10, the number I hated the most. It’s the day of my birth as well as my age when my life took its first and biggest twist. A simple vision which I had that one winter night, a vision of an accident which still gives me trauma unknown to me that this vision would be reality.

For what I remember, it was exactly 15th of October. That day, the accident that took away my only cousin happened. It left me with this scar that scares me to this day. I still question “Why? Why did I have that dream? Why did she have to be the victim? Why couldn’t I save her? Why!?”

Soon after a few months, it happened again. This time it I chose not to go outside the entire month and till the possibilities of what I saw ended. To avoid going to school, I lied to my parents for the first time. I told them I was really sick. My parents most likely had noticed that I was lying, but they played along to my lies.

In that dream I saw some kind of diverging road for what I knew. Nearby was a hospital and a big one at that. Before I knew what was happening, all of a sudden everything got enveloped in bright red, orange and yellow lights of fire. I could hear the screams of people inside the building, see the terror in the eyes of the people outside the building, loud sirens of fire trucks and panicked movement of the firefighters trying to rescue the people trapped inside the building, crowds of people gathering in front of the hospital, ambulances taking several injured people to other hospitals among them some dying before they could be put in the ambulance.

I saw everything happening in front of me. All that was left after the 7 hours long fire was a burned down hospital, corpses of people who tried to jump out of the window to escape the fire. People who lost their limbs. Some even losing their will to live. A nightmare I was forced to endure.

It was after two whole months of having that horrible nightmare that I got the courage to go back outside once again. I was naïve to think that the dream I had could not be true.

That very night, in the news, I saw that very hospital burning. The news reporter saying that the reason behind the burning of the hospital was still unknown.  I almost puked seeing that but I somehow managed to hold it in. For a normal child it might have been unbearable, but it was not the case for me. I have already witnessed a tragedy. That day I knew that me being outside was the root of the calamities I see in my dream.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

         It’s been seven years since then. I told my parents about my condition and got checked up by several doctors, psychiatrists, therapists and many more I can’t remember the first three years when I was still living in India. Some treated me it as me being psychologically ill and some as a child’s delusions.

            Unable to make others understand my situation, one day I made a request to my father. My parents were the only ones who took what I said seriously. I still truly feel blessed to have such amazing parents. But when it came to requesting things, I always went to my father. He was a calm and understanding person.

            “Papa, I have a request I want to ask.” I said.

            “Yes, what is it?” He said in his soothing voice.

            “Can we leave somewhere far away where nobody knows me.”

            I was most likely 11 and half or maybe 12 years old when I asked this request from my father. If it were any normal parents, they would most likely refuse without a second thought. Mostly because it would hard for them to get a new job, a new place to live, and most importantly, get used to their new surroundings. But my father was quite different. He accepted my request immediately and I could see a sense of happiness in his face. We later talked it out with my mother and she agreed.

            So, we planned to leave immediately after my final exams are over. After a week of my exams being over, we left for the Miyagi Prefecture in Japan. Somewhere there I found out that my father owns a three-story house. It was there I found out that my parents met here. Both were foreign students attending the same university. They were if totally different courses but they still met every day. How did this start? I dunno. They always get flustered whenever I bring out this topic and refuse to tell me anything. After a few attempts, I just gave up.

            Yeah, so where was I, oh right. After coming to Japan, I completed my studies in a nearby middle school and after that refused to go to high school.

            It was around then that I stopped going outside unless a certain someone would drag be out of my house.

            This change of fate is something I still cannot understand and most likely will never understand. For what I know, the flow of time is will most likely betray me once again.