Sesame Seeds

Prologue

The first time Mya Withers glimpsed into the future, she was ten years old.

It wasn't the kind of future 'reading' one might expect to see a young girl to perform. It wasn't a case of tossing knuckle bones, palm reading or plucking up a Tarot card and declaring you were one slot away from becoming a millionaire. Oh no, Mya was quite blind. She had long since resigned herself to the cruel fact that she would never know the colour purple, could never truly appreciate artwork, drive a car or recognise her mother's face. No, blindness from birth made all of this impossible. There was no smoke, no chanting, mind reading or angels from the heavens. What there was though, was a three dollar sesame seed bun from McDonald's.

Mya hadn't been particularly hungry. Her parents had taken her for cheap, fake-tasting food in a desperate, half-hearted attempt to cheer her up after another day of humiliation and name-calling from her school mates. Their favourite name for Mya, for now anyway, was 'Bat', "Mya the blind bat," or "Mya the blind freak," is what they called her. They were rude little brats, Mya would tell herself, afraid and hateful of anything different. Perhaps Mya should have gone to a blind school but blind schools were expensive and despite her parents' workaholic ways, they never seemed to get any richer.

So Mya sat in McDonald's and ideally ran her finger over the top of her burger, unable to stomach the thought of eating it, while her parents gossiped about the latest office scandal. As Mya ran her finger over the small bumps made by the sesame seeds, she felt the slightest glimmer of amusement when she recognised several brail letters made from those small seeds. One could read off this, Mya thought wryly. Intrigued at the concept, Mya moved her finger faster.

A-U-N-T-Y.

She paused. Mya certainly hadn't expected that. Slower now, she slid her finger to the right.

W-I-L-L B-E.

Even slower now, almost cautious.

D-E-A-D B-Y M-O-R-N-I-N-G.

Looking back on this moment many years later, Mya would remember freezing, going so still she didn't dare breathe. When her heart fell back down from her throat, Mya had torn her hands back as though burned because Mya had an aunt who lived only two streets down from her house; because, with a pair of workaholic parents, it had always been her beloved Auntie Ellie to kiss her hurts better and hold her when she cried. Mya's aunt was practically her surrogate mother.

Alas, Mya, being just a child, hastily dismissed the message before her. But she didn't eat the bun, she didn't dare touch it, and when Mya went back home she couldn't shake a heavy sense of foreboding. She didn't sleep that night.

When she looked back to this moment many years later, Mya would shake her head and laugh coldly.