Fulfill Thyself
Chapter I: Jimmy
It happened on a Friday in January. I know this because when it happened, I was just about to close up shop and was debating whether I’d enjoy the weekend or freeze outside on my walk home first. The snow was only a light flurry as it sparkled past the streetlights that kept the overeager sunset from blinding everyone, but having been born and raised in a more tropical climate, I abhorred the cold. The friends I made here all said I’d grow accustomed to the change one day, but after a year, it still hadn’t happened yet.
I sighed and stood to get my coat, and that was when I heard the tinkle of the bell attached to the door. “Sorry, I’m just about closed now,” I said loudly as I headed to the main lobby. “You can come back on Monday if you want.” When I turned the corner into the room, I found a woman in her thirties holding the hand of a young girl, perhaps only ten years old. Both were bundled in puffy winter coats, both were shivering, and both looked distressed.
“Please,” the woman (who I rightly assumed to be the mother) begged. “We just need one reading. It’s important, and it won’t take long.” I wanted to turn them away and get myself home, but their expressions showed a sadness deeper than I’d seen in a long while.
“I don’t usually read for anyone under 18... she’d have to sit out here if we do one...”
“Please,” the mother begged. “She needs to know, too.”
I couldn’t bring myself to reject them, so I sighed instead. “Okay, one reading. What’s wrong and what do you need to know?”
“Oh, thank you!” the mother exclaimed. She clearly didn’t expect me to say yes, and neither did I, so we had that in common. She nudged her daughter, urging her to speak up. The girl explained. “It’s just... my brother. We were playing in the woods, having a snowball fight, and he slipped. I saw him fall down a hill, but he didn’t come back. I went to look for him, but he was gone. Mommy and Daddy looked, too, but... we don’t know where he is. Can you please help us find him?”
“That’s... that’s not really how it works...” I muttered. I wanted to help, but I didn’t want to give them false hope.
“How does it work?” the mother asked.
Well, I thought, that’s a long story. I thought back to when my life had changed forever, way back when I was a small child. I don’t even remember much at first, but I know I started getting headaches. Migraines, really. Hell, they were torturous nails in my brain, and even that might not be an apt enough metaphor to explain the pain. My parents took me to every physician and neurologist they could afford, but every test came back negative. I had no indication of any known disease, so they all just prescribed painkillers and sent us home every time. The medication helped a bit, but I continued to feel enough pain that it was still a problem. You can imagine how relieved Mom and Dad were when the headaches finally stopped, and they would have considered it a miracle, if shortly after that I hadn’t started babbling about being a ghost.
See, after the migraines ended, the visions began. “Visions” isn’t the most accurate word, since they involve more than just sight, but it’s close. I began to find myself transported to new places, new times, whenever I closed my eyes. It was like a vivid dream that felt real enough to know I wasn’t dreaming, yet no one ever saw me or heard me. A few times at the beginning, I remember shouting in peoples’ faces for them to notice me, but they didn’t. That’s why I thought I was a ghost, invisible and fluttering around. My parents transferred their worries from neurological troubles to psychological ones and took me to see a therapist. The good doctor was sure I was suffering from hallucinations and delusions, which had him concerned that I was schizophrenic. He was ready to prescribe me antipsychotics, and he would have if I hadn’t had the perfect vision.
The first time I’d spoken to Dr. Martin, I told him about when I “was a ghost” and I saw him before, even though I’d just met him. I told him how I’d been in his kitchen and watched him eating dinner alone, and how I’d watched him get a call. He’d put it on speaker so he could eat his pasta and meatballs, and that’s how I’d heard the doctor on the line tell him his wife had been in a serious accident and he needed to get to the hospital. The vision had jumped ahead and I saw him crying over his wife, who had her arms and legs in casts; then the vision ended.
When I told him about this, he of course thought it was all imagination, all hallucinations and delusions. But the week before our appointment in which he would have prescribed the meds, Dr. Martin had been eating his pasta and meatballs, when he’d gotten a call from the hospital...
That was how Dr. Martin realized that I wasn’t ill, I was psychic. Now, he wasn’t one to believe in such things before, but the specificity with which I’d described the encounter and the accuracy I’d attained was too much for him to ignore. He told my parents about it, explained that he couldn’t do anything to help me, and I never saw him again.
The rest of my childhood was spent basically under wraps. If I’d have a vision, my parents would hear me out, but then they’d make sure no one ever knew about it. They wanted me to have a normal life, but that didn’t stop the visions from coming. So when I left home for college, I decided to see if I could control my abilities, and as I learned to focus it more and more on a desired subject, I realized I could do some good in the world (and make some extra money on the side, too). In the end, by the time I’d graduated, I’d opened up my own psychic shop and that became my primary income.
I snapped back to the present and considered the frozen mother and daughter in my entryway. “Come in, my office is back here, and we can get started.” I led the way into my office and sat behind it, my computer’s lock screen glowing dimly on my face.
The two clients sat opposite me. “This... is your parlor?” the mother asked. “It seems so...”
“Not mystical?” I finished for her. “Exactly. Too many charlatans pretend to be psychic, but it’s all theatrics. Turbans and gemstones and red tablecloths with white trim below a foggy crystal ball... it’s all nonsense to swindle customers. I’m not about that. I just try to help when I can.”
“So you can help me find Jimmy?” the little girl asked, gushing with such hope that I could almost feel it washing over me like a wave of illuminated water.
“I... uh...” I didn’t know if I could. “I can definitely try. I don’t see other places in the present, though; I can only see the future. But that might be enough to help. What’s your name, first of all?”
“Reina. And my mom’s name is Danielle.”
“If it’s okay with your mother, Reina, I’d like you to hold my hands, on the desk here, just flat like that.” She looked to her mom, who nodded encouragement, and the girl took my hands. Holding them tightly, I closed my eyes. “Okay, now, tell me about Jimmy and about where you were playing...”
She told me all about her brother, including his hobbies and grades in school. Then she told me about the forest, and the snowball fight, and the accident on the hill. I was almost about to disappoint them as nothing triggered, and then suddenly, I was on that snowy hill. I walked over it, and then walked about thirty feet more, and that’s when I saw the crowd. Police and EMTs were gathered around, and as I walked through them, I saw a young boy lying on the ground in the middle of it all. I’m not a doctor, but I know what frostbite looks like, and I’ve also seen enough dead bodies in my visions to know that Jimmy was one of them. A medical examiner was on the scene, and I heard him say, “Looks like he severed his spine when he fell; several vertebrae are fractured. He probably survived that, but was paralyzed, and being stuck in this weather for two weeks with no food or water or shelter... the cause of death could be starvation, dehydration, or hypothermia, any of them are plausible. I’ll have to examine him more when we bring him in.”
Oh, no, I thought. No, no... this is why I don’t read for kids! Whenever people have important information about the future they just absolutely need to know, there’s a good chance the truth is painful or terrible. Adults can usually handle that, even if they need some time to mourn or deny first. But no child should be subjected to that kind of pain before they have no other choice. And it’s not like I could even tell them this and give them a chance to save Jimmy, either. I’d learned the hard way that my visions always came true. Call it fate, or destiny, or God’s will—whatever you call it, anytime someone tries to change my visions, they end up causing them instead. For instance, maybe Jimmy isn’t actually paralyzed yet. Maybe he’s just lost and injured, but if I tell his mom and sister where he is, they’ll go looking for him. He’ll hear them but not know it’s them, get frightened, and run away. In the process, he’ll slip and fall again, breaking his neck, and a week later, my vision will come true anyway. That’s just one of a million ways things could go wrong, but the point is simple: if I have a vision, it’s going to happen. Period. No other options.
Goddammit, I thought, as I looked down upon the lifeless boy in front of me. The police had gone over beyond the yellow tape perimeter to talk to Jimmy’s family, and I watched Reina and Danielle weep into their hands. I don’t want this to happen... I don’t want Reina to have to know this! She’s just a kid... she needs hope! I wish I could tell her anything else... I begged in my mind, but to who I didn’t know. I imagined that maybe, instead of a week, I was seeing Jimmy there after only one day. And maybe, instead of paralyzed or dead, he just had a broken leg. And maybe, instead of the medical examiner, Reina and Danille had found him and were now joyously helping him home, or to the hospital...
And then, I wasn’t imagining it anymore. I was watching it happen. I was there, a ghost, just like all my visions always had been, except now I was watching Danielle and Reina helping a very much alive Jimmy to his feet. “I’m so glad we found you, Jimmy!” Danielle said as she kissed her son’s forehead. “Me, too!” exclaimed Reina, hugging her brother as he winced a little in pain. They limped away, but I didn’t follow. I was too confused about what had just happened. There was no way both parts of my vision could be true. They couldn’t have found and saved him with a broken leg if he’s found dead with a broken neck a week later. It didn’t make sense. And what are the chances that exactly the thing I wished I’d seen had been real?
And then, without warning, the vision ended, and I was back in my office holding little Reina’s hands. I opened my eyes and saw hers staring desperately back into mine. “Well? Did you see him? Did you see Jimmy?”
“Reina!” her mom scolded. “Don’t pressure him too much...”
“It’s okay,” I said, and I released Reina’s hands. “It’s... I saw something. Actually, I... I saw two things...”
“Two? Can either of them help us find Jimmy?” Danielle was just as desperate to find her son as Reina was to find her brother.
“I... I mean, maybe... I don’t... uh, this vision was unusual. Different from every other vision I’ve ever had...”
“How so?” Danielle was confused, but then, so was I, and I was the one who’d been psychic most of my life.
“I’m not really sure what’s going to happen... it’s like I... like I saw two different possibilities this time. I never do...”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. But what I do know is that it gives me hope. In one of the visions, I saw Jimmy. His leg was broken, but he was okay. I saw you two finding him, tomorrow night, and helping him home. He was hidden in some trees, about thirty feet north of where you saw him fall, Reina.”
“So he’s alive?!” Reina shouted. She turned to her mother. “Come on, Mom, let’s go get him!”
“Thank you,” Danielle said, her eyes welling with tears. “Thank you so much. I can’t pay much, but I can write you a check for what I have, if you—”
I put up a hand and shook my head. “No, please, Danielle, no need. Just let me know when Jimmy is home safe.” Back at the front door to my shop, Danielle shook my hand with both of hers, Reina hugged me tightly, and then they both left, headed out into the cold night together. I closed up shop, for real this time, and as I walked home, I wondered about what had happened with that strange vision.