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By Megan Sanders
First Place Fiction Winner of The Makeshift Review's Writing Contest 2021
All it takes is the flap of a butterfly’s paper-thin wings to change the future of an entire world. Or at least that’s what Lorenz’s “butterfly theory” said. For Lincoln Lawson, there was no such thing as chance. Everything that happened around him happened for an unknown reason. If he was running late for school or practice, it was because there was something he was meant to see during his commute. Whenever he found a pen or a random piece of paper in the hall, it was because his was about to run out of ink or he left his notebook at home. There was someone or something in Lincoln’s life constantly placing things in his path for him. Someone or something that had a reason for everything that happened to him.
But it was hard for his grandmother to see any reason for the single blue Nike basketball shoe that laid on its side at the top of a wooded hill—the laces still tied. It was hard for his father to see any reason for the shreds of a blue Falcons jersey that clung to the rain-soaked body of his son that rested in the dirt and dead leaves beneath the starry sky. It was hard for his brother to see any reason for the open and lifeless eyes that were once so brown and beautiful, but now stared back at him as the coroner covered them with a black tarp. It was hard for his mother to see any reason other than chance for the splinter-filled gash on the side of his head or the blood-soaked hair that clung to his forehead; the change in color faint, but still present.
And it was hard for the judge to see any reason other than chance when he stared into the eyes of the man that had taken a life and with a smile, stared right back.
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