Do you know about the Red String of Fate?
Do you want me to tell you—the truth of it all?
Because I need to confess to somebody about what I’ve done, how I’ve wronged you all. I didn’t mean it. I never meant to destroy those precious connections.
Those little spider web thin threads connected to hips, elbows, and collarbones—so many different types of stitching on different places. The array of colors and textures were all so different and every person had at least one string that connected off somewhere. Sometimes I could see it right away, connecting back to the person sitting beside them. Other times it would stretch farther off than my eyes could see.
I’d always been able to see them. I found out only after my first day of kindergarten that what I could see wasn’t normal. What my family used to find cute and imaginative became a disturbance to their reputation. So I stopped bringing it up.
It just became normal. I got used to seeing them.
Then my dad needed hip surgery and I found myself in a place with people close to death.
One couple in particular caught my attention on the day of my dad’s surgery. It was raining outside, coming down hard and sliding against the giant windows of the hospitals like it was being poured in buckets. I had been wandering the halls when I came across a string made of shiny silver.
The man was sick and his string was slack, I’d never seen a string hang like that. They usually stayed tight and straight to their destination, shortening and lengthening when necessary. It looked as if it hung from his shoulder loosely; the same way loose nails fall from rotting wood. The other end led into a woman I assumed was his wife. I don’t even know where I was in the hospital. I just remember watching as the string slipped out from his shoulder. It fell like a silk scarf on the edge of a bed.
Nurses rushed into the room and pushed the woman out before shutting the door. His machines had flat lined, but I couldn’t focus on him. I kept staring at a string hanging from a woman’s left pinky finger. It stayed attached to her, but the other end dragged across the floor. It didn’t connect to anyone and it felt wrong. So I picked it up. The moment I did the woman flinched up. Her hands shook and she seemed confused for a moment before grabbing me. Her nails dug into my arms and she was breathing heavily.
“I love you. I love you so much,” her lips touched the corner of my mouth in a way meant for a lover.
I dropped the string and pushed away from her. I stepped away and hid behind the counter. Her face went into a confused horror before she stepped away, apologizing to me profusely.
I started to sob and only when the nurses called for my parents over the intercom and the woman had disappeared from the hospital, did I stop crying.
These strings are not permanent. They do not carry into the afterlife, so I told myself there was no real point to them. Anyone can pick up the other end and take the love as their own.
The strings were something I kept in my peripheral vision, until the day I fell in love with a boy. He was the prettiest person I had ever seen; all long lashes, golden brown skin, and dark wavy hair. I sat next to him in math and we were assigned as class partners.
No, I did not have a string with him. I didn’t care.
That is until I watched a girl walk past him just as he was passing her. They had a string. A deep red stitched on the side of their right palms, which I had seen numerous times before on others. The red string, the fated true love.
But they didn’t know each other right? So what if they had a red string? If they never talk, then they never become lovers.
So I made sure to keep them apart. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted my chance to be happy outside of the strings. Why should I wait for my own strings to find me? Some people never find out who is on the other end.
Some people don’t even have red strings. I didn’t. So why should they be with each other.
I thought things were going my way, when he asked her out. They had been in a group project for English. I wasn’t his only school partner.
But I was close to him. He told me about it in math, about how much he liked her. He wanted me to know because I was like his best friend, he said. He claimed he didn’t have anyone else to tell it to since all his guy friends would make fun of him.
So I sat there and smiled and took it.
Except I couldn’t. I hated the strings, hated how they decided everything. Which is why as he walked out of math and she was leaving the class across ours, I yanked on the string.
It didn’t break.
So I brought my scissors and I snipped it off on her end.
My heart pumped so hard. I suddenly felt as if everyone could see exactly what I had done. I stood still as she sat next to me unsuspectingly in the library.
I had just cut her love line. I was so busy freaking out I forgot to watch the string as it dragged away, unattached.
When I found it again, it had knotted itself into the middle of a black string. My fingers were shaky and sweating too much for me to untangle the red from the black. I decided to just cut the black string and tie it back together after I slipped off the red one. Except when I cut it, the string snapped away, as if it had been so tightly wound already and was on the verge of snapping. The red string fell to the ground and I picked it up gingerly, trying to untangle the knot at the end.
The original red string girl walked out of the library as I kneeled on the ground.
Are you okay? She asks me.
Yes fine. I smile up at her, my fingers fumbling.
Her smile fades as she watches my hands twitch emptily in her own eyes.
Would you like me to take you to the nurse? I don’t think it’s healthy to shake like that.
My guilty conscious seeps into me. I cut the string of a girl who wants to be nice to me. She lost her red string because I want it for myself.
I leave the cut, red string lying tangled there on the floor as I stand up. I tell her again that everything is fine. I fell and it startled me when my hands took the impact. She dusts me off and tells me she’s glad I’m okay.
I fall asleep believing I did the right thing.
But I didn’t. The next day I find multiple slack strings. Some drag too loosely across the floor, others are so tight they appear to be on the brink of a snap. I walk to school and instead of them being out of my way, they touch me and cling to me. I try to yank a few up so I can duck under but they break apart with just a bit of a stretch. I curse under my breath and try to tie them back together.
It works out until I’m left with three blue strings…three.
I check the entire street for another string of blue but find none. Kids bump past me as they break into a run to make it to school on time. In my desperation, I tie all three strings together in the middle.
It becomes a daily routine. If I touch a string it either falls loose or snaps. I try to put them back, but sometime I can’t help but get it wrong.
A slue of divorces and affairs become the talk of the town. Parents dating teenagers, dads seeing multiple women, believing all of them to be the same woman. People forgetting whom their spouse is.
I rush about town seeing all the chaos through the strings. The knots and tangles that mix together about each other. All because I wanted to be at the end of one red string of fate.
The girl I stole from walks around empty and willing to give herself to anyone who will have her. She claims she feels empty when her friends ask. She feels as if there is something missing that only a boy can fill. She became obsessed with finding true love.
The boy ends up in scandal after scandal. He dates anyone who his string tangles up with accidentally. Then one day it gets stuck on a bottle in an alley and stays knotted there. He became madly in love with alcohol and hasn’t left it since.
Me?
I don’t touch the strings anymore. Sometimes if I accidentally brush against them, they still fall apart or end up messy.
One day I feel one around my neck. It stitches into me slowly all the way around until it reaches the nape of my neck.
I look at it in the mirror, a deep dark purple, a bruised color. It reaches up into the sky and I know exactly where I’m connected.
In the morning, someone will find me hanging from my bedroom ceiling fan. They’ll see the rope around my neck. They’ll take off the rope and reveal the purple bruise underneath. But they won’t see the purple string around my neck.
They won’t see how it’s embedded there forever, even in death as it loops around and around, always back to me.