My name is Cassandra and I can see the future. I’m sure some of you are rolling your eyes right now in disbelief, which is the point of my namesake. No one believes me. And like Cassandra of old, I see tragedies.
It took a while before I realized I was different. I couldn’t make sense of my visions at first. They were horrifying. Terrible things flashing before my eyes, like the last slides of an old film as the reel runs out. Then, as I began to understand that these images weren’t reality, I assumed everyone had these strange visions. It wasn’t something you’d ask your parents about, or perhaps I did, and my parents dismissed it as a child’s fanciful ideas until I stopped asking. I don’t remember. I was young.
It wasn’t until my great-uncle died that I realized this wasn’t how the world was. It was my first brush with death. I’d seen it earlier, him flailing at the windows of his house before his struggles trailed off and he succumbed to the smoke and flames consumed him. At the funeral, I listened intently to the adults speak in hushed tones about how abrupt this was. How no one had expected it, how the house was new enough that it shouldn’t have had faulty wiring like that. How they wish he’d remembered to change the batteries to the smoke alarm and woken while there was still time to get out. I heard all these things and thought - but didn’t you know? Didn’t you see?
I learned two things that day. The first was that visions I saw were not just a child’s fancy. They were premonitions of the future - specifically, how the person I was looking at would die. The second was that I was the only one that saw them.
I didn’t learn my next lesson until I was older. I was in fourth grade. I was shy, but that was all. I didn’t have many friends.
There was a boy in my class that would try to climb the maple tree in the playground during recess. The teachers made him get down each time.
One morning I walked into the classroom and as my eyes traveled across the students leading to my desk, I saw him. Lying twisted at the bottom of the tree, his head bent over to touch his shoulder.
I ran to my teacher and urgently told her I had something important to say. In private. We went out into the hall and I told her that he was going to die. Today. While climbing the tree. She seemed upset at what I was telling her and at the time, I interpreted it as she was angry at me for doing something wrong. Now that I am older, I can understand how disconcerting it might be to have one of your students suddenly telling you in all seriousness that someone was going to break their neck and not in an abstract fear, but in a concrete sense that this would happen soon. She told me not to say such disturbing things and we went back into the classroom.
But I was desperate. So I began to tell everyone. The gym teacher. The math teacher. The other students. Finally, I was sent to the principal’s office to ‘calm down’ and while I was there, the bell rang, and my peers went out to recess.
While I sat crying in the principal’s office as he gently tried to explain that there was nothing to be afraid of, my classmate climbed higher than he normally did in defiance of the teachers yelling at him, stepped on a branch that broke, and fell and landed on his neck. It snapped. He died instantly.
None of the other students talked to me after that. They remembered how I had told them that he would die and then he did. The teachers treated me warily. Like I was a snake, waiting to strike. There were sessions with the counselor, my parents were called in, and I began to be bullied in small, subtle ways. Snickering and silence as I went through the hallways. Sodas poured into my locker. It was a relief when my family moved to another state. I could start over.
But by then, I’d learned my lesson. When a student at the new school started treatment for leukemia, I didn’t tell anyone the chemotherapy wasn’t going to save her and her death shocked everyone, who had been futilely hoping she would recover. At least they weren’t angry, though. They didn’t hate me for it. I never again told someone they would die and I suffered in silence, seeing these horrific things and knowing that when I said goodbye to someone, that was the last time I would see them alive.
I suppose my story could end there, with me being the silent and resentful Cassandra, doomed to watch but never able to act.
It doesn’t, though.
A year ago I picked someone up. I was driving for a rideshare app and as soon as he got in the car, I saw a vision of him thrashing in my backseat, body rigid, face red and gasping for air. I could see some of the scenery through the rearview window. It would happen after we got off the highway near his destination. Roughly twenty-five minutes until he had a heart attack and died.
I was anxious as I drove towards the on-ramp. He tried to make small talk but I remained silent, not knowing what to say. It didn’t matter if that would normally affect my rating - he was going to die before he could give it. A morbid thought, I admit. I wanted to scream. Bad enough that I had to see how people would die and couldn’t do anything about it, but now I was going to have someone die in my car, right in front of me.
Unless…
I pulled off a few exits early. He piped up that I’d taken a wrong exit but I said nothing. I just kept driving. His annoyance quickly turned to anger. He berated me. Demanded that I turn around and stop fucking around, and then he demanded that I let him out. Instead, I turned into the drive for the hospital’s ER department and finally stopped the car. He wrenched at the door handle and let himself out, screaming epithets at me. Called me all sorts of horrible names. I waited, heart pounding, hands shaking. There was a cold sweat on my brow. Just five more minutes now, if my estimation was correct. He stalked up and down the sidewalk, face growing redder, cursing and punching furiously at his cellphone. Then, as a security guard was coming out to see what the commotion was, it happened.
He fell to his knees and clutched his chest. The physicians inside were quick to respond and he was wheeled inside. I didn’t stay to see what happened next. I drove away and found someplace quiet to pull over and calm down.
I think he appreciates what I did. I know he lived, because he gave me a perfect rating and the biggest tip the app would allow.
After that I had an idea. Maybe I couldn’t save people by telling them what would happen… but I could still save people.
I still drive for this rideshare app. This time, I have an ulterior motive. I make sure to look at my clients when they get in the car. And rarely - very rarely - I see something.
It isn’t always as simple as the man that had the heart attack. The timing hasn’t been nearly so convenient since then. I have to be smart about it. I take them to where they want to go, drop them off, and leave. Then I write down their starting location and destination. Days, maybe weeks, later I start monitoring those points. Seeing if it is part of their routine. If it isn’t, there isn’t much I can do after that. But sometimes it is.
I follow them. I wait until I have an opportunity. And then I save them however I can.
Sometimes it’s as simple as slashing someone’s tires so they can’t drive to a restaurant as planned. Or a quick trip to the hardware store and then ringing someone’s doorbell, posing as a representative of the city’s home safety commission, handing out free carbon monoxide detectors.
The first time I was nervous, but it was more that I would be caught. I didn’t see them dying of a brain hemorrhage, after all. I saw them dying of a rapidly growing brain tumor they had no idea existed. So I threw a brick at her head and I can only hope they saw something that would clue the doctors off to the tumor’s existence when she went to the ER for a concussion.
The person that was going to drown? I went to the bowling aisle he had his league at and dropped my ball on his hand as he was reaching for his own. I didn’t even have to fake crying, because I was sorry I’d hurt him. But it’s hard to go swimming when your hand is broken. I can only hope that his seaside vacation was spent drinking margaritas safely on the beach.
And the person that was going to die in a ski accident… well, it’s hard to ski when both your legs have been amputated after being struck by a hit-and-run driver.
Sometimes the guilt eats at me. I can hear their screams in my head if I sit still for too long. I don’t want to hurt people. I’m so scared every time I do. Scared I’ll get caught, scared they’ll get away, scared I won’t hurt them in just the right way to circumvent the fate waiting for them. My hands still shake each time, but it only takes a moment of resolve, and then it’s over. For me, at least. The road to recovery is long for the people I save, but at least they will be alive by the end of it.
At least they’re alive.
I guess I’m just stalling by writing this. Working up the nerve to go into the basement and put a nail into the eyes of the person tied up down there. The one I saw driving on a nondescript highway at an unidentifiable time of the year, just before another car swerved into their lane and they lost control and rolled into opposing traffic. Their family was in the car with them.
It’s a horrible thing, seeing how people will die. Seeing their last minutes, the fear and the despair. I’ve lived with it my whole life. Can you blame me, for wanting to do something to stop it? To banish these horrible visions I live with? To save someone, instead of pretending that everything is fine and then going my own way, knowing what I know?
I wish they could understand what I’m trying to do for them. But I am Cassandra and I am doomed as much as my namesake was.
I don’t want your sympathy. I don’t care about your anger. I just want someone to understand.
If our paths ever meet… I’m doing this to save you.