Not A Moment Too Soon

Chapter 3

Wounds of redemption

A cough escaped my mouth. A cough that begged for air to course through any passage in which I would be permitted the advantage of breath. Coughing a second time to ensure my mind that I was alive, I opened my eyes to see that I was still in the same spot as I had been in before. The same spot that I had sat in after I'd been attacked by a random man I had never known in my life, some man that had felt he needed to release his anger out on somebody because of his girlfriend's issues with loyalty. These were the things we had to deal with as humans, I acknowledged, and I had been the one to suffer some other fool's deserved consequence.

Sitting up fully, and without the pain I had felt when I'd lost consciousness hours before, I easily examined my bloodied shirt. One of my shirt's that had been my favorite at one time, but wouldn't be anymore. I was positive that I should've been upset about what had happened to me, I was past upset, I was irked, couldn't believe that it had happened to me. Yet, I found myself more angry at the fact my new shirt had been torn by the rusty blade of some eight ball's knife.

I had always known I was a magnet for bad karma and attention, I had known that someday I would prove myself correct about everything, but I hadn't known that it would happen twice, and I would get ran over, then stabbed. It was undoubted bad karma, but it was equaled just as roughly with good karma that I hadn't died yet. Only I felt that all of this mostly had to evolve around the fact that I had run into the old lady twice.

In my life, the people that I ran into the most, were the people that had no choice but to give some of their time to me, usually within a certain amount of time, they decided that it was best to stay away. I was a loser in their mind, as well as my own. Losers like myself deserved to be alone, they deserved to get their comeuppance; they included me.

I was getting my comeuppance?

"Glad to see you're not such a hard shell to crack." The words of the older woman reaching me as she stood above me, I looked up at her with a blank expression.

Scratching my head with my bloodied hand that had long ago dried up, I walled my eyes. It would be that just when I was starting to delve into my own mind, she would come out of the blue.

"I bet you are," I said to her dull as I stood. A grunt from distant pain escaping my mouth, I looked down at her once I was at my full height which towered above her.

"What happened this time, Kevin?" she questioned me motherly. I ground my teeth together.

"You could probably tell me that," I snapped back at her my eyes looking both ways before I crossed the street. We were all told to look both ways before crossing the street as children, and cross signs had been invented. Then why when I had crossed, had it just so happened that I was an example of 'Don't trust the cross signs'. Soon my face would be posted up on billborards, and they would state how I had been a reason to not be a crash dummy.

Not sighting the smile on her face after my comment though I knew it was there, I crossed the street and walked up it, her right next to me the whole way. "Don't be angry, Kevin. It's not such a bad thing for your life to be reflected in your eyes."

"Reflected, how?" I questioned her. "Reflected right before I get ran over by something that I can't dodge anyway, reflected when a man steps out an alley and stabs me because of something I'm innocent of?"

"Reflected in how you take everything for granted. You have an oppurtunity that not many are given, and yet you choose to ignore it because you want nothing to do with happiness." Not accepting her words that were true about me, I scoffed loudly.

Here I was, I had no choice but to listen to everything she told me, and she had the nerve to say to me that I didn't want to accept happiness. "Happiness is a relative state of the mind," I voiced out loud for her to sigh. "there's really no such thing."

"Yes, there is," she said countering my words, which had been told to me many times as a child. "Simply because you believe there is no such moment when a person experiences happiness, that does not mean other people haven't experienced it."

Confronted with another cross sign and a light that gave me time enough to cross the street safely, I instead chose to turn right and walk down the block. At the moment, crossing streets weren't exactly the smartest action I would take on my part, it hadn't been the smartest thing I had done anyway. "Are you going to give me a lesson on the difference now?" I questioned her simply.

Stopping suddenly when I noticed exactly where I was, I felt my eyes wander to the older woman on their own accord without my intention. I was in front of my apartment building. One minute, I was on a block bleeding that was far enough from my apartment that I had to take a bus, and now I was in front of it. The odds of my day had never been as effective as they were now.

"Are you going up?" I was asked.

Partially turning my gaze to the older woman, I sighed. "Am I supposed to?" I questioned her.

It was known between the both of us that I didn't want to go up, there was nothing up there for me that I hadn't seen or experienced myself. I had been up there to witness it myself, and though I knew from all my happenings that it was hours later, I could admit to myself that I'd been wrong in the past about things. It had been proved many times before, and now would end up being another one of those times that I'd be wrong.

Sighing again, I scratched my head. "You do know though, that if you go up, I can't tell you what might happen?" she asked me, I looked to her once, then pushed my hands into my pockets, which revealed my cigarettes.

"You didn't before," I answered her easily. Not saying anything else to her about the situation that had to be fixed exactly where it was, I relived one last urge of mine by putting the cigarette in my mouth and lighting it. If I was going to deal with Georgina, I had to have some type of outlet to prevent me from doing something I was too lazy to do.

Walking to the elevator that wasn't far from the door, I pushed the button to open the doors, then entered when I found it was already on the ground floor. I knew that this day hadn't been like any of my other ones, that of course I would always remember it as it had been; a day I had died many times, twice to be exact.

My eyes getting one last look at the old lady before the elevator doors shut closed, I exhaled deeply. This was just another time for me, I was going to die, whether a car was going to come out of nowhere in the building and run me over, or some psychopath jumped out to stab me for a reason I couldn't comprehend, I knew somehow I was going to die again, and possibly remain so this time. If I died, it wouldn't matter much to anyone, my parents would only worry about what insurance they'd receive from my death, and I had long before stopped communicating with my perfectly constructed siblings. The way that they were, they wouldn't have been bothered with the news that I had been hit by a jeep, then pronounced dead.

Quietly anticipating what would become of me as the elevator made it way to my floor, my gaze nervously shifted to my watch that had luckily not broken in the midst of all my accidents. It was alittle past nine, a few hours after I had left the apartment, which definitely meant that Georgina's guest was gone; she was stupid, but not stupid enough to allow the person to over stay their welcome, not in my apartment.

A distant bell type sound heard from my thoughts that I had to pull myself out of, the doors again opened for me as they had when I'd been on the first floor. Only this time, instead of feeling anticipation, or dread as I had before, I felt tired. Tired of everything, tired of this boring life I led, tired of the betrayal I'd dealt with, just damn tired period. There hadn't been a time in my life that I had been more tired than I was now. I was so tired that the thought of changing actually appealed to me... for this second alone.

Sucking on my teeth for a second that lasted forever, I quickly wedged my hand betwen the elevator doors when they would have closed and exited. My apartment door was a few inches in front of me, my future also, and I wanted to just wait for some object to hit me instead of seeing it coming towards me, like I had with the jeep and the knife. My life was damned, and there actually wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

Satisfied with that conclusion about myself, I calmly pushed my key into the lock and opened the door. Greeted by nothing in the apartment when I entered, I listened for any signs of life or people as I closed the door behind me. Not ready to call Georgina's name from my lack of interest in her at the moment, my vision blurred when I turned and immediately ran into the sight of a gun pointed at me.

"What the he--" Confused, the cigarette I had in my mouth leaned to the side at the same time I did to get a better view of the person, I was given the reflection of myself holding the gun. Nothing escaping my mouth, nor my twin image that stood in front of me, I had barely shut my eyes to blink when the trigger was pulled.

--

Awaking abruptly from a dream that had seemed too real to be true, my eyes slowly took in a room that I was in and I relaxed enough to allow a breath to flow from my lungs. My head falling back on the pillow it had laid on prior to my waking up, I looked to my right and saw a sleeping body that I recognized as Georgina, slumped against the bed's edge. Narrowing my eyes at the dream I'd had, I tried to sit up, but couldn't.

I hadn't known exactly what had taken place, or if everything had been exactly what it had been, some made up attempt in my mind to find my innerself, but I was positive now that the room I was in was definitely a hospital. I could tell this from the smell which emanated throughout the air, it was the hospital smell, the usual air that was always floating around and sickening all those who also didn't care for hospitals.

My eyes moving to the room door when it abruptly opened up, I felt my eyes widen automatically as an older woman stepped in, a wide smile on her face. This couldn't be happening to me, I thought as she apporached me easily, her smile faded.

"How are you?" she questioned me congenially, I relaxed my stare that had become one of skepticism.

Uncertain if this was some joke of hers because of the fact Georgina was in the room, and she had always been a light sleeper, I shrugged slowly. "I'm alive. What happened to me, though?" I asked her.

Her bright smile returning, she exhaled. "You were hit by a car."

"Not a jeep?" My question forcing her to uplift her gaze and stare at me as though I were odd, she shook her head.

"No, a car, a Toyota Camry; if you must know," Nothing expressed on her face, she shook her head again. "Ran right over you, like a speed bump."

Scoffing at the ironic thought, I went to scratch my head and instantly was reminded of true pain. "It's not the first time a car hit me," I told her grunting.

Quickly helped to lay back in a reclined position, she smiled. "A jeep before?"

"Yeah, ran right over me, like a speed bump," I said using the same exact words that she had. "Only, I didn't end up in the hospital."

"Really?" Her amused expression that she'd crafted on her face telling me that she definitely was the same old lady that I had seen in my dreams, she continued her job of checking the monitor. "Well, you were lucky. They all don't turn out like you do."

Not saying anything else to her from the confusion I suffered when her hard gaze fell on me with a hidden message behind them, I felt my brows furrow in a frown-like motion. They all didn't turn out like I did? I thought worried.

I had actually thought that everything had been a dream, some way to get me to change my ways, from my subconscious mind. I had made a decision to change myself, but because I had known it would be difficult I had dreamt up some drastic measures... Right? None of it had really taken place, I hadn't been run over by somebody metal transporter, or stabbed by some other loser, who'd been expressing his emotions about his girlfriend's infidelities, and I hadn't shot myself?

My eyes moving to where the old woman stood, most likely awaiting my stupid comment, so she could correct me, I was speechless when I saw she was gone. Calmly laying my head back on my pillow in a semi-paranoid fashion without any protests or sounds escaping my mouth, I sighed to quietly; I had been run over, stabbed, and shot... I thought?

XXXXXXXXXX

Epilogue

She shook her head as she left the hospital, the nurse clothes she'd worn before, long disposed of the instant she had stepped out of Kevin's room. She knew that just like every other youngster's life she had changed, it would take him forever to figure out she had only made a small detour to insist on him changing his life, his wants had already been there. He'd at least admitted before he'd been stabbed that he hadn't known anything, or been too dumb to recognize it. He would leave the hospital still wondering exactly if all the events had actually happened; they were memories that soon wouldn't leave his mind though; whether they had really happened, or not.