by Sean McMahon
Then, pulling a thousand-yard-stare in their target’s direction, she looked over the rim of her detective glasses, dramatically pushing them up the bridge of her nose, much to the delight of Hal.
‘Let’s go to work,’ said Hal, impersonating his favourite iconic vampire with a soul from the early two-thousands.
‘Time to make it rain,’ said Kara, like a gritty, time-travelling superhero.
‘Oh, that was great!’ said Hal. ‘Did you practice that, like was it prepared before-hand or did you just freestyle–’
‘Hal, the killer?’ said Kara, motioning towards the monstrous hulk of a man that was making his way towards them.
‘I ruined the moment, didn’t I?’
‘Little bit,’ said Kara.
‘Dammit.’
And with that, it was time.
*
As their past-selves drew ever closer to Kevin’s lodge, Hal and Kara took up position around the serial killer, who was staring up at the ceiling, seemingly judging whether to ascend the staircase, or remain down in the basement. Hal stood in front of him, with Kara getting into position behind. As the beast took a step towards the staircase, the Restarters realised it was now or never.
Plunging his hand through the monster’s chest, he signalled for Kara to grab onto it from the other side of their target. As their fingers interlocked, the blue energy shimmered erratically. Kara realised she needed to move closer, slowly moving her hand back to the area of space where their murderer’s heart resided, pulling Hal along with her. As their past-selves drew closer, the energy intensified, electricity coiling and spiralling like the surface of a miniature, blue sun.
The demon growled, apparently settling on the decision to ascend the stairs, but remained in place, moving incredibly slowly. Either he was caught in an internal deliberation, or…it was working. He was held in place, just like Peter had been.
‘It’s…w-working!’ said Hal, shaking from the reverberations caused by the connection.
Hal experienced an intense panic, as the killer relaxed his fixated stare from the basement door above him, and gradually lowered his gaze to meet Hal’s, looking directly through him.
“At me, more like…” thought Hal.
Their past-selves were at the front door now, shouting into the lodge for Jerry’s owner to see if anyone was home.
‘Two st-steps right!’ said Kara, through gritted teeth.
They needed to align themselves to ensure they were directly underneath their past-selves in order to maximise their charge and, together, they were on the move. They made their way slowly to Hal’s right, ensuring they maintained their connection. If they gave in to the force between them that was repelling them apart, this would all be over before it had even begun.
The man between them followed Hal with his eyes as they moved, and for the first time in their lives, they finally heard him speak.
‘Aaaaaaaaiiii’ said the killer, in a thick deep voice that dripped with malice and venom.
‘Ca-can he s-see me?!’ asked Hal, his voice breaking slightly, causing the power of the energy between them to dip in intensity. Something only Kara seemed to notice.
‘HAL! F-focus! Don’t t-talk to him–’ but the billowing voice of evil cut her off, not wishing to be silenced.
‘Ssseeeee youuuuu!’ his voice, though only a whisper, nothing but unparalleled rage.
The energy dipped again, and the murderer began raising his knife towards Hal, who pulled away instinctively, but Kara held on tight, pulling her partner’s hand back into the man’s chest.
She could tell she was losing Hal, neither of them had expected this level of interaction, but Kara was fortunate in that she was unable to see the man’s face.
She closed her eyes, and focused on the music that was still playing on the upstairs radio. Back in the days before his voice became synonymous with a countdown clock to her death, she used to love Johnny Cash
And then she remembered. Or perhaps she was reliving, it was hard for her to be certain. That day when they had first witnessed what had truly happened to them. Then the restart after, where she had to escape. She was moving faster than she ever had before…her rage had been boundless that day.
She remembered how Hal said he couldn’t keep up with her. Then, without warning, something clicked in her mind. It wasn’t just rage. It was fear, it was love, it was hate, it was all of those things. But most importantly of all, it was her will. Her will not to accept the world as it was, not to be bound by the confines of the world around her based on the rules they had thought they were beholden to. Rules they had unknowingly shackled themselves to, based on their prior physical existence and experiences.
For the first time in her life, she realised that this must have been what experiencing an epiphany felt like. They were not bound to this place by time, it was their desire to get home to their loved ones, their friends, everything they had left behind, that gave them power.
“Power…” she thought to herself. “We need more power…”
With her eyes still closed, she focused her mind on the things that mattered most to her in the world.
Her friends appeared to her first, as she replayed her most recent memories of them. Their time together at Fir Lodge flickered past in her mind’s eye, like a camera roll of highlights, running at an accelerated speed. She scrunched her eyes up harder, as she attempted to reach more-powerful memories.
The images sped up even faster, travelling further and further into the past. Memories of birthday meals and Christmas get-togethers with her friends flashed before her, then images of her sister, then her parents. She thought of her wonderful two dogs, which were her world. Everything she was fighting to get back to was cycling through her heart and soul, as she desperately sought the emotional resonance she needed to infuse the blue energy with everything she had.
Everything she was.
Hal sensed a significant boost to the arcing lightshow being generated from his hand, which was still interlocked with Kara’s, and could see over the serial-killer’s shoulder that she was concentrating hard on something. Hal made the conscious decision to block out every other distraction around him and, mimicking his fellow Restarter, he closed his eyes as well.
His mind was instantly flooded with visions of his friends, of Kara with her sister, of Kara’s dogs, of a really epic handbag he was once given as a gift from the girls.
Hal shook his head, realising these weren’t his memories, instantly understanding what she was doing; that she was bolstering the energy with the most powerful memories she could muster. He focused on Jess, and his dog Shelby, which immediately caused an energy spike that nearly flung him across the room, but he resisted, and held on tight.
With his apparent telepathic connection to Kara, he learned quickly what worked, and what didn’t. The day he first became friends with Rachel; the time Robert broke character and bought him a thoughtful gift after a bad break-up; the day he collected Shelby from the dog rescue centre; passing his driving test after an embarrassing number of failed attempts; getting his first promotion at work and seeing how proud his father was of him…
Suddenly, the thunderous noise being generated between the three of them ceased, and a voice cut through the unsettling silence.
‘Hal, it’s over.’
He opened his eyes, and was alarmed to see Kara, who had undergone something of a transformation. The details on her clothing remained intact, but she looked like the manifestation of pure, blue energy, as if her entire body was now made of it.
He looked down at his outstretched hand, and realised it too had been equally transformed. He could see dust motes suspended in the air, the entire room bathed in a blue sheen, so bright that it almost hurt to look at anything directly.
Their murderer stood between them, suspended in both place and time. Hal had no idea how he knew, but he knew that time had literally stopped. They were no longer in a restart, they were in a pause between moments, outside
of time itself.
They both relaxed their interlocked grip on each other, and dropped their arms back to their sides. The large man between them fell to the ground in an undignified heap, sprawled out before them. And, with a bitter realisation, they knew that they had just become the one thing they had spent so much time trying to defeat.
They were now murderers themselves.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Malcolm in the Middle
Saturday Evening, 9:05pm
His eyes blinked open instantly. Noticing that he must have dropped the knife he was clenching, he stretched out his fingers, then closed his hand again, clicking his knuckles, one by one.
Malcolm ran up the staircase of the basement, feeling uncharacteristically off-balance, reached for the door, and moved silently through it, leaving it ajar. His surroundings were illuminated, his senses seemingly heightened; as if everything he looked at was an incredibly clear photograph, sitting under an extremely-florescent light.
Blinking again, he thought he could see the outline of two young people behind him, standing at the base of the stairs he had just ascended. Oddly, this was the only part of his surroundings that appeared slightly out of focus. He strained his eyes, moving closer to the source of the odd anomaly. Yes. They were two of the young ones, from one of the many lodges he had been surveying. The creature had kept running around the woods ever since he’d stored his owner in the storage container below. Always running off trying to make new friends…and now here were those very friends, standing directly in the middle of his current workspace.
Malcolm barked a laugh. He couldn’t help himself. They had no idea how short their remaining time on this earth would be. Moving closer, he decided that he would not need the knives, and that he would do this with his bare hands. They were intruders. It was dark. He would be protecting himself. It would be self-defence. Yes. He would recite and memorise that in greater detail, as he mopped the congealing blood from the cracks of the rickety cabin, in the event that questions were asked. Not that it ever came to that, he was always long gone before his victims were discovered, but he always revelled in planning ahead. He would incapacitate the young man first. Then the young woman.
And then he heard it; a girl’s voice coming from outside the doorway. He noted that the front door was open.
“The creature must have pushed his way out again,” thought Malcolm.
‘Hellooo?’
His eyes shot to the left, and then back to the dark space of the stairway that led to the basement of the cabin. The same people? Only far more vibrant. A mechanic of some kind? Or perhaps someone had called a pest-extermination service? He hadn’t recalled seeing any rats. He always double-wrapped his projects in order to prevent odours, and by extension the unwanted arrival of vermin. The other wearing orange. Glasses. Was she his secretary? His manager, perhaps?
Then the same voice again, only manlier. Louder.
‘Hello? Is anyone home?’
He then heard an actual girl’s voice.
“Correction,” he thought, “a young woman’s voice,” as the orange secretary spoke.
‘I don’t think anyone’s here,’ said the woman. ‘In you go boy!’
Following her instruction, the rat-catching mechanic ushered the creature through the door, then closed it.
This all felt very familiar to Malcolm. He felt…disoriented. He couldn’t advance on the young couple at the door, not with the witnesses in the basement below staring back at him.
He looked back to the two people at the base of the staircase, barely being able to contain his fury at what was slowly becoming a missed opportunity. Malcolm thought he could detect one of them smiling. The young woman at the bottom of the stairs slowly raised her left arm, like a ghost harbouring a tragic secret.
She was pointing to something behind her, on the floor, and the young man next to her was holding something. It was at that moment that Malcolm realised the young man was not holding anything, and that he was actually extending his middle finger.
The audacity of the obnoxious child was maddening. Looking back at his unwanted guests by the doorway on the upper level, the young rat-catcher stuck his head across the threshold of the entrance.
This young man, stepping into his domain? Could he not see him standing right before him? Perhaps he just did not care?
“The arrogance!” thought Malcolm.
The rat-catcher spoke. Something about the creature escaping. The young intruder reached for the creature’s water container, then proceeded to use the kitchen tap to fill it. Malcolm noticed his name tag; three red letters, embroidered onto a black patch, which read “HAL”. He made a mental-note of the name, knowing through experience that it would be useful for finding them again at a later date.
Placing the bowl on the floor, water spilled from the edges. The mess being generated was too much for Malcolm to bear, and he clenched his fists, having to avert his eyes. He looked back at the young man, who switched on the living room light as he left, momentarily blinding Malcolm, as his superior vision had already completely-adjusted to the dark.
The light was excruciating, his uninvited trespasser’s reasoning for turning on a light completely lost on Malcolm. He heard them outside now, stating they were returning to a lodge. He looked back to the identically-dressed phantoms at the base of the stairs, only to discover that they were gone.
Malcolm noticed something glistening on the floor below, and deduced that it must have been what the young woman had been pointing to. Taking several, large strides towards the staircase, he closed the door behind him, and once again descended the wooden steps to the lower level.
All of his art still adorned the walls and work spaces. Each and every one of his masterpieces and paper cuttings. The fact that the intruders had seen these items was a problem he would have to address. They had more than likely seen the plans, deceptions, and lures he’d used to bring the many subjects to his canvas.
“Elegant,” he thought, taking the time to marvel at his life’s work. “Masterful, beautiful, and…what on earth is that on the floor?”
For a brief moment, he thought his genius perfection had sent him teetering over the edge. That all of his masterpieces had grown too much for his perfect soul to comprehend, as he found himself looking at himself for the first time in a very long time; A strong man for sure. His vigorous training regime had seen to that.
But, more than anything, it was the face that startled him the most; Dead black eyes, dishevelled hair, and a face that looked gaunt, like not enough papier-mâché spread over too much wire.
“It’s you, idiot,” Malcolm thought to himself, the impossible realisation at odds with his analytical mind.
The room began to fill with a static fog, his previously-impeccable clarity of vision distorting slightly, like an image going out of focus. He moved quickly, stepping over his own body, to reach for the door on his left, the same door which was concealing his current project away from prying eyes.
He had left the newest edition to his collection bound, gagged and, most importantly, heavily sedated. Malcolm turned the handle of the door, instantly remembering that it was locked. He fumbled in his pocket to retrieve the key, relieved it was still there, and plunged the key into the lock, noting that something was wrong; it wouldn’t grip the internal mechanism. Had he reached for the wrong key? He never made such mundane mistakes as that. Everything in its proper place, that’s how it was for him, and how it always would be. Disorder led to unpredictability, unpredictability led to mistakes, and mistakes led to failure. A concept that was no longer in his vocabulary.
And yet...
He tried again, but it was as if the key was made from air. Meanwhile, the fog was thickening; seemingly growing in density the more he panicked, a black and menacing mist that both swirled as it filled the corners of the room, and absorbed any light that it came into contact with.
“I’m not finished here!” he thought, a sudden desperation causing
a crack to appear in his carefully-balanced mental state. And for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, he was afraid.
He sectioned that part of his mind away so that he could concentrate, not wanting to give such a flaw the satisfaction of his attention.
Malcolm ran to his legacy, reaching out for the papers on the wall, and the journals on the desk. They fluttered as he plucked at them, but wouldn’t remain in his frantically-moving fists. Instead, they floated to the floor, seemingly lost forever in the ever-expanding static fog.
Falling to his knees next to his ill-looking corpse, which was now only barely visible, he gasped for air, then immediately regained control of himself.
“Weak. Don’t be weak,” he thought to himself.
And then there was only darkness. He couldn’t see his own hands in front of his face.
“I’m not finish–”
And then he was gone.
*
It was then that he heard a deafening rush of air, like falling from an airplane, thousands of feet above ground-level. His senses were bombarded by a terrifying blackness, attacking him from every direction, entirely removing his sense of spatial-awareness. His eardrums filled with the thundering, relentless sound of wind, being expunged into eternal nothingness. And then, after what felt like an eternity of timelessness, the sound ceased without warning, like someone pulling the plug on a ridiculously-loud electric saw.
And there he remained, with nothing but the darkness for company.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
A Tornado in Peru
Saturday Evening, 8:38pm
Kara approached the dishwasher, determined to avoid having to wash up the plates from the barbecue by hand. Having no prior knowledge on how the appliance worked, she expected it would take her a while to figure it out, but she sussed out the buttons with little effort. The machine hummed to life, and Kara grabbed her bottle of Southern Comfort, safe in the knowledge that she’d done a good job.