Sepphora was born ill

Sepphora was born ill. She is always looking to the future. Literally. Sepphora knows everything that is going to happen in the next ten minutes. She knows it with the same precision of an actor who knows his lines by heart.

When she was a child, she knew what the answer to teachers' questions was. What was the moral of the story they had to read for homework? No one had read it, not even herself, but she knew the moral was "don't tell lies." She also knew that her friend Hannah would spill her apple juice on the art teacher's computer, and they would send her home for a few days before all of that happened. That her older brother would arrive from a party, drunk and her father would punish him for a month.

When she was a teenager, she knew that Tahir, her dog, was going to run away from the house and they would never see him again. Another day, she learned that her mother would run down the stairs because the beans were scattered all over the kitchen. Afterward, she went to a party and learned that Hannah's boyfriend, Kyle, would be kissing another girl in the bathrooms and her friend would be running into them. When she turned eighteen, she learned that the university would reject her application and her mother would suggest that she tried again the following year.

When she was in college, she knew her Taxonomy professor would have a heart attack in the middle of class. On another occasion, she learned that Marietta, one of her Introductory Biochemistry classmates, would declare her love for her in public. At her graduation, she learned that the university principal would drop a glass of red wine on his suit during his farewell speech, and the students would take many photos of him.

Sepphora knew all of this ten minutes before it happened. But Sepphora never did anything. She never raised her hand to say what was the moral of the story, she did not stop Tahir when he came out through the old fence that was around the patio of her house, she did not warn Hannah about what Kyle was doing, she did not call the medical service to save to her teacher, nor did she do anything to prevent the principal from making a fool of himself in front of six hundred people.

No one ever knew why.

Until, at the age of twenty-four, while coming home from one of her countless job interviews, she pushed her father out in the yard. Her mother and brother looked at her in surprise.

"What's wrong with you?" Her mother reproached her. Sepphora did not respond and entered the house. She sat in the dining room off the kitchen and checked her notifications on her phone. A few seconds later, the lights in the home began to fail and the Christmas lights that her father was placing in the fence were rendered useless in an electrical explosion.

The couple was shocked and trying to understand what had happened. However, Nicholas, Sepphora's brother had already done so. Her mother had insisted to her husband to use insulating gloves to place the lights, as there had been several power outages caused by surges that generated outbursts like that one. But the man regarded the suggestion as an exaggeration.

Nicholas was stunned. He didn't know if what he was thinking was a product of his addiction to superhero comics, or if it was a valid conclusion. Did his sister know that that electrical blast would fall directly on her father, ending his life? But how? There was no way to predict that.

He went to the kitchen and entered shyly. Sepphora was staring at her cell phone, with no expression on her face. The young woman knew that her brother would realize what she could do.

Twelve minutes earlier, Sepphora was crossing the street in front of her house. Her gaze was lost in infinity, and she seemed completely oblivious to her reality. As if she was a robot. Or so anyone who saw her walking the streets would think so. Inside her mind, things were very different.

Seeing the future was a flaw because Sepphora could never see the present. Her mind was always ten minutes out of date into the future. If she looked at a clock that marked three in the afternoon, her eyes would see the same thing, but her mind would tell her that it marked ten past three. The present and the future were spliced in her head; when she spoke to someone, she would hear them say hello and goodbye at the same time. When she bathed, she felt the water fall cold on her body and at the same time interrupt its flow. When she ate, she savored the soup and the stew at the same time. Over the years, she had come to understand both, but she never chose to act. She had never known if she could do so.

As she stared at the concrete on the ground with her eyes in the present, her mind witnessed a terrible scenario. Just as she entered the courtyard of her house, her father received an electric shock, which made him fall to the ground, motionless and lifeless. Her present self, without thinking, rushed her way home, and after finding her father still alive, she ran to push him to save him from his fateful destiny. She did not stop to see if she had succeeded, nor did she listen to her mother's reproach. Her heart was pounding relieved when her future self had a glimpse of her father in the doorway of the kitchen, waiting for an explanation from his daughter.

So... had she done it? Had the future really changed? Her present self saw his brother walk into the kitchen. Sepphora had had simultaneous interactions before. Many times. She had solved tests while discussing the answers with her friends in the hall in front of the classroom. She had seen other people laugh ecstatically and cry inconsolably at the same time. She had talked to a teacher and a friend at the same time. Everything was always separated by a period of ten minutes, not one second more, not one less. She had measured it.

Nicholas was fascinated when his sister told him that she knew in advance what was going to happen to her father. He started asking lots of questions, his eyes shined with illusion. Sepphora knew then that once she acted and changed the future, as she had done, she could no longer keep her secret. Her parents interrupted their meeting to serve food, and Sepphora had to answer the same questions her brother asked ten minutes earlier.

Now her family knew about what was going on in her mind all the time.

Later, Nicholas made a suggestion his sister had never considered.

"Do you have any idea how much people would pay to know what's going to happen in the future?" He had said. Sepphora had never seen her ability as an opportunity, or as something she could take advantage of. At first, it was a nightmare, something that did not allow her to see her present or her future clearly. Then it just became a situation, something that was just in her life, and no more.

Faced with her silence, Nicholas suggested that they took a test, that they spread the rumor that Sepphora had supernatural gifts. A few days later, a girl with hippie looks, dyed hair, and a blank look appeared at their house. She was a little skeptical, but she was hopeful that she would see something extraordinary. So it was. And then the thing grew and grew, inevitably. Their parents were constantly surrounded by people who were crazy to see what Sepphora did.

Money flowed in and in, like a water dam that collapses, and tons of liquid fall like a tsunami. After a while, famous journalists, internet celebrities came; everyone wanted to verify that the legend of the seer girl was real. They asked her to attend television shows, to record videos, to give demonstrations of what she did. Sepphora was never able to adapt to the rate at which her fame grew. Her father bought a car that was only driven by actors, by business owners. Her mother bought a cabin near the beach. Nicholas dressed in designer clothes. Sepphora was also not sure what she would do if she had so much money, so all her financial management was done by her brother. The young woman also wore expensive clothes that she never quite liked, drove a car like her father's, traveled to places she never imagined existed.

Sepphora always warned about the immediate future and changed it when something that she did not like was coming. Similar to that occasion when she saw herself in front of the barrel of a gun belonging to a client who claimed to come to quote her services, but it was a trap to end her life. She then demanded that all the entrances be closed, and her guards did so without questioning her for a second.

But one day, a gloomy man approached Nicholas. He told him that he would pay him the worth of four mansions if he would do him a favor with his sister's skills. Nicholas, blinded by the exorbitant figure, agreed. What Sepphora had to do was too simple, so simple that it was clearly a trap.

Strangely, that was the last event that she did not change. No one ever knew why. She knew that this man entered armed and would end her life.

Sepphora never said why she did the things she did. Why were there people to whom she revealed their future and others to whom she did not? People assumed it was because she saw something horrible, something she could not reveal; they always assumed that there was a logical reason behind her refusals. But they never knew for sure. Many great journalists in their interviews asked her that question, which she never answered.

And when Sepphora died, the answer died along with her, the answer to why she reverted to her old ways of inactivity at such an important time.

Sepphora knew that you would read his story, and ask yourself the same questions. Why didn't she do anything when she was little? Why didn't she do anything to prevent her death?

No one ever knew.