One day, a magician like those who pull rabbits out of their hat proposed a game to me.

– Take a coin – he told me – look at it several times. Turn it over, play with it. Check that there is no trap. That it is not bent, that it is perfectly round, without undulations. Do it conscientiously. Look under my sleeve, there’s nothing, right? 

The coin was normal, a dime, and, at first glance, it had nothing to highlight. No folds, clean. With its lifelong heads and tails. He had just taken it from the table, where he also kept other objects of a magician’s everyday life and show: a rope, a hat, some cards, dice. I didn’t see anything special during the short time I dedicated to it: it had rough edges, like all dimes, the map of Europe on one side and Cervantes’ face on the other.

– Take your time – he insisted when he saw that I was giving it back to him – make sure that everything is in order because this is and will be the most important coin of your life – he said looking now at the audience – even if it is worthless. Even if it ends up forgotten in a drawer, between the seats of a car, in a fountain in Italy. This coin will read your future. Hold it tight because it knows everything about you, it keeps your biggest secret and your worst fears. It has been with you since you were born. It is your amulet. Or your evil eye. 

It was the first time I saw that coin. That specific one, I mean, and, although I didn’t understand very well what the illusionist meant by all that, I played along for the sake of the show. I smiled, I’m not sure why, and nodded while he showed the audience two envelopes containing two letters from me to myself written thirty years from now. I looked at the coin. 

– Don’t let go, for the moment. I’m going to ask you a question that I can only answer to you: do you want to know your future? – I hesitated for a few minutes, but just before answering and seeing that among the audience hands were starting to raise, he raised his voice and concluded –  today it can’t be another one, and usually I can’t do this trick because someone specific is missing in the audience, most people are slaves of chance and are condemned to the casualty of chaos being their only certainty. Magic is an exact science, to be able to read your future, you must have a destiny and, I insist, here you are the only one who has it, you are special, do you want to know your future? 

– Yes – I ended up saying, in part due to the pressure of the fixed gaze of the audience, I did not want to spoil the performance, in the end it was just a trick – let’s go on – I ended up saying just before the applause started.

– Your life is already written on both sides of that coin – continued the magician, while he pointed at it and made a face as if he was trying to pierce it – On the heads side, there is a half-blank story, where you can still write, paint whatever you want, decide, apparently, about your own life, play at being your own God – he paused to smile and look at everyone, like someone who expects recognition when he finishes delivering big news. Before anyone reacted, the stage lights went out almost completely, the magician changed his face, the only one illuminated in the whole room and began to speak with a dark tone staring at me and with the intention of scaring me – However, tails side, the story is completely written, with no room for maneuver. Someone has already done the work of playing God for you and you will be locked in your body even if you don’t want to be. 

There were a few very intense seconds of silence, the performance was becoming something that bothered me personally and the accusing eyes of a morbid whole row of seats had intentions that went far beyond the game, they wanted to see me emotionally on the edge.

– Flip the coin, the die is cast. 

Like an automaton, without thinking very well that I was doing something I didn’t really want to do, I tossed the coin upwards and the time it took to fall became an eternity: I watched the spin and tried to make mental calculations based on nothing so that it would never be tails, so that an external force of nature, some God, something, would determine that it would have some possibility of landing on heads. When it began to bounce several times, I heard the sound of the chant like a whistle in my ear, it vibrated, just like the breathing of the spectators, of the magician with a Machiavellian laugh who waited to give me the definitive result. As if by survival, in an unpremeditated act, just as I had tossed the coin, I managed to step on it just before the last bounce, without seeing the result, I bent down with my eyes closed, put it in my pocket and spent several minutes turning it around inside my pants, while enduring the booing of the people and the shouts of the magician.

When I got home, I opened a drawer, closed my eyes again and put it away forever, along with the envelopes.

I chose not to know what had touched me, but the coin is still here, with me, with its truth already written. 

You, reader, free of my fears, can read my future: “Flip the coin, the die is cast.”