Glitching.

I wished that I had never been born.

A Glitch in the Matrix.

Do we live in a simulated reality? Scientists can neither prove it nor disprove it. But what happens if a bug gets into the program?

Fictional stories based on real accounts...

I wished that I had never been born.

STORY 7

Margret's life had been nothing but a string of bad luck, every choice she made always turned out to be the wrong one and a lot of times the worst one. It played itself back to her as she lay in a semi-conscious state in the back of an ambulance racing towards a hospital considering whether to fight for life or let it go.

Her torn dress was still wet from the gutter that the ambulance had pulled her from after a client had thrown her there beaten up and left to die like a discarded animal.

She did things that she wasn't proud of to survive and gained a drug habit after using them to nullify her working experience. She knew the risks were high but if she expects to be able to eat and now had an accompanying addiction, the risks were soon outweighed by the positives.

It was a while later when Margret slowly opened her eyes to the sterile scent of her room and the stiffness of her sheets. She could hear the repetitive beeps of machines that were monitoring her body functions. At the end of her bed, she could see the blur of two figures with their backs towards her looking over a clipboard and murmuring about her as if they were mechanics discussing how best to approach a wreck after a bad accident.

The two attendants turned when Margret let out an unavoidable groan as movement caused pain to course through her body. One of the attendants hastily walked to where a drip bottle was hanging and adjusted a valve on the tube. Before long the pain killer put Margret back into a dozy stupor as she lay back and closed her eyes.

“Thank you, Maggie.”

Margret slowly opened her eyes and could clearly see a very pretty little girl smiling at her from the side of her bed. No one had called her by that name since she was a kid?

“Hello? where did you come from?” She managed to get out, her mouth and throat still dry and tacky.

“Would you like some water?” the girl smiled as she put the straw towards Margret's lips.

“Thank you, that is very kind of you.”

“No problem. You are very welcome Maggie.”

'What a lovely little girl.' Margret thought to herself.

“How do you know my name?”

“Oh, you remember Maggie! Cause we both have the same name!” The girl chuckled.

That answer just had her more confused than ever as she racked her mind over the past eight or nine years that this child looked to figure how they knew each other?

“Where is your mum?” She asked the girl who then stood up from leaning on the bed towards her and replied, “Oh yes. I had better get going, mum will be looking for me.”

With a smile and the blow of a kiss, she was gone out the door.

Parts of her life shot through Margret's mind as she considered what it might have been like to have a child like this of her own? She had considered it often in the past especially around the times that she had aborted a fetus. She learned to console her guilt with the reality that her lifestyle was not the environment to drag a child through, life is hard enough as it is on her. Margret also liked to imagine what it would have been like to bring up children if her circumstances had been different.

What would their personalities be like? Would they have that pure kindheartedness that she once had but has long since been twisted into a tool to use people within her daily struggles? Would they have that bubbly sense of humor that once caused people to gravitate towards her but she only uses now to hide the hurt deep inside? Would they have been smart enough to learn from her mistakes?

Margret was just closing her eyes as a movement in the room caused her to open them again. This time she saw an attractive teen-aged girl holding a bouquet of flowers and laying them on the wide window sill of the hospital room beside a bunch that the young girl must have left.

“Hello, Mags. Try not to move. Just thought I would pop in and thank you for what you did for me?”

“Who are you?”

“Aw, you know who I am silly? Anyway just thought I would stop by to thank you and give you some support. Don't give up Mags I love you.”

Margaret watched with her mouth open as the girl left the room blowing her a kiss behind her.

Margret remembered seeing an outfit very similar to the one that the girl was wearing when she was about the same age as the teenager that had just swept in and out of her hospital room. She had dreamed about owning it for ages but could never afford it after loaning her money to a relative who never paid her back. In fact, the girl looked very similar to her around that age only happier, prettier. She even had her hair worn the way that she would have worn it back then if hair loss through stress hadn't affected her during that time. This girl still had that bubbly personality that Margret had lost soon after running away from home to live with a no prospect boyfriend. The girl was about the age that Margret herself had started to become depressed and vindictive because her parents wouldn't let her do things that she wanted to do whenever she wanted to do it, for however long that she wanted to do it. Margret had known for years later that they were right all along and she was just being totally selfish. A selfishness that got her into this same situation many times before. Her once supple figure now showed the battle scars of her profession. Her face showed the lines of over-experience for a person still in the prime of their life. Many times in her life Margret had wished that she had never been born, now she has the opportunity to just let go and correct that. She thought that the world would probably be a better place without her in it anyway.

Her eyes glanced towards the door as a quiet knock was accompanied to Margret's surprise by a very beautiful woman dressed in an equally beautiful wedding dress also carrying a large bouquet of flowers? Margret watched agape as the woman seemed to glide across the floor in her full gown towards the window sill and lain the flowers down beside the others. On her way back to the door the woman put her finger up to her lips and said,” Sh, you don't have to say anything sweetheart, I just called in to thank you for what you did for me and to offer you my fullest blessings.” Margret was dumbfounded as she watched the woman quietly drift back towards the door and then out after blowing her a kiss and a brilliant smile. Margret's jaw had been broken twice in the past and had some back teeth knocked out. Her own smile as crooked as her broken nose nowadays. Her bright eyes, long replaced by sunken hollow holes from years of having to sleep with one eye open. At least she was getting a decent amount of rest now considering the circumstances. She wanted to let it all go and rest forever in peace no more disappointments, pain, sorrow. Until these three showed up Margret never thought anyone liked her? Let alone loved her? What had she done to deserve their unconditional love?

Then there was another quiet knock as a woman closer to her age poked her head through the partially opened door. This woman could have been her twin sister but without the scars and age lines?

“Good evening Ms. Walkner I hope that I didn't awaken you.”

“No, it's fine please come in,” Margret whispered her voice still a little harsh. A well-dressed attractive woman wearing an expensive-looking business suit stepped sideways through the partially opened door and into the room.

“I wanted to stop by and thank you for what you did for me and to drop off these.” Then she presented a bunch of flowers that she had behind her back and proceeded over to lay them with the flowers on the window sill.

“They are your favorites I hope that they perk you up. I have done well in my life and I owe it all to you. Sorry, I can't stay long but don't give up the fight honey you are worth more than you realize.”

With a blow of a kiss, she ushered herself out of the room just as a surprised nurse entered.

“Who was that? A sister or something?” the wide-eyed nurse asked.

“I have no idea,” Margret answered her.

“You seem to have had visitors sneaking in to see you all day by the look of all the flowers in the room, Your room smells like a florist?” the nurse giggled, “but their magic seems to be working on you. You are looking a little better than you did when you first got here?”

After the nurse had finished fussing around her she left Margret to catch up on more sleep. Margret was sure that these visitors had mistaken her for someone else? That there could even be some poor woman in another part of the hospital expecting these gracious visitors to show up?

“Well whoever that visitor was, she seems to have made a better business choice than I did.”

Margret thought about her time as a self-employed strip dancer operating under the name 'Margret Divine' only to find out that her dancing was more preferred as a precursor to paid sex which always paid much more than the dancing by itself. This led to bigger more profitable work. An age when you never think about the money ever running out because you will always be young, desirable, and indestructible. At a time when you could happily afford the drugs to get you through the bad days. Until it slowly becomes your sole purpose for existing. Eating into everything you own and everyone you loved till there is nothing else left for it to eat but yourself. Once you have eaten your pride you will do the most debased thing for anybody if they will grant you the means to satisfy that new master of your life. You become a plaything to the low lifes of society doing their bidding and allowing them to use you however they choose. You want desperately to give up the drugs but you fear even worse having to live with the memories that taking drugs had helped you to suppress. to begin with. Margret’s life isn't hers any more it belongs to some pimp to whom she owes a lot of money for the drugs that he had supplied to her in the past. If he sends her out on a job she has to do the job no questions asked.

The last client paid well because he has a cruel streak which he likes to get out of his system from time to time. Margret considered that if she could handle the pain the payment would be enough to clear her debt with the animal that she is in debt to. The service was paid for upfront without her input but she was obliged to go through with it.

“ Hello dear.”

Margret opened her eyes to see the smiling face of a silver-haired old lady standing beside her bed.

“You don't know me, yet. But I most of all wanted to come and thank you for what you have done for us all.”

“Um, who are you and what is it that I did to make your lives so great whilst mine has been going so miserably?”

The elderly lady smiled and her eyes sparkled,” Whenever we are faced with big choices in our lives our world splits into different dimensions. One following the outcome of this choice and another following the outcome of that choice.”

“Yes I have heard of that theory, I understand,” Margret replied.

“Yes I knew that you would,” she continued, “Now when someone has taken one choice someone has to take the other. Otherwise, there is no choice but whatever happens, happens with no way of changing the outcome. A choice gives you options and a way to change the outcome. When nature gives you an option, you take what is given you can't pick and choose to take one and leave the others or nature may think that you do not prefer to have a choice why you only took one so, therefore, may not make the offer so easily in future. So most times it is better to take whatever choices that are given.”

Margret considered what the old lady was telling her, “Just about every major choice in my life I stuffed it up and took the wrong one.”

“Wrong for you in this dimension but right for those for whom you left the only possible choice left, the correct choice.”

The elderly lady could see that Margret was still mystified so continued, “The young girl that first entered your room is you when you left her the right choice by choosing to take the hard road and make the wrong decision. Each person that brought you flowers was the result of you taking the choice that they did not have to at the time. They had come to thank you for taking the hard road for them. Leaving them the easy road to travel. They were all you. I am you from your future not from another dimension but from you in this dimension. You need to know that you will live through this but you will need to fight for it. You need to know that you are needed. If you had never been born there would not have been many many other versions of yourself living an enjoyable life to the full at this very moment but in different dimensions.

A time will come when we will all reunite and you will know the full unconditional appreciation for what you have done for us all.”

Margret still couldn't get her head around it. So she asked, “am I doomed to make the wrong choice for the rest of my life?”

The old lady smiled at her then answered, “no, once you beat this your decision-making will improve. Starting with your decision to help a certain lovable, cuddly teddy bear of a police detective put a certain high-ranking politician into jail for a string of murders of which you were the only surviving victim. Your other identities have agreed to share your workload and make some of the bad choices themselves leaving you with the better ones.” The old lady's handsome features lit up when she smiled and then added, “believe me, life will get much easier from here on in.”

Margret didn't remember dozing off she didn't even remember seeing the old lady leave. When she slowly lifted her eyelids the two figures were back standing at the end of her bed but this time she could hear what they were saying.

“We've done everything that we can, it's all up to her now.”

Margret Walkner always considered herself as a life wasted,

Until a glitch in the matrix showed her the real value behind her life.

Next story here.

If I could live my life over. Story 8

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The Naked Truth. Story 6