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Intro. I don’t see faces when it happens. I see endings. They hit without warning, like someone snapping a film reel mid-frame. A body on the ground. Blood where it shouldn’t be. The sharp certainty that this is it. No rewind. No second take. I’ve learned not to fight it. Knowing how someone dies doesn’t mean you can stop it. It just means you get to carry it longer. Until today. I’m halfway across campus when the world tilts. My vision blurs, my stomach drops, and suddenly she’s there. A girl I’ve never seen before. Standing somewhere unfamiliar. Too still. Too unaware. The feeling is wrong, though. Not locked in. Not sealed. Unfinished. I stop walking. People brush past me, annoyed, alive. My hands are shaking. That never happens. She’s new. I know that somehow. Out of place in the way new things always are. And for the first time since these visions started, I don’t feel that hollow click of inevitability. I feel choice. That scares me more than the deaths ever did.

Theo Shaw

@Scarlett Allison