Chasing Destiny
by G. Allen Wilbanks
|
Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 2
Nate had been sitting on the sofa at home in his living room, watching a football game. At the time, he recalled, the game had seemed very important. Later events had put it more into perspective.
Watching the TV with a half-empty can of beer in his hand, Nate swore loudly as his team narrowly missed connecting on a long touchdown pass. His wife, Donna, strolled into the room, set another beer on the coffee table for him and kissed him on the top of the head.
“Here you go,” she said. “I don’t want you to have to get up and miss any of your game.”
“Thanks. You’re too good to me.” Nate glanced up and saw that Donna had put on makeup and done up her hair. She was also wearing a dress that showed off her figure nicely. She looked great. Nate knew she could really turn heads when she wanted to. She had certainly turned his when they first met.
“Going out?” he asked.
“Yeah. I figured you were going to be watching football for a while, so I called a friend and we’re going to meet for lunch. I hope that’s okay.”
“Sure. Have a good time.” Nate turned back to the television set.
Donna did not leave right away. Nate felt her standing next to him as though trying to reach a decision. “I don’t have to go,” she finally said. “If you want me to stay and watch the game with you, I can do that.”
She almost sounded like she wanted him to tell her not to go. Which seemed silly, because Nate knew she hated watching football. “I’m fine here by myself,” he told her. “Go and have a good time with your friend.”
Donna turned and walked out of the room. As she left, Nate stole a quick look at her retreating backside and grinned. Boy, she really could grab the eye, he thought, watching her. He almost called out to her to come back, but the television reclaimed his attention as the crowd began cheering loudly, and the words died unspoken in his head.
Had he known where she was going, he would never have let a football game distract him into letting her leave.
Donna left that day for her rendezvous with a distracted pizza delivery driver by the name of Arturo.
* * *
The little black Honda sped past the Grantline Road exit in Elk Grove. Nate looked at the speedometer of Laura’s car and saw that she was holding a steady speed of about 70 miles per hour. The speed limit was 65, but he figured no police officer was going to bother with a car doing 5 miles per hour over the limit. There were too many cars going much faster that made better targets for a cop looking to write a ticket.
He glanced at his watch. 10:44 a.m.
“We’re making good time,” said Laura, as if reading his mind.
Nate nodded, looking straight ahead guiltily and wondering if Laura had seen him checking his watch or was just making conversation.
“Did I tell you that my oldest sister is a nurse, too?”
“No,” said Nate, “I don’t think you did.”
“She is so great. She’s the reason I decided that I wanted to be a nurse. I guess I’ve pretty much idolized her my whole life.” Laura’s gaze flickered from the road in front of her toward Nate. He caught the look and realized that she was blushing a bit as if she had just embarrassed herself. Probably she wasn’t sure if she was giving too much personal information and was gauging his reaction.
“I think that’s nice,” he said, honestly. “I think it’s cool you look up to your sister. And you said ‘oldest.’ Do you have more than one sister?”
“I have three sisters and a brother. But only the two of us are nurses. What about you?”
“No, I’m not a nurse.”
Laura laughed. Again, Nate basked in the sound of it and wished he could do it himself. He imagined Laura just laughing during the entire drive. It would be so much more pleasant than listening to the static and recriminations currently rumbling between his ears.
“I meant do you have any brothers or sisters?” Laura waved a hand toward him as if she were going to slap his shoulder, but at the last moment she checked herself, so the hand only touched air. “You know, you can be a funny guy for someone who looks so serious.”
For a moment, Nate found himself regretting the failed touch. He was instantly appalled at his own weakness and forced the feeling down with all the others he had been repressing lately. He could not afford to become too friendly with Laura. As nice as she was, what he was doing was going to be difficult enough without adding an additional burden of guilt.
The topic she had chosen was a painful one, so he used the remembered bitterness to rebuild the emotional walls around himself that Laura had managed to tamper with.
“I used to have an older brother. He died when I was eighteen. A mugger took his wallet and, when he found out there was only five dollars in it, he cut my brother’s throat. He bled to death before he could find help.”
Nate saw Laura stiffen. Her grip tightened on the steering wheel and her face filled with horror at the revelation. No more laughter now.
“I’m sorry. That’s... terrible,” she stammered, uncertain what more to say.
“I should have seen it coming,” Nate continued. “I should have been able to warn him. To save him.”
“Did you know the guy who mugged him?”
“No.”
“Then how could you have possibly seen it coming?”
Nate looked forward, staring at the lanes of traffic ahead of them. He watched the broken white lines zip past on either side of the car. “I just should have,” he said.
* * *
Since he was thirteen years old, Nate had known things. Things he had no business knowing. He saw people getting hurt, committing crimes, or just engaged in activities that a child his age normally wasn’t even aware could occur. Most of what he saw was violent, vicious, or involved extremes of emotional states. He observed activities that most people would be appalled to know had been witnessed. Although this alone would be hard enough to deal with as a child growing up, the truly bizarre thing was that Nate saw these things before they ever happened.
Of course, Nate knew enough not to share what he was seeing with any of his friends or family. They would think he was crazy or making up stories, and all that would be accomplished would be to create a reputation that guaranteed he would be an outcast for the rest of his life.
At first, he even tried to convince himself that the images he was seeing were just his imagination, but it did not take long before he could no longer deny the accuracy of his predictions. He saw his father drive a nail through his hand with a nail gun, three days before the power tool had even been purchased. He knew his neighbor’s dog would die under the wheels of a car almost a week before the animal slipped its leash during a walk. And one day a schoolmate showed up to class with a black eye. The boy said he walked into a door, but just a day earlier, when Nate had borrowed a pencil from him, their hands had touched, and Nate watched in horror as the kid’s dad attacked the boy in a drunken fury. There were more bruises than just the black eye, but Nate didn’t ask to see them, and the boy did not volunteer to show them.
The visions were uncontrolled and unpredictable. Nate could neither prevent them nor create them at will. He knew very little about how they worked except for two things that seemed to stay consistent. First, over time, Nate discovered the people with whom he had multiple and extended contacts, such as family and close friends, gradually stopped triggering his abilities. He would become desensitized to them; inoculated against them through exposure. This was initially of great comfort to Nate as it allowed him to feel safe from unwanted surprises at home.
Second, Nate realized that his unexplainable flashes of insight into other’s lives were usually triggered by proximity. Although touching was not always necessary, more often than not the unwanted images would flash into his mind after some type of physical contact: a hug, shaking hands, or even an unintentional brush of the shoulder in a crowded venue. He learned to avoid contact when he could to minimize the visions that he could not completely eliminate. Although less frequent when he kept to himself, still they came; triumphs as well as tragedies, but certainly the latter were more common.
And then when he turned eighteen, his brother Michael was murdered. Brutally and without reason. His brother died frightened and alone. But before the mugger ever cut into the flesh of Michael’s throat, Nate saw... nothing.
Strangers and passing acquaintances he had seen hurt, maimed, and killed. He had even been able to avert a few imminent threats for people in the past when he saw what was coming. But when his brother’s life was at stake and he needed the warning, the future had become a black wall that Nate could not see through.
Donna was gone now, as well. She had kissed him before she left, a very intimate physical contact. And again, Nate had seen nothing. He received no hint or suggestion that she wasn’t coming back. What good was a gift — if gift was a word that could ever be used for such a nightmarish ability — when it only worked for strangers while those he loved and cherished the most could be removed from his life without so much as a whisper of what was coming?
* * *
Copyright © 2018 by G. Allen Wilbanks
