Excerpt from ‘The Fortune Teller’

Unfortunately, Marvin’s parents were getting older. He had been thinking a lot about how lonely it was going to be when they were gone. He tried to keep these thoughts out of his head, but he had just recently learned that his father was ill, and had gained a nasty infection that could be fatal to a man of his age. In what felt like the blink of an eye, Marvin had gone from being hoisted up onto his father’s shoulders, to hoisting his father into and out of bed. This truly terrified him and he sunk deeper and deeper into himself as the worries of loneliness plagued his mind, and the fear of losing his parents was slowly getting closer and creeping toward becoming a reality. He would stare at the cuckoo clock in the hallway, and every time the cuckoo screamed at him, he felt this horrible feeling in his chest, and he would pull at his eyebrows until his heart settled down. Another hour gone, just like that, edging closer to the inevitability that one day he would be well and truly alone, and there was nothing he could do about it.