The Strings

The first time I saw my String was when I was eleven years old.  I had left home on my bike twenty minutes ago and was in a near-empty park when the first droplets of rain fell from the sky.  I remember looking up, only one thought echoing in my head.

Mom’s going to kill me!

So I pedaled back home as fast as I could as the scattered raindrops turned into a downpour.  My calves burned and I puffed for breath, pedaling, pedaling, pedaling.  The sky was getting dark, even though it was only 2:30 in the afternoon, and I had stopped focusing on what was directly in front of me in favor of focusing on getting home before I could get in too much trouble.

Apparently, I was so focused that the roar of an engine escaped my ears, and the flashing headlights my eyes.  It was only when I felt myself being yanked to the side of the road by my wrist that I saw the car that almost hit me.  After the initial shock wore off, I looked around frantically for whoever had pulled me and my bike to the side of the road and saw nothing.  No person, at least.  What was there was was a translucent golden string floating in the air, stretching forever and ever, tied to my right wrist.

I never told anyone about it, not even when a few months later my mom sat me down in the living room and told me about the Strings.  She spoke of the bitterly, and now I know it was because a string had dragged my father into a construction site and hadn’t had the thought to pull him back out before some equipment crashed to the earth.

___

I didn’t see my String again until my cousin’s twenty-first birthday, and her older brother was driving us back home from the bar where she officially had her first drink.  It was the String that made me lurch forward and grasp the steering wheel before we collided head-on with an old Chevy.  

And then the string began to appear more often.  When I dashed across a New York crosswalk in an attempt to not miss my tour bus (I did anyway).  When I was laughing with a group of friends in a college parking lot covered in slick ice.  When I had my hood tight around my face, walking into the road, forgetting to look both ways.  

___

I’ve begun to wonder what the String is waiting for, because everyone knows what the Strings do other than saving.  Everyone knows that the girl who drowned at the community pool two years ago was dragged to the bottom by an invisible force.  Everyone knows that the department head from a few months ago was yanked into an alley where a mugger stumbled a few seconds later.  Everyone knows that the strings control how we live and die.

And as people get older, the strings interfere more and more often.  Pulling your hand away from one coat in the closet to another.   Jerking you away from the couch when you decide to sit down for a rest. More recently, it practically played the piano for me (unfortunately, far from perfect).  I wonder if this means I am getting old, or if the String is practicing for something big.  If so, I wonder what my finale will be.

___

I know it’s soon.  The String controls everything.  Every movement, every choice.  It’s how the world works.  It’s how life flows and twists, it’s the key to everything.  

But I wonder how life would be if it weren’t.

___

Flies buzz in a halo around my head, and I tuck my hands into my pockets.  That doesn’t stop the gentle tugging bringing me to my location.

Two weeks ago my mother decided on a spur of the moment family trip to a small farm in the mountains.  I, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, all of us, are outside on a humid, cloudy day.  Lindsey, five years after the incident on her twenty-first birthday, holds her seven month old baby boy in her arms, careful not to rouse him.

“I spent forever trying to find a name, but Adam is fitting, don’t you think?”

I nod, and wonder if that was my choice or the String’s.  

Uncle Geoffry hops down the steps of the main house, carrying a rifle.  When asked, all he says is “It’s huntin’ season up ‘ere, ain’t it?”

I stray near the edge of the forest, and hear what sounds like a low growl.  I would turn away and ask anyone else if they’d heard it, but the String drags me over to the trees, quiet.  I look frantically and spot a splash of brown fur, and beady black eyes.  I stumble back, and horror strikes as the String drags me harshly toward the bear.

This can’t be how I die

I hear little baby Adam wail and feel like crying myself.  No one can see me now, no one can help.  I run, trying my best to resist the pull, towards the farm’s old truck.  If I can get there - maybe - 

One of my cousins is in the front seat, and it clicks.  

I make my mad dash, and fall on the ground in front of the truck - the moving truck.  

I’ve always been pulled away from moving vehicles.

They can’t hurt me. 

I pray they can’t hurt me.

Then it all happens at once.  A sharp crack echoes through the air, and the truck jerks to a stop.  Uncle Geoffry raises his gun in victory as he jogs to the now limp bear, and Lindsey crouches in front of me.

“Oh God,” she exclaims, “Oh God!”

She’s holding Adam even closer, and I look at his young, innocent eyes.  

“I’m alive, right?” I ask, voice shaking softly.

Lindsey nods.  I hug her tightly, murmuring, “I escaped the string.”

She nods in shock.

She doesn’t need to know that somehow, someway, I slip the String off my wrist and onto Adam’s.

___

Lindsey called me a few days ago, hiccupping and crying.

“I don’t know how it happened,” she whispered, “The car didn’t hurt him.”

It is then that I know I’ve given my fate to someone else.