Risk Taker
By Rosencrantz -- Rated PG
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I'm the risk-taker. Oh, you scoff, but that's who I am. I may have a real name, like Frank, Bob, or Malcolm, but in the end that is who I am.
Why am I calling myself that? Because I take risks. Lots of them.
Why do I take risks? Because they won't kill me. Heh. I can see it in your eyes, you've figured out I'm not normal. Your first thought is probably that I'm invulnerable, or immortal. Buzz, wrongo. I can't even heal faster then normal. What I can do, however, is know when I'm going to die to the exact day. Don't know how, it might even be by one of my little 'risks' that I love so much.
How long do I have? Fourteen years.
How old am I? Fifteen. Whatta kicker, huh? At least I know I've got fourteen years to have fun. Or maybe tomorrow I'll do something that puts me in a coma and I'll be a vegetable for fourteen years until they give up and unplug me.
Or maybe I'll die at the grand age of 29 with a wife and child. I think I prefer the other one...no one would really be attached to me by then. No one would be really hurt. Well, maybe in the beginning...
Oh wait. How do I know when I'm going to bite it? I see lifelines. No, not the "Who Wants To Be A F***ing Millionaire" ones, the actual thing. How long you're going to live, no if ands or buts. Kind of neat, but really freaky. I saw an entire group of people getting on a bus that had identical cut-offs...the bus crashed that day you know. Big news in our town. I wanted to run screaming into the hills. Why? I knew it was going to happen...and I didn't even try to stop it. Why again, you ask? I wouldn't have been able to do a thing about it even had I given them the exact second.
I've tried it before you see. And the person still died. Not the way they probably would have, but they still did. If it doesn't happen one way, it will happen another, to quote my father whom I both adore and despise for this ability.
Am I mutant? You tell me. I never figured it out...seems to be a talent from my paternal side. Always the same from person to person. Never any different. Aren't mutations supposed to vary? I could be anything...a descendent of one of the fates, even. Actually, that sounds pretty neat. I could be part god. Or maybe I'm just a nice little freak of nature that should shut up now.
Continue? Okay. I've seen a lot of interesting lifelines. I've seen one that meant the person would live more than a thousand years and I've seen one that ended seconds after it started. I was looking at my aunt for that one, she was pregnant and I could see the lifeline for the kid inside. She miscarried. Her thread ended a year or so after that, did you know? I still miss her.
Why do I take risks, you ask again? Because I'm going to die far ahead of the long life so many people have...I'm going to die just before my prime. I'm taking all the energy, the life, everything I can before this happens. Even if it's jumping off the roof of the Empire State building (makes me wonder how I'll survive. I'll probably make the news or something similar. Go down in history, true immortality).
It's actually very freeing to know when you'll die...but it's also like being trapped in a cage of your own making. You've only got so long to do so many things, a deadline if you'll excuse the pun. Do you know how sad it is to know that your best friend is going to die before his sixteenth birthday? And if I tell him, all he'll do is laugh at me, thinking it's another one of my mindgames. I'm unkind to him enough already, he doesn't understand why I love to take risks, to roll under moving trains when they block my way, or
skateboard down a flight of steps. He'll never understand. He'd tell me: "Change your fate! Be careful, thwart it!" Amusing words from a boy who once climbed the height of our school on a wobbly drainpipe.
You know what the first thing my father said to me when I was little and asked him what those lines I saw with everyone was? (Okay, they aren't exactly lines, but that has always worked best as an explanation. This was asked around the same time I was wondering what hair was, what nails were, and why did we have two eyes instead of three?) He told me what they were and what they signified. And then he said to never bother to defy them. Guess he figured out the hard way that it never worked too.
...
Hmm, sorry, forgot you were there for a moment. Do I know when you're going to die? Yeah. But I'm not going to tell you. It'd be like saying the ending of a movie that you've never seen, or telling you the conclusion of a book you're reading. Takes the spice out of it.
How would you react if I told you that you had eighty years ahead of you? Oooh, nice big grin. Now, if I were to say that you'd be dead by this time tomorrow...
Oh, didn't like that. See? That's the reason I won't tell you, so stop asking. I'm made for this sort of thing, I like risks. I'm made for being a risk-taker. Not you...you seem more like the popcorn-and-late-night-movie kind of guy. Now, I've told you my life story, so why don't you tell me why your eyes and hair are glowing, hmm?
End.
Notes after the fact: This story was good enough I willingly read it outloud. It also got me feedback from one of my favourite authors. I was extremely pleased. This story was actually always meant to be an entry into another story I always meant to write.
I did not, however, ever get around to it.
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