Delores Davidson traced lines through the pile of vomit with her hand-carved reading rod. She held her scarf over her mouth, blocking out the bilious fumes. Disgusted women toked and gossiped in the cubicles, but Delores was used to scorn. She ignored them and practised her augury. Read the shapes in regurgitated mushrooms, the patterns of carrots and streams of saliva, the day-glo colour of bile.

Saw someone’s future and sat back on her haunches. Felt the gut flushes again. Delores raced out of the toilets into the smoky pub crowd. Looked back and forth, searching for a sick face, the source of the spew.

Who? she wondered. Who is going to be kidnapped?But people only screwed up their faces. ‘Someone,’ she said, ‘is going to disappear! One of you is in danger!’ She waved her rod for attention. Flicks of saliva rained over the nearby patrons. ‘Listen to me!’ she cried.

The bouncers approached and steered her into the street.

‘Don’t come back, barf-lady,’ they said.

Nobody ever listened to Delores Davidson.

Delores pulled out her notebook and noted down the date, location and content of her prophecy. Then she picked herself up and continued to roam the town. She made her rounds of the alleys, parks and public toilets. She snuck into pubs where she could. She lingered outside the hospital. She sniffed around the community until she detected the smell of stomach acid, and then she moved in to scry the spew.

She was the prognosticator of puke.

She read what was written in the dog vomits of roaming mutts. Divining a painful death, she practised her own, swift veterinary euthanasia.

The next morning, like every morning, she stood on her soapbox in the main street and told what she had foreseen. She delivered revelations to ignorant passers-by.

She was the soothsayer of spew.

‘Shut up, barf-lady,’ they yelled.

‘Get off ya barf box,’ they cried.

‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘I have seen a kidnapping!’

They shouted, ‘Stick your fingers down your throat and smoke them.’

Delores cursed her second sight.

‘Ignore me at your peril!’ she said. ‘You just wait. Wait until one of your daughters disappears, then you’ll be crying to me for help.’

She was the harbinger of heaves.

But nobody listened. Nobody ever listened to Delores Davidson. Too wrapped up in their own business, the townsfolk ignored her. At their peril.

The next day, Malorie Mansfield went missing. One second, she was drinking at the local, the next, she went outside to use her mobile. And then she was gone. That made the townsfolk listen to Delores.

Malorie’s father was a policeman, Sergeant Mansfield. He searched outside the pub where she was last seen, but there was no evidence. Only the ravings of old barf-lady.

Like she’d said, they came running for help.

For she was the oracle of the technicolour yawn.

They questioned her about what she’d seen, but she only said, ‘I told you so. If you had listened to me at the time,’ she said, ‘all this could have been avoided.’

The town panicked, called meetings, sent out search parties and put up posters. But not a trace could be found. They tried to mourn their missing daughter. The Sergeant cried into his coffee as Malorie’s brother, Mark, held a party in honour of his sister. His friends and hers got drunk and celebrated the life of their loved one. Delores Davidson lingered by the back fence. She watched the empty beer-bottles pile up and anticipated the night’s easy pickings. But Mark spotted her through the gate, stormed out.

‘It’s your fault, barf-lady!’ he yelled, pointing his finger. ‘You made her disappear! If you want to read vomit, read this!’ And he shoved his fingers down his throat and threw up all over her dress.

Delores stared down at the upchuck and staggered to the floor with the gut flushes when she saw Mark’s suicide. Unable to get her scarf to her mouth, she gagged at the stench of bile and retched herself, all over the ground.

‘Ha, barf-lady barfed!’ the crowding kids cried.

Stooped over her own vomit, Delores looked down, to see what she could see in the great green sea of spew. And saw vomit. Her future, her death. Vomit. Piles of stinking mucous, another’s festering chunder.

Sergeant Mansfield emerged from the house, saw Delores shaking and muttering to herself.

‘I see vomit,’ she whispered.

‘Get back inside,’ he yelled at those gathered around.

The sergeant took Delores’s shaking arm and led her to his police van.

‘I see vomit,’ she murmured as they drove home.

He tried to ignore the stench.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s what you do. I know it’s not your fault. You just see things.’

Sergeant Mansfield helped Delores into her house, onto the couch. ‘I’ll just leave you there,’ he said. ‘Will you be all right?’ But then he heard a muffled screaming from another room.

He kicked through the door and found his daughter tied to a chair. The room was stacked with tins of food; the floor covered by an organised pattern of buckets. Each contained a different pile of Malorie’s vomit, obviously force-fed and force-ejected. Barfed baked-bean blueprints, disgorged dinosaur dioramas, spewed spaghetti sketches. And strange half-formed words made by small starchy letters.

Acidic alphagetti arrangements.