I believe in the butterfly effect. Nobody can claim their actions don't matter; everything in our world is connected like a line of dominoes, and when one domino falls, the rest collapse with it.

There was a farm resting by the river, sleeping amongst creamy gold California poppies. The bees spent their summer flirting with the blushing almond blossoms; naming each bud and sampling their distinct pollen like obsessive food-critics.

The hound on the farm could be always be found sprawled beside the creaky rocking chair in the evenings, receiving head-pats with the thump of his tail. While the setting sun lit the sky on fire and burned time, old Leo the farmer would -much to the hound's displeasure- munch on the butt of a fat cigar. Indian spices sprinkled the air.

Over time the hound grew bored of chasing slack-jawed cows. He burrowed under the fence and dashed onto the road, tangling himself in the wheels of a Sedan. On impact, the car skimmed across the asphalt and came to rest with its belly exposed to the impartial sun. The accident created one hell of a traffic jam. This jam impacted thousands of lives, sending a crusade of dominoes crashing down.

Mr. Harrington rapped his calloused knuckles against the steering wheel, muttering the lines of his speech, over and over again, out from underneath mustached lips. It was a speech about teenage depression. Giving the speech was a monumental job; it could change a student's life, which was why he was nervous. He had never been known for his sympathetic character. Although, after getting stuck in traffic, he was more concerned about missing the assembly rather than screwing it up. An hour passed without his car covering a mile. The assembly had ended and his speech left undelivered.

If he were to have given the speech, Savannah Wrighter would have rapped on his office door, tears streaming down her bony face. In a hysterical voice, she would have explained the constant misery embedded in her life. When her words ran dry, Mr. Harrington would have wrapped his hands around her deeply scarred wrists and made a promise; he would do everything in his power to help. Together, with time, they would erase the lines of grief in her mind and cement peace in its place.

Except that hadn't happened. A car hit a hound and caused a traffic jam, and the speech was never made. That year, Savannah took her life; sitting in a brutally hot shower, she slit her wrists with a razorblade shoplifted from Walmart. It was too humiliating to buy. She bled out slowly and died alone. Her parents found her two hours later; wet and naked and pale and empty, robbed of something that could have been great. Her blood had swirled down the drain, sent to the abyss of pipes below with no recognition.

They go on and on, these dominoes do; smashing against one another until they reach the end of their line. Then they are stacked back up, and the whole process restarts. I believe in the butterfly effect. Therefore, I can not dismiss that the beginning of the end of my world started with a ripped notebook.

-Juliet Harper. January 13th, 2022?

She signed her short story with elegant handwriting. The question mark was not for nothing. Days were becoming hard to keep track of; time did not matter here. Satisfied with her work, Juliet put down her pencil and pondered how the butterfly effect had played out in her own life...

The ripped notebook. So seemingly unimportant, but that was the start. and now, three months after the 18th of October, she was about to receive a fate worse than death. Juliet couldn't help but wonder if, somewhere, somehow, in the distant future, someone would read her story; in a time when the world would be pieced back together, and civilization rebuilt. She doubted it. There were no longer enough people alive to restore civilization, and soon she would be as invisible as the wind; her story tossed into the trash. The girl with eyes like a full moon leaned back against the cold wall of her cell, awaiting whatever horrors were about to unfold, thinking of that day -which felt years ago- when she had driven up the coast without a care in the world...