The Mother's Curse

A van suddenly swerved towards me, forcing me off the bridge and into the river below. I struggled to undo my seatbelt, but it wouldn’t budge. My car slowly sank into the depths of the river as I held my breath. I suddenly woke up panicking in bed; once I was calm, I laid back down.

I hope it doesn’t start again...

I drove to work the next day thinking about my nightmare. Since I was six, I had seen events that were to come days before they happened—and they were all grim. First, it was my grandfather; a year later, it was our parish priest. My mom brushed them off as coincidences, but when the premonition of my dad getting killed in action came true, she became worried.

Not a week later, I was sent to a children’s home. I suppose she feared me, or thought me a freak. I never saw or heard from her again; the only one I reconnected with a decade later was my little brother, David. I got a call from him after work that day. He said Mom was dying.

I went to Mom’s house the next day. She was thin and pale; her eyes looked too heavy to react to me as I entered the room. Sitting next to her, I couldn’t find the words to ask why she abandoned me. Right then, however, she revealed something I never expected. Mom said she left me at the children’s home for David’s safety, as it was a curse she was familiar with. She said Grandma did the same thing to her because she also had premonitions. Mom said she didn’t want David to suffer the same fate as her little brother. According to her, it was a curse shared between mother and daughter that brought death to the males around them. To render it ineffective, she and I had to be apart.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but it made sense; I had not had a single premonition since I was sent away. I asked her whether the curse could be broken, but she said all her past efforts had ended in failure, not only for herself, but also for me. I also asked Mom about my latest dream, but she wasn’t sure if it were a premonition or not.

“Perhaps the curse is rerouting itself, since you’ve avoided it all this time. Please be careful, Val.”

With those words, my mom passed away. I suddenly began to feel emotions I had never felt before. My body shook as I drove home. Grief and uncertainty swirled in my mind; I lost focus on the road and wandered off into my memories. Then it happened. The van from my dreams almost hit me, and I drove my car off the bridge. There was no escaping fate that day, but at least I took my curse with me to the bottom of the river that day.