Five Lives Brad Crawford Never Lived, I-V
Title: Five Lives Brad Crawford Never Lived
Team: Schwarz
Word count: 100 X 5
Character: Crawford
I
There were bad men in the world and he shouldn't talk to strangers. Brad knew there were bad men in his future, and they'd make him bad too. He didn't want that.
His plan was very simple. He had a stupid friend. He attributed all his lucky breaks to his friend's cleverness and foresight, loudly and often. His friend was stupid enough to agree. When Brad saw the trouble coming he fell back as they walked home from school.
The big car squealed to a halt and the bad men grabbed his friend. Brad grinned. So much for the future.
II
At sixteen, Brad Crawford realised he was clairvoyant. All the nightmares, the headaches made sudden sense. It was only natural that his physical sight should deteriorate as his psychic sight improved. The visions hurt, the flashes of brilliance and clarity searing like hot metal, but he was happy to suffer them.
His parents wept to hear his illness was too advanced to operate, the tumour pressing on his brain. The doctor told them the hallucinations would only increase, that Brad should be hospitalised.
In his vision Brad saw his parents laughing again and happy. He couldn't wait to tell them.
III
If you were in serious trouble you didn't hesitate, you hired Crawford to represent you. The prosecution could never spring surprises on him, unfortunate evidence never threw his arguments off-course, his cross-examinations ended at destinations his opponents could not foresee.
He charged a lot, of course. His friends who worked pro bono tried to persuade him to do likewise. And if this were a TV movie he'd have a change of heart and defend poor people from injustice.
But life isn't a TV movie, and Crawford kept up his successful career. There was no future in that heart-warming crap anyway.
IV
When Crawford got married he knew certain things were true. His wife was going to cheat with his best friend, and then try to screw him over with alimony and child support. She'd fight tooth and nail to get the children, and the damned liberal courts would back her all the way.
Crawford knew all this, and married her anyway. The children he saw in his future filled him with fierce pride and love, and the mere wonderful fact of their existence was going to be enough to keep him going.
He wasn't smiling much in his wedding photos, though.
V
It is not given to every man to know the hour of their death, but then not every man was Crawford. His life was full of last minute changes, planes not boarded, car journeys not taken, apparently safe neighbourhoods avoided. He worried sometimes that he was too obvious, that someone would see the patterns by which he survived. Survival was what it was, he thought, he could no longer call it living. "The coward dies a thousand times, the brave man only once," he'd read and smiled bitterly.
He'd seen a thousand possible deaths by the time he was ten.
Team: Schwarz
Word count: 100 X 5
Character: Crawford
I
There were bad men in the world and he shouldn't talk to strangers. Brad knew there were bad men in his future, and they'd make him bad too. He didn't want that.
His plan was very simple. He had a stupid friend. He attributed all his lucky breaks to his friend's cleverness and foresight, loudly and often. His friend was stupid enough to agree. When Brad saw the trouble coming he fell back as they walked home from school.
The big car squealed to a halt and the bad men grabbed his friend. Brad grinned. So much for the future.
II
At sixteen, Brad Crawford realised he was clairvoyant. All the nightmares, the headaches made sudden sense. It was only natural that his physical sight should deteriorate as his psychic sight improved. The visions hurt, the flashes of brilliance and clarity searing like hot metal, but he was happy to suffer them.
His parents wept to hear his illness was too advanced to operate, the tumour pressing on his brain. The doctor told them the hallucinations would only increase, that Brad should be hospitalised.
In his vision Brad saw his parents laughing again and happy. He couldn't wait to tell them.
III
If you were in serious trouble you didn't hesitate, you hired Crawford to represent you. The prosecution could never spring surprises on him, unfortunate evidence never threw his arguments off-course, his cross-examinations ended at destinations his opponents could not foresee.
He charged a lot, of course. His friends who worked pro bono tried to persuade him to do likewise. And if this were a TV movie he'd have a change of heart and defend poor people from injustice.
But life isn't a TV movie, and Crawford kept up his successful career. There was no future in that heart-warming crap anyway.
IV
When Crawford got married he knew certain things were true. His wife was going to cheat with his best friend, and then try to screw him over with alimony and child support. She'd fight tooth and nail to get the children, and the damned liberal courts would back her all the way.
Crawford knew all this, and married her anyway. The children he saw in his future filled him with fierce pride and love, and the mere wonderful fact of their existence was going to be enough to keep him going.
He wasn't smiling much in his wedding photos, though.
V
It is not given to every man to know the hour of their death, but then not every man was Crawford. His life was full of last minute changes, planes not boarded, car journeys not taken, apparently safe neighbourhoods avoided. He worried sometimes that he was too obvious, that someone would see the patterns by which he survived. Survival was what it was, he thought, he could no longer call it living. "The coward dies a thousand times, the brave man only once," he'd read and smiled bitterly.
He'd seen a thousand possible deaths by the time he was ten.