Prompt: Local vixen falls face-first into the infinite number of possible roads her life could've taken.
A moment, frozen forever. A moment spent halfway to the ground, my foot still caught beneath the lip of the last step up into the sun. A moment, frozen forever, while before me stretch out countless possibilities. Do I catch myself with a quick hop upward? Do I fall flat on my face and bang up my nose? Do I reach out my hands and scuff up my pads, stain the black fur of my wrists and elbows red? Perhaps there is a sudden pain and my wrist bends at an unnatural angle — yes, I see that there. I see the call for the ambulance I can't afford. I can see the pain as everything is set again, the ache that continues on from then– No, from one then; there is another then wherein I get a simple surgery to alleviate a pinched nerve. And from there? There is a faint 'and then' wherein I do not wake up from that surgery after an adverse reaction to anesthesia, the end of a thread snipped and melted with a lighter to keep it from fraying.
Time means nothing. It has stopped. It never existed for this me, this me who sees all paths.
And there, behind me, sensed but not seen, are how many other 'but before that's. There is the me who never tripped on the step. There is the me who, tired from the day, took the lift and felt guilty about it. There is the me who, after too little sleep, called out from work, and all of the various paths that her day could have taken. There is the me who never took this stupid fucking job. There is the me who never fell in with this stupid fucking crowd, these stupid fucking friends and that stupid fucking relationship that drained my savings. There is the me who was a good girl, who stayed in school and got a good job and a differently stupid set of friends, who had a differently stupid wife who added to my savings but drained my energy over the years.
There was that better version of me and, in the end, she was no happier than I.
