Because
Matthew Ryan Fischer
“Because I said so…”
And so it was and so it happened. Evan blinked. Had he rewritten
reality? How could he tell? Things were what they were. They were always that
way. Weren’t they? If things had changed, would he have changed along with it,
memories and all? If so, then he would never know. He would have no way of knowing
if he had the power to do what he thought he did. If he wanted it to happen,
then it would have happened. But he would be rewriting reality, including
himself. A wish or a demand would be too dangerous to have. There was no
telling what he might accidentally change along the way, but he’d never know
and never be able to know what to turn back.
“I wish you were dead…”
She didn’t mean it. Not really. It was the last thing Alice said out
loud. Her mother suffered a ruptured aneurysm and collapsed in front of her. She
was dead before the medics could arrive. Alice didn’t want her mother to die.
She hadn’t meant it; she had just been angry. But it had happened. Some might
have thought it was a coincidence, but not Alice. Alice was sure she had done
it. She had thought it, said it, and it had happened. She could not be allowed
to speak again. She couldn’t trust the things she might say. She wrote notes to
the medics and the police but otherwise she sat in silence. A child
psychiatrist tried to examine her for trauma, but Alice had already made up her
mind. She wouldn’t risk the potential calamity.
Michael liked to read and imagine the stories were real. He wondered
if he would ever meet one of the characters he dreamt about. If he did, would
they know him? Would the know it was his imagination that had made them real?
Maybe they would recognize him from a dream. He liked that idea. There was symmetry
to it. He dreamed them and they dreamed about him. Who made whom? It was a perfect
circle.
Pencil to paper. There were stories to tell. Worlds to created. Worlds
to end and people to kill. Perhaps one or two of them might even feel it
coming.
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