Just before leaving my day job, I went down to our local wonderful bookstore-that-sells-tarot-decks, BookPeople, seeking out a new, you guessed it, tarot deck.

I didn’t really need one, but I wanted desperately to spend money.

It’s hard to take your time browsing the tarot decks, because they’re all locked in a glass case, and if you want to see anything other than the fronts of the boxes you have to pull over a busy salesperson who will open the case and wait, staring at you with a faux-cheerful “jesus christ if she looks at one more tarot deck I’m committing seppuku” twinkle in her eye.

So I didn’t take my time. She opened the case and just as the glass swung an inch past my nose I saw the a wonderful thing:

The Fantod Pack by Edward Gorey.

Instantly the theme for the PBS Mystery series popped into my head and I grabbed it. $9.95. Cheap for a tarot deck! I’d be able to buy something else, too! I hugged it between my breasts and thanked the blinking salesgirl and walked away.

Only after I’d reached the car, Fantod Pack and mandala coloring book in hand, did I realize what I’d really purchased. Not a tarot deck in the traditional sense, oh no. Something far, far better. A deck filled with Horrors! 20 cards, each unique to the Fantod Pack and each associated with its own list of Evils That May Befall My Characters. Instructions for reading the pack: “Stand in the center of a sparsely furnished room and close your eyes. Fling the pack into the air. Keep your eyes closed. Pick up five cards from the floor, keeping them in order.” And then lay them out and interpret them.

The cards are backed with a morbid drawing of a - thing - riding an ornately decorated unicycle, carrying above its head a serving tray holding a skull, hourglass and candle. Their fronts depict each subject in Gorey’s inimitable style. No Wheel of Fortune or Nine of Rods here, no thank you - these cards include such subjects as The Limb, The Effigy, The Insects, The Blue Dog, The Ladder and The Waltzing Mouse. And each has its own hint-list in the accompanying booklet. This is the hint-list for The Limb - the interpretation, of course, rests with the reader.

The Limb
February
miscarriage of justice
gapes
a forged snapshot
morbid sensations
a useless sacrifice
alopecia
a generalized calamity
broken promises
ignominy
an accident in a theatre
fugues
poverty

Delicious! MUAHAHAHA! If I’m ever stuck for something horrid to do to my characters, I now have a Plan. Who can resist a generalized calamity? And what character would ever want alopecia? I will never be too nice to my characters ever again.