I can’t remember when it started, I’ve had this ability for as long as I can remember. It started small. I could see a few seconds into the future, and although these flashes were random, they were occasionally useful. I could avoid dropping a plate, or someone opening a door while I was standing in front of it. A lot of the time though, the flashes weren’t really helpful, they just… were. I used to try to convince my parents that I had this ability, that stopped when I was around 5 or 6. They, of course, thought that I was just a kid with a large imagination. I realized that my ability wasn’t normal. That I, was different. I was alright with that. After all, it was pretty cool to be able to see a flash of the future, right?
As I grew older, I began to be able to see further. First a minute, then two, three, five. By the time I was 14 the flashes would let me see over ten minutes into the future. The flashes were never long. They were just that: flashes. You know how sometimes you have a thought, and that thought encapsulates an entire idea? You just have an entire idea in a flash; a single quick thought? These flashes were like that. Around the time I turned 15 I could on occasion control when a flash would occur. It didn’t always work, but sometimes, sometimes it did.
I started to manipulate this to cheat on tests. If I didn’t know the answer to a question, I would wait until about 5 minutes before the test ended, then I would try to look ten to fifteen minutes into the future, having already planned to google the answer to a question once that point in time arrived. I could of course not always control the flashes, but when it did work, it was quite useful. My friends always thought I was weird for googling the answers to questions after the test was over. I didn’t mind. Though I could not tell them the reason I did it, because, well, you understand.
Anyway, my control over my ability kept becoming greater. I could control how far to look into the future, there was a limit on it of course, but I could look far enough. I could almost fully reliably use my ability. Random flashes started to become increasingly rare.
When I turned 17, I could look weeks into the future. I didn’t really know how I would be able to make this very useful yet, but I had no doubt I would figure out a couple ways. You might think it would be easy to use this ability to your benefit, but there is a problem: No one can change the future. The actions I take, will always lead to the future I saw. I found that out when I tried to cheat on a biology test one time, and I instead saw myself in the supermarket with my friends. Then, when the test was over, I actually forgot to check the answer, and went to the supermarket with my friends.
One day, while having breakfast, I had a random flash. I hadn’t had a random flash in months. In the flash, I was in my bed, late at night. There was a pain in my chest, and screaming from my parents’ room. I… didn’t want to believe what I saw. So I went back, looked into the future to that exact moment. And to my horror, it showed the same thing. A person at the foot of my bed plunging a knife into my chest, and my parents screaming. This couldn’t be real. For the first time I could remember I didn’t believe a vision of the future. No… that’s wrong. I just deluded myself into thinking that it wasn’t real. Maybe I was seeing a nightmare? Yes. That must have been it. I was seeing a flash of myself having a nightmare.
But I couldn’t delude myself forever. So, a week before the date that it would happen. I looked 5 minutes before the incident, 10 minutes before, half an hour before. And it all pointed to one conclusion: It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real. Myself and my family are going to get murdered. I… had to do something. You might think that it would be easy: just get yourself and your family out of the house, right? But I knew it wouldn’t be that simple. So… I went on the internet and hired some people to come and I suppose protect my house that night. It sounds ridiculous, I know. But I wasn’t thinking very clearly, and I had to think of something convoluted, something that would elude the future. Something that could trick the passing of time to avoid my fate.
But now, laying in my bed the night that it’s supposed to happen, I’m not so sure anymore. The website that I hired these people from was a little shady, though I had brushed it off at the time. But then why was there a strange noise coming from the front door? I tried, I really did try to convince myself that it was nothing. However, deep down, I knew that wasn’t true. After all: No one, can change the future.