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failed. Miserably.
    “On the contrary, it means great loss and suffering. It can mean grave danger as well. This is not to be taken lightly.” The Oracle spun the dandelion between her fingers by its stem and examined it closely. She inhaled deeply at its center, contemplating the scent. Then she licked the petals clean. “You must prepare for a great loss, dear girl. Larger than you have ever known.”
    “What is going to happen? Will I be okay?” Coco asked, alarmed by the Oracle’s warning.
    “Unfortunately I cannot tell you. The final item of this reading is the eye.” She picked it up by its long string of nerves and veins and let it dangle before Coco like a pendulum. “The eye signifies the unknowable. Something too hazy to be seen. Blindness. Your outcome is unclear.”
    “That can’t be all. You can’t sit here and tell me how much danger I am about to be in and then not tell me how it turns out.” Coco stood and stamped her foot.
    “But I can. In fact, that’s all I can do,” the Oracle said calmly.
    “There isn’t, like, a follow-up portion? A bonus round? Something ?”
    “I’m afraid not. But nothing is written in stone. At least you have been warned. Consider yourself lucky for that. Some do not get that luxury.”
    “Luxury? You think it’s a luxury to be told that something really fucking awful is about to happen to me? What am I going to lose? What kind of danger will I be in?” Coco was having trouble breathing. She sat down at the table again.
    “Some people do not get a warning.” The Oracle wiped her hands on the inside of her faded robe.
    Coco could see the crusted, filthy material inside, stained from many readings past—other warnings of love, danger and death. She hoped that maybe some were happier and less open-ended.
    The Oracle said, “I do not know what you are going to lose. It may be your love, your life, yourself. It could be anything, really. You won’t know what it is until it’s gone.”
    “Well, that’s just fucking great.” Coco stood up from the table, placing her hands palms-down on the surface. “Thanks for the tea, I guess. Can you point me towards town?”
    The Oracle raised an arm. Her sleeve was still rolled up and bits of meat goo streaked her nearly translucent skin. “It’s half a day’s walk from here, at least. And it is getting late. If you’d like, I could fix up a guest bed. You haven’t had a good night’s rest until you’ve slept on a mattress stuffed with meat. It contours to your body perfectly and it absorbs heat. It’s like being back in the womb.” The Oracle closed her eyes dreamily and held her hands in the prayer position over her heart.
    “Thanks but I had better be on my way.” She slipped across the room and wriggled her way back through the intestine curtain delicately, trying to get past with as little skin-to-guts contact as possible.
    Coco stood outside the Oracle’s meat hut staring out at the vast expanse of refuse and potential doom that lay before her. A pair of rats stopped and blinked their beady eyes at her before scuttling away. Somewhere out there something was waiting to harm her. If she could be harmed here. She still wanted to believe that she was coma-dreaming, but found that rather difficult.
    Rudy landed on her nose. He hadn’t been in her hair.
    “Where did you go?”
    “It was getting heavy in there,” he said.
    “Yeah, tell me about it.”
    “And it was making me hungry. All that meat just lying around. So I left. How did it go?”
    “Not well.” Coco pouted. She looked out over the landscape. The sun was setting and there was a chill in the light breeze. She shivered and thought of a love she had not yet met, but would soon lose. “We should probably get moving. I don’t suppose there is a hotel around here?”
    Rudy laughed and buzzed away while Coco followed him. They traveled until the sky was black. They found a pile of wooden pallets with an old torn mattress perched on top. It had