Second Chances

The door simply said: Enter Here, Cassie. So she did. 

Blindingly bright lights forced her to raise her arm to shield her eyes. It was like being hit by the high beams of an oncoming truck, without the truck. A pulsing cloud of sound accompanied the lights, so loud it sent Cassie backwards searching for the door she’d just entered. But there was none, just a shadowy cavern. Not an empty one, either. A dozen pairs of eyes and soft, insistent whispers pushed her back again. Go, go, you’re on now, Cassie, just go. 

Cassie wheeled around again, and even with the bright lights and the cacophony, shapes finally began to take on meaning. Black, expansive floor—stage. Wall of sound—applause, emanating from a huge auditorium. Shape beckoning in the distant—a man? 

“Looks like our next contestant has a little bit of staaaaage friiiiiight,” a baritone oozing with honey and oil emanated from the blurry shape. “Come on, Cass. People want to meet you, girl.” 

The shape approached her and in a rush, features came into focus. Bright red three-piece suit that shimmered in the lights; red fedora; thin, string tie; snakeskin boots; all holding up a goateed chin and coal-black eyes. The shape leaned in and Cassie felt her stomach turn at a faint sulfuric smell. 

“Hey, now’s not the time to get shy, young lady, it’s either this or, you-know-where,” the red suit muttered under his breath, punctuating the sentence with a sharp downwards gesture. 

“No, no, I don’t know where, I don’t even know where here is. I want to leave now!” Cassie said, horrified to hear her own words magnified through the vast space. 

“Too late now, princess,” the red suit man said, louder again, turning a stretched smile toward the blackness that held the audience. “Because, you’re on…. Second Chances! The show where we decide if you deserve a second chance at the life you just wasted.” 

The wave of sound thundered back across Cassie’s eardrums, accompanied now by a smooth wail of saxophones, piano, and percussion. Feeling herself pulled along by the hand, she squinted out into the blackness where the audience should have been but saw nothing. She looked back to where the whispering voices had stopped her escape and saw only more blackness. 

The man pulled her into an oversized armchair—crimson red—and dropped himself into a matching one opposite her. 

“So, Cassie, tell me about you. That’s an—” he broke off to wink at the invisible audience. “Interesting look you’re sporting there. That what they’re wearing in Albany this time of year?”

Cassie looked down and nearly screamed. Her shirt, which may have once been white, her jeans, her flip-flopped feet, her hands—they were all covered in blood. 

“What did you do to me?” Cassie gasped, clutching the plush arms of her char in an effort to steady her beating heart. 

“I think the right question is—what did you do to you?” the red suit man replied, punctuating each “you” with a practiced jerk of his chin. “I think it’s time for a—” 

He paused and held a hand up to his ear, listening. Out of the blackness in front of them, the word came back. 

“Replay!” screamed what sounded like a million voices. 

“Roll it, Lucy!” the red suit man snapped in the air and a giant screen, at least 30 feet tall, appeared out of nowhere on the empty stage to their right. 

“What is this?” Cassie shook her head. “Like, seriously, what in the hell is this place? You have to let me out of here. I never signed up for this, this is crazy!” 

The red suit man held up a finger to his lips. 

“You’re going to want to see this, Cass.” 

The images that unfolded on the screen made their way into Cassie’s mind like a long-forgotten dream, triggered back into existence by a random word. 

Close-up of a hand, fumbling for something inside a bag, keys, pulled out, clutched. The bag was black, real leather, exactly like one Cassie had—and then there were sounds, pieces of words here and there—can’t—have a right to—you don’t—shit—I’m better than this—my life—you don’t. An older woman’s voice and a younger one that Cassie knew, she knew it, but she couldn’t place it. 

More images. A tiny porcelain box with a metal clasp, opened, holding pills, white and pastel pink. Fingers with bitten-down nails grabbing at them, missing, dropping them onto dark pavement. Asphalt under knees and on hands as the figure of a woman hunted for each pill, swearing the whole time. Pills found, swallowed, washed down with something from a flask pulled out of the black leather purse. 

The screen cut to a moving car, rain cascading down the windshield, wipers exhausted, car horns sounding angrily. Driver after driver passing the too-slow car. The turn signal, the turn that isn’t a turn. The too-small barrier on the too-steep embankment. And then noise—metal and friction and glass shattering. And then pain—Cassie’s own pain. And then blackness. 

Cassie sat in silence, and the red suit man allowed her to, only staring at her with a halfway smile on his face. After a moment, he spoke. 

“Difficult, to rewatch, isn’t it? Almost like—reliving,” he said with a pause for dramatic effect. 

“What do you want from me?” Cassie said. 

“I want what I want from everyone,” the man smiled. “To ask three simple questions.” 

A quick musical interlude and a snap later, another screen appeared.

“Question one: Are you a good person, Cassie? Explain.” 

Cassie blinked. Her reeling mind presented an old image of herself in speech class—11th grade. Expensive speech class at an expensive private school, sweating all over her expensive uniform. Expensive drugs too, but if there had been a better way to de-stress, Cassie never discovered it. Taking a deep breath and doing her best to sound calm, she answered.

“Yes. Comparatively, I mean. I did my best and tried to make everyone else happy.” 

A giant X appeared on the screen. 

“Ooh, I’m sorry, Cass. That’s a big, fat, wrong answer. According to our researchers, you took your privilege for granted, sabotaged your relationship with even your own mother, sold drugs to minors, and—do we even need to mention what you said to Rebecca before her wedding?” 

Before Cassie could respond, the next question flashed on the screen, and the red suit man read it out loud. 

“Here’s one to tug on those heart strings,” he said to a wistful violin melody from the invisible orchestra. “Will people miss you when you’re gone?” 

“Yes, yes, I’m positive about that. Dana, Peter, mom,” Cassie said, listing off the first faces that came to her mind.

“Let’s see if you’re right,” the man said, turning toward the screen. 

Again, the X appeared, blinking twice this time. 

“Oh, bad luck, Cassie. Looks like Dana’s only still friends with you because she’s scared of what you did to Rebecca, your mom is about fed up with your habit, and Peter? Well, looks like Peter only truly loves—Peter.” 

“No, no that can’t be right,” Cassie said, heart beating faster than ever. 

“I’m truly sorry, Cassie,” the man said, looking far from sorry. “The board doesn’t lie. But you still have one more question. Answer this one right, and you could still score that sweet second chance.” 

As he spoke, a white door ascended from above. From the bottom of it, steps unfolded, ending directly in front of the platform upon which Cassie and the man sat. 

“What happens if I get it wrong?” Cassie said, wiping her palms on her bloodstained jeans. 

The man winked. 

“You join the audience.” 

Cassie didn’t have a chance to ask him what that meant. The man continued onto the third question. 

“Cassandra Evans, for your chance to get a second chance, answer me this simple question: If we send you back, how would you make the most of your new life?” 

Cassie was speechless. She thought about her mother’s face when she slammed the door in it. She thought about all the pills. She thought about how sweet they felt, better than sunshine, better than a massage, better than a week at a yoga retreat. She thought about Rebecca’s face falling at the sounds of Cassie’s words. She thought about the girl she bullied in third grade, Carla, who ended up transferring because it got so bad. She thought about her sister that she hadn’t really spoken to for six years.

“Cassie, this is it, we’re waiting,” the red suit man said, leaning forward, forearms on his knees, a single furrow between his eyebrows. 

Cassie couldn’t believe her own ears when she said it. 

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I would,” she said. 

For a split second, a genuine look of surprise appeared on the man’s face, but it just as quickly disappeared. He snapped his fingers and the stairs slowly started to fold up into the white door.

“Well, that’s a first in Second Chance history. I’ll give you points for that dramatic flair, Cassie, and I’m almost sad we have to say goodbye to—” 

He stopped in mid-sentence as Cassie made a run for it, just before the white stairs were out of reach, Cassie jumped onto them, scrambling upwards to grab the door handle, even as the last stair disappeared beneath her feet. 

Below her she could see the red suit man fuming with anger. 

“Cassie, you can’t just—”

But Cassie never heard the end of his sentence. The door handle suddenly gave and the weight of her body violently pushed the door open and inwards, taking her with it.

————————————

Pain was everything. That’s how Cassie knew she was alive again. There was pain and there was blood in her eyes and there was a steady drizzle of water through the broken windshield, but it was all beautiful. 

Cassie took in a breath, then another one. She reached out her tongue to let rainwater fall on it. She’d never tasted anything so sweet. Loving every second of the sharp, life-giving pain, she reached around for her phone. It had been in her purse on the seat beside her. Calling 911 was the first priority. 

When her hand hit something that was not her purse or her phone or the seat of the car, she froze. Her stiff neck only allowed her to turn a few inches, but she could see it anyways. She was not alone in the car. On the seat next to her, she could just see a hand resting on a leg attached to a body that was covered in what was unmistakably a sharply pressed red suit.