I knew where I was before I realized I was floating. I recognized the red basket I’d left in the community laundry room that morning. It was stuffed to overflowing with my white, down comforter and a pair of heavy running shoes that I’d planned to use in the dryer for fluffing purposes. My building’s maintenance man frowned on me doing that. He’d told me several times that he didn’t think that the athletic shoes banging against the inside of the dryer was a good thing. The way his lips would purse made the liver spots on his face dance, which was somehow worse than seeing how he’d die. So, I did what any girl who’s against dry cleaner bills would do, I waited for his day off to wash and dry the blanket.

I didn’t sweat much of what he said to me, but I did feel a little sorry for him. Who wants to be fated to die of a heart attack while sitting on the john? There’s nothing dignified about that. Then again, there’s nothing dignified about most deaths I’ve seen. They’re usually messy, often stupid, and always final. 

I heard the click of the nineteen seventies plastic flip clock on the wall. I wasn’t sure if all of them did that, but ours had an annoying habit of clicking when the hour flipped down, like a mechanical heartbeat counting down. The clock showed that it was eight o’clock; the date display showed that it was today. My stomach clenched at the immediacy of it.

A man entered the room carrying a basket and dragging a hamper, both stuffed full of clothes. He opened the washer and started pulling out my wet clothes, piling them on top of the dryer. “Fucking inconsiderate people.” He grumbled.

“Fuck you.” I said, still hovering over him. “If you had my issues, you wouldn’t stay in public places longer than you had to either, dick.” The words came out automatically, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me. Old habits die hard – unlike people, who die pretty easily.

At first, I thought he’d heard me. He stopped what he was doing and cocked his head to the side, then seemed to shrug it off. All I could really see was the top of his head. His dark hair was retreating like the French military, away from his forehead. He was slim, wearing a light grey shirt, skinny jeans and a pair of black converse. He was probably some coffee shop douche with an acoustic guitar and a collection of elitist books in his apartment that he’d never read. The kind of guy who’d judge me for reading mystery novels instead of Proust.

The arrival of another man snapped me out of my unfair opinion forming. This one was a plain and simple street thug, the kind of guy that non-criminals would cross the street to avoid. He was wearing a pair of ratty jeans, a dirty t-shirt that had once been white and a brown leather vest. The stunning ensemble was topped off with hair so greasy it stuck to his head and a pistol grip stuck out of his waistband. He drew the gun out of the front of his jeans and pointed it at the guy with the laundry. “Give it to me.” He said, his hand visibly shaking. “Give it to me now!” he screamed.

The first man took his wallet out of his back pocket and threw it on the floor. His hands trembled worse than the gunman’s, and I felt a pang of guilt for my earlier judgment. It’s weird how death has a way of humanizing people.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” The thug screeched and prematurely pulled the trigger. The dark haired guy’s blood, brains and skull painted the dingy walls of the laundry room, and my blanket.

Damn.

For a second, I couldn’t look at the guy—his blood, his brains, and his glasses dangling uselessly from his ears. I shook the image away, trying to focus on the here and now. “Damn it,” I muttered, looking at my comforter. Brains and blood stain. Another pointless death to add to my collection of nightmares.

I popped out of the dream, sweating and disoriented. That wasn’t unusual. I had at least a couple of death dreams a week. This one was different because it was going down in less than five minutes and it was in my building. My safe haven, my carefully chosen fortress of solitude where the visions usually kept their distance.

It’s terrible, but if I were being honest, I wasn’t so much concerned about the potential dead guy as I was over the imminent soiling of my building. It had taken years to find a place I could live comfortably and have food delivered on the regular. Every time I went near the exterior walls of my apartment, or when someone walked by my door, I didn’t see the deaths as I had in former buildings. Maybe it was the thick, concrete walls that did it, but here, I could mostly choose when I let a vision in. And after years of sleepless nights in other buildings, seeing every neighbor’s end through paper-thin walls, this sanctuary was worth every penny of my parent’s inheritance. The thought of losing that sanctuary made my chest tight with panic.

I glanced at the clock. It was three minutes till eight. I didn’t want to put myself in harm’s way, but if I let a murder go down in the laundry room, I’d have to move, again. “Not going to happen.” I said to Brutus, my fawn-colored English Mastiff slash lumpy area rug. He lifted his massive head and gave me that look, the one that said he knew we were about to do something stupid but he’d follow me anyway.

The minutes on the digital clock changed. Two minutes till eight. My stomach churned, a sick mix of dread and the usual panic. This wasn’t my problem. It couldn’t be. I’d spent years building rules for myself, staying out of other people’s deaths. They happened whether I wanted them to or not, whether I saw them coming or not.

But this one wasn’t happening to a stranger across town. It was happening here, in my building. It was about to ruin my carefully curated life.

Jumping out of bed, shoeless and still in my pajamas – the ones with little cartoon ghosts on them, because I have a sick sense of humor – I headed for the door with Brutus on my heels. Brutus moved like a shadow beside me, all grace for his massive size, somehow avoiding the creaky spots in the old flooring that I could never miss. My clumsy human feet undermined his stealth, pounding the hallway’s old, creaky wood flooring as I sprinted for the stairwell door. I was breathing so heavily by the time I reached the stairs, I thought I might have to either sit down or fall down. Note to self: apocalyptic death visions are not an adequate substitute for cardio.

Clutching the railing, I made it down the single flight without falling, bursting into the room just as the thug drew his gun. My heart was hammering so hard I could barely hear my own voice.

My breath came in sharp gasps as I skidded into the laundry room, Brutus growling at my side. My brain scrambled for the right words, anything that might stop the guy with the gun.

“Get the fuck out of my building!” I yelled, my voice shaking more than I’d like. As the gunman’s hands trembled on his weapon, I caught a flash of his death, decades away, choking on a chicken bone in a prison cafeteria. The banality of it almost made me laugh. “You really don’t want to do this. Trust me, prison food is going to kill you.”

The words hit harder than I intended. His face went pale, gun wavering between me and his intended victim. Then his eyes caught Brutus’s steady gaze, and something like survival instinct finally kicked in. He turned and fled, the gun disappearing into his waistband.

My legs felt like jelly. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I’d done it. Somehow, I’d done it. And I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do next.

I looked back at the guy whose life I’d just saved. He was pressed so flat against the wall, that it looked like he was trying to meld with it. His eyes, the size of cup saucers watched me carefully. The fear in them was familiar, it was the same look people got when they realized I wasn’t quite normal.

“It wouldn’t have killed you to put my clothes in the dryer.” I walked over to the machine, scooped up my wet clothes and deposited them inside. My hands were shaking, but I refused to let him see that.

Brutus and I were half way up the stairs when I heard the laundry room door open. “Wait.” He said. “How did you know?”

I didn’t even turn around. “I see dead people.” I continued climbing the stairs, trying to ignore how my legs felt like jelly.

“You see ghosts?” the sound of his shoes on the concrete steps was closing in.

“No,” I said, “I see death, the way people are going to die.” The words tasted bitter in my mouth. They always did.

He put his hand on my shoulder and instead of seeing a death, I saw a sea of murky green, like tarnished gold, undulating. Brutus growled, low and menacing. He was definitely getting a treat. The man snatched his hand back. “So, I was going to die back there and you saved me?”

I turned to face him. “It was either save you or buy a new comforter. Brains and blood tend to stain.” I tried to make it sound flip, casual, like I hadn’t just watched his alternate ending splattered across the wall.

I hurried back to my apartment, hoping that I wouldn’t have to see Mr. Skinny Jeans again. Brutus watched my back down the long hallway, moving with a precision that seemed almost ritual, and settled by the door. He always positioned himself in exactly the same spot, like a sentry at a post until I turned the last of two deadbolts. After that, he resumed his rug imitation on the living room floor, but his eyes stayed on me. He always knew when the visions left me shaken. 

Locking the door behind me I slumped against it. The adrenaline had my hands shaking violently. I threw the keys on my dining table. It was more a display for mail, keys, and my favorite rock-paper-scissors sculpture than a place for family dinners. Scissors seemed to crop up everywhere in my apartment—art pieces, shadowboxes, even the bold Keith Haring print above my turquoise couch. I tried not to overanalyze it.

I turned on my big television as I walked past on my way to the kitchen. It was too big really for the smallish apartment, but I liked turning off the lights and drawing the black-out curtains. The big screen along with the expensive sound system made me feel like I was in a movie theatre, one of the few public places I wanted to go, but never could without the visions overwhelming me. Sometimes I wondered if my life would make a decent movie, but then I remembered that the protagonist usually needs to be more heroic and less neurotic.

In my postage stamp size kitchen, I grabbed Brutus a treat along with a stack of menus. I settled onto my couch, the knobby turquoise fabric perfectly worn to that sweet spot between soft and scruffy. I fanned the menus out on the coffee table. The red menu from Mr. Chan’s Chinese restaurant beckoned me. If James was working, it would be a good choice.

I picked up my old-fashioned landline phone and dialed, my fingers moving on autopilot. “Good evening, Miss Molly.” I supposed it was probably a bad sign when the restaurateur knew a customer’s phone number on sight, but I couldn’t be picky about the places I ordered from. When you can see how people die, your dining options become severely limited.

“Hey Mr. Chan, is James working?”

“He’s here. You want the usual?”

“Yes please.”

“Thirty minutes.”

I asked for James because he was going to die at eighty-five, in his bed, surrounded by loved ones. If I had to see deaths, I preferred to see peaceful ones. They were like unicorns, rare and beautiful and often mythical.

The pounding on the door started about twenty minutes after I hung up with Mr. Chan. It sounded like someone was going at the other side of my door with a small sledge hammer. My heart jumped into my throat. It was too soon for James, but a decent response time if it were the cops. “Can you believe that little shit called the police? After all we did for him.” I grumbled to Brutus’ sympathetic ear on my way to the door. He gave me his patented look that said humans were exhausting, and he wasn’t wrong. “Who is it?” I asked, though the aggressive knocking had cop written all over it.

“Police, please open the door ma’am.” 

I released the two deadbolts, the little, all but useless lock on the knob and opened the door as far as the chain would allow. The cops on the other side were no strangers to the dance. As soon as the door cracked open, there was a badge thrust toward me at eye level. “I have a dog.” I told the officer. “Please don’t shoot him.” I was no stranger to the dance, either. More than one cop had drawn their gun on Brutus.

Opening the door, I inspected the two men. The younger, uniformed officer hit me with a vision that sucked the air from my lungs–a large Hispanic woman, a kitchen knife, vengeance for her husband’s death at his hands. The officer’s Ken-doll perfect features twisted in shock, blue eyes going wide as the blade went in. Weeks, maybe a month away. I pushed it away, like always. You can’t save everyone.

The other one who’d offered me his detective’s badge was a plain-clothes officer, blatantly of Greek descent. Where the younger man was light, he was dark; black hair, dark brown eyes, and olive-toned skin.

I waited for the vision to hit, for the usual rush of someone’s final moments crashing into me. But nothing came. No death. No blood. Just… nothing. It was like staring into an empty mirror, and the void of it made my skin prickle with something between fear and fascination.

“He can’t come in.” I told the detective, nodding toward Ken doll. “You’re okay.” The words came out before I could stop them, my usual filter stripped away by the oddity of his non-death and the way he seemed to fill my doorway with more presence than should fit there.

“It’s alright.” He told the younger uniformed officer and walked inside. I closed the door behind him, trying not to notice how he moved like a predator, all fluid grace and contained power. Even Brutus watched him with unusual intensity, his posture alert but not aggressive, strange for my typically protective companion.

“Molly Carmichael, is that right?” he asked, though I was sure he’d already spoken to the Super and probably Ray, the nighttime doorman, about me. “I’m Detective Thanatos.” Something about the way he said his own name made the shadows in my apartment seem deeper. “I just have a couple of routine questions regarding your role in the attempted assault of Mr. Alexander Burton.”

“I don’t know the name.” I said. The detective showed me the picture he was holding. It was the man from the laundry room, looking considerably less terrified than the last time I’d seen him. Something about the detective’s intense stare made me want to fidget, but I forced myself still.

I considered lying; I always gave it some thought before I blurted out that I was a freak to a stranger. The bad thing about lying was that they always knew. I was a terrible liar. My face basically came with closed captioning for my thoughts. “I had a vision of his death and I ran downstairs to try to stop it.” I told him. Might as well go for broke.

“A vision?” He frowned at me, but there was something else in his expression. Not disbelief – recognition?

“It was in a dream.” I flopped down on my couch, still in my pajamas, and Brutus sat on my foot. His weight was comforting, grounding. “I saw him die, but I went down to the laundry room and stopped it.” The words came out matter-of-fact, like I was discussing the weather instead of admitting to supernatural abilities.

He sat down on the other end of the couch, close enough that I caught a whiff of his cologne – something expensive and subtle that made me think of ancient forests. “You see deaths?” He wasn’t looking at me like I was crazy. That was the second clue that something was different about the man. “Did you see mine?”

“I’ve seen the deaths of everyone I’ve ever met, except for yours.” I felt myself frown. “Why?” The question came out sharper than I intended, edged with the nervousness his blank slate sparked in me.

“Shit,” He said, “this really complicates things.” He stood, reached into the pocket of his sinfully snug jeans and took out his phone. “Boss Lady.” He said to the phone and held it up to his ear giving me the eyeball. “It wasn’t there.” He told the person on the other end of the connection. He didn’t seem to have any service issues, which was odd given my building was a notorious dead zone.

I panicked for a number of heartbeats. The “it” he was talking about could be whatever the thug was looking for. My mind raced through possibilities, each worse than the last.

“A Seer intervened,” he said, his voice low but clear. “Yes, the kind that sees death before it happens. No, she’s not like the others. And the dog—yes, I said the dog. There’s something unusual about both of them.” His dark eyes fixed on me with renewed intensity. “Yes, I’ll handle it personally.” He stuck the phone back in his pocket and leveled an intimidating stare directly at me. “How did you stop it?”

The way he’d said “different” made my skin prickle. And what did he mean about Brutus? But before I could voice either question, his intimidating stare demanded an answer about Burton.

“I reasoned with the guy.” I told him. “Brutus probably didn’t hurt my cause.” 

His gaze shifted between Brutus and me, finally settling on my dog, frowning. He acknowledged Brutus with that classic upward chin tilt – the universal masculine greeting that silently says “hey” without words.

 “Have you ever stopped a death before?”

I was getting tired of his weird ass questions and the way he made my skin buzz like I’d touched a live wire. “Listen, Detective, I don’t know what you’re after, but I already played hero once today, and I’m fresh out of capes.” My voice only shook a little. “Unless you’ve got more questions about my spin cycle settings, you know where the door is.” I stood up to my full, completely unintimidating five feet two inches and pointed at the door. 

Not at all intimidated, he perched his hot ass on the arm of my couch and casually inspected my apartment with squinty eyes. The mess suddenly embarrassed me; balled-up pieces of paper that I’d thrown at the wastebasket, an abandoned takeout container on the coffee table that, earlier in the day, contained the lunch Brutus and I shared. Every wrapper and dust bunny felt like evidence of my isolation, my carefully constructed bubble of safety that he was somehow threatening just by existing.

“Don’t leave town,” he said, finally standing up and heading to the door when his partner started knocking. The words should have sounded like a cliché, but instead they carried the weight of prophecy. As he left, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my carefully ordered world was about to implode. Brutus pressed against my leg, and I scratched his ears, grateful for his solid presence. At least one thing in my life made sense.