I was assigned to write a short story for my Creative Writing Workshop. I took a flash fiction idea I had abandoned some time ago and revised it. This is what I came up with:
No One Would Believe Him Anyway
Jacob was ten when he realized that
not everyone could see the future. He
had known that he had that ability ever since he could remember, but didn’t
think much about it until that fateful year.
He had thought his ability to know the future was like his sense of
smell or taste; the capability always existed but he only noticed it when
something smelled or tasted really good or really bad. He simply knew things that were going to
occur. He could not control when it
happened. It just happened. But it always happened. Sometimes it was just a little thing, like
knowing the phone was going to ring and who was going to be calling or that his
mom would break a glass in the kitchen.
Other times it was a more meaningful event, like a neighbor’s dog
getting run over by a garbage truck, what he was getting for Christmas, or an
earthquake in India. Though he didn’t
know exactly where India was, other than far away, he could feel the terror and
see the destruction of the quake as if it was in his Brooklyn neighborhood
The mistake he made was telling
someone. One evening, just before
bedtime, he frantically warned his dad not to drive to the 7-Eleven for a pack of
Marlboro's. "You can't go dad! The
man is going to rob it. He has a gun. He
will shoot you. Please, don't go!" Jacob
screamed.
His dad laughed and as he grabbed
his car keys from the cluttered breakfast bar and was walking out the door he
said, "you have a great imagination, Jake.
I will be fine. You can stay up until I get back. I'll bring you some ice cream, chocolate chip?" The
door slammed before Jacob could answer.
Less than an hour later the Korean
store clerk's body was encircled with a chalk outline and his
dad was in an ambulance with a bullet wound in his shoulder and a confused look
on his face. The police were equally
baffled when they apprehended the shooter the next day based entirely on Jacob’s
detailed description; including the license plate number of the getaway car and
the scorpion tattoo on the robber's neck.
His dad, being in shock, much of which was not gunshot induced, could provide little information to the
authorities, but could clearly identify the culprit from a police lineup.
From that moment on, everything was
different. Jacob was talked about on the
news. They used his soccer team picture
in the broadcast. He hated that
picture. It looked like he was picking his nose. Maybe he was. People were calling his house day and night,
wanting to know who would win a ball game or what numbers to pick. No one understood that it didn’t work that
way. Random Images would just appear to
him, as real as life. He had no control
over when or where. It could happen in a
dream, at the dinner table, or in the classroom. Sometimes he would go weeks without a
premonition. Other times they would come
so fast and frequently that it gave him a headache.
The kids at St. Rita's suddenly noticed him, where before he had been happily
invisible. They called him a freak and a
weirdo. One kid, Evan, that he had
thought was his friend stole his Han Solo lunchbox and hid it, saying, "if
you are so smart, you will know where it is." Jacob never found it. But he knew that the boy had an uncle who did
things to him that Jacob didn't even understand but which made him feel sorry
for Evan. Even the teachers, who were
mostly nuns, looked at him warily and he was sure he heard whispered devotions and
saw lots of hurried crossing as they passed by him in the halls. But the worst part was the way his parents
looked at him. It was never the same
again at home. He felt that they
actually feared him. Father O'Shughnessy
once told him in Catechism that
Catholics feared "anything they don't understand." Jacob hoped that mom and dad didn't regret
adopting him.
Mrs. Howard, the school counselor,
was not a nun and seemed more interested in his “gift” than afraid of it. She met with his parents and it was decided
that he would undergo some trials to verify his ability, though she admitted
being skeptical that this type of power (she called it ESP) actually existed.
Jacob was very nervous on the day he
was to be probed.
He didn’t know what sort of exams he was going to be given, but he hated
tests of any kind and just wanted to forget the whole thing. But as his grandpa once said, "You can't put toothpaste back in the tube, son." He thought that was funny but didn't
understand exactly what it meant until now.
For one of the assessments, Mrs.
Howard held up cards with symbols on them; stars, circles, triangles; and he
was supposed to guess which figure was on each card. He knew, just by seeing the look on the
therapist that he was not getting them right.
In fact, he failed all the tests, but he did know that Mrs. Howard’s
heart was going to stop working very soon.
He decided to keep that information to himself. No one would believe him anyway. His
advance knowledge about the shooting was explained away as coincidence or
happenstance. That was fine with Jacob. Mrs. Howard concluded that Jacob was not
gifted with second sight and things at school soon returned pretty much back to
normal. Things at home never did. There was always an uneasiness and his dad
seemed to always have a beer in his hand and his Marlboros were replaced by
something that smelled worse. Life went
on, but not for Mrs. Howard. When his
mom told him that Mrs. Howard had died suddenly, he acted surprised. He had learned to fake a perfect look of astonishment.
That
was twenty years ago. Both Jacob's
parents had died of cancer in the last two years, with no foreshadowing. He was now a successful New York stock
broker, working in an office with an exquisite view of the Manhattan skyline. Though he never learned to harness his
ability, he heeded his intuition enough through the years that he had made some
very successful investments for both he and his clients. A type of insider trading that no one would
ever believe, nor prosecute him for.
When he met Sherry, the first day of
his senior year at NYU, he knew immediately that she was the woman he would
marry. He had learned never to doubt his
insight. He had also discovered that
nothing he could do could change the future.
Life was a story that was already written and any attempts by Jacob to
edit it always failed. The fact that she
was totally out of his league and had absolutely no interest in him did not
bother Jacob at all. He ignored her
right back. They married a week after
graduation.
When Sherry told him excitedly a few
months later that she was pregnant, he had to expertly feign surprise and avoid
letting it slip that it was a boy, Abraham. Jacob's "gift" was the only secret
he ever kept from her. Well, the only
important secret. The facts that he
hated the hideous sweater she bought him for Christmas and a woman in his
office had tried unsuccessfully to seduce him that same Christmas would die
with him.
Sometimes Jacob was amused by the
inevitability of his ability. When he
and Sherry went to Dr. Gobel's office
for her sonogram. Dr. Gobel said, "everything looks fine," and
asked, "do you want to know the sex of your baby?"
"No," Sherry quickly
replied. "I want it to be a
surprise."
Jacob added, "that is fine with
me. She has names picked out for either.
I have no say."
"Yes, Sherry said with a grin. "Esther if it
is a girl and Bradley if it is a boy."
Jacob smiled inwardly. "Her mind is made up."
When she was eight months along, she
excitedly met him at the door as he arrived home from the city, "I want to
name him Abraham, if it is a boy. We can
call him Abe."
"What made you think of
that?" Jacob chuckled.
"I was just thinking what a
strong name it is. I started to hate
Bradley, but still like Esther. What do
you think?"
"I think it is perfect. Abe it is........or Esther," he whispered
as he kissed her. He could almost taste
the happiness on her lips.
Tonight, six year old Abe awoke from
a terrible dream and crawled into bed with his parents, shaking uncontrollably. As Abe related the detailed horror of the
dream, Jacob realized that as he had sometimes suspected, but prayed was not
true, his son shared the burden of premonition.
Jacob had experienced the identical horrible vision that his son
had recounted while looking out his
office window that very afternoon. He
had told his middle-aged assistant, Helen, to take tomorrow off, telling her
only that they had worked hard on the Anderson account and deserved a break.
She started to remonstrate, until he revealed that he, too, was taking a
personal day to spend in his Connecticut home with his wife and son. In all the time she had worked for Jacob,
starting as a temp two years ago, he had never taken a day off, nor offered her
one. She accepted it without
protest. "See you on Wednesday,
boss." Helen hugged him and he
feigned a convincing smile.
Jacob woke early from a fitful sleep
and eased out of bed as not to disturb Sherry and Abe, who had finally dozed
off. He went to the kitchen and poured
himself a cup from Mr. Coffee, strong and black. He sat down at the hardwood desk in his
paneled study. He looked at the blotter
calendar where he had circled today’s date, September 11, 2001. He had not told anyone what was to come. They would not believe him anyway. He sipped his hot Folgers and waited for the
world to change.
