The first day of the rest of my life

 I nodded at him in my review as he walked backwards facing me toward his house. I drove off fast, toward the bridge. If this was gonna happen it had to happen today. I couldn’t take it anymore. I went nearly a hundred and got there in five minutes.

There was a small dirt patch for parking on the bridge off the side of the road. I got out of my car slowly, I’d left a thousand dollars in on my bed, and my mom would find it when she got home at five. Even though it didn’t begin to cover the expensive treatments, medicines, and doctors it would have to make do for now. I stepped to the edge of the bridge; I looked down at least a seventy foot drop. I stared at the river below so calm and serene, I walked over to my car and reached into my glove compartment, I grabbed a bottle of my mom’s sleeping pills and popped three of them into my mouth. I sat on the hood of my car waiting for the pills to make me drowsy and then I would jump. I thought back throughout the years, back to when I first told my mom, what was happening. She just laughed at me, but then came the nightmares, and then the things I said started coming true.

Then she got scared, she started calling family, who started calling doctors, who started giving me meds. I was so drugged up I could barely function. Then there was the electroshock, after that I gave up, I was twelve when I spoke up and fourteen when I went silent. I didn’t say a word about it for a year, spent most of that time in a special after school program. Then I figured I would say everything worked and I was back to normal, but no one believed me. Since then I’ve been on antipsychotics and have had therapy every Tuesday for the last five years of my life. I felt kinda sleepy, but not quite enough yet. My phone started buzzing, I debated whether or not to answer it, but my curiosity got the better of me. It was Drew, my shrink. Of all the people I could have wasted my words on it was Drew. I threw the phone onto the ground; Drew couldn’t help me anymore anyway. He was gonna have a heart attack on Tuesday right before our session. I felt really tired now, so I figured this is it, now or never. I walked or sort of stumbled to the edge of the bridge and looked down. I sensed it before I saw it, a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye.

 I turned around still dangerously close to the edge of the bridge. They were standing there watching me, a little boy barely older than ten holding a shot gun, with his dad. They were watching me from the other side of the rode where the forest begins, their faces white. The weather was warm, but breezy. The man called out to me “son just step forward towards me.”

He set his shotgun down and motioned for me to come, he started walking real slow toward me. I took a step back; of all the things that could have stopped me he wasn’t going to be one of them. I turned around to look at where I stood and when I looked back there it was, hovering over him, breathing. Most times they looked just like Auras barely visible unless the time was approaching, but his was in its true demonic form, teeth bared, staring at me with hollow eyes. It was gray, and hovered over him; it stared at me and wrapped its long fingers around the man’s neck, stroking it.

The man was going to die today; I started breathing hard, and choking. Very few times had I seen the demon ones, the gray wisps I could handle, but the pointy teeth, the hollow eyes and choked breathing? I looked deep into the hollow eyes and discovered him and the boy were going to die today in a hunting accident. Neither of them was wearing bright vests. How could I warn them, they would think I was crazy like everybody else? Unless?  If I jumped it would create the perfect distraction to lure them away from the woods. The man crossed the street slowly toward me; I could always do this later, I had to save the little boy and his dad from the horror of death. “I won’t if you promise me to go home and call for help.” I shouted. “I, I, if that’s what you want I’ll do it. Jimmy! Run home and call for help.” The boy stood there apparently frightened by the idea of what I was doing. “Now son now!” he shouted and at that Jimmy took off running. The man edged closer to me and the shadows grip began to loosen on his neck. The shadow turned to me and screamed, snapping its sharp teeth in my direction. The man walked closer and closer and finally the shadow let out one more blood curling scream before admitting defeat and vanishing.

I let out a sigh of relief, I knew I had not changed much, but maybe since they knew I was in the area they would relax on the man and his son. The man got to the edge of the road, and motioned for me to come. I had to keep my promise or the man might forever be tormented by my untimely death.  I stepped forward slowly across the street, dizzy from the sleeping pills. I stumbled forward and fell to my palms.

The man started forward, but I put out a hand to halt him, I would go over and explain I wasn’t really going to jump, so he would feel the need to explain this to any authorities. I tried to get up, but found I couldn’t. The ground vibrated beneath me and I realized right before the bridge was a blind corner, and a car was coming, like most around the corner too fast. I tried to sit up, but couldn’t get my balance right.

My mom suffered from severe insomnia, she once told me her sleeping pills were enough to tranquilize a horse, and I had taken three. I finally stood and took a step forward, when I looked to my left and saw a timber truck headed straight for me I paused, the man darted forward but he hesitated as he realized it was too late, there was no time to knock me out of the way. In the five seconds before the crash I stared at the driver in the truck and realized he had a shadow around him and it was going to be my fault. I couldn’t let them win. The trucker started too honk, I turned to stare at the man pleading with me to step away, but instead I jumped backward and over the ledge. The sounds of air rushing through my ears and the taste of my last breaths before I plunged into the river below were the last things I let my mind linger on…