If my math is right, I’ve experienced just under three thousand winters.
Summers, falls, springs, just as many of those. But winter, when the year reaches a crotchety old age, bitter and cold and too tired to care—what a fucking headache.
I stand in the middle of the street, staring at the church, feeling this particular winter in the deeper parts of my soul. “I could do something.”
I really could.
According to the Red Books, I have tried.
In my 11th Life, I completely ignored the task at hand. Instead of giving the rifle away, I carried it across the street, opened the door to the church, and took fate into my own hands.
Fate, as it turned out, would not be handled.
The following Life, I was a little smarter. I arrived in town a day early, set up in the woods, and waited. Something about that decision changed their course; the group never showed.
I tried again in my 13th Life. Smarter. Earlier. More prepared. Again, they never showed.
I’ve broken every rule, taken every turn, told them everything, told them nothing. Sixteen times, I’ve tried to stop tonight’s events from happening, and sixteen times I have failed, each failure further confirmation that to live by the Law of Peripheral Adjustments is to accept the curse of the middle domino: you are a means to an end you will never see.
I turn away from the church to face the saddest-looking house on the block. All chipped paint and rotted wood, heavy locks on doors, bars on every window. Eager to be rid of the rifle in my hands, I walk to the front door, set to work picking the lock. I remind myself that this is action, and while the middle domino may cause little destruction, the final domino is nothing without it.