A Gentleman's Curse

Accidents Happen

*Sigh*

"Didn't make it, damn."

Vistiel hit the crosswalk button and then jabbed at it again for good measure, trying but failing to keep himself from sighing as he leaned against the pole to wait. His parents and friends had been nagging him about sighing less and smiling more, but the poor luck he'd always encountered at this particular intersection vexed him to no end.

He hit the button again for good measure, then looked at his watch.

"Not gonna get there before they leave, huh.." he mumbled.

'What is the point of going anyway,' he thought. 'It's an outlet, they could just look up how to change it on the web. Surely, it wouldn't take that long.'

He suppressed another sigh. Today was starting rough.

Unfortunately, the only thing harder to come by than love were good clients and he wasn't about to completely blow off the people who'd funded him through trade school to become an electrician. Not to mention, they loved him as well. More than most people loved their children, in fact, since they chose him.

Adopted parents. Once you realize someone would give anything for you while not having a blood-related reason to, it became hard to not do anything you could for them in return. Vistiel was always picked on in school for it but now he couldn't see it as anything other than a blessing.

'She just wants to check up on me,' he thought.

His mom was no fool. Learning to change an outlet was something she could pick up in less than an hour, yet she'd rather pay him to do it. No matter how hard he'd refuse, she'd find a way to pay him. She wanted his business to succeed more than he did it seemed at times.

Hesitantly, Vistiel reached into his pocket to pull out his phone.

'Better let her know now than have her wondering.'

Vistiel dialed his mother's phone number and brought the phone to his ear, hitting the cross button one last time. He didn't understand why but something about pressing it tickled his brain in just the right way, be it the beep or the slight vibration it gave off.

He glanced to the right and spotted a man stepping off the sidewalk. The man, texting and walking while not paying attention in the least to where he was going, had just put himself in the path of a speeding police vehicle.

With quicker movements than he'd ever used before in his life, Vistiel reached out with his right hand to wretch him back to safety just in time for the interceptor to go flying past where the man should have been a half second later.

"Hey, watch whe-"

"DON'T TOUCH ME MAN!"

Without looking up, the man grabbed Vistiel's hand off his shoulder and shoved him to the side. Already being off balance from yanking the man so fast, Vistiel stumbled forward off the sidewalk right into the path of another vehicle. He lifted his hands up and cringed as a last resort as if that would save him from the inevitable.

Which came in the form of a slight jolt on his left thigh. Confused, he slowly opened his eyes and glanced up to see the truck had stopped in time with a driver that looked terrified in the driver's seat. Vistiel then stared down at his leg, not malformed and not in pieces. It just ached slightly.

He slowly let all the tension leave his body as he sighed, heart-pounding but legs staying solid as a rock.

He didn't want to die. Not really, but when looking at a list of things the man was afraid of, death wasn't there. In fact, one could say death was more on the 'looking forward to' portion of the list.