Copyright © 2009 Michelle Picard

All rights reserved — a Crescent Moon Press publication

 

It was April freakin' thirtieth of the year when my life took a nose dive into the bizarre, and I pulled my jacket tighter against the chill New England wind. The air smelled of ozone, and I sensed a storm threatening to deluge the area. I trudged the last couple blocks home after the bus dumped me on the corner. Relieved to have made it out of the rush hour push of Boston and onto the streets of Watertown's family neighborhoods, my commute home always felt like a desperate race toward a safe haven.

"Don't dwell on the 'what ifs', Rachel," I mumbled, feet slapping the pavement as it bore the brunt of my irritation. "Life's about the here and now, and you get what you get." I gave myself roughly the same speech every year on my birthday. Sometimes it even worked.

I tried again to dismiss the unshakable knot in my gut I'd carried around today. I'd rather ignore whatever it was trying to tell me. Got me into less trouble that way. At least most of the time.

I walked faster, a jay walk away from my apartment in a two-family, and cursed the fool part of me that hoped for more from life. Distracted by my whirling thoughts, I never saw the speeding car until my foot left the curb. My body kept moving forward, momentum fighting my brain's command to stop. Everything went into slow motion, and I watched, as if outside myself, each horrific moment unfold. My step into the street was completed an instant later, and nothing could halt my body from intersecting the vehicle's path.

I dragged in one long breath before impact.

Then a whirling white blur hit me like a steam shovel to my abdomen and threw me back onto the sidewalk. Briefcase flying, I slammed into the concrete with a painful jarring. Skin scraped the ground, the burn ran down to my bones, and all the air whooshed from my lungs. My eyes closed, and a disturbing tingling coursed through my limbs and chest as I registered the car engine's hum fading away to nothing. My last coherent thought: everything was about to change.

The fuzziness began to clear and my body settled. Damn, what happened? There'd been a car, speeding. It hit me. Or at least something had. Why no agony? There should be more pain, right? I opened my eyes. What the hell! My back was against the pavement, and I was draped underneath a panting, drooling, cream-colored standard poodle.

"If that isn't the stupidest thing I've ever seen a human do. Were you looking where you were going? If I hadn't slammed you away from that car you would've been killed and what would I say to Morven? Huh? She'd roast me for dinner. I can hear her now. 'You think I can't acquire a new familiar, Jack? I should have replaced you with a cat ages ago."

I figured I'd been knocked into next Sunday because I could hear the dog speaking clear as a bell. "How could you let the Mother Heir be killed one minute before you brought her home?' And that's the highly edited version without the expletives and threats to bodily harm. Are you trying to get me fired? I swear, I think I bruised my front leg shoving you out of the way. Ow, I'm really hurt. I need a doctor. Someone get me a doctor."

At this point the poodle stopped complaining and panted melodramatically, a pained doggy expression on its face. It coated me with a glob of slobber and sneezed in quick succession.

The last thing I remember was thinking I hated poodles almost as much as birthdays. Then, black.

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