Smoke and Mirrors

What If?

Skye looked left, looked right, then looked left again.

She didn't see the car approaching, because the sun had created a blind spot. Her earbuds were in her ears, blasting AC/DC. She was listening to "Thunderstruck" and singing along.

Skye's right foot came down off the curb first, quickly followed by her left. One step, then a second.

Xavier was running late for work. He was supposed to start in ten minutes and yet he was a good twenty minutes away if he didn't hit any traffic.

He looked down at his ringing phone and saw his boss's angry face blinking up at him. Obviously, the boss was pissed off already this morning, and so, "I'm running late" wouldn't be something he wanted to hear.

He looked up from his phone just as he hit the girl crossing the road.

Xavier hit the brakes with everything he had, both feet stomping on the pedal and locking his brakes as he tried to stop the car as quickly as he could. But traveling above the speed limit wasn't going to help, and neither was the fact the he had been distracted by his cell phone.

"Oh shit! What have I done?" he cried as he finally managed to stop the skidding car.

He jumped out of the vehicle and ran toward the mass of blood and flesh lying on the road. Without thinking, he scooped her up and cradled her bloodied body against his elegant Armani suit. Blood poured from her. He shouldn't have touched her, not because of the warm, red liquid oozing out of her, but because he could have done more damage than he already had. But Xavier wasn't thinking.

"I'm so sorry," he kept chanting, over and over again.

Skye didn't know what happened. One moment she was happily singing to "Thunderstruck", and the next she was being thrown in the air. She didn't see Xavier's car, she didn't hear it, and she had no idea that in a blink of an eye her entire world was about to change.

She could now hear someone saying they were sorry. She could feel warm, strong arms hugging her, stroking her hair and telling her to, "Hold on, help's on the way," but she didn't quite understand what was happening.

It was so peaceful, so beautiful as Skye stood beside herself, looking at the handsome young man caressing her hair and crying as he kissed her forehead.

"Don't cry," Skye said to the man as she knelt down beside him. She tried putting a hand on his shoulder, but her hand just passed through him. She couldn't feel him or even touch him. She looked at the crumpled, bloodied woman that lay in his arms. She looked so sad, an empty, gloomy shell.

The woman looked up, when she heard someone calling her. "Skye."

She looked to see where the sound was coming from; it sounded so much like her grandmother. But that was impossible. Her grandmother had passed away many years ago, when Skye was only a teenager.

"Skye." She heard it again. Skye stood and looked around her, this time seeing her grandmother a few steps behind her.

"Grandma, what are you doing here?" she said as she ran over to the timelessly beautiful woman.

"I've come to guide you, dear." Her grandmother extended a hand to her, waiting for Skye to take it.

"Where am I going?" Skye asked with a smile. Seeing her grandmother after all these years was an unexpected joy.

"The choice is yours, Skye. But first you need to see something. Come."

Both women, fingers tightly entwined, stepped into the most brilliant of serene, purple lights imaginable. Her grandmother wrapped her in a tight embrace and took Skye back to a time that she remembered with great fondness.