A TCP
By Pamela "Hutch" Thalner

The TCP concept is courtesy of Kielle and Phil Foster. Mutants are Marvel's idea, but the characters in this story are mine. This one's a bit of a downer, so I apologize in advance. Kielle of course may archive; anyone else, just ask. (Two fics from me in the space of one week? I think the world is coming to an end...)

Rated: PG for mild language.

Feedback is welcomed openly at hutch @ jazmer.com. No MSTing, please; Pop-Up is okay, though.

I'm going to die. I know that it's going to happen. The damn seatbelt's stuck and the car won't go and the semi's coming towards me and the driver can't see me and I'm going to die.

This is why.

When I was about eleven, I sat around in a circle with my friends and we played a game of Truth or Dare. I think it was a slumber party. Anyway, I said 'truth' and Emmy asked me what power I'd want to have if I was a mutant and I said I wanted to be precognitive.

I was always reading books about people with special powers and stuff, you know like you get from the reading clubs in school? And like there was one with this guy and this girl whose moms both had some weird medicine when they were pregnant with the guy and the girl, and so the guy and the girl had weird powers and saw aliens or something -- I think, I don't remember for sure now. It was supposed to be like thalidomide, I learned later. Like a way cooler version of thalidomide, so instead of doing horrible things to the kids it gave them neat powers.

Or there were the creepy-neat books by that lady, I can't remember her name, Lois Duncan? The one I remember is where the girl was a precog and her sister danced and her brother was a musician, they all had special gifts because of their grandmother. Anyway, she wrote a bunch of other books too, but that was the one that really got me the most, and ever since I'd read it I thought: that's what I want to be.

So I said I wanted to be able to see things before they happen, and everyone else giggled and thought it was silly and then I dared Tracy to run around the outside of the house in her nightgown, and we forgot about it.

See, this is why I thought it would be cool: you know who's on the phone before you answer. You know if you're going to have a pop quiz in school so you can study ahead of time. You can tell if there's going to be a line at the grocery store, so you know when to go, or you know if there's an accident on the highway so that you can take another route before everyone else finds out.

How many little girls' wishes come true?

Mine did.

Except, of course, it wasn't nearly as cool as I thought it was. Because first I got these really horrible headaches, migraines, and I wouldn't be able to keep anything in my stomach and I couldn't have any light because it hurt my eyes so bad. And then after the migraines finally started passing -- I was thirteen -- I got mindsplitting visions instead of migraines. They hurt almost as bad, except they didn't have the same results. But the teachers started getting mad when I fell out of my chair in class, or things like that.

Amy, my sister, pointed out this year that they were kind of like the visions Doyle got on Angel, before they killed him off. Which might have helped, since Glenn Quinn's hot, but it didn't really make me feel much better. See, they didn't come out the same. I'd actually see everything exactly as it would happen, without having to piece together the mystery -- and like as not the vision would be something completely ordinary. Like I'd see myself walking out of the classroom in half an hour, which, big whoop. Who couldn't see that coming?

And did you know that time isn't as neat as people seem to think it is? Actually, I don't think a lot of people think about it. Except the people who are really smart, and even they don't know. See, I'd see stuff that *might* happen. Not definitely, kind of like a multiple-choice quiz -- do this, this happens; do that, that happens. Sometimes things were set in stone -- like duh, everyone knew Jeremy Breakstone was going to dump Angela Lieder, that was inevitable. But a lot of the time, things weren't.

Except for this thing right now.

My name's Sue Potterman. I'm eighteen years old, and I know exactly when and where and how I'm going to die. My car's in great shape, but something's going to happen to make my dad forget to do something to it -- brake fluid or oil or something, I'm not sure. And it's going to go out of control on the highway. I'm not going to be able to get out of the car because my seatbelt will get jammed, and the semi that's bearing down on me won't see me because it's too dark, and wham. That'll be it.

I keep trying to re-analyze it and see it from every angle. I try to imagine myself nagging my dad about making sure everything's good in the car; I even try doing it myself, but I'm really not that knowledgeable about cars and I don't have a whole lot of time to learn.

See, it's happening tomorrow.

So this is where I say goodbye, and how much I'll miss everyone and all the things I never got to do.

But don't feel too bad for me.

At least I know it'll be over quickly.

Love, Sue.

FIN

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this page last updated on 18 january 2003