Samantha Sapp

Tuesday Night Takeout

You are going to die.

I crumpled the fortune and dropped it back onto the broken shell of its cookie. Clearly, someone at the fortune factory was depressed. The fortunes were the most important part of any takeout meal: they were the prophetic climax of a night spent eating away feelings, a glimmer of hope. Growing up, Mom and I had lived by one strict rule: whatever your fortune was, you had to take its advice to heart. But this wasn’t advice. It was a reminder of how cold and callous the universe was.

I grabbed another cookie and it cracked in my hands.

Billions of humans just like you have lived. Almost all have been forgotten, and you will be too.

Goosebumps sprouted all over me. It wasn’t the fortune factory writer; clearly, it was the cosmic forces which paired cookie and eater that were depressed. But thankfully, I still had cookies left to open. The old lady who ran my Chinese restaurant always gave me extra, probably out of pity. One time I picked up my order, and cried into her shoulder about how I hated my job and missed living far from my mom. That night she gave me a dozen cookies as a treat, and had continued to ever since. I was grateful because they made eating takeout alone, as a washed-out college grad working retail, a little less lonely.

I reached for another fortune. The cookie crumbled away from material reality into little pieces that speckled the couch cushion.

Life is 4.5 billion years old. If you’re lucky, you’ll live to 75 and be spared the knowledge of how long eternity is.

I frantically re-read the fortune. It didn’t change. The universe hated me.

When I ate takeout, it was to eat away my feelings, to feel better. It was a trait I’d inherited from my mom, and probably to blame for my weight. This was not helping—this was what my therapist liked to call “spiraling” and “catastrophizing” and “I swear to God please go outside and make some friends.” But I wasn’t a quitter, so I reached for another.

Just like you, all of humanity will die. Our species will go extinct, and all remnants of humanity will fade into oblivion.

I sniffled, wiping at my eyes, and not just because my kung pao was a little too spicy. These fortunes were cruel; I was half convinced they were written by the same crackhead who’d come into the store today and started pushing stuff off the shelves. Still, I persisted—to end on a bad fortune would be to concede my place in this universe as a lowly, lonely retail worker, a blip lost in the immensity of all there was. It would mean accepting that life is suffering and nothing more. And how was I supposed to go back to work if that was true? How was I supposed to go on?

What a small speck you are. Invisibly small to this planet, this solar system, this galaxy, and the infinite galaxies that make up our universe.

I could hear my pulse, blood pounding like waves against my skull. As if I were the cookie now—a worthless vessel ready to fade into oblivions. A machine without a ghost, doomed to short-circuit any kind of inner truth was revealed. Still, there were four fortunes left. Mechanically, my pattern-seeking primate brain reached for the next.

But remember, while there are infinite galaxies, there is only one you.

My heart stilled. That one was different, almost hopeful. Each cookie may be the same, but each one is the only one in its wrapper. So I reached for another wrapper, another cookie, another fortune.

The billions of people that have came before you lived, loved, and found peace. You will too.

Serenity washed over me, lulling me into a kind of false comfort—but maybe it wasn’t false because the fortune was right. If everyone before me could do it, I could, too. I wasn’t alone, because with me was everyone—past, present, and future—all of us had to face these questions, and had to come to the same end. We were all in this together.

It has gotten better before. It will get better again.

I was reminded of being a child; of skinned knees and chicken pox, of first dates and breakups. Of summers spent at Grandma’s, of nights spent gazing up at the stars and wondering. Of when the crash happened, of grappling with my dad’s death. Of my mom, cooking chicken noodle soup, and the way it made me warm. Of her arms, wrapped around me, of her soothing voice. Of her tears, too—and me, there to put my arms around her, to speak soothing words back. Of us, helping each other through each day as mother and daughter, standing firm together against the world.

With careful, trembling hands, I reached for the final fortune. Slowly, I tore open the plastic. The cookie cracked with a snap. And as soon as I saw it, I knew that the fortune was for me alone, and my heart flushed with a warmth it hadn’t felt in years.

Welcoming the tears, for the first time in weeks, I called my mom.

Samantha Sapp is a former middle school teacher and current MFA student at Miami University. Though she is originally from the Florida Panhandle, she has spent the last few years in the Midwest coping poorly with winter. Her work has appeared in the literary journal Sinister Wisdom, and she was a finalist for the 2022 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest.