To Be Omnipotent

Walk through the field with the girl. Climb over the broken fence and watch her hand graze the tips of the tall grass. Understand that she has always hated this pathway. Know she walks it because it is convenient. She walks it because it lengthens the time she is able to stay out on her own. Recognize, however, these reasons don’t discount that she has always felt haunted while traveling it.

Visit the stories in her mind. Goblins, and trolls, and evil sprites living in the tall, creaking trees. Maybe it is the No Trespassing sign on the locked gate, or the dilapidated couch sitting in a small clearing, or the long-forgotten tree-stands sporting dangling boards, that lend to the spookiness. But as the wind whistles eerily through the hilly terrain, the fear is almost as undeniable as it is appealing. Remember the times her sisters walked with her. Remember the make-believe games they played in the field and trees. But this girl came back more times than all the rest. Feel her seclusion and safety, distance and danger.

Today, she walks the pathway like always, avoiding large stones that threaten to turn ankles. She winds her way through briar patches and around hidden holes, an inner compass guiding her through the maze. But pause, listen as she hears a disturbing new noise. It stops her in her tracks, alerts her senses. Her eyes dart toward a nearby gas well, where the noise is coming from.

Heart beating fast, she steps closer to the sound, curiosity guiding her footsteps. Her hand reaches out to a white box as an alarm hurts her ears. A thought rushes through her mind as she lifts the panel of the white box, she wonders what she is doing. You wonder what she is doing. Wonder, what could she possibly do to stop the noise? Wonder if the alarm is for a dangerous problem. Wonder if she could get hurt. Her fingers run over a row of blinking lights and corresponding buttons. Follow the finger that pushes one.

Watch the girl die in a fiery explosion of a gas well. Her body is burned until unrecognizable. It takes a long time for them to find her. Her phone rings until its life gives out a few feet from her body. It is a group of flashlights who find her.

“It’s crazy,” some will say, and others will think. 

But you know it’s not crazy. You know she was always supposed to die there.

Hear those ghost stories live on. Wait until the kids in the neighborhood attribute the eerie wind to a girl screaming as she is swallowed by flame.

Or, the girl walks away. You watch her return to her as-usual-life. But her mind, always making up stories about this place, spins a tale about her blowing up a beeping gas well by simply touching it. You know this scares her and amuses her as she walks home. It isn’t until she is far away from the spooky path that you hear her think about the repercussions of her dying. See the moments in her mind of how badly her family would fall apart. Watch her mother cry kneeling by a fresh grave

Hear the whispers of “What a shame…” and “She had such a bright future”.Know her mind momentarily dwells on whether you will care. If I died, she thinks, would you even be sad?Would it matter at all? Feel her fear the answer to that question. Realize she is scared because she thinks you would be just fine.

About the Author

Emmalee Gagnon is a twenty-year-old author who is currently an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing at Arcadia University. She has won multiple poetry contests, has been published in Quiddity literary magazine, in the anthology POETRY, and in Pennsylvania’s Best Emerging Poets. Currently, she works as a desk assistant at Landman Library and as an editor with the academic journal The Compass.