Waiting For Five Minutes

The world ended, for Clara, at 7:42 PM on a rainy Tuesday.

The metal twisted. Glass shattered. Sirens wailed. And when the haze cleared, Eli was gone. One breath he was laughing in the passenger seat, humming off-key to an old Sam Cooke song, and the next—

Silence. Stillness. A steering wheel crushed under her hands.

Eli's last words: "You always miss the turn."

She hadn't cried at the funeral. Everyone said she was in shock. But the tears never came later either. Just... silence. Months of it. Her grief was an empty warehouse. Echoes of what she was supposed to feel, but nothing tangible.

She functioned. Paid bills. Ate cereal. Showered. Smiled, sometimes, to make others comfortable. It was as if her mind had packed grief away in some sealed crate and shoved it into a corner labeled "too dangerous."

Then came the coffee cup.

Three months later, alone in her kitchen, she reached for her mug. As her fingers curled around the handle, a strange sensation prickled down her spine—an image flared in her mind: the mug falling, coffee splashing across the tile, shards of ceramic everywhere. She yanked her hand back instinctively.

A beat. Two. Then the mug tipped over and shattered, exactly as she'd seen.

It was a fluke, she thought.

But it wasn’t.

Over the next few days, it happened again. And again. A momentary flash of something—five minutes ahead. A dog slipping its leash on the sidewalk. A stranger about to knock on her door. The elevator malfunctioning just before she stepped inside. Each time, she could stop it. Each time, the future rewrote itself in small ways.

Clara kept it secret. What do you tell people? I see five minutes into the future, but only sometimes, only when my heart feels like it’s about to implode? No. You keep that to yourself. Like a burn. Like a scar.

It was a power, yes. But it felt like a wound, too. Was the future a fixed place, or just a possibility shaped by our fears and choices? And if she could alter it, did that make her responsible for it?

Then came the crosswalk.

It was another Tuesday. Rain again. She didn’t notice at first. She was halfway across Main and 5th, wrapped in her coat, head down.

Then—

A jolt.

A flash.

Five minutes ahead: she stood at this same corner. But someone was approaching her. Tall. Familiar. Eli.

Same tousled hair. Same beat-up leather jacket. He smiled, eyes crinkling just the way she remembered. Her breath caught in her throat.

She blinked. The vision vanished.

There was no one there. Just a businessman rushing past and a delivery bike honking at a cab.

Clara stood in the crosswalk long enough for the light to change twice.

She wondered if time was taunting her. Offering her a thread and then snapping it away.

Over the next week, she haunted that corner. Same time. Same spot. Same ache in her chest, like her ribs were pressing inward, crushing her from the inside.

Sometimes she saw nothing. Sometimes she saw flickers. A whisper of Eli across the street. His silhouette reflected in a store window. His laugh echoing through a crowd.

She started experimenting. Journaling every time the visions came. She noticed the pattern: her ability only triggered under emotional strain. Not just stress—but intensity. A moment of fear. Anguish. Overwhelming joy.

She relived the crash once. Forced herself to remember the crunch of metal, the smear of blood on glass. Five minutes into the future, she saw herself screaming into a pillow, gasping for breath—and so it came to pass.

Another time, she found an old voice message from Eli. Listened to it on repeat until her chest ached. Vision: the barista at her local coffee shop knocking over a tray of lattes. It happened, right on cue.

The more intense her feelings, the clearer the visions. So she chased them. Even when it hurt. Especially when it hurt.

But the cost was real. She was haunted by the idea that maybe each change she made created some ripple she couldn't see. Maybe there was a ledger out there, a cosmic balance sheet, and every future she meddled with would need to be paid for.

She began testing her limits. Could she use the power to prevent a stranger’s bad day? She once intervened when a toddler nearly darted into traffic. Another time, she pulled a woman away from a broken railing seconds before it collapsed.

Each time, the vision sharpened, but the aftershock deepened. Headaches. Nosebleeds. Heart palpitations. As if time, or whatever governed it, was punishing her for tampering with the script.

She wanted to get back to that moment—the vision of Eli walking toward her. If she could trigger it again, she could follow it. Track it. Maybe she could change it.

And then, finally, she did.

It happened during a thunderstorm. She was at the same intersection, soaked to the bone, heartbeat a snare drum.

She opened the voicemail one last time. Listened.

Eli's voice: "You always miss the turn. But I love you anyway."

Then, pain. Sharp, sudden. Like her chest had ruptured.

A vision surged forward.

He was there. Eli. Closer this time. Crossing the street. Smiling. Stretching out his hand.

Clara stepped forward. One foot. Two. She gasped—

—and then the moment snapped.

She was alone. Car horns blared. Someone shouted at her to get out of the road.

She fell back to the curb, shaking.

She sat there a long time, letting the rain soak through her coat, her jeans, her skin. She wondered: Was that the real Eli, reaching through time? Or just her grief, dressed in memory?

The next day, Jonas knocked on her door.

He was kind. Soft-spoken. A neighbor, apparently—three floors up. Her power didn’t react to him. Not at first. But he noticed the dark circles under her eyes. The way she flinched at sudden noises. He brought her soup.

Over weeks, they became friends. Slowly, cautiously. She didn't tell him about the visions. But she told him about Eli. About the crash. About the voice messages.

Jonas never pried. He listened.

One night, he touched her hand. Not romantically—just a moment of connection. Her breath caught.

Flash.

Five minutes ahead: Jonas, in her kitchen, laughing. They’re drinking wine. She’s smiling. Happy. Warm.

The vision faded. Clara blinked. Looked at him.

It wasn’t Eli’s face. But maybe it didn’t have to be.

She wondered, not for the first time, if the future could offer something new only when we stopped trying to repair the past. Was grief a place to visit, or a place to live in? And how long could a person stand at the edge of two worlds before they forgot which direction they were facing?

Another vision came later, unprompted.

Clara stood on a subway platform. A man across from her—shaking, muttering—edged closer to the tracks. She saw five minutes ahead: the scream, the panic, the red splash.

She broke the timeline again. Approached. Said something. Held out a granola bar, a bottle of water. Just long enough for a security guard to intervene.

That night, the pain was worse than ever. Her hands trembled. She collapsed in the bathroom, clutching her ribs.

Was this penance? Was she playing god? And if so, who would stop her?

Jonas noticed. He confronted her one evening, found her in tears on the kitchen floor. She finally confessed everything. The visions. The crosswalk. Eli.

He listened, then said quietly, “Maybe it’s not about changing things. Maybe it’s about understanding them.”

“Understanding doesn’t bring him back.”

“No. But chasing him might keep you from moving forward.”

His words echoed. Not because they were comforting, but because they were terrifyingly true.

The next morning, she stood at the intersection again.

No rain. Just sunlight. Morning traffic. A breeze.

She stood still. Let the weight come. The ache. The grief. But something had shifted.

She triggered a vision.

Five minutes ahead: she was still here. But she wasn’t looking across the street. She was turning away. Walking home.

And smiling.

Not because Eli returned.

But because she chose not to wait anymore.

Clara exhaled. The vision faded. The future, for once, was quiet.

She stepped off the curb, not to chase the past, but to greet what came next.

And maybe, she thought, that was the real power after all: not to see the future, but to step into it anyway, unafraid of what it might hold.