The Fortune Cookie

Author’s Note: This piece is a short story involving semi-colons, colons, and commas. The main characters are Hunter and his wife, Stacey.

Imagine having to flee the country, for no reason, only because a fortune cookie told you to. Hunter is going through this exact crisis. He knows the cookie is true because all of the other fortunes he’s read have come to life. For example: Two months ago he read a fortune saying , “Within the next week you will have luck with employment.”  The very next day he got a fantastic new job at the hospital, and his wife had just gotten a new job as a physical therapist.  Only today, he didn’t want to believe what the cookie had told him. He read it once again; “Leave the country at once, your life is in danger; only take what you desperately need. Do NOT say a word to anyone about this message.” Floating around in his head was the last thought of the note he had just read. Over and over again… “Do NOT say a word to anyone.”

Hunter immediately got up and ran all the way home to find his wife sitting on the couch with a book in her hand, giving him a puzzling look.  He thinks again of the last part, “Do NOT say a word to anyone,” and suddenly realizes he cannot tell his own wife about what he had read on the little slip of paper just  five minutes ago.  Right away Hunter decides to obey what the fortune told him so he starts packing a bag. Thinking of the consequences, he only slips one thing to his wife; “Get a suit case out and start packing!” She follows his orders with a little smirk on her face.

Hunter takes both of the luggage bags; he tells her to follow him to the car. Just like before, she thinks he is crazy but does it anyway. Both Hunter and Stacey race to get a cab to go straight to the airport. Hunter knows he is making the right choice by following the fortune’s directions; but somehow he just can’t seem to be entirely convinced.  When they both reach the airport, they pay the driver and sprint in towards the security and ticket purchasing counter. He looks at all of the different flights; domestic and international.   Being of English descent, Hunter told the ticketing agent, “two tickets to London, please.”  Finding it impossible to contain the secret, Hunter tells Stacey the entire story of how the fortune cookie had persuaded him to leave the country as they were waiting to board the plane.  For a week, for a lifetime… ?  Only time would tell.

After the flight Hunter and Stacey are shocked at how amazing and strange it is to be in England where everyone thinks  they have an accent. Almost by an instinct they hop into another taxi-cab to find the best hotel they can afford to stay at until they can find an apartment.  Before they got out of the cab they  both looked around to see if there is anyone suspicious like a sheriff or guard; someone who might be looking to hurt him. They look both ways and spot no one at all. So, they take a step out of the cab and find themselves in front of a beautiful hotel. They make the decision to stay, and get checked in right away. Hunter decides to freshen up in the men’s room while Stacey is checking in because now he spots someone that he had seen at the airport in America; not just a normal  England tourist, but perhaps a person who might be trying to follow him and his wife.

With things seeming to get more peculiar every minute, Hunter pulls his wife away from the front desk of the hotel and asks if she really wants to stay there. He tells her about the person he thinks could be following them, and together they decide to make a quick exit.  Relieved to get out of the hotel, they grab a taxi-cab to the other side of town.  Reluctantly, Hunter scopes out the cars around the cab and spots the person following them in the car behind them.  He thinks about what has transpired in the last few hours, and in the back of his mind the thought keeps repeating itself… “Do NOT say a word to anyone.”

Realizing that the only way to escape from the torment of the repeating fortune is to meet it head-on, Hunter tells the cab driver to pull over at the next hotel.  Either the follower will also pull over; or he will go on, meaning he wasn’t following them after all.  Hunter had to have the answer.  Pulling up to the Hilton, the cab driver starts calculating the fare, and  Hunter watches as the car behind them drives on by.  WHEW!!!  Hunter had his answer, and now he and his wife could enjoy their English holiday!  A bit of an extreme circumstance to get them to England, but now that they were there, they were going to enjoy it.  They sat down to dinner, toasted each other with their water glasses, and lived happily ever after… back at home in their little cottage in  Iowa.  And they never, ever, opened another fortune cookie for the rest of their days!