Entering the Jewel on the last evening of my former life, I stop, bleary-eyed, before the gum and toy machines, in the vestibule, between the swoop and whoosh of automatic doors. I insert a coin and feel like pulling a lever; instead I'm to twist a handle, metal-plated and so shiny under the fluorescent glare that I'm able to see my face on it, shrunk and stretched and upside down. What tumbles into my palm is a plastic capsule, stuffed, the seal reads, with a cellophane chimp, the bearer of the upcoming week's fortune. I assume that that has already come true: the Taurus is packed and parked in the lot, box-spring lashed to the roof. I toss the capsule, unopened, into the RECYCLABLES ONLY bin. Then I buy a banana and drive off. Years later, after much weeping and wailing upon a second-hand mattress that belonged to the owner of the first hand I'd ever thought of asking for in marriage, I find myself writing this, thinking of the chimp I threw away, not willing to know what it had to say. It's a riot, really, me holding a pen, remembering that night. It seems as random as anything still might.

Jon Mozes is a writer currently living and working in Chapel Hill, NC. He was recently made a finalist in both River Styx's Microfiction and Glimmer Train Stories' "Family Matters" contests. Jon also has an M.F.A. in fiction from Washington University in St. Louis and has worked in publishing and in the theatre.