by Logan Castle
I rubbed my now aching jaw as I looked at myself and wondered about the damage. I had to sit back in my seat to stop the sudden dizziness. I unbuckled my belt and pushed the door open. Holding onto the door handle, I barely pulled myself out. As soon as I left the truck, I wanted to make sure the other driver was okay. I was more than relieved to see the person removing her seatbelt.
I watched a tiny woman, whom I guess was probably in her mid-sixties, extricating herself from her old Volvo before she glared at me. Her thick glasses made her eyes seem much larger than they were. I couldn’t explain why, but seeing her glasses suddenly angered me for no reason at all. I glared at her, shooting her full of venomous thoughts before looking back into her car. I saw exactly what I expected—a disabled placard hanging from the rearview mirror.
Of fucking course! Don’t you dare claim neck or back injuries, you old bat!
I walked towards her. My temper was already inflamed so I had to forcibly calm myself down. I had, after all, hit her.
Yeah, but you wouldn’t have if the old bat hadn’t braked out of buttfuck nowhere! You should insist that she throw her keys away and never get behind the wheel again!
“Are you okay?” I managed to inquire.
“I think so,” she answered while rubbing her temples before looking back at her car. “You got me pretty good there.” Her voice sounded a bit shaky but she appeared to be otherwise in fair condition. “Are you injured?” she asked as she faced me again, her saggy skin turning corpse white.
“I’m fine,” I reassured her. I just wanted to exchange insurance information, call a tow truck if necessary and drive away. I just wanted to get back to Plum…
“You should really pay better attention to your driving.”
My heart began to race and I suddenly felt very warm. My hands were already fisting at my sides when my anger bubbled over inside me. I had to take a few deep breaths to collect myself. “Why would you hit the gas before stepping on the brake?”
Behind her Coke bottle glasses, I could see the woman’s eyes narrowing. “That’s no way to apologize to someone! Blaming the victim for your stupid mistake! Obviously, you were in far too big a hurry…as all you young people seem to be.” Taking a deep breath, she asked, “I trust you have insurance?”
My body felt tight and every muscle was seizing up. My breathing became shallower and beads of sweat were beginning to form at my brow. “Yes,” I barely managed to force out.
I started to retrieve my insurance information, but then I stopped. As I walked past her car, I happened to notice that her back bumper was completely intact. I reached out and rubbed my hand along it just to be sure I didn’t miss something. If there were anything wrong with the bumper, I certainly couldn’t see or feel it. In the light of the sun, perhaps there would be a scratch or two but surely, the woman would be willing to overlook something as small as that? Couldn’t they could both just go on their way?
“What are doing?” the woman demanded.
“There’s nothing wrong with your car,” I responded icily.
The woman waved a dismissive hand at me. “I’m sure that’s not the case,” she said as she glared at me, no doubt thinking I was trying to pull a fast one over on her.
“Come here and look at it,” I challenged her.
“I can’t see anything in this light,” she answered, remaining firmly rooted where she was. “Best if we do this through the insurance companies anyway.”
On the temperature scale, I went from warm to smoldering in an instant. Rage overtook me and I couldn’t restrain myself. “What the fuck do you mean you can’t see anything in this light?!” I railed without understanding where this sudden rage I felt was coming from. “What the fuck are you doing driving if you can’t even fucking see?!”
The woman’s eyes grew larger than they already were, if that were even possible. She seemed to collapse before me, hunching over as if she were suddenly having a hard time breathing. Her voice was shaking when she replied. “I don’t want any trouble. Just give me your insurance information right now or I will have to call the police.”
I was too far gone to let her try and smooth things over. “Good! Go ahead and fucking call the police! I’ll tell them that you have no business getting behind the fucking wheel!”
The woman’s hands suddenly clutched her chest. I could see she was struggling to breathe. In the light of the street lamps overhead, her face was already growing even paler, matching the whiteness of her eyes. Eyes, which were fully round and huge with unrefined fear. She stumbled before she fell over. I lurched forward, trying to grab her before she hit the ground, but I was too late. I heard a blood curdling thud as her head hit the asphalt.
She’s having a heart attack! It has to be!
I took the last few steps that separated us, leaning down to cradle her in my arms. She was limp and unresponsive. Slowly, I placed my hand beneath her nose to check if she were breathing. I couldn’t feel anything. Unconscious?
Or dead!
My breath caught. Suddenly quite panicked, I put my fingers on her neck to check for a pulse. Nothing. Not even a weak one. I went into autopilot and began administering CPR, filling her lungs with air and heaving down with my hands above her chest. I don’t know how long I kept it up. My hands were sore and my mind got foggy from lack of oxygen before I realized all my ministrations were for naught.
She was dead. Actually, she had probably been dead before she even hit the ground.
As I sat there cradling her lifeless body, I couldn’t believe it and refused to accept it. Someone just died right in front of me! Worst of all, there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to stop it. Never did I feel so completely helpless or useless.
How the fuck did this just happen?!
I knew the answer of course. The rage had overtaken me again. I’d lost control again, unleashed my anger on this poor woman and scared her to death. You have to call 911! I commanded myself. But what the fuck would I say?! That I crashed into her before I verbally assaulted her until she keeled over and died?!
Incredulity turned to panic very quickly along with overwhelming remorse. How could I have spoken to her in such a way? She was probably someone’s grandma and I killed her. Murdering an old lady by scaring her to death until her heart gave out. What the fuck was wrong with me?! If not for me, this woman would still be alive!
I felt dizzy again. As if I were about to be sick and spew my rotten insides all over the place.
The vertigo intensified until my whole world was spinning. My heart was racing too… And then I felt something else. My skin was burning. On my left forearm. A searing, torturing agony. It was taking everything in me not to scream out in pain.
What’s happening to me?!
Fighting through the spinning, I unbuttoned my shirt and lifted my shirt sleeve. I knew what I was going to see before my eyes even landed there. As the world spun chaotically, so too was the backwards clock, the one symbolizing the past. Before my eyes, the copper gears spun harmoniously, propelling the two arms backwards at a dizzying pace. It was as clear as day this time. There was absolutely no mistaking or denying it any longer, not after this.
I looked toward my right forearm, expecting that tattoo to be moving as well and was a bit disappointed to find it motionless. The air around me grew dense and the hair on the back of my neck bristled. A wave of unharnessed energy suddenly crackled all around me. Whatever it was, it had everything to do with the clock now spinning on my flesh.
This is really happening! I really have lost my fucking mind!
The world spun faster and faster and I didn’t even feel myself hitting the concrete. Everything went black.
* * *
When my eyes reopened, I was sitting in my truck at a stop light on Main Street. I was about to turn left onto Bay Drive. The car in front of me had just begun to pull forward and I felt myself releasing the brake. Then I pushed on the gas.
Wait! What the
hell had just happened?!
Suddenly, the car in front of me came to a screeching halt. I slammed on my brake, and all four tires wretched to a halt just in time to avoid hitting the other car.
I looked up, gasping with relief. The person in the car turned and looked back at me. Squinting my eyes to look closely at the driver, I felt the blood instantly drain from my face.
It’s her! The old woman I had just…!
She must have planted her foot down on the gas because the next second she was gone. I could only sit there, with my foot pressed so hard on the brake that I feared it would go right through the floorboard of the car. I couldn’t think. I could barely breathe. I couldn’t do anything except sit there in utter, bewildered silence.
I hadn’t dreamt it. The car accident, the old woman lying dead in the street from a heart attack that I brought on and my tattoo spinning clearly before my eyes. It had all happened. Of that I was certain. None of this was the result of lunacy or delirium. The images and feelings were so fresh in my mind. I could still feel that woman’s cold skin!
The bellowing of a big rig’s horn snapped me out of my thoughts. It was only then that I realized I was still sitting in the middle of the road. With a dismissive wave to the driver of the rig, I released my foot and pressed the gas pedal.
My mind racing with questions. None of it made any sense. How could it? Was I truly losing my mind? Was I dreaming up shit that wasn’t happening? But it had all felt so real!
But it obviously didn’t happen, I argued against myself.
I was waging an all-out war within myself. Nothing made sense and even the smallest pieces that did threatened to tear down the walls of my sanity. In that moment of pure panic, I knew there was only one place I could go to. There was only one person who could make it all better.
Plum. I needed to get to Plum.
*
I stopped in front of Plum’s car so fast that my tires screeched. I could see the lights were on through the windows of Plum’s house so I knew she was home.
As I hastily put the car in park and turned off the engine, a tsunami of overlapping thoughts began infiltrating my head, each one screaming over the previous. Of course there was no reasonable explanation for what had happened on the road just now and I had two completely different memories of the incident! Those two outcomes, which couldn’t have been more different, were both such vivid and intense memories that there was no chance that either of them wasn’t real. Had this been an isolated incident, one could rationalize that I’d fallen asleep at the wheel for a few seconds or perhaps that my sleep-deprived brain was playing tricks on me. But this wasn’t an isolated incident. This was just the latest in a string of events that had become impossible to ignore. The more I considered it, the more I realized there was only one reasonable explanation:
Time travel.
I chewed furiously on my cheek as that thought entered my head. I tried to reject it, or nullify its plausibility so I could talk myself out of considering it but it was the only logical conclusion.
But that’s not fucking possible! Not at all. Start spouting that nonsense and you’ll end up being hauled away by men in white coats!
What other explanation could there be, though?! I had no answer to my question. I did know one thing: I had to tell Plum. I had to tell someone before I went completely mad by keeping it all in. In all likelihood, I would scare her half to death and make her think I really had completely lost my mind. The truth was that I had no other options. The status of our relationship would have to wait. For now, I was terrified out of my mind.
I walked up the stairs leading to her front door. My feet grew heavier after each step. I was so scared to look into Plum’s eyes and tell her, I didn’t even know where to start. My heart was pounding and ready to leap right out of my throat.
I knocked on the door but no one answered, so I knocked again. Still nothing. Even though I knew I shouldn’t have, I tried the door handle and found it unlocked. I pushed the door open all the way and stepped inside. As far as I could tell, Plum wasn’t in the living room so I popped my head into the kitchen, expecting to find her doing dishes, making dinner or something just as lovely. Instead, I found two empty wine glasses, two plates with a few scraps of leftover food on them and dirty silverware on the table. My heart dropped down to my toes and I started feeling sick to my stomach. So there was someone here? The stove and countertop in front of me also displayed an array of used pots scattered across them.
“Plum?” I called. No response.
As I walked up the steps to her room, I didn’t know why. I was deliberately torturing myself. Of course, I knew what I’d find Plum in bed with another man. Plum would be in bed with Justin. Even though the very idea nearly made me turn around and run back to my truck, my feet continued forward, forcing me to face the truth. I noticed that the lights at the top of the staircase were off. Having walked up these stairs so often, that didn’t matter to me in the least; I knew where I was going well enough. Her bedroom door was closed.
“Plum?” Still no answer.
I turned the doorknob with my heart lodged in my throat and peered in. It was practically pitch-black inside her room but I could make out Plum’s face resting on the pillows on the bed. I could faintly see the rest of her figure sprawled out and the familiar sounds of her light breathing that indicated she was sleeping peacefully. Thank fucking god!
I tiptoed into the room after carefully shutting the door behind me, progressing at a painfully slow and deliberate pace so as not to make a sound. I didn’t want to disturb the slumbering angel in her bed. I was just about to head for the bathroom when I stopped myself. I looked back to where Plum was sleeping. Suddenly, I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her. I wanted to kiss her, hold her, and feel her. I took a step closer towards the bed…
“Let her sleep. She needs it. I’m pretty sure I gave her all she could handle.”
A deep man’s voice from the far corner of the room nearly made me jump out of my skin. In a panic, I spun around to face the intruder…
But nothing happened. As if my feet were suddenly planted in concrete, my hips wouldn’t turn and my neck was also frozen in its current position. Nothing could move despite all my brain’s frenzied commands to do so. No matter what I did to overcome it, I was inexplicably unable to move a single body part. Not even an inch in any direction. My eyes, however, remained on the sleeping form of Plum. I attempted to open my mouth. I planned to demand an answer and find out what the fuck was going on, but nothing came out.
“Don’t bother. She’s completely knocked out. Besides, I wouldn’t allow you to ruin such a beautiful moment.” The man spoke with such nonchalance! As if to compound the absolute terror and confusion around me, even the hairs on my neck began to rise.
“Mmm,” the voice continued, “the taste of her lips, and how her nipples felt against my chest, and that sweet, little moan she makes when you touch her in just the right place.”
I tried to ignore his words. The images that flashed in my mind were too much. I wasn’t prepared to deal with that. I couldn’t resist the bait. I strained my eyes, looking towards the corner of the room where I vaguely spotted a figure sitting at my desk. I couldn’t make out any discernible features of any kind. Whoever he was, he remained completely cloaked in shadows. Despite my mutinous body’s lack of cooperation, I continued struggling to move it, meeting with stronger resistance each time.
Why can’t I move?! What the fuck is going on?!
“Oh, relax. There’s a logical explanation for all of this. Well, I suppose that it all depends on your definition of logic,” the man said with a knowing chuckle. “You are wondering why you can’t move. Well, that’s an easy one to answer. You can thank a little toy that I borrowed from the Axis of Time. It creates something called a ‘stasis field’ apparently. I’m sure that means fuck all to you and, I’ll be honest, it didn’t mean much to me at first either. But here we are.”
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My mind slammed into overdrive. Had he heard me? Paralyzed as I was, I was certain no sound could have been emitted from me.
“I guess you could say I can hear you, in a sense. But, really, I don’t need to be able to hear you with my ears. It’s perfectly obvious what you’re thinking. For example, at this very moment, you must be imagining how I fucked your girlfriend. Incidentally, I gave her three orgasms,” the man paused for a moment, as if he were expecting a comment from me. None came. Despite how much I wished I could, I remained incapable of outwardly responding.
“So, tell me; am I right?” the man inquired with a tone of excitement that seemed completely out of place, eerily so.
He wasn’t wrong—I was completely stunned. So, it was true! Plum dumped me because she was already fucking someone else. I felt sick to my stomach and worse than stupid. How long had that been going on? And who the fuck was the guy? Justin? And why the hell couldn’t I move a goddamn limb? I was helpless and had a sinking feeling that was only matched by my utter frustration at not knowing what was happening to me.
If you really know my thoughts, hear this: if you’ve harmed her, I will kill you, I thought ferociously. A feeble attempt to be sure, especially considering my current situation, but it was all I could do.
“I assure you that everything I did to her was only because she begged me to do it.” He cleared his throat. “And she loved every second of it. As to the very suggestion that I could harm her,” he began before his words faded. When he spoke again, his voice was deadly serious. “I would never so much as address her with an unkind word. No, I would pamper and satisfy her as a king treats his queen. Something you couldn’t do.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw him rising from the chair and taking a few short steps toward the bed. I strained in vain to make out any of his features, knowing how important they would be to a police report. But it was too dark and I failed to notice anything discernible about him. My breath caught as I watched him stopping short above the bed, leaning over Plum and pausing. A short inhale followed by another. Almost like he was smelling her, breathing her essence in.