stop you from taking.”
His knuckles shone white. “We’ve been doing this for four years, and from what Mark and Warren and the others told me, you never predicted anything sooner than a few weeks. Not very useful now, is it?” He tilted his head, casting her face into darkness.
She licked her lips, her breathing slow and precise. “What do you want?”
Storm clouds formed above his eyes. “Money, obviously. Why else would I drag myself halfway around the world?”
She closed her eyes again, head in one hand. “Let me think a bit.”
Someone from outside lazily inquired after him; he responded that he was tired.
She whispered something, her eyes flitting from the wall to the floor, regarding each as if through a loupe, one hand senselessly sounding a drumbeat into the desk.
He came towards her, leaned down. “What was that?”
“Be at the corner of Forty-Ninth and Eleventh Street at ten fifty-two AM on Saturday, October twenty-first, and great wealth will strike you.”
He was gone before she could look at him. The predictions had fallen to the floor. She picked up each one in turn and smoothed out her dress.
Cassandra Skowroński unsheathed her sharpie and, with a great sigh, wrote upon her arm:
“@ 75 mph.”
She walked out of the room and swung herself into a circle of conversation with a laugh that almost sounded genuine.
“Mr. Z———, let me be the first to say that the party might just end well this year.”