Déjà vu

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The first time I saw the future I was three years old and saw my own death. At that time, I didn't know it was me. But that image was never erased from my mind. As time passed, other events I saw in my lapses began to become real. With each passing day, my child self-became more like the young man who was going to die in the future. I was becoming myself, headed for my own death. When I spoke about my ability to see the future, there was no lack of someone who told me that I was a liar, a phony, a demon.... That's why I kept the secret of my death. It was a mistake.  I lived my life normally until I realized that the one who would die was me. How do you live knowing how you are going to die? You live in ignorance, like everyone else, not knowing the day and the hour. There were many things I didn't know about my life, like I had a brother. I also didn't know that my parents weren't my parents. That's what I found out one day when I dreamt that a stranger was visiting the house. There were things I'd rather not have known about. But now I know them. I wouldn't have wanted to know that my dog would die trying to cross the street, that a red car would run over him and leave him lying in the garbage can.  It would have been enough to find him there rotten only once, but I saw him before. I have seen the future countless involuntary times. But what worries me most is my first memory, my first vision, my own destiny.  In the vision I had of my death, my adopted sister Maricarmen had a cast in her left hand, with which she writes.  My father was recently operated on a kidney and carried a bag of those used to urinate.  My mother was late, as always. And I saw them all around me, and I could even see myself seeing myself, as if my soul had detached from my body.  It was quite a fateful scene for a three-year-old boy. I also remember Joi, my cousin's son, who watched my wound and the blood that came out of me wet the wheels of his skateboard. I was on the road, breathing, turning myself off. And that's all I remember, that's as far as my vision goes. How long before this happens?  I don't know. I've never been able to pinpoint the exact moment, sometimes it just comes, like the time I remembered the omen of the boy who fell at school. I remembered it after it had already fallen.  Perhaps I could have prevented the accident if I had seen all the elements before, the child licking the palette, the one who played with the fire cart, the one who pushed him, the one who built the stone fort against which he hit his head.  I was barely five years old, just a month ago my father had a kidney operation.  By the time my sister broke her arm I thought that my father would no longer have the urine bag, I thought that for the first time the future had been wrong about me. But he is never wrong, my visions are precise, as they were during my best friend's wedding. The suit, the bouquet, the flowers, who reached the bouquet, his divorce within three days. Everything happened as I saw it in one of my lapses. My sister reached six months with the plaster. Her arm was trying to repair three serious breakages that the doctor said in less than a year would heal. Then less than a year is all that's left to fulfill my destiny.  At least that's what I thought until a lapse came and my head spun. I saw myself coming home with a girl, I kissed her on the mouth and took her by the hand, as if I was asking for encouragement to knock on the door. At that moment I didn't know if I was going to die or not. The visions never fail even those I have had about me.  Like my first time. In a very brief lapse of time I saw how I tried to get savagely close to a girl who was stirring my demons, but in the attempt I fell over a railing and was naked, head down, with one foot hijacked through a fence hole. The vision and reality were exactly the same. My shame when, the not future in-laws went to get me out, was terrible. It was never wrong, until that day when I saw myself die and then come home. The future was not wrong, not even the day my cousin extorted me to guess the lottery numbers.  I don't know how it happened, but there was no mistake because I never saw my cousin again.

There was nothing left to meet whatever my destiny was, so I sat and waited for it. And it came. They knocked on the door one morning when we were all home, except my mother who was always late. Then I knew it was the day. The door kept insisting that it should be opened, my sister and father were not in a position to move forward. For a moment I looked in the mirror. I gave myself a smile, who knows why. The door was still insistent, and I was entangled in the stairs wearing a shirt. I'm coming, I shouted. I settled in, took a deep breath, and opened the door. The whole future hit me. It was not a lapse, it was an explosion of small pieces that I had never been able to put together, visions about me that had never happened. I asked them to come in, my father and sister were stunned when the newcomers began to explain. My mother arrived. She almost had a heart attack when she walked through the door. We sat in the living room. We looked like a communion of aliens trying to understand, the bride explained, he explained, my sister nodded, my father didn't know and my mother had no idea. I didn't need anything. He was just like me. We shared a uterus. He didn't have the visions, but the visions I've had all this time were of him. Now, how do I explain to my newly known twin brother that he is going to die? It was easier when I thought it was me.

F. JaBieR