Fate - Chapter 1

              Sam Welty is just an average everyday normal guy.  There isn’t anything special about him.  He wakes up in the morning, brushes his teeth, takes a shower, and does everything that an average everyday normal guy might do to prepare for his everyday normal job.  Of course, if this were true he would hardly be worth mentioning.  At this point, any reasonable person should conclude that there must, indeed, be something special about Mr. Welty after all, and this reasonable person would most probably be waiting with unbridled anticipation to find out just what that something special might be.  Can he shoot lasers from his eyes?  Can he lift full-size automobiles above his head?!  Of course he can't!  There is simply nothing remarkable about him whatsoever, despite what a reasonable person might think.

              Sam is ready for work, now.  His face is clean shaven, his teeth are sparkling white, and his lunch is neatly packed away in his nondescript blue lunchbox.  He leaves his apartment with his important businessman briefcase in hand, locks his door, and makes his way, as he does every weekday, to the bus stop on Cherry Street where he will wait for the 7:30 bus which will take him directly to his place of business.  Once there, he'll proceed to conduct the business that businessmen in his position would routinely conduct until the clock's little hand points to the right and slightly down, excluding a small break when it is pointing straight up.  He'll then make his way home, prepare his dinner, and sit down in his comfortable reclining chair to watch his favorite television shows.

              Unfortunately for Sam, he will never make it to work on this day, and he won't eat his carefully prepared lunch from his nondescript lunchbox when the clock's smallest hand points to its top.  He can't prepare his favorite meal or sit down in his comfortable chair or watch his beloved television shows.  He can't do much of anything really.  This day, Sam Welty dies.

              It is a fairly complicated death, which seems almost unfair what with his thoroughly uncomplicated life, though from his perspective, a good deal of the complication is obscured.  While waiting at the bus stop beside the road, Sam thinks he hears his name from somewhere behind him.  When he turns to inspect, his foot slips from the curb and he falls backwards into the road.  The time is now exactly 7:30 and as punctual as it ever has been, the 7:30 bus pulls into the bus stop.  Sam's head, with his immaculately combed hair and his dazzlingly white teeth and his near-perfect complexion, is suddenly very backwards, and dangerously sideways.

              In those moments that theoretically exist just before death, when the mind is said to be still functioning, we can assume that Sam Welty's final thoughts are something very close to:

              That's odd.  It isn't raining or snowing, or wet in any way. I wonder why I slipped.

              And then:

              Huh.  I'm quite certain my head is at an exact 90degree angle.  How neat.

              Of course, the impact of the bus on his head most probably instantly turned his brains to mush so he very likely thought nothing at all of his melon's new arrangement.  It is still, though, extremely likely that in the split second between his slip and his slap he pondered the curiousness of the cause of his tumble, and he would have been right to do so.

              This is what poor Sam Welty could not see:

              A small droopy little creature lazed about on the sidewalk at the bus stop.  Its face was scrunched up like an ugly pug, and its wrinkly grey body was no bigger than a coconut.  It had pudgy little legs and arms, a fat round belly, and floppy wide ears.  It wore a peculiar watch around its skinny wrist which had only one hand and one number located at the top.  The single hand ticked slowly towards its zenith as Mr. Sam Welty neared the bus stop.  When it was very nearly at the top, the little creature cupped its hands and called quietly.

              "Sam," it said to Sam alone in barely a whisper.

              As Sam turned to investigate, the little pug-faced creature kicked his foot.  Sam lost his balance, slipped from the sidewalk, and well, the rest, as they say, is history.

              Sam could not see the strange little creature which had caused his demise, because no one could see it.  Well no, that isn't entirely true.  One man did see it.  One man, who was, at that moment, sitting on a bench behind the bus stop with his morning paper sagging in his hands, his jaw as low as it could go, and his eyes as wide as half-dollars, which is to say very wide indeed, did see the chubby little creature kick Sam's foot off the curb.  This man was Henry Gains, and he believed himself to be, at least until that very moment, an average everyday normal guy.