The Gift

This is a work of fiction. None of the characters, events or activities exist in real life. Read with discretion as the story may contain disturbing elements.

The stunning slice of light from the sunrise lay waste to last night’s darkness. It breached in, uninvited, shocking the sterile glass of the windows and landing on a papery calendar perched on a wall.

The light spread out, exploding in a 360° panorama of color and life into my bedroom.

My eyes hungered for breath as my sleep drugged my well-relaxed body with a provoked urge to wake up. No doubt, I was already up. Allowing my eyes to adjust with the surrounding bokeh of dawn, I caught sight of today’s date on the calendar.

“24th March.”

My birthday. Wow. And also the mournful death day of several world-renown Renaissance philosophers and scientists. How did I know that? That’s a pretty tricky question.

Though most people would call it fantasy — and some even call it ‘madness’, ‘absurdity’, or a ‘mental disorder’ — I possessed a curse. A unique abstract blessing, to be exact…

The doorknob to my room twisted and withered apart.

I turned my attention towards it, but it seemed intact and untouched by any damage.

That’s right — I had a strange gift of foretelling future events. Worse, I could also perform clairvoyance to observe past events. A very bizarre and supernatural gift this.

And, sad to say, the world wasn’t prepared to live with a kind of anomaly like me.

Since childhood, my family and friends had shunned me from their lifestyle atmospheres, leaving me to fend off survival on my own. None would dare believe me, lest believe in my extraordinary powers.

From school to school, I had snuck into libraries to parasitize onto books and assimilated knowledge from teachers. They all rejected me when I tried to share my perspectives and sensations. Either the teachers accused me of spying on their personal matters or blamed me for any sabotage that had occurred. So how come I learnt things so fast? How come I raised my quality of education? Simple — I used my gift, my virtue, my talent.

Years had flown past faster than a moth’s wing flicking. But to me, time didn’t seem to exist anymore.

Everywhere my vision was obscured by the clash of different distinct dimensions ripping our world apart; all the tenses — past, present and future — glittered like the hundreds of shades of human emotion and experience.

As I had grown up into adolescence, I discovered a certain group of people who would, in fact, believe in my gift — the underworld of crime.

But was I their soothsayer sidekick? Never, by any chance. Unfortunately, I had been lured to their point of view, while they poured more poison into my wounds, only to spit out their cause onto the human civilizations.

I had gained fame. I had gained recognition. But my gift soon began to expire…or so I had thought, at first.

Instead, my gift augmented its control. My mind slipped out of sanity and redesigned the concept of my nervous system.

Within years — approaching my middle ages — I soon learnt of my new gift; I could perform telekinesis, bending nature’s laws to perform my bidding. But was I following the correct ambition? Would my parents be happy if I did all these? Would they smile for my handiwork?

I had asked myself these questions as I gazed at the monstrous reflection of my face in the mirror, one day, only to realize that…

“My parents never cared for me!” my demonic voice had boomed, with sudden realization as I faced the bitter music. “The world never cared for me!”

I remembered smashing that mirror with my fist, but I remembered no more.

Yet, here I was, about to begin my day to celebrate my 260th birthday, in my room, in a secluded hut, resting on the summit of Mount Everest, proud.

Proud of my activities.

Proud of what I had gifted this world with, as a payback courtesy of why I had been entrusted with my unwanted, undesired gift.

Luckily, I had never received any new gifts from God and nature, in all of eternity; not even the gift of death.

I might turn this story into a short film. Here is a trailer: