It was Saturday; but it wasn’t just any Saturday: it was a really stupid Saturday. So stupid, in fact, that a certain Samantha Jones of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was wondering why she didn’t just skip Saturday entirely and sleep on through to Sunday. The reason she didn’t was that by the time she’d had this brilliant idea, there was only a short amount of Saturday left to suffer through, so she decided to be brave and struggle through the rest of the day.

This stupid Saturday had all started with the alarm clock. When it sounded, she hit "snooze;" Sam was a firm believer in the snooze button. She always set her alarm for twenty minutes before she actually had to be up, just for the sake of hitting snooze several times; it made her feel that she was being sneaky and sleeping in later than she should. This particular Saturday morning, her groping hand found the "sleep" button, of which she was not at all fond, and she slept nearly an hour longer than she should have. Not that she had anywhere to go, but one of her cats was diabetic and had to have his insulin at 7am. She lay in bed a moment longer, then tried, sleepily, to get up. Something was preventing this seemingly easy task, like a weight on her chest, and as she was trying to figure out what was going on, the phone rang and the weight suddenly dug its claws into her chest and bolted off. In a great amount of pain, she answered the phone, only to find that it was a telemarketer.

"No, I don’t want any," she said. "I’m dead. Stop calling."

She slammed the phone down and headed out to give her cat his medicine and eat her breakfast, which posed another challenge. She sat on the couch with her Cheerios, watching some cartoon or other, when the more pushy of the two cats, Caesar, tried to get at the milk in the bowl. He succeeded, but not in quite the way he had intended: he tipped over the entire bowl, sending milk and Cheerios all over the couch, the floor, himself, and Sam.

"If you weren’t diabetic, cat, I’d kick your ass," she said while she cleaned up the mess. Caesar didn’t care; he had his milk.

And so the day continued in this fashion.

Once dinnertime arrived, she decided not to tempt fate any more and she ordered a pizza–small, extra cheese, that’s it. The pizza arrived smothered in black olives, which, of course, she didn’t notice until after the delivery guy was gone.

"Son-of-a-bitch," she said to the couch when she discovered the mistake.

She was getting quite accustomed to speaking to the walls, the furniture, and the television, since she had moved to Eau Claire on a whim two weeks ago, without knowing a soul or, for that matter, a street. She had an apartment on one of the few streets she actually did know (only because she now lived there) and she had a car, which sat in the driveway for longer periods of time than is customary for a vehicle of that sort.

She picked the olives off her pizza and switched on Wheel of Fortune. Between shouts of "you don’t need to buy a vowel" and "no, you idiot, take an ‘n’," she managed to finish her dinner without any further problems. But the course of the day had taught her not to let it go to her head; she sat back and patiently waited for the next disaster to occur. After fifteen minutes of the worst sit-com ever made, she was suddenly inspired to take a walk.

And, so, Samantha Jones set off on what she thought would be just a relaxing stroll around a completely unfamiliar neighborhood. As soon as she stepped out the front door, she heard the unmistakable sounds of a carnival, saw her street lined with cars along both sides, and decided to find out what was going on. The sounds and the people led her to Carson Park, which was just down the road from her lovely house.

"Hell, maybe I’ll meet a few people," she told the evergreen on the corner. "I just hope there aren’t any clowns."

As she neared the park, the noise from the carnival became louder. People were walking to their cars, heading home after a long day of eating, going on rides, winning prizes at those ever-present cheesy little games, and buying cheap junk from the numerous vendors set up all over. There were still some people heading in, so Sam was relieved, somewhat, to find that it wasn’t over yet. She paid her dollar at the gate and headed into the crowd.

One of the most amazing things about carnivals is the people. Nowhere else will you find such a vast assortment of human beings: over by the frog toss was a man who looked like a stork with a mustache; two wiry teenagers with porcupine hair and Metallica T-shirts were hanging out by the haunted house; a pear-shaped couple was rapidly walking past the mini-doughnut booth, as though they were trying desperately to outrun the urge to buy some. Sam, however, could not resist temptation. Armed only with a bag of greasy, sugar-coated mini-doughnuts, she walked around the park and found herself in front of the dark, mysterious tent of Madame Serena.

Fortune-telling was not a profession that Sam was impressed with. She was largely of the opinion that it was all a big hoax; that the people who went into these tents were unknowingly dropping hints that the Madame Serenas of the world were eating up like vultures and spitting back at these stupid people, all to their amazement and their wallets’ grief.

It was with this attitude that Sam entered the tent. She didn’t know why she went in, really, except maybe to try to beat Madame Serena at her own game. Once inside, she was greeted with the scent of something that smelled vaguely of incense and dead fish. Directly in front of her was the stereotypical doorway of beaded strings. Pushing them aside, she stepped into the center of the tent. Oddly enough, there was no crystal ball, no round table covered with a purple, tasseled tablecloth, and there were no candles. Instead, there were several lava lamps set up that illuminated the room enough to see, but the eerie quality of the place was undisturbed. A battered old card table with the rules to several card games printed on top sat in the middle of the tiny space left over from the beads and the lava lamps. She sat down in one of the two chairs present and waited.

A minute passed.

Then, another minute passed.

Then, suddenly, a woman who bore a striking resemblance to John Belushi in drag entered from some hidden door in the rear. Sam stood up when she entered.

"Welcome, Samantha, to the All-Knowing Presence of Madame Serena," the woman said in a soothing, slightly accented voice. "Please, sit down."