Writer Wednesday #11: Seventh Sanctum

On my blog, I am doing a new 'event' called Writer Wednesdays. I post a prompt and others(including me) write something based on that prompt.

Luke was not a bad man.  He had been born with the sight; it was not as if he had had a choice in the matter.  Many had called him a charlatan, a faker.  Others had also called him an abomination, unholy.  There were few that felt he had been truly blessed, that God had given him this gift for a reason.

Poor Luke had recently been the victim of some teenagers that lived in the apartment complex near his own small house.  Everyone in town knew he had the sight, and would either treat him like a holy man, a liar, or the Devil.  Luke was certainly not the Devil, but he was also no angel.  After the hoodlums took a baseball bat to his car, he decided to do something he had never done before.  To tell them their future, only it would be a lie.  He saw it as a mean prank, but he was justified; it wasn’t as bad as him taking a bat to their heads like they had done to his poor old Ford.

Luke had shook his fist at them as they ran off, shouting “Listen here, you little s***s!  You’ll get what’s coming to you, and not from me!  I see only blood and death in your futures!”  They had actually looked amongst themselves in a terrified manner, picking up the pace and running even faster; Luke thought this was funny s**t.

The sight was very unpredictable.  He actually saw nothing of the boys’ futures, but he could tell you that the woman getting out her car was about to get a promotion.  When she would enter her home to tell her husband the news, she would find him making love to the young lady that worked at the Quik Trip.  Life’s a b***h like that.  But Luke could not be held responsible for what happened next.  He really had seen nothing of the boys’ futures; he had told a flat out lie to scare them.

A mere two days later, the boys went to the amusement park a few towns over for some fun, and to carry out a little bit of minor vandalism.  The amusement park was known for its fantastic roller coaster.  So everyone was shocked when it derailed in mid-loop, traveling about 80 miles per hour, crashing to the ground and killing its only three passengers for that session: the three boys who had beat up Luke’s car.

The woman with the promotion and cheating husband told authorities what she had heard Luke yelling after the boys and he was of course brought in for questioning.  Luke explained that it had been an empty threat, to scare the boys.  Many thought this was downright cruel.  Some thought he had made the roller coaster derail, but the sight didn’t work like; he was not telekinetic.  After that day, Luke stopped telling anyone what he saw.  Because he had not seen the tragic future ahead for the boys…

Luke had never thought his powers were either evil or divine.  He had always known they were unpredictable, but before that day he had never known just how unpredictable.  It was then that he decided that maybe the Devil had played some hand in this charade he called ‘the sight.’

Author's Note

My prompt from seventhsanctum.com which inspired this story was as follows: "The theme of this story: dark character study. The main character: scatterbrained psychic. The start of the story: joke. The end of the story: tragedy."