Tick Tock

Christ, I’d never wanted this life. Had tried unbelievably hard to avoid any involvement in seeing the future, altering the future . . . even participating in the future, but our rapid approach to the Paris bridge signaled another end to what I wanted. Like a cat running through its nine lives, I wondered, as the SUV twisted around yet one more curve and I grabbed a bit tighter to my rescuer-slash-kidnapper’s hand, how many more I had stored up.

How had I ended up trapped in a reality not of my making?

I’d grown up a normal kid in an average town. Only wanting to keep up, to pull even, maybe even to race ahead on my fire-engine red rollerblades of my older brother. The slow-winding streets of Charleston had been our muggy summer days’ playground until one too sharp corner and an innocuous curb had catapulted my brother into unforgiving building granite. Then there was only the whish of machines as they breathed for him, the blip of heart monitors, and miles of tubing that kept him tied to this world.

If not for his accident, if not for the long days and even longer nights of waiting and hoping he’d open his eyes, I’d never have been tucked inside that hospital room with more electric circuitry than the Stars War's Death Star. One terrible storm, blown generators, grabbing for machines, and I’d seen light dance before my eyes, felt it course through my body, and reach into my soul – literally in a flash.

Now, ten years later, my life was still captured in a surreal down-draft spiral. I couldn’t change the past, hell, I was barely surviving my present, and was so terrified of the future that it was hard to breathe. But that wasn’t anyone’s fault, least of all this man who had stroked my fingers, warmed my palms and scared the paint of my toenails all in less than thirty minutes. I didn’t let passer-bys, or even government do-gooders get caught in the stream of my reality.

I glanced through the tinted glass. Our speed seemed to be increasing, and from more than the car’s massive engine. Of course, it was. The inescapable draught that always pulled me to the next crossing was accelerating.

“You should pass along the word . . . to your higher whatevers . . . what I do isn’t a gift,” I breathed the harsh warning to my bathroom-kidnapper. The Escalade squeaked past another tight curve, drawing closer to the dull gleam of the bridge’s cross-sections. “More like a curse, and certainly not worth owning.”

“Some say you’re a prophet.” His voice was rough, gravelly, as though he’d not wanted to issue the words.

“Only a fool would believe that.” The sudden whine beneath the SUVs mammoth tires heralded our entrance onto grooved pavement and the last stretch of road before the bridge. I opened my fingers, releasing my involuntary grasp on his hand. Tick-tock . . . time had run out. “You’ll want to let go now.”

“Not this time, Sarah.” His grip tightened, almost as though he were afraid I’d shake free. “This time I go with you.”

The car hit the bridge’s edge, and a rumbling – part earthquake, part heaven parting – rattled through the vehicle’s massive frame. Light splintered and spun, refracting in a million slivers of brilliance. In an instance of sanity and pure-good-old-gal determination, I wrenched free of his tight clasp.

This was my madness and I wouldn’t take anyone along. Not ever again.