Tom stepped into the busy crosswalk:
The bus might hit me. Or one of the cars. Run me over. A driver’s foot could slip off the brake. Or a car further back could come in too fast. Crash into another car. Push it into the crosswalk. Into me. Legs crushed under tires. Head smashed into pavement. Could be a pedestrian. Crazy. And armed. Shoot me. Or not armed. Snap my neck. Or I could just die. Drop dead. Heart attack. Aneurism.
He’d been an anxious child, prone to turning negative possibilities over in his mind. One night his parents left him with a sitter and he was certain they wouldn’t return. They said goodnight and he knew it was the last time. A car accident on the way home seemed likely.
He could picture it: Dad drives too fast. Animal in the road. Deer or rabbit. Dad overcorrects, swerves. Car plunges off a cliff, rolling several times then bursting into flames. Just like on the cop shows.
The sitter put him to bed, but Tom couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t get it out of his head. Later, headlights crossed his window. The familiar diagonal slashes of light from the blinds crawled down the Star Wars wallpaper. A key turned in the lock.
“How’d he do?” Mom asked the sitter.
“He was fine.”
Under his covers, Tom cried. Relieved. He’d been so sure.
Tom walked across the lobby:
Surrounded. Any one of them could be crazy. All of them could. Car could smash in through the windows. Jumble of bodies. Did I leave the coffee pot on this morning? The kitchen is on fire. Is there something off about that janitor? He’s not sweeping. Just watching. Looking at me. I’m going to blow the interview. They’ll know I’m nervous. Shouldn’t have had that second cup of coffee. Shouldn’t have told Omar. Aneurism. Heart attack. Death.
Tom became preoccupied with foretelling doom. When he’d had a child’s indestructible ego, he worried about his parents because threats to his own safety were inconceivable. When he got older, the tragic fantasies were about his own misfortune. Death and other negative outcomes. Mostly death, though. These potential tragedies constantly played in the background of his thoughts. His one source of comfort was that he was always wrong. Nothing he prophesied ever come true. He came to think of this as his hidden superpower: negative prediction. By thinking of something, he assured that it would not come to pass.
It was a secret game he played with himself. By noticing danger, he avoided it. Like Schrödinger’s cat: observation changed outcome.
Tom got on the elevator:
Nowhere to run. Surrounded by people. They could turn on me. The elevator might break down. We’ll starve. Die. Cable could snap. Bodies crushed in a metal box. Shattered. Puree of limbs and blood mixed in the bottom of the shaft. Getting hard to breathe. Could suffocate. Death. Fire. Aneurism. Heart attack.
Tom hadn’t seen the accident coming. His car was already in the driveway when it was rear-ended. The other driver was drunk and thought he was on a different block, pulling in at his own house. Tom got whiplash and a bad back and missed a lot of work. It cost him a good job. Carolyn left him. Credit cards got maxed out. Six months lost to depression. Too much drinking. Brooding. Never bothering with the light switches. Channel surfing on the couch until the windows darkened, then lying across it sideways and pulling up the blanket.
He hadn’t seen any of it coming.
After that it was a contest between him and the world. The game was more urgent. Tom tallied possible misfortunes, injuries, and deaths, struggling to think of everything. It felt necessary to keep himself safe. He imagined an adversary, trying to outwit him by engineering unpredictable threats.
He shouldn’t have told Omar. They hadn’t been particularly close in the MFA program, but Omar was a generous soul. He’d used his contacts to help Tom get the design interview at the agency. Gave him a couch to crash on in the city. Took him out to a cool bar on the Lower East Side. Tom had a few drinks and it seemed like a good idea to get it off his chest. It was the first time he’d told anyone about the power of negative prediction.
“What do you think?” he had asked when he saw the way Omar was looking at him. “Am I crazy?”
Omar’s sat by the window. Red neon from the street lit one side of his face. “I don’t know, man,” he said. “Neurotic maybe. People who really have something to worry about don’t make stuff up.”
Then Omar patiently pointed out that Tom was an American. He was white. His parents were well off. They’d put him through school. No student loans. He’d grown up in a time of economic prosperity in the untouchable American empire with the luxury to invent anxieties. Maybe it was a way of letting himself off the hook when people in other parts of the world starved and fell to curable diseases and lived in constant fear of violent death. Maybe the Cold War mentality of his early years, with its abstracted sense of inevitable doom, had something to do with it too. People like Tom, who lived under no real threats, concocted existential ones. Like the whole Y2K thing, or those that Tom averted with his imaginary superpowers.
Omar was one smart dude.
They ordered another round, but didn’t keep talking. Tom felt ashamed. He had no arguments. He’d thought Omar might get a laugh out of it, but instead he’d torn it apart. Dragged it out of Tom’s head and into the world and shredded it into pieces.
And rightly so. It was ridiculous.
But still.
By speaking it aloud, he’d violated the contract. Observation changes outcome. The universe was going to step up its game. Tom was sure of it, but this certainty gave him no comfort.
Tom stepped off the elevator:
The office took up the whole floor. Open plan. Lots of space. People ducking in and out of cubicles. Places to hide. Any one of them could be disgruntled. Like those postal workers that kept going on rampages. Why did I tell Omar? I’m not going to get the job. I’m sweating. Five minutes late. No, six. What if this is the wrong floor? What if it’s the wrong tower? How late will I be if I have to get to the other one? All the way down and back up. WTC, North, 94th floor. That’s what I remember scribbling down. But what if I’m wrong? Why didn’t I bring the pad? Aneurism. Death. Heart attack.
Tom heard the sound and looked to the windows. A shadow passed between him and the morning sun and the world shook itself apart.
Charles Cline is a fiction writer, filmmaker, and educator. He recently completed his first novel and is seeking representation.
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