Free Fibble: The Fourth Circle of Heck by Dale E. Basye

which, obviouslyforetold the death of Henry II. ‘Pau, Nay, Loron will be more of fire than of blood …’ plainly speaks to the reign of French emperor Napoleon, with ‘PAU, NAY, LORON’ an anagram for NAPAULON ROY. You know: ‘Roy’ as in French for ‘king.’ And then there was perhaps my most unsettling prognostication: ‘In the year 1999 from the sky will come the great King of Terror,’ which is an indisputable reference to George Lucas’s release of
The Phantom Menace.
”
    A pudgy boy with a mop of stringy brown curls raised his hand.
    “Prophecy involves a number of complex methodologies, Mr. Stawinski,” Nostradamus replied as the boy sheepishly lowered his hand. “There’s scrying, for one—”
    Zane raised his hand.
    “—which is the act of predicting the future using a crystal ball, Mr. Covington.”
    Zane lowered his hand, baffled, as Mr. Nostradamus peered into a snow globe submerged in a small pool of milk on his cluttered desk.
    “Hmm … the future is clouded,” the ancient man mumbled. “Well, one should never scry over spilt milk.… In any case, prophecy can also involve comparative horoscopy, where the planetary configurations corresponding with past historical events are used to predict similar events based on equivalent celestial arrangements. Also helpful are—”
    Marlo raised her hand. Mr. Nostradamus studied her with unease.
    “I … you … Mr. Fauster,” he faltered. “You … want to … know what sign I am—”
    “Actually, I didn’t want to ask a question at all but to share a story,” Marlo said with a knowing smirk. “But nice job anticipating everybody’s questions based on the last thing you said, not quite explaining something so someone naturally has a question. It’s like when a lawyer leads the witless.”
    “You mean
witness,
” the teacher interjected, his nostrils flared with outrage.
    “Wrong again, Mr. Nostradamus,” she replied. “I meant what I said.
Anyway
, my mom went through a spooky phase when I was little. Numerology, horoscopes, hypnosis to stop smoking, which—in a way—worked because, after all those sessions, we were so broke that she couldn’t afford cigarettes. All in all, she was flakier than an apple turnover with psoriasis. When her favorite psychic, Yuri Null, predicted the end of the world, my mom wrote the date on our family calendar that hung on the refrigerator.
The date that we were all supposed to die
. The day came and, of course, nothing happened. At that point, I decided that life was just too short to worry about how short life was and that all that psychic friends network junk was bunk.”
    Zane bit his lower lip to hold back his laughter. “Brilliant,” he snickered under his breath.
    Marlo’s chest swelled with pride. Mr. Nostradamus, however, swelled with bristling irritation, like an anacondathat had just swallowed a porcupine. “While I have, with eerie precision, pinpointed the most significant events in history, I cannot pin down
your
point, Mr. Fauster,” the teacher spat through thin, foam-flecked lips in desperate need of Atomic Cherry Balm.
    “Well … um … let me show you,” Marlo said as she sat up, scooted her desk back, and walked over to Colby’s desk.
    “Hey, Colby. How’s it going?” she asked.
    “Fine, I guess,” Colby replied, “though, as the
real
Dalai Lama, I find the air here super thick, not like back home in Tibet—”
    Marlo punched Colby in the arm, then returned to her seat.
    “Now watch,” Marlo said as she again rose from her desk and walked over to Colby, who was rubbing his aching shoulder. “Hello, Dalai. How’s it going?”
    Colby flinched.
    “Why’d you hit me, psycho?!” he replied, shrinking back in his seat.
    Marlo smiled and returned to her seat.
    “See?” she said as she crossed her brother’s legs.
    Mr. Nostradamus scratched his wooly gray beard.
    “Well, of course I
knew
you were going to do that,” he replied in a voice like a