Seven Seconds
She could maybe warn you. She definitely couldn’t save you.
Write a short story about a person with a useless superpower. Make it funny.
Prompt by Ellis Elms
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•••
The first time Cassandra saw the future, her father was reaching for the microwave.
“Dad, don’t...” she yelled.
He glanced over his shoulder.
The microwave burst open hard enough to rip the door off. Spaghetti hit the ceiling in wet streaks. Her father dropped screaming to the kitchen floor, skin peeling red from his forearm.
Seven seconds.
That was all she ever got.
•••
At thirteen, she tackled a boy off his skateboard just before a delivery truck flattened it.
At sixteen, she grabbed a teacher by the collar and dragged her out of a stairwell moments before the railing snapped free from the wall.
At nineteen, she screamed at a crossing guard outside an elementary school.
Seven seconds.
“MOVE THE KIDS!”
“What?”
Three seconds.
The city bus jumped the curb and tore through the crosswalk.
People called her a hero because she got three children out of the way.
Even though the bus got the other nine.
Vantage Hero Management called the next morning.
•••
By twenty-three, Cassandra had a contract, a stylist, and a navy blue jumpsuit with gold trim stitched into the seams.
ORACLE.
She rolled her eyes.
“That’s a little on the nose,” Cassandra muttered.
“It tested well with men twenty-five to fifty and women eighteen to forty-five” her agent replied.
She sighed.
The commercials were ridiculous.
Oracle standing on rooftops.
Oracle staring solemnly into the distance.
Oracle with glowing gold eyes added in post-production because her real power looked mostly like panic and arriving too late.
She felt useless.
•••
“Do you feel burdened by knowing the future?” one interviewer asked.
Cassandra smiled for the cameras.
“Every second. Or should I say seven seconds.” She joked for the interviewer just like Vantage asked her to do.
•••
The first official rescue happened downtown during a live interview.
The vision hit in the middle of a question about brand partnerships.
Gas leak.
Flames.
People running through smoke.
Seven seconds.
Cassandra took off before the reporter finished speaking.
Cameras bounced after her through the crowd.
“MOVE!”
A man grabbed her wrist.
“What’s happening?”
Three seconds.
“Oh, fuck.”
She yanked her arm back and turned.
The apartment building folded inward with a roar that exploded every window out across the block.
The shockwave threw Cassandra into a parked car.
Dust swallowed the street.
Sirens screamed somewhere in the gray cloud of smoke and debris.
A pipe shot out from the building and caught the man who grabbed her wrist, pinning him to a streetlight.
At least he got his question answered before he died, she morbidly thought.
A cameraman crawled out from beneath an overturned news van and kept filming with blood running down his face.
The clip hit twelve million views before midnight.
ORACLE PREDICTS EXPLOSION.
ORACLE TOO LATE TO STOP IT.
Vantage sold T-shirts by morning.
•••
After that came the ferry accident.
Cassandra vomited over the railing while trying to evacuate passengers.
Sea sick.
“Everybody off the boat!”
“Why?”
Four seconds.
The ferry clipped a support beam hard enough to split the deck open.
Most drowned. Some were able to swim to shore with her.
•••
Then the elevator collapse.
“DON’T GET IN THAT ELEVATOR!”
People froze.
A businessman frowned at her.
“Lady, what the hell are you yelling abou–”
The cable snapped.
The elevator dropped thirty floors.
Someone uploaded the security footage with dance music over it.
Twenty million views in two days.
•••
People started recognizing her after that.
Not from the billboards.
Not from the commercials or interviews.
But because she was always running towards disaster right before it struck.
A mother abandoned a full shopping cart and dragged her children out of a grocery store after spotting Oracle sprinting through produce screaming for people to move.
Passengers shoved each other trying to get off a subway car when she stumbled onboard out of breath.
A man leapt through an open window of his dentist’s office after seeing her run into the building.
Someone pepper-sprayed her in a Target.
Someone else tried to shoot her outside a football stadium.
People decided she was causing the disasters.
Conspiracy videos exploded overnight.
ORACLE KNOWS TOO MUCH.
ORACLE IS THE DISASTER.
ORACLE CAUSED MY DIVORCE.
Cassandra stopped reading comments after the death threats started arriving at her apartment.
•••
Still, every time the visions came, she ran.
Train derailment.
Scaffold collapse.
Fire in a nightclub.
Seven seconds.
Three by the time she got there.
One if traffic was bad.
More often than not, she arrived after.
The worst part was the hope.
Every single time, some stupid part of her believed this would finally be the moment she mattered.
That she would get there early enough.
That somebody would live because of her.
•••
Then came Flight 802.
Cassandra was standing outside a coffee shop holding an iced latte she never got to drink.
The vision slammed into her so hard her knees buckled.
Smoke pouring from an airplane engine.
Passengers gripping armrests.
Oxygen masks dropping from the ceiling.
A burst of orange fire across the clouds.
Seven seconds.
Cassandra looked up.
The plane screamed overhead trailing black smoke.
People on the sidewalk stopped walking.
Phones came out immediately.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
The explosion split the sky apart.
Metal and flaming debris rained across downtown.
Car alarms started wailing nearby.
People were crying.
Others were filming.
Cassandra stood frozen in the middle of the sidewalk while pieces of the plane spun down through the smoke.
Then she heard whistling overhead.
A white shape tumbled toward her end over end.
She squinted.
Is that a... toilet?
For one strange second, she just stood there staring at it.
Seven seconds.
“Oh, you have got to be fuc–”
The impact killed her instantly.
•••
The footage spread online before emergency crews even arrived.
By evening, every major network was replaying it in slow motion.
“She spent her entire life trying to warn others,” one newscaster said solemnly. “If only Oracle could have seen her own future, seven seconds could have been enough to save her.”
The clip won an award for broadcast journalism.
Three weeks later, Vantage Hero Management released the Oracle Memorial Collection.
Limited-edition navy blue porcelain toilets with gold trim and Oracle written in bold golden letters across the tank.
They sold out in seven seconds.
•••
Thank you for being here.
For choosing to sit with work that isn’t polished for comfort, that doesn’t soften its teeth. Writing is how I exhale the pieces of myself I can’t carry quietly. It takes time... between work, life, dog, and all the little ghosts trailing behind me. If my words have found you, your support helps me build my career as a writer and keeps my heartbeat alive. 🖤
Support my dream of becoming a full-time author with a paid subscription. If you can’t contribute financially right now, simply subscribing and being here means more than you know. 🖤
Honestly, this power would drive someone crazy. The mental fortitude she had to have to continue despite knowing she will mostly fail.
It's like hitting failure again and again while taking the internal blame every time. That's a dark sad place.
It was a fun read, but it also hit the heart a bit for me. Lovely, Laura. ❤️
This is just an amazing write; I do not know how you brilliant writers do this!