It’s happening again. This feeling that things are out of sync, that I’ve felt this before. Deja vu, I think it’s called. But I doubt anyone’s had deja vu like this. Ever. It’s more than just the feeling that I’ve lived all this before. I see things, people, places, and I know them, even if I’ve never seen them before. I know everything about them. In the case of people, I see where they come from, where they’ve been, what they’ve done and will do in their lives. The good, the bad, and everything in between. You’d be shocked at what some people will do in the future. Horrible, soul searing things. But I figured it out. The way to stop bad things from happening is to stop whoever is going to do the bad thing, right? Simple as that.
Oh, I balked at first. After all, I’d never done anything worse than get a traffic ticket in my entire life. But here I was, able to see just who would be committing a crime, and in a plum position to do something about it. I thought, Hey, I’ll call the police and tip them off. They’ll be so grateful to me. As you can probably guess, that didn’t work. I was called a crackpot. But I’ve always been resilient, so I decided that the only thing to do was to take matters into my own hands. I picked a fairly awful person for my first...um...test, let us call it. I had seen that he was going to kidnap a child, and do all sorts of horrible things to the poor dear. So I followed him to his home. Gaining entrance was simple. I had my uniform on, and a box in my arms for camouflage. It also helped that I look physically unimposing, with my balding head and beer belly. He opened the door, and before he could react, I had the knife out.
I drove it deep into his left eye. I’ll never forget the sound he made. A choking, gurgling noise that made my blood run cold. Then he toppled over backward, twitching. I’d never seen someone die right in front of me. But I told myself that I was ridding the world of a monster, and that no more children would be hurt by him. As I stood there, watching his life ebb away, I suddenly knew what my life’s work would be. I would use this gift to hunt the hunters, find those who would do things like this man. I wasn’t worried about those who would commit petty acts. Let the police deal with those as they happened. I would be an avenging angel, cleansing the world of filth.
And so I began my work, tracking down those whom my Gift pointed out. I used all manner of weapon, knife, rope, gavotte, but never a gun. Guns make noise, and I wanted their deaths to be quiet. I wore gloves. I slung the bodies into the abandoned quarry on the edge of town. In every case, once the light left their eyes, I no longer saw what they would do in future. That’s how I knew what I was doing was right.
And I am doing what’s right. I know I am. But lately I’ve been getting this feeling that things are out of sync, that I’ve lived through this before. I see people, and they’re people I know. People who I saw die, people that would do horrible things if I hadn’t killed them, so I have to kill them again. And again. And again. It keeps happening, over and over. No matter what I do, they’re always there. Watching. Laughing. Always.
It’s happening again. It keeps happening. It’s never going to stop.