In the Cards
Phony psychic Catherine (Dorothy Lyman) makes money by using her Tarot cards to give people happy, harmless, and light-hearted predictions. After a peculiar old lady (Carmine Mathews) who comes for a reading swaps her usual Tarot cards for another deck, Catherine discovers that her new deck is cursed to bring only death and despair to anyone who is given a reading with them, and she herself is forced to peer into these horrific futures against her will. After remembering that the trouble started with the old lady, Catherine tracks her down to demand an explanation.
Tropes:
- Chromosome Casting: Isaac and the mugger are the only men present in the story.
- Cursed Item: The Tarot deck that Marlena swaps with Catherine's. Whoever uses them will see only the client's imminent death in the future, forced to peer into said future against their will. The cards are also unable to be destroyed and are occasionally able to move on their own. Marlena also reveals that the only way to get rid of them is to pass them on to another disbelieving psychic.
- Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Catherine was deemed a disbeliever to the powers of the Tarot for giving people simple, happy readings for money instead of telling them what was necessary. The cursed Tarot deck is doled out to her by Marlena to punish her for her lies.
- Downer Ending: Catherine is stabbed to death by a mugger, and Mrs. McNiell, who was in no way a fraud, is now stuck with the cursed Tarot cards herself.
- Elevator Failure: One of Catherine's customers, an old man named Isaac, is said to have fallen to his death when the elevator he was riding in snapped its cables.
- Face Death with Dignity: Despite meeting his end, described above, Isaac faces it with pride, claiming that one must accept the powers of the Tarot, even when it doesn't look good for them. Seeing his own death in Catherine's eyes, the old man thanks her for all the happiness she gave him in life.
- Hell Is That Noise: The cursed deck of Tarot cards often emit the sound of a knight brandishing and swinging his sword whenever the Knight of Swords comes up, predicting that someone is going to die.
- Karma Houdini: The above-mentioned mugger gets away with killing Catherine and stealing her purse.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The cursed Tarot cards are meant to serve as this to phony fortune-tellers like Catherine, who scam their clients out of their cash by only telling them what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear. Whoever inherits the cursed deck is doomed to only foretell the client's death as a means to teach them that knowing the future isn't supposed to be fun and games.
- Mickey Mousing: The Knight of Swords, the one card in the deck that Catherine says supposedly never lies, is frequently accompanied by a series of metallic slashing sounds when it appears on screen.
- Phony Psychic: Catherine doesn't actually believe in the power of the Tarot, and only uses her cards to give happy, fluffy predictions to make easy money, which is why she is granted the cursed deck. Madame Marlena, the psychic who gave her the cards in the first place, was also a disbeliever, telling Catherine that the cards are a punishment for toying with the powers that be for personal gain, and that the only way to be rid of them is to find another phony psychic to pass them along to.
- Small Role, Big Impact:
- Madame Marlena, who foists the cursed Tarot deck onto Catherine and goes into their history.
- There's also Mrs. McNiell, the psychic who Catherine gives the cursed deck to.
- Tarot Troubles: The cursed Tarot cards only give death and despair to anyone who has a reading done with them. As they're unable to be destroyed, the only way to get rid of them is to force them onto another disbelieving psychic.
- Tempting Fate: At the end of her rope, Catherine goes to another psychic, Mrs. McNiell, to swap the cursed Tarot deck with hers. After making the mistake mentioned below, Catherine screams to McNiell that she doesn't want to know her future. As a result of her poor judgment, Catherine no longer has a future.
- Too Dumb to Live: Catherine tries to swap the cursed Tarot cards with McNiell's deck, like Marlena did with hers. However, whereas Marlena waited after Catherine was finished with her reading and getting her change, Catherine instead swaps them before her reading. As a result, not even a minute after she steps outside, she's stabbed to death by a random mugger.
