The Accident

You never saw it coming. The van came out from the intersection, nearly out of control, screeching and swerving wildly towards you. It missed you by a couple of inches at most crashing right into the electrical substation a few meters from where you were standing, and everything went off in a flash.

The fateful morning of the accident, like every day, you had said goodbye to your soon-to-be wife Rosa with a kiss before heading out for your usual walk to work. Rosa was your girlfriend since high school and she was still beautiful as the day you first fell in love with her. Never would you have imagined that your life could, and would, be so deeply upsetted so quickly!

The Doctors did try everything to wake you but nothing seemed to work. After a couple of weeks, they were starting to lose hope when, all of a sudden, you simply awoke. Just like that. It was as if someone had just turned you back on.

Even if you didn’t remember anything at all about the accident, the doctors told you that, the very fact you’d survived without burns or other visible injury, was a miracle. You didn’t come out unscathed though, since you came out of the coma, you often had very violent migraines that seemed to last forever and then disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared. It seemed that the electric shock had actually caused some damage to your nervous system and had somewhat fucked up something in your head. It would certainly take months, and a lot of extensive (and damn expensive) tests, to really understand what really happened.

Even if you still didn’t knew it, your life had already changed. *Dear* Rosa, officially because seeing you in a coma and in pain was too much of a burden for her (spoiler alert, those were bullshits!), decided to leave you and, what were the words she said to your parents? Oh, yes, she needed to *start anew*! She had packed up and left our - sorry - YOUR house even before you had woken up, simply abandoning you and your family to your fate.

Honestly, you don’t think you’ll ever be able to really forgive her for what she’d done. The problem wasn’t that she wanted to leave you, you could understand that, those things could happen in any couple but, her timing, THAT was really a terrible and almost evil thing to do to you after all those years (at least this is how you felt). You still remember the mortification in your sister Caitlin’s voice when she ran out of excuses to justify the lack of messages or visits from Rosa while you were hospitalized. When you finally learned the truth, well, the disappointment and pain about it burned you so deeply that, to be honest, it radically changed your opinions about women and was probably the first *excuse* you needed to start doing what you Oh-so-often-do nowadays!

But we're digressing ... In those initial weeks, you were basically trying to regain possession of your life when you finally realized that, probably by mistake, among the things that had been returned to you by the hospital, there was *THE* ring (to put it this way it almost sounds like you should wait for a bunch of frightening black-robed bad guys looking for it sooner or later). To be perfectly honest, at first you didn't even paid too much attention to it. It was a classic gold ring, old and frankly quite démodé in its design. The thing that intrigued you the most, however, was the triskele roughly engraved on it.

Your curiosity would probably have been limited to these firsts, trivial, considerations if you inexplicably hadn't kept coming across that ring all the time during your daily routine; where you usually left your car keys, on the kitchen table near the fruit bowl, on your nightstand, etc. You kept bumping on it whatever you did at home.

However, everything really changed the day you found it in a drawer, while you were struggling with yet another annoying migraine (again you don’t remember to have put it in there). As soon as you grabbed the ring, your headache immediately subsided until it almost disappeared. Intrigued, you tried to put the ring back in the drawer and walk away noticing the immediate return of the headache. You then tried to wear the ring, feeling immediate relief - Not only was the migraine suddenly and completely gone, but the general soreness that accompanied you since the accident was also gone.

Closing your eyes to savour the sudden serenity that was completely permeating you, you felt for the first time, *powerful* or, more precisely, in total *control*. You don’t know how to explain it but it was as if you knew that you could tell people what they should, or had to, do with the certainty that, if someone was following your *suggestions*, nobody would find anything strange or inappropriate about it, whatever it was what you asked or, more appropriately, ordered.

It was then that your life really changed.

As I already told you in the previous chapter comments, English isn't my first language and it's the first time I write something. Feel free to comment and point out errors or if some passages are hard to follow. thank you all, I hope you like it so far.. ;)