Mortal Legacy: Fatal Flight Chapter 1

Sarah Benes

I have had a feeling since I was a little girl that there was something more to me.  There was something more about me that no one, but I knew or bothered to pay attention to. 

The visions started when I was 5. At least that was the first one I could remember.  It was of my Mother, my real Mother.  I was adopted when I was a baby by Carol and Thomas, whom are my parents for all intensive purposes.  In this first vision, I saw my real Mother at the end of this tunnel masked by this blindingly bright light.  She didn’t come in the form of a person, but instead in the form of energy.  Her energy was so powerful that it pulled me towards her.  I know to this day that I wasn’t afraid when the vision took place. 

When I came to, I remembered getting this horrible headache, and my parents rushing me to the hospital.  I was a 5 year old child and afraid of telling anyone what exactly had happened to me. 

A few more episodes throughout my childhood occurred.  The doctors then diagnosed me with Epilepsy when no other explanations held. I had gone through a ton of tests, both physical and psychological.  I still never told anyone about my visions during these unconscious episodes and that I was completely aware of what was happening to me.  I really just wanted to be a normal kid.

Every time these visions came to me, they were deemed seizures, but what was funny is that none of the medicines helped.  It had just validated all of my assumptions about who I really was.  The visions still happened. The next 10 years I became a science experiment to all the neurosurgeons at Lattimer General Hospital in Rhode Island. 

I am now 18 years old and a senior at Woodland High School in Rhode Island and still proclaimed to be the healthiest epileptic in the world.  We stopped the meds 4 years ago, but I still go for tests to humor my parents and dumbfounded MDs in the state of Rhode Island.

What they don’t know, and no one hopefully never will, is that I am a clairvoyant.  I came to this conclusion when I was sick and tired of all the bull shit medication I was on, made me sicker rather than healthier.

I had little to no social life, so I used my extra time that the other Woodland kids used to drink and have inconsequential sex with each other, reading books and surfing the web.  I stumbled upon a parapsychology website.  Apparently, my epileptic symptoms were in fact closely related to that of a clairvoyant. 

I dedicated most of my free time to finding out about my gift, what I could do, and how I could use it.  Clairvoyance is a completely controlled response to the energy around us.  I am what they call a precognitive.  I can see the future.  I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think I can see the present and the past too, but my precog visions are the strangest and the strongest.  I don’t really even know how accurate my visions are.  Sometimes I think they give hints into a bigger scheme of things. 

The worst thing about being what I am is that I am never going to be normal.  I’m always going to be pegged as different and that bothers me most. 

At school, I am considered a loaner or anti-social.  I have even heard the others mark me as suicidal.  I really don’t think I give off the suicidal vibe, but who’s to say.  I mean I have been in the same school system for 12 years and all the kids know me as the girl that falls over and twitches uncontrollably when I have one of my episodes. I really can’t blame them for their judgments.

The episodes don’t happen as frequently anymore.  I feel that I have some control over them now, but I still never broke the mold of what I once was.  I think it’s easier for everyone not to know what an actual freak I really am. 

I definitely feel bad for my parents.  I mean they got the chance to pick their kid and they got a dud.  They have to be pretty disappointed on how I am turning out. 

When I was little, my Mother, Carol, had me in beauty pageants.  Being that she was a Southern Beauty Queen herself, she had to have me in on that circuit.  I tried my best to please her, and won a few, but I didn’t fit there.  I eventually started losing because I became more and more introverted and afraid I would have an episode on stage.  I have to give her credit for trying. 

Carol always tried to buy me the trendy looks for school, and made sure I always looked cute.  She was always there to praise me when I was feeling self-conscious.  It wasn’t that I thought of myself as ugly or pretty, I just didn’t think of myself at all.  It was more like, who cares about looks, I am a mental freak. 

As looks go, I guess I wasn’t dealt too badly of a hand.  I always wondered if I had my Mother’s eyes.  My family always said that they could see a million galaxies in my eyes.  I guess when I hit the right light the clear blue color of my irises sparkled off the light like a diamond.  A part of me knows I have her eyes and it is why they are my favorite.  When I look at them, they make me feel like no matter what, I will always have a part of my Mother with me and no one could take that away.

  I am a little over 5 feet tall. A lot of girls in my school tower over me.  Being short is another reason I probably don’t get noticed by the opposite sex.  Unlike the majority of girls my age, I am a little late developing or maybe I’m not supposed to be endowed with amazing curves.  Instead, I am a very petite, plain girl. 

I have always been afraid to cut my hair so I always just left it long, dark, and perfectly straight.  I usually just throw it up in a pony tail.  Needless to say, I am just me, nothing special and nothing extravagant.  The one thing that keeps me going is my gift and knowing that there is a part of me that is a little bit special. 

My senior year was coming to an end and I was afraid of leaving the protection and routine of my life here in Rhode Island.  I had the opportunity to attend Brown University and Dartmouth, but due to a vision I had, I found myself applying and getting accepted the University of New Orleans.

Many people would think I was a complete moron to give up partial scholarships to amazing schools such as Brown and Dartmouth, but to me New Orleans made so much more sense to me.  The vision that pointed me in the direction of New Orleans happened about a year ago when I was deciding what college to go to.  It was on my mind 24/7 and my Mom and Dad were getting impatient.  I think they were worried that the application deadlines were quickly approaching and I wouldn’t get into any reputable school at all.  They always had high hopes that all the Friday and Saturday nights of studying instead of going out and having fun would pay off.  They would eventually be able to brag that their daughter, while not Miss Congeniality, she was attending an Ivy League school. 

I really did want to please them, but I needed to do something for me and that was to find out who I really was.  Above all, I wanted to find out more about my Mother. 

The vision came to me while I was writing my application essay to Brown.  I was sitting in front of my laptop in my room listening to some angry rock.  I had always felt that the louder the music the more I could concentrate.  My parents strongly disagreed.  I got stuck on the direction I wanted to take my essay and just started staring at the white screen of my computer suddenly feeling overwhelmed.  I felt as if I dosed off, instead I jumped right into my vision.  I felt like I was flying over a city.  Instantly, I could identify it as New Orleans because of the waterways, and plus we just studied the effects of Hurricane Katrina in my current issues class so the images of it were fresh in my head.  I know I was by myself because I felt so free and uninhibited.  Like no one there was judging me or holding me back.  I felt liberated and as corny as it may sound, I felt free as a bird.  As I was flying over New Orleans, I got the most overpowering feeling that I belonged there and all my questions I had asked myself for so long would be answered.  I knew that some way, somehow, New Orleans would set me free.