The Creative Chronicles of Dave Stancliff

Cassandra only had 72 hours left to live unless she found the right room where a giant magic mirror majestically stood waiting to grant a wish.

There were thirty-six rooms in the massive Victorian mansion. Each one a portal into a different dimension. With time running out Cassandra grew more desperate every time she opened another door. Her slim dancer’s body flitted down the dusky hallways like a wraith, only stopping to probe another room.

She found herself in ancient Egypt in one room and in London, England circa 1886 in another. She barely got out of the room safely where Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. was erupting and threatening to bury Pompeii’s residents.

When Cassandra went into a room where there was a saloon in 1868 Texas where a gunfight was taking place, she narrowly dodged the flying bullets bursting through bat-wing doors and back out into the hallway.

She didn’t have time to reflect why the mage cursed her. Each hour brought her closer to an unthinkable ending. An eternal hell.

Cassandra was a gypsy who was famous for forecasting futures with Tarot cards. Her many clients spread the word over the years that she was better than anyone alive at predicting people’s futures. She believed them. That boast didn’t set well with other fortune-tellers and especially with wizards and mages who prided themselves as being “all-knowing.” One dark night a Greek necromancer named Asclepius decided to teach Cassandra a lesson for her hubris and cursed her.

The curse was straightforward; she was a prisoner in a house with 36 rooms. She had 80 hours to find the magic mirror and save herself before being eternally lost in one of the rooms. Each time she entered a room the hours would fly by like a murder of crows. At that rate she’d never be able to go to all of the rooms before her time ran out. So, Cassandra had to be selective and let her instincts take over. Drawing from her Romani heritage of mysticism she stopped opening doors and just put her hand on them and felt the vibrations within. It only took minutes instead of hours to determine what was behind them.

With two hours to spare she found the right room. Her wish was granted, and the curse was lifted. Back in her own house Cassandra picked up her deck of Tarot cards, stared at them for a few moments, then threw them into a trash can. It was time for a new vocation.

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