"Two...."
I remember the look of pure fear in the boy's eyes as he tried to run from the Visionaries. He didn't believe the Vision. He was just as scared of himself as everyone else was. Just as I am afraid of myself. Who I would become. Are these hands even mine?
Only a second remains. In this moment, I feel eternity. I feel the universe, in all of its orbits and collisions and chaos, and in the chaos, calm.
Calm. In the eye of a storm there is peace, if not for just a second.
In my world, the past, present, and future are all the same. They blur together like fact and fiction. Like memories from long, long ago.
A memory. That is all my future will ever be.
I exhale, knowing there is nothing left to do but accept my fate. "It doesn't hurt," the officials had promised me in the car. Maybe it will just be like fading away, like the inky words on old parchment. Like the ending to my story--never written.
VOUS LISEZ
The Vision
Nouvelles"T-minus ten seconds until total obliteration." In which a person faces imminent death, their future becomes their past, and we raise the question: can you be punished for something you haven't yet done? Winner of the Inspiration! short story contes...
