In Hindsight

Flash fiction horror with multiple endings for Madness & (May)hem: Day 10

Image: Vincent Chan via Unsplash

For Madness & (May)hem Day 10, I asked writers to write a story or poem based on this prompt: after having corrective eye surgery, you begin to see strange things.

Here’s my entry, with two possible endings…

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I didn’t bother asking about the donor.

I really should have.

I can see now why they wanted to get rid of it, but of course, hindsight is 20/20.

Thanks to my corneal transplant surgery, I was, too! So, I try to take the good with the bad. There’s just one problem:

After the surgery, I could see exactly when someone was going to die.

Yeah. Let that sink in.

Three years ago, after the surgery, I saw digital timers floating above everyone’s head in my field of view. They were nice and bright, easy to read, and conveyed time in the traditional hour, minute, second format.

I love it when supernatural abilities match our number system.

I know what you’re thinking, too. You want to know if I sneaked a peek at my timer.

Absolutely fucking not.

Do you have any idea how much I would obsess over that knowledge? No, I destroyed every mirror in my house and avoided reflective surfaces.

Of course, I couldn’t ignore everyone else’s, so I tried to help out where I could.

Bad idea.

Word spread fast that some guy was miraculously saving people or predicting things like cancer diagnoses and heart attacks well before modern medicine ever could.

They made it sound so difficult, but it was really just a numbers game.

If you were young, relatively healthy, and your clock was running low, there are only so many reasons. Anyway, things got out of hand.

People started thinking of me as a superhero, but what kind of superhero wears khakis?

I started getting book deals, movie contracts, even a damn TV show about me. There were, of course, people who thought I was some kind of demon, too, so I had to hire a whole security detail.

Which, I have to ask:

What kind of superhero has a security detail?

I sighed loudly as I sat in front of the covered mirror in the green room at the Channel 12 News Studio.

A wiry woman appeared in front of me holding a makeup palette and a thick brush.

She’s got about twenty years left on her timer.

“Sorry, this will just take a second. Need to make sure you’re camera ready!” she said.

I forced a smile as she touched up the makeup she had just put on me a few minutes ago. She stepped away, and I heard some clacking behind me.

“Okay, what do you think?” she asked.

Before I could stop her, the damn woman reached around from behind me with a mirror in her hand.

“NO!” I screamed, whacking the thing out of her hand.

It hit the ground nearby and skittered toward the door.

The woman let out a gasp and nearly immediately started sobbing. “Oh no, I forgot about the no-mirror rule! That’s why the main one’s covered up. Oh, I’m so sorry!”

She kept apologizing, but I wasn’t listening. The whole world faded to a dull roar as I thought about what I had seen in that moment before I hit the mirror out of her hand.

I saw a timer above my head.

It had twenty minutes left.

The makeup artist was still apologizing profusely when they came to get me. I walked out to the show’s set like a zombie.

I was fully dissociated. My eyes scanned the lights above the set, looking to see if any were about to fall.

I looked over the crew, the cameras, and the cables that snaked along the ground. I was desperate for a sign, for some kind of hint at what terrible fate was waiting for me.

What if it’s a heart attack?

I was perfectly healthy. It didn’t seem likely. An accident, though? Yeah, that would make sense.

The show started, and we conducted the interview, but my answers were simplistic. My tone was distant.

I was looking past the host, still scanning every detail around me. At that point, I probably had about ten minutes left.

My pulse went up exponentially with every passing second. I started to think that maybe the heart attack wasn’t so far-fetched.

“Well, thank you for joining us today, for all that you do!” the host said.

She had a concerned smile. She could tell I wasn’t all there. She couldn’t help me, though. She was just there to report the news, and I was trying not to end up on it.

A crew member led me back to the green room again. I was terrible at math, but at that point, I probably had less than five minutes on my clock.

My mouth was dry, my hands were shaking, and my eyeballs were practically vibrating in my skull from darting around so much.

What was going to happen?

Is it a gas leak?

A terrorist attack?

A meteor strike?

A stroke? An aneurysm?

“Someone from your security detail will be here soon to escort you to your vehicle,” the crew member said, opening the door for me. I stepped inside and collapsed into the chair in front of the covered mirror.

Fuck it.

I ripped the sheet off the mirror and stared at the timer above my reflection’s head.

Two minutes!

A knock came from the green room door. I nearly screamed.

“Sir? It’s Clancy from your security team. May I come in?” a voice asked.

“YES! COME IN NOW!” I screamed.

The door opened as I glanced at the mirror one more time.

One minute, thirty seconds!

“Listen, I looked in the mirror by accident, and my timer has less than two minutes left! I need you to help me!”

Clancy, the security guard I’d known for over a year, pulled a knife from his pocket.

“That sounds about right,” he growled.

“What the hell?”

Clancy was on me within seconds. He pushed me to the ground and towered over me. His eyes were wild and full of rage.

“What the hell are you doing?!” I asked.

“Every time you save someone, another person who witnessed it dies! You’re not preventing deaths, you’re just passing them to others! I’m here to make sure it fucking stops.”

He brought down the knife toward my head. I whipped my neck to the right and narrowly dodged the blade.

With adrenaline now matching the blood in my veins, I panicked and swung my leg upward.

Clancy let out a yelp and fell to the side, clutching his groin and dropping his knife. I grabbed his knife and stood up.

The moment I gripped the blade, the timer above his head went from fifteen years to thirty seconds.

Holy shit. Does it think I’m going to kill him?

To be fair, I was thinking about it.

“My sister died because of you! I’ve been waiting a whole year for this moment!” Clancy roared, wrapping his hand around my right ankle.

The world spun around me. Clancy wrenched my leg out from under me. I dropped the knife on my way down.

My head slammed against the concrete floor, and pain rippled through my skull.

Clancy hovered over me, the knife now back in his hand. His timer was back up to fifteen years.

I crawled out from underneath them, moving backwards until my back was on the wall.

“Please, don’t kill me!” I pleaded.

Clancy paused and looked down at the knife in his hand.

“You know what? I’m feeling charitable. If you take this knife and gouge out your eyes, I’ll let you live.”

He extended his hand and rotated the handle of the knife to face me.

“If you try anything, I’ll gut you like a fish,” Clancy added.

Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

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TIME TO DECIDE

To use the knife on your eyes, go to ENDING A

To fight back, go to ENDING B

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ENDING A

Image: Andrew Dawes via Unsplash

I reached out and took the knife out of his hand. He was trained for close-quarters combat. There was no way I’d win if I fought back.

And, truth be told, I hate seeing the goddamn timers.

I turned the blade toward me. Clancy chuckled. I put the tip of the blade against my left eye. I could feel the cool metal against one of my fancy new corneas.

Here goes nothing.

I pushed the blade in as searing pain rocketed across my face. My eye popped like a grape, sending blood gushing down my face.

“GOOD! NOW THE OTHER!” Clancy shouted.

I didn’t hesitate. I plunged the knife into my right eye as well and ripped the blade out, taking the eyeball with it. I dropped the knife onto the ground and let loose a scream of utter agony.

Clancy picked up the knife and wiped it on his pants.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” Clancy said, running out of the room.

I clutched my hands against my face and let out a chuckle as a joke leapt into my mind.

An eye for an eye indeed!

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ENDING B

Image: Jason Jarrach via Unsplash

I took the knife and looked into Clancy’s eyes as he towered over me. I felt bad for him, I did.

But I’m not about to stab myself.

I turned the knife and swung it down into Clancy’s leg. He screamed and fell onto his knees as I climbed back onto my feet.

Realizing I had a height advantage, I kicked him square in the jaw. He fell backward, clutching his face as the knife sat still stuck in his leg.

I reached down and ripped it out. Blood arced through the air as Clancy rolled onto his back. I looked down, expecting his timer to fall again, but it didn’t.

What the hell?

My eyes shot over to the mirror on my left for only a moment to check my own timer.

Ten seconds?

The door to the green room flew open with a loud crash. Police officers ran into the room, their guns drawn. They were shouting at me to drop the knife.

Clancy grabbed my leg again to destabilize me. I stumbled and fell forward toward the cops.

Holding a knife.

You can probably guess what happened next.

Gunfire erupted and tore through my body.

I was dead before I hit the ground.

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Thanks for Reading! Here’s Your Musical Pairing

Listen to this after reading, like pairing a glass of wine with dinner.