My little brother was on his tiptoes, leaning against the railing of the bridge, making quaking noises at the ducklings down below.

Then he was slipping, tumbling, rocketing toward the water. His body landed with a splash, but his head thumped against a rock and the blood came oozing out of his skull, dyeing the water a deep red that…

I pinched my inner arm and the image disappeared, like a camera snapping its lens shut. Tony was fine, still calling out to the ducklings. He made an audible groan when they flew away, and then came tottering back to me.

When I was his age, I was convinced that I could see the future, because of moments like this. But around the time I’d turned ten, I’d realized I had it all wrong. Whenever I saw a vision of my father choking on his dinner or my mother burning alive in a house fire, I was actually seeing glimpses of parallel universes. There must’ve been thousands of them, judging by the number of times I’d seen my loved ones succumb to gruesome deaths.

Even though I knew the visions had no bearing on my real life, they still messed with my mind. Like bad dreams. When you know your boyfriend isn’t actually cheating on you, but you can’t push away the mental image of him bending your best friend over your bed and shoving his cock in her.