Madam Rasputin (real name Maggie Rivers) is a local fortune teller in her mid-40s who works out of a room above Candy’s Cotton Candy. She has no ability as a fortune teller but a small gift at spinning an entertaining yarn.
However about 1 in 20 of the fictions she spins seem to come true. Many customers have felt the need to come back, called or written that she felt she had to get someone to check.
For two weeks Maggie had Paul Dukes (a local Private Detective) watch customers leave and report on what happened in the next ten minutes. In her prediction for every customer she said a Seagull would give them a gift within ten minutes of leaving.
By Duke’s calculation around 5% received a gift. Now you might think getting hit by seagull guano wasn’t really that unlikely on Harbour Road and that did happened to some customers. But some got other gifts – one got a roll of bank notes. Another was hit by a diamond ring. Another some car keys. And for a week seagulls approached some of her customers to offer them chips.
Enough that the fortune teller is sure there is something to it but really isn’t sure what to make of it. She has become more cautious in her tales.
What Maggie doesn’t know is the inverse of their prediction happens to about 1 in 100 of their customers.
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