As a child I thought my visions were normal—that we all got them whenever someone was about to die, but nobody said anything as a common courtesy. I mean, imagine marching up to a person you’ve never met before and telling them, “Tough luck on the fridge freezer that’s gonna crush your skull later. Nasty way to go, being pinned down under all that weight. Oh well, rest in peace.”

That’s why I didn't realize I was a freak until the night my parents died. There we were, driving home from the beach and singing along with the radio, when the visions showed me glass exploding inward. Another car slammed into ours like a bullet train speeding through a tunnel, then up became down then up again as we plunged over an embankment, my parents’ mangled bodies twisting in mid-air.

The second my vision ended I thrashed around in my seat. “Stop, stop, we have to get out!” I screamed.

After she turned down the music, my mom unbuckled her belt, reached into the back, and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Ciara honey, what’s wrong?”

What’s wrong? What’s wrong? She and Dad were about to get impaled by the fucking windshield—that’s what was wrong!

“I don’t want you to die,” I whimpered, my heart practically beating out of my chest.

She screwed up her face. “Who says I’m gonna die?”

And that's when it hit me: she hadn't the faintest idea her ticket just got punched. Neither of my parents did.

While I alternated between clawing at the door handle and slamming my fists against the side window, Mom begged me to settle down. With his free arm, Dad tried helping wrangle me into place, but he couldn’t simultaneously do that and drive, so he eased the car to a stop.

Five seconds later headlights engulfed the cabin.

I woke up in a hospital bed with my left leg in a metal cylinder. When a male doctor pulled back the curtain and announced I’d become an orphan, I simply stared up at a bright halogen bulb, numb to the world.

The bad news didn’t end there. It turned out the bastard responsible for the accident sped off before the authorities arrived. “Still,” the doctor continued, smiling thinly, “with physical therapy, you’ll be able to walk again.”

The collision left me with sixteen pins in my femur, a collage of nasty scars you can still see today, and a slightly off-balance John Wayne walk. Throughout the agonising six weeks I spent in recovery, questions like ‘could you have saved Mom and Dad by reacting sooner?’ sloshed around my brain. Their mutilated corpses haunted me from the moment nurses arrived with breakfast until the drugs dragged me into a restless sleep.

After rehab, state officials placed me with a kind foster family who made me see a shrink, one hellbent on asking how the accident made me feel fifty times a session. I couldn’t reveal the truth—that I blamed myself for it, and simply thinking about Mom or Dad set my insides squirming. Every memory of them had become entwined with the guilt, you see.

At the end of one session, the therapist encouraged me to lead a life that would ‘make them proud’. This set me thinking: what if the visions had a purpose? What if this ‘ability’ could do some good? The people I cared about were beyond saving, obviously. But others still needed help. Isn’t that how Batman got started?

Finding somebody to rescue turned out to be tougher than you’d think; for the first few weeks, I only encountered folks whose obituaries would soon read ‘died from natural causes’.

But then, after school one afternoon, some older girls strolled past my locker, triggering an especially nasty vision.

I saw the blonde girl at the front trapped inside a smoke-filled room, choking on thick, black fumes. As she feebly mashed her fists against an unmovable wooden door, naked flames licked her flesh until every inch of exposed skin bubbled and boiled.

Right as her eyeballs melted out of their sockets, I found myself back at the locker. I limped after the group, fast as my weak leg would allow.

On the march toward the front entrance, Blondie bragged about her family's plans to stay at their cabin in the woods that weekend. How did I convince her not to go?

I waited until the group parted ways on the quad before I tapped the girl’s shoulder. She faced me.

“Hey. So, umm…I heard you’re staying at a cabin this weekend?”

“…Yeah.”

"I know a guy—well, I knew a guy—who died in one of those.” We both stayed quiet, the silence growing awkward. “It caught fire.”

“Okay.”

She muttered a quiet ‘freak’ as she turned away.

Terrified I’d already blown my chance, I blocked her path. “It’s just, I’ve heard those things can be dangerous. Y’know, all that…wood.”

Around us, conversations trailed off as students’ heads snapped in our direction. Blondie circled me, her green eyes wide with embarrassment, and broke into a jog. My leg muscles twanged and spasmed matching her pace. “Maybe don’t go? I mean why take the risk?”

“Get away from me loser,” she shouted as she tore past the gate.

“At least check the smoke detectors when you get there!” I shouted after her.

That weekend, I passed the time by staring up at my bedroom ceiling for hours on end. On Monday the principal called a special assembly, and my cheeks were drenched with tears before he even approached the podium.

The blaze took the lives of both the blonde girl and her younger sister. The school memorial attracted a massive turnout, and being surrounded by that profound outpouring of grief felt like a knife twisting between my ribs—a constant reminder I’d disappointed my parents. Again.

This made me even more determined to save the next life.

Three weeks later at the grocery store, an opportunity came along in the form of a thin clerk about to tumble off his ladder. I bolted down the aisle, but before I’d even managed ten steps, the man’s feet wobbled from side to side. In a desperate attempt at remaining upright, he windmilled his arms around, collapsing a nearby lemonade stand.

In the end, gravity won out. The tiled floor cracked his skull like an egg, then blood and fizzy yellow liquid seeped out from beneath the corpse, mingling together.

Meanwhile, I just stood there, deflated.

A pattern soon emerged: the drowning girl got swept away before I could fish her out of the river; a social worker about to get stabbed flipped me off because I begged him to rush home yet couldn’t explain why; and the paramedics failed at resuscitating the elderly man suffering a heart attack on the park bench even though, thanks to me, they arrived ten seconds after he started clutching his own chest.

No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, the visions always came to pass. Always. When I barely winced at a cashier about to get shot in the face over the meagre change in his register, it became painfully obvious I’d lost all hope. Sorry Mom, sorry Dad. Turns out my ‘gift’ couldn't benefit others.

Fast forward fifteen years. By the time my thirties reared their ugly head, I’d launched a decent IT career and paid off a cosy apartment. Years of physical therapy had left my limp almost unnoticeable, although if I stood around too long pins and needles still went racing along my thigh.

Those guilt pangs over my parents’ deaths never subsided and, as a result, I avoided large crowds and gatherings on account of all the soon-to-be corpses.

Until a bizarre vision changed everything...

It was the twentieth anniversary of the accident, and I’d slipped into a sports bar to perform my yearly ritual of drowning gruesome images from the collision in a shot glass.

But no sooner had I found a quiet seat in the corner when a suited man approached my table and said, “Hey baby doll.”

His appearance triggered a vision, which surprised me. This guy clearly looked after himself and couldn’t have been any older than forty; typically, people fitting that description bit the dust in strange and unusual ways. Maybe he had an undiagnosed lung condition? Or a jaded ex hungry for revenge?

My vision didn’t reveal either of those things. Instead, it showed him on his knees in a windowless room beside a leather sofa, blood gushing from his neck like water from a spout. With a liquid gurgle, he pawed at his own throat and then slumped face-down onto a diamond-patterned rug, feet twitching.

And standing over him, slaughtering knife in hand, was…me.

Back in the bar, my hands clung onto the table. Who was this guy? Where did the encounter take place? And why the hell would I kill somebody?

A sensible voice in the back of my mind told me to walk away—to bolt straight out the door. If anybody else tried that ‘baby doll’ line they’d have received a rude gesture in response.

But I needed answers. So I forced a smile and looked up.

“Buy you a drink?” the man asked, one eyebrow raised.

Peter had a slender nose, brown hair, and dark eyes. A handsome guy, no doubt. He worked as a lawyer—youngest partner in his firm’s history—and his favorite subject was…himself. That suited me. I gave him a fake name which he probably forgot ten seconds later.

“You look familiar,” he said after his third whiskey. “Have we met before?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Must be thinking of someone else.”

While he joked with the regulars and announced ‘another round on me’ to a chorus of cheers, I studied his every move, half-expecting his taste in beer or how generously he tipped to reveal why he deserved a death sentence.

“Wanna come back to my place?” he asked when the bartender called last round.

I should have made up some half-assed excuse and slipped away, but there had to be some vital information I’d missed. Maybe Peter moonlighted as a serial killer? If so, didn’t I have an obligation to investigate?

Now intoxicated, he drove us over to his place in a fancy blue Porsche. The plan was simple: stick around long enough to discover whatever dark secret he harboured, then leave. No matter what. If anything suspicious turned up, I’d notify the police. That way, there’d be zero risk of any trouble.

After all, how hard could not slitting somebody’s throat be?

Peter led me along the front hall and down a narrow staircase. As the basement door swung open, a yelp slid up my throat.

We’d entered the room from the vision. Maybe I’d come to meet my destiny.

Placing a hand against my back, Peter steered me past the diamond-patterned rug, toward a home bar cast in warm red light by a neon Budweiser sign. From beneath the counter, he grabbed a chopping board and a sharp kitchen knife—the same one future me butchered him with. My eyes stayed glued to the blade while he cut lime slices and poured out tequila shots.

We had a toast before moving to the fancy leather sofa where my companion pounded back beer after beer. I nursed mine, staying sober and in control.

He managed an entire hour of shameless boasting before his head slumped forward against his chest.

The pieces had all fallen into place: the knife, the rug, the defenseless victim. Yet I saw zero reason to hurt Peter. It’s a miracle my giant sigh of relief didn’t startle him awake.

Take that, dumb visions. You lost. It was time to leave.

However. A quick look around couldn’t have hurt anybody, could it?

There was no hidden torture chamber behind the bookshelf, just guides on the art of seduction, and the freezer didn't harbour any severed heads, only frozen salmon and shrimp.

In a cramped office on the first floor, I rummaged through desk drawers, and right when it felt like this had all been a gigantic waste of time, my eye happened across a pile of newspaper clippings. The first headline read, TWO DEAD IN HIGHWAY HIT AND RUN. Beside it was a familiar image: the wreckage my parents died in…

My hands frantically tore through the pile. In total, Peter had collected seventeen articles about the collision and subsequent investigation. Beneath them, there sat an envelope with a name scribbled across the front. My name.

A sensible voice in some quiet recess of my brain begged me to walk away—to forget what I’d seen and go.

I waved the thought aside, took a slow, steady breath, and tore open the wrapper.

The letter began with:

Dear Ciara, there is something I must confess. On the night of your parent’s death, I was driving drunk along...

Those words dragged me back to the accident, caused me to relive the sensation of the seatbelt pinning me in place while Mom and Dad’s bodies ricocheted off the dashboard, the roof.

Peter killed my parents. I’d found his confession.

The letter explained how he’d avoided prison; since he stemmed from a wealthy family—his father had been mayor at the time—some powerful friends torpedoed the investigation. He heard I’d survived and considered reaching out over the years. The poor guy even spent ‘countless nights’ agonizing over what happened and felt ‘filled to bursting point with regret’.

Clearly, not quite 'full' enough to mail the letter. He’d written it to clear his conscience, nothing more.

In an almost trance-like state, I returned to the basement.

Peter snored away on the sofa. Only vaguely aware of my own actions, I circled the bar, grabbed the knife, and positioned myself behind my parents’ murderer. His foul whiskey breaths fogged up the blade.

My hands started trembling. Did I really want to go through with this? Did he really deserve to die? Is it what Mom and Dad would have wanted?

I quietened the bickering voices, closed my eyes, and took a slow, steady breath.

No. Two wrongs would not make a right. Better to take the letter and report the son of a bitch. Would this accomplish much? Unlikely. It sure beat the alternative, though.

I started toward the door.

I'd taken less than five steps when Peter stirred. “Hey, you’re not leaving alre—what’s that?”

By the time I spun around, he’d already found his feet. Those brown eyes whipped between me and the letter. “Why have…where did…”

Of all the potential excuses that came to me, zero made sense. When it finally dawned on Peter where he recognized me from earlier, his face turned whiter than the paper confession, his mouth going wide with shock. Most likely he saw a resemblance to an old family photo published after the accident.

His hands shot up in a submissive gesture. “Okay. Calm down.”

Holding the knife out defensively, I snorted a quick, “Fuck you.” The nerves in my leg went wild with terrible, burning sensations.

While I shuffled backward toward the stairs, Peter said, “Listen…Ciara, there isn’t a day goes by—"

“Don’t. Don’t you fucking dare.”

He swallowed a lump. “I’ll make this right, I promise. Why don’t you put the knife down and we’ll talk?”

The suggestion this could get 'talked out' made me snort. I said, “Go fuck yourself. I’m taking the letter. Along with your little scrapbook upstairs.”

“Was this your plan all along?” he demanded, his self-pity giving way to anger. “Get me drunk then snoop around? How long have you been planning your little heist?”

Still traveling in reverse, I cut the air, forced him a half-step back. The knife felt good in my hand. Powerful.

“Don’t be stupid. None of this would hold up in court. Give me the knife, then we can work things out like two—”

Completely terrified and barely able to form a cohesive thought, I almost obliged. Until a horrible image of the bastard picking his bruised, swollen head up off a steering wheel slid into my brain. I pictured him slowly uncover my parents insides spread out across twenty metres of asphalt before racing home to call his dad, who called the chief of police…

“—rationale adults. I…I’ll give you money. Or jewellery. A new car? Whatever you want, just—”

With renewed confidence, I said, “The only thing I want, Peter, is to see you in an orange fucking jumpsuit.”

My heel hit the bottom step. In the brief moment my eyes flicked backward, the bastard lunged.

“I’ll fucking kill you,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

His hands clamped around my wrists, tight enough the fingertips plunged into the skin. We wrestled around the room, collapsing shelves and slamming against the bar once, twice. My parents’ smiling faces flashed before my eyes, accompanied by thoughts about how this might be the final time I’d ever disappoint them. After he murdered me Peter would no doubt call his father, who’d hire two goons to dump the body…

Both of us flew sideways on a collision course with the sofa. For a moment the world flushed upside down. We hit the floor, hard, the knife landing mid-way between us on the rug. We fumbled for it, me shaking from the panic and adrenaline, him struggling to regain equilibrium.

In one smooth movement I snatched the blade beyond the bastard’s reach, readjusted my grip, and then plunged the pointy end into his throat. As my hand yanked it loose, the thin blood trickle morphed into a furious spray. Some even got inside my mouth, disgustingly warm.

Peter tried to speak although no words came out. Only a pathetic, wet gurgle. He flopped forward, tongue draped over his chin. And just like that I found myself standing over a corpse.

In retrospect, it probably shouldn’t have come as such a surprise.

Repulsed by my red palms, I retreated toward the bar and slid to the floor, breathless. I began convulsing, rocked myself back and forth, bile sliding up my throat. I felt ill, and not only from the tequila.

By the time I’d regained composure, a clock above the bar said 6 AM. Somebody could have walked in at any moment. There'd be time for remorse later. First, I needed to cover my tracks.

Under my feet the rug, having absorbed most of the blood, squelched as I raced around wiping down every surface. After gathering together all articles about the accident, I departed on foot and ditched the knife in a dumpster several miles from the crime scene, then I rushed home to read the confession once more before burning it, along with Peter’s treasure trove of misery.

The next few days passed in a whirlwind of alcohol and tears. As a politician’s son, my victim made the front page; authorities appealed for anybody with information to come forward.

Funny how Mom and Dad never warranted such special consideration…

After two weeks of rage, regret, and hysteria, I’d almost reached the point of confession. Until something unexpected happened, that is.

Reports emerged of multiple drunk driving incidents involving Peter where the injured parties got paid off or threatened into silence, along with more assault allegations reporters could keep up with. Turns out, Daddy had been buying that slimeball out of trouble for two decades.

Gradually, the guilt haze looming over me since the night my parents died evaporated. The visions no longer felt like a burden—they were a blessing. One that dispensed justice.

After the investigation wound down and people lost interest in the story, I treated myself with a celebratory trip to the beach. All those happy families reminded me of my parent’s final day, when Dad and I spent hours building a huge sandcastle with its own drawbridge, Mom sunbathing nearby.

While I stood ankle-deep in the water, lost in thought, a mother shuffled past carrying her infant daughter. A dishevelled man trailed after them, far enough away so as not to appear suspicious.

There came another vision. In it, the mother and child sat back-to-back, tied up together in a bug-infested apartment, their jaws encased with duct tape.

The grinning man hunched over them, his right hand caressing the terrified girl’s cheek.

A baseball bat connected suddenly with the back of his skull, which made him faceplant onto the wooden floor with a resounding thud.

I’ll give you three guesses who took that swing…

Back on the beach, I watched all three disappear along the coastal path, conflicted. Going after them meant playing right into the vision’s hands, not to mention cutting my celebration short.

But then again, could I really pass up another opportunity to make my parents proud?