This morning, I am four years old. My head is battered and bruised. I hold my big sister's hand. We wait on a platform in our little coats and little hats with our little suitcases. The train we are hoping for never comes. So, eventually we turn away and walk home.
I have troubling shaking off the image as I slowly return to being self-aware. Hopefully, it’s a metaphor not a memory. I didn’t want to get pulled back into that timeline again. Not that I am ever given a choice. But sometimes I get a warning. Like this.
Increasingly, I feel like a child so lost in the woods that I no longer know which way is home, or whether I really want to follow the breadcrumbs back there anyway. My past shifts restlessly in its grave like a creature neither alive nor fully dead.
I know the next episode will begin soon. It always does. Perhaps it has already. Will this be one of those times I wake up to find my world hasn’t changed very much at all?
The transition back is always rough. Like suddenly waking up from a deep slumber. Or that nightmare you know you’re having but cannot stir yourself from no matter how hard you try. As I drop into semi-consciousness, my senses return one by one as if cycling through a reboot sequence. Sometimes smell first, sometimes hearing. This morning, it’s touch.
The back of my head hurts in two places, one on each side of where my skull connects to my neck. My shoulders are hunched forward, aching at the blades. My lower back is tight from being unsupported. Cold radiates into the underside of my thighs. I am sitting up, wedged into a corner defensively. Never a good sign.
As I prepare to pull open my eyes to confront this new or old reality, I draw a deep breath. Dried sweat and stale fear assault my nose, with a faint undernote of the floor of roadside Texaco men’s room. My mouth tastes like ashen adrenaline and unbrushed teeth.
Someone pushes me. Not quite a shove but more insistent than a nudge. Fearing it’s my wife, should I still have a wife in this timeline, I will my eyes open. It feels like I need a crowbar. Even unlidded, they don’t want to focus. No, that’s not quite right. They focus; my brain just isn’t ready to process what they see. A voice emerges near my ear with my descent into full consciousness.
“… awake, Mookie? They said we can’t sleep in here.”
I know that voice. Jerry Wolfe. My best friend from high school and decade beyond. God, I miss him. But he is no longer in my life. And hasn’t been for years. In another short while, he won’t be again. No matter. The first piece to the puzzle of this timeline.
“I’m up,” I respond, my voice rasping from dry mouth and disuse. “Just drifted off a minute. What were you saying?”
Jerry resumes talking low yet conspiratorial, but not quite a whisper which his baritone voice doesn’t seem to know how to achieve.
“I just can’t believe Bill skated as a juvie, leaving us to deal with his bullshit decisions.” Then he pauses as he turns to ask me, “Did you know?”
My head sags forward only partly from exhaustion. I long to close my eyes again, to drift off and pretend this is all a dream. Instead, I slowly shake my head. I don’t know anything, not yet. I wonder if he means Bill Nailor but don’t dare ask. If so, that can’t be good. He’s a father now but when younger he made some pretty selfish, sketchy decisions. Though hadn’t we all.
I lift my hands and clutch my head, hoping to massage away the migraine I feel building. Hair. I run them back to my neck. No ponytail. I must be young. Touching my face, I find no beard. That puts more of a timeline together, but not much of one.
Still groggy, my eyes finally bring my feet into focus. The room is dim but not so dim that I can’t see that my shoes have no laces. I check my jeans. No belt. My back is pressed into the corner of two clammy concrete walls, my thighs rest on an unforgiving metal bench that rings the room. There are maybe a dozen others in here with us confronting the thick, chipped paint struggling to conceal the rusty bars caging us in.
The situation snaps into sharp relief like an autofocusing camera. I am in jail again. The third time that I remember. The last time I’d woken up in a holding cell it had been for throwing someone into a wall after she’d nut-shotted me. Self-defense didn’t apply, or rather hadn’t been believed.
Was this a different cell, a different timeline? Had that encounter even happened yet? More importantly, what poor decision led me here this time? I have a day to figure it out, maybe less. Or my situation will get worse for a while.
Looking up at Jerry, I hear another voice say something I learned from my two other times in jail. “We can’t talk about it now. Not here.”
That’s when I notice Gabe Pope sitting on the other side of Jerry, his gaze focused on the floor. He nods half-heartedly at the other inmates, then shoots a sidelong glance at us.
Scanning the room further, I spot Dan Bass chatting with a knot of four other inmates, having turned on his performance charm. The last of my old running crew from high school. That narrows it down to maybe four years.
God, they all look so incredibly young. I know I must, too.
Dan wanders back our way. He exudes a cool, quiet confidence. The kind you need to put it all out there on stage. He sits down heavily beside me. He nods to a roughneck-looking pair of crackers eyeing us off and on.
“Armed robbery and grand theft,” he announces quietly. “They got drunk and decided to appropriate a couple crates of oysters coming in from the coast. When the cruiser showed up, they took off.”
“How’s that armed robbery?” Gabe asks, finally looking up.
Dan shrugs. “One of them had a carpet knife in his pocket.”
“Damn,” Jerry swears as almost a two-syllable word, shaking his head, dejected at the depth of our situation but not surprised.
“What about the new guy?” Gabe asks, stealing a glance at the man sitting in far corner by the bare steel commode overflowing with wet toilet paper. He looks the kind of hungover where he might be working through the decision of whether to puke on his shoes.
“Aggravated assault and resisting,” Dan says, shrugging again. “Maybe a girlfriend.”
“And your newfound friends?” I ask. My voice sounds different, slightly less graveled. Strange in my ears like an old, distorted cassette recording.
“Trespassing. Some rancher blew them in.” He spread his hands. “Probably college boys out shrooming.”
How did he know this? Maybe from his time with the band? Not a secret of his I’d learned later though I knew several more he had not yet shared.
Jerry nudges me. “They’re eying us again.” He meant the oysters Rockefeller brain trust.
“Ignore them,” I say. “There’s four of us and two of them. Bad odds and they know it.”
Jerry stares at me wide-eyed as if I haven’t so much as glanced at them, or really taken a long look at us either.
Before he can formulate a response, two green uniformed guards approach the cell door, each with a hand on the elbow of a short, muscular twentysomething in dirty jeans and a grubby once white wife-beater. The man’s hands are cuffed behind him and he has two strikingly fresh black eyes. The guards open the cell door and shove him in. Everyone clears space around him though he doesn’t seem to notice. He just shuffles off to the nearest empty stretch of bench and collapses onto it. The trespassers edge away.
“Watch out for this one, boys,” the taller guard warns us with a smile. “Thinks he’s a stone-cold killer.”
“Wannabe,” his companion mutters.
We all look at each other uncertainly, then grow a little ashen. Someone whispers “murder”. Our situation just got real.
That’s when I notice the guards haven’t yet closed the cell door. Green uniforms mean county jail in this state, but I can’t read their patches from here. Is that another piece to narrow down the timeline? I wrack my brain but find no answer.
“Gabe Pope,” the taller of the pair calls out with authority. He scans the cell like a gym coach surveying the slackers near the back of a locker room while calling roll.
Gabe’s head shoots up. He instinctively raises a hand and calls out, “Here.”
“Front and center, inmate,” the guard orders. “Daddy just bailed you out.”
Jerry and I can only stare at Gabe uncomprehendingly, each for different reasons. Our friend rises mechanically and heads for the door, not sparing us so much as a backward glance.
“Dan Bass,” the guard then calls out as his partner claims Gabe. “You, too.”
“That’s my cue, boys.” Dan claps each of us on the shoulder as we turn our glares on him.
“Really, Dan?” Jerry hangs his head in defeat. “I thought you said we were in this together.”
“We were.” Dan shrugs easily. “Until Gabe’s bail bondsman said he would take my car title as collateral in lockup. Said it was best to change and shave before we see a judge. Sage advice, my friends. Innocent men don’t turn up in four-point restraints.”
“Get a move on, Bass,” the guard commands. “I don’t have all night while you catch up with your coffee klatch. In three seconds, I shut this door for good. One…”
Dan hustles over and out before we hear a “two”. The barred door echoes shut behind him with a sharp metallic snap as the lock bolt settles our fate.
I wonder exactly what time it is. Looking at my wrist, I see my watch is missing but spot the pale area where it should be. Damn. If it was the one my father had given me for graduation, that might have been a clue. Probably in the envelope with my wallet, belt and shoelaces.
At least we aren’t in the era of color-coded prison uniforms. But I know from experience that when they transfer us to court first thing in the morning, we’ll get shackled just like Dan said, wrists and ankles. From past or future experience, I understand his betrayal better than Jerry does. We may not be in the time of orange jumpsuits but we are still in the time of chains.
Wait, what if that doesn’t happen this morning? What if it’s the weekend? No way I want to spend the rest of my time here in jail. “What day is it?” I demand from Jerry, who now looks at me like I’m speaking in tongues.
I don’t have time for him to sort out my non sequitur. “Hey!” I shout at the taller guard’s retreating back as I jump to my feet. “What about my phone call?”
He stops and turns to fix me with an incredulous stare, as if wondering whether I understand the power dynamics here.
“We already gave you two,” he replies condescendingly. “Neither Daddy nor Mummy are interested in bailing out their lowlife son. But she is coming to pick up her car.”
“My car,” I correct him angrily without thinking as rage boils instantly inside me. An old grievance made new even decades later. Or is that because it’s still fresh in this timeline? I have never fully understood the dynamics of my reactions here.
“So, it’s yours now?” he replies mildly, an eyebrow shooting up. “That changes things. I’ll let the prosecutor know.”
Shit. What had I just done?
I’d forgotten just how potent testosterone and adrenaline could be, how much of the mixture had coursed through my young veins at any given moment, usually for insignificant reasons. How spontaneous and unpredictable it made my decisions. Through the lens of time, my fifty-something year-old self always thinks he could manage it with experience and wisdom. Clearly, I continue to overestimate my abilities.
Jerry recovers enough to lay his hand on my arm and pull me back down beside him. Reluctantly, I allow him to.
The guard smiles smugly before continuing on his way, escorting my friends to their temporary freedom. Gabe’s dad will find a way to get him off. Dan, well, he usually stumbles into that kind of luck on his own. Not me or Jerry. A second, distant door clangs shut.
“Don’t worry, Mookie.” Jerry once again attempts a whisper. “Frank said he’d come.” His reassurance sounds more like a prayer.
Still, the name of Jerry’s older brother calms me a bit but depresses me at the same time, as I know it must him. It seems like Frank is always bailing us out. I still owe him for one of the previous jail episodes. Or will. I’m not exactly sure how these timelines work. But I have no idea why he seems to care about me as much as his own brother.
Maybe that’s what these episodes are about, some sort of moral lesson. If so, I haven’t discovered it. But maybe that’s why they keep happening.
I am still keyed up and twitchy from the biochemical cocktail that had been loosed in my blood. How had I even managed it when I was this age? I know the crash will be spectacular when it finally comes. Right about the time we would stand before a judge, if we even saw a courtroom this morning. But that would still beat the alternative of working through it here.
To settle my nerves, I shift my back against one wall and stretch my legs out along the bench running away from it. I cross my arms, lean my head back until it rests against concrete, and close my eyes. With no chance of sleep now, I think and listen. I still don’t know what day it is, or even what county jail we’re in, never mind what Bill might have done. The only close call I remember involved the highway patrol.
An episode doesn’t always begin at the crucial decision that spawns it. Several times I have awakened into utterly paralyzed darkness, knowing that I’m dead. Not sure exactly what killed me. But when I don’t finish out my time in a given timeline, I am thrown into another episode immediately until the day is done. Often one right after the other, each equally as bad.
On the best of days, I can no longer keep the timelines straight. I don’t know where they overlap, or whether they fully reset. Not having a permanent personal history that I can rely on is disorienting. I know the first time through my life, none of them had happened; they just could have had one small thing gone wrong. Each time I reawaken, I have to decipher what’s changed and what impact it might have. But if there’s a lesson, I haven’t been able to learn it. If there is a pattern, I haven’t been able to discern it.
I can’t even remember when it started. Was it the morning I woke up with the noose around my neck? The morning my wife left me? The morning I learned my daughter had been killed? Had I ever fathered children or even married? I no longer remember. I think I had a life once but am increasingly left to wonder if this is all a simulation. A Bayesian model run by some dispassionate researcher attempting to quantify my experiences. Is my life now a malfunction? An error in the code?
My thoughts are interrupted by the soft squirch of two pairs of rubber soled shoes striding across the tacky floor. I hear Jerry muttering to himself, “don’t make eye contact, don’t make eye contact,” thinking I’m asleep.
I don’t bother to crack an eyelid, I just track the sounds closer, hoping they’ll go away, knowing they won’t. Human nature never changes.
Sure enough, the footsteps stop a couple feet away. I try not to tense visibly although I still clench up inside. Even though I haven’t lived this timeline before, I have a pretty good idea what’s about to happen. I’ve relived too many similar situations. They all end badly the second time around.
“Hey, boy,” someone twangs after a moment of silence. “You’re in my seat.”
Casually, I slit an eye, quickly glancing at the bench beyond Jerry without otherwise stirring. Without my commanding it, my voice instinctively utters a line that tried to get me beat up by a star football player at my new high school when I’d sat in his informally reserved place on the bus, some forty years ago. In this timeline maybe one to three.
“I don’t see your name on it,” I reply knowing he most certainly was not addressing me.
Committed now, I try to recover the landing by leveling my gaze at the taller Blue Oyster Cult boy, both of whom are now glaring back at me, as expected. Where there’d been four of us now there were only two. But their numbers hadn’t changed. And they still have belts and bootlaces.
The trailing sidekick says, “Nobody’s talking to you, toothpick.”
I snort, realizing that he’s right. This younger self of mine weighs maybe a buck forty-five soaking wet, not the one and three quarters I would grow into after working out in my twenties. Nothing a little old man attitude can’t correct.
From their eyes, I can see this will definitely kick off no matter what I say or do. When it does, I know it’s either me or Jerry. At least if it’s me, the guards might make it back before they turn on him. I won’t be here that long anyway. I have no idea what happens to the people I leave behind but am unwilling to risk it. Jerry’s still my friend, no matter the timeline.
“Yeah, well, maybe I was talking to you,” I say, channeling a Philly kickboxer I would briefly share a condo with in another decade and a half.
“Mookie, don’t do this,” he mumbles as if he can read my mind. “I’ll just move.”
“For these white-trash assholes?” I say loud enough for everyone else in the cell to hear, never taking my eyes off them. May as well get this over with. “Why bother?”
“Did you just call me an ass… hole, you little fucking pantywaist?” the senior cracker twangs, now fully focused on me.
“Wow, deaf, mad and blind,” I quote a line from a TV show I haven’t yet seen. Then I toss out another from a movie not yet made, “And I do not think that means what you think it means.”
Now the larger raw bar twin steps around Jerry to get right up in my grill. “We don’t cotton to your kind around here, shit-for-brains.”
“And what kind is that, exactly,” I ask innocently leaning away from the wall slightly as if eager to hear his answer, hoping draw him in.
He obliges by coming close enough that I can smell and taste each word. “Niggers and preppy drug dealers.”
Damn, now I remember exactly what Bill had done and exactly why we’re here. Fuck me, why hadn’t this version of myself listened to his instincts and bolted for home when Bill had failed to sell his secret stash of weed for gas money? Too late. Here we go.
I pull my head back as if trying to escape his fetid breath. The instant I feel it kiss the wall I snap it forward to give him a Klingon mind meld. My forehead smashes into the bridge of his nose. Blood fountains onto my jeans. Wow, that worked better than I thought.
Aw, shit, are we in the time of AIDS? I can’t remember.
No time for that now. As he staggers back clutching his nose, I leap to my feet. I sense I only have a narrow window to get in some shots before this turns around. Maybe the college boys will intervene, but I doubt it. It’s not how these things work in replay.
I just step clear of the bench when redneck one recovers, rearing up like an angry bear complete with an awe-inspiring roar. Oh, god, this guy’s bigger than I thought. He’s taller than me and at over six foot, I’m not exactly short. And this obviously isn’t his first barroom or jailhouse brawl. But I’m pretty sure it’s mine. Any blows I land will likely be meaningless. Just a delaying action.
So, I opt for a new strategy, something called a lioness defense that a female friend would teach me after my first and maybe only wedding. Which involves turning my back as if I’m about to run then stomping my heel down as hard as I can on his top of his foot.
Great plan. Might have worked, too, Sharon, if I’d been in heels, or even had my shoelaces. As I draw my leg up, my laceless sneaker flops sideway. My heel lands a glancing blow, sliding harmlessly off his boot.
Oh, fuck.
Which is the only thought I have time for before his fist impacts the back of my head like a two-pound sledge, driving my cheekbone straight into the cinderblock wall I now face. Not for the last time in my life, I see stars, this time a mix of black and white. First the metal bench then the floor rises up to meet me as my legs mutiny from beneath my command. Before I can will them to obey again, I feel a hard, steady hail of steel-toed boots repeatedly slam into my ribs. I curl my legs up and cover my head with my arms. Just like when I was a kid. Just like the dream I had this morning.
One rib cracks, then two. I remember exactly what that feels like from once having a frozen roast slung against my side. Has that even happened yet? Each panting breath sends a spike of agony through my chest. I have trouble breathing. That’s new.
As though plunging into a long, deep water column, I hear shouting, heavy metal clanging and more bootfalls pounding forward, each receding more each second. As the water deepens, the noises fade to raindrops. No lightning, no thunder, just a steady rain until the blackness of the stormfront wall overtakes me.
---
This morning I hear a voice calling to me from somewhere far below. “Go slow! Be careful!”
I recognize that voice as Ned from college. My world remains dark. No, it’s night or early morning. I feel slightly nauseous and unsteady, climbing down from an unfiltered cocktail of alcohol and raw adrenaline.
My hands grip irregular holes before me. My fingers along with my left toes support my body. My right foot probes further down for a fresh toehold. Finding it, my aching arms lower my weight onto it as my left foot now begins the search anew.
“One step at time!” Ned shouts up. “There’s no rush now! The race is over!”
God, he’s really annoying and distracting. I wish he would just shut up.
That’s when the slick sole of the moccasin boot that I didn’t realize I was wearing slides from its purchase into empty air. A spike of pain smashes through my knee as I crash face first into a latticed concrete wall. Dizzy from the impact and the waning chemical influence, my right hand slips free, quickly followed by my left.
The scant second to a bone-crushing impact is just long enough for me to remember exactly when I am, and the drunken dare that had turned into a climbing competition.
---
I awake to feel the webbing knotted at my waist unexpectedly unravel just as my boots push free from an uneven wall of stone. My gloved hands barely manage to grip the rappelling rope now sliding through my fingers just like it should, left above, right behind. I spin and twirl in midair, my left shoulder slamming into the ragged cliff sideways with most of my adolescent body weight behind it. Like a gunshot, I hear and feel the snap of a collar bone simultaneously, both of which I remember but not from this. My left hand goes numb and releases the rope against my will.
As my right hand fails to hold the sudden weight dropped onto it, I tumble downward with three full degrees of freedom like a diver or an Olympic gymnast.
This morning, I do not stick the landing.
---
I awake with my face grinding into abrasive sand. A weight on my neck pins me against it. My eyes once again will not focus. This morning, they are obscured by a thick, swirling, dirty mist. My lungs burn, my limbs feel encased in molasses. Thrashing uselessly, I panic and all my precious air escapes. My diaphragm convulses, insistent on drawing breath. Some foggy instinct warns me not to.
Desperation wears down my resolve. On the verge of blacking out, my throat opens to the inevitable. I pray this is a dream. As the thick, inrushing cold douses the burning in my chest, I realize it is not. In the instant between drowning and drowned I belatedly recognize I’m underwater.
As a distant siren song of laughter claims me, I remember exactly what I just did wrong.
---
I awake to a steady hum of white noise. The air feels so dry it’s almost desiccated. My sinuses and thoughts are amazingly clear.
As I open my eyes this morning, a soft, suffused glow of red and green LEDs greets me. Overhead, shadowed canvas marginally sags. I am lying on a narrow, cloth cot. I can feel a rigid metal cross-support beneath the scant pillow upon which I rest my head. My feet feel heavy as I sit up and throw them over the side. When they clunk on the floor, I realize I am wearing tan boots. With variegated desert fatigue pants and a sand-colored t-shirt to complete the monochromatic ensemble.
As I look down, I see that my boots now rest on a hollow, sectioned, raised floor. Gazing around, I find my cot is wedged into the narrow aisle between and behind a series of looming gunmetal grey computer cabinets. The white noise evolves into a dual-tone over-under harmonic that further divides into a high-pitched chorus and a solo bass note, all composed of pushed air. Cooling fans and an AC unit. I recognize that I have just awakened in an equipment tent setup god knows where.
Is this the simulation lab I’ve long suspected? Am I even who I think I am?
Grabbing the matching fatigue jacket hanging near the cot, I examine it in the dim light. In dark stitched letters over the pocket, I read my last name. At the collar, I spy a pair of parallel bars. A captain. I’m in the military but whose and when? I do not recognize the unit insignia. I do know the stars and stripes of the muted flag.
My body feels younger, its aches not yet persistent. But it feels much the same as the one I remember from my twenties, though perhaps harder and leaner.
In the soft, quiet glow of LEDs and the reassuring whisper of electric motors, I search my memory for what decision might have led me here. I draw an incomplete blank. A single inexplicable term emerges: Stop-loss.
Before I can piece that together with an episode from my past, a siren tears the night in half. At first, I think it’s an overtemperature warning from one of the computer racks. I dodge through the tent, seeking its source within the sound distorting maze of equipment, poking my head here and there, turning one ear then another in a vain attempt to isolate the piercing cry. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, as if all the computers are melting down, and my life with them.
Critical seconds later, it dawns on me that the warning comes from beyond the tent as someone outside yells, “Air Raid! Seek cover!” The only problem being I have no idea where cover is. Not here.
As I finally navigate the chambered egress of the sealed tent, I hear a Dolby surround-sound bottle rocket launch somewhere to my left. I emerge to a wall of hot, dry, desert chaos, men running, diving into sandbagged enclosures, many half-naked, others in helmets and bulletproof vests, both of which I belatedly remember are stowed beneath my cot.
Beyond the artificial horizon of shadowed tent peaks, I spot a second salvo rising up to meet the fiery, descending remnants of a Scud. The two bright lines will intersect before I can hope to make it to a sandbagged shelter fifty yards or fifty years away. Training I don’t remember takes over and I sprint for all I’m worth. The distance closes faster than I expect from my even best days of running in PE. But not fast enough.
The flash-bang of rival missiles converging rips my breath away. Red-hot needles sear deep into my flesh. My vision constricts to a narrow tunnel as I sail through the air.
In that slow-motion instant of flying and falling, scraps of information drop into place to form an understanding. A picture emerges like an old jigsaw puzzle abandoned halfway through. I now remember filling out forms in an induction center. Was truth or spotless perfection the more desirable trait? That morning, I’d chosen truth.
This morning, I knew I’d gone the other way.
---
I awaken in midair. It’s a pleasant, weightless experience, like coming into that dream of flying midway through.
A stiff breeze ruffles through my shirt in stop-motion animation. A refreshing cool spreads over my arms, face and chest as summer sweat evaporates into goosebumps. As I turn my head to catch the blurred green scenery sailing past, I slam face first into something bright and hard and sun-metal hot.
Whiteout pain explodes behind my cheekbone then deep inside my neck. The trickling darkness from a slowly spreading ache in my shin and knee tells me exactly when I’ve landed. From a moment’s inattention, I’ve come to rest in a crumpled heap upon a sedan’s sunbaked trunk that wouldn’t be there a minute later.
This morning, there will be no ambulance, no x-rays, and no eight-week cast. Only darkness.
---
I come to with my cheek pressed to unfinished plywood. The downward incline is disorienting. My head is thick with blood.
This morning, a nighttide of darkness once again embraces me, staining my field of view. As I lift my eyes skyward, the giddy anticipation of scanning a starfield with its newly connected constellations intertwines with a wonderous joy I haven’t felt since grade school. Believing this would be an ideal spot to skywatch, whyever else I am here, I push myself up to turn around so I can lie with my head angled toward the nightscape instead of trailing down to the murkiness of mother earth.
As I rise from my rooftop vantage, audio returns. I hear a distant shout from somewhere below and before me, the sound telescoping louder and closer with each panicked word. “I… Said… Freeze!”
Not recognizing that voice, I instinctively drop back down in hopes of clinging to what scant cover I have rather than risk the eight-foot drop to the construction yard below that only now comes into shadowed relief.
As I descend in slow motion, a lightning rod of flame and thunder explodes into a white-hot migraine that springs like Athena from the right side of my head. My hands and arms rebel against direction. I fall flat on my face. Unable to control gravity on an inclined plane, I roll into clear air for a split-second before the pain of impact takes my breath away. Somewhere above and behind me, I hear a contralto scream.
Gazing heavenward with my one good eye, I spy a young cop in street clothes looming over me, a shiny service revolver unwavering in his two-handed grip. Against what menace, I am uncertain. I slowly realize that his only threat is me.
As his dawning expression of horror at shooting the stargazing kid I know I am fades from the edges to an all-encompassing black, I fully understand the mistakes we’ve both just made.
---
I drop into a new perspective. I find myself looking out from a dizzyingly high tower with my head tilted slightly toward a stunning array of stars that merge at the dark horizon with the scattered lights from the farmscape a hundred yards below. My arms and legs shake slightly in the crisp nighttime chill from the unaccustomed exertion of the climb.
My descent into this timeline is once again disorienting. My head swims like the worst days of allergy-induced vertigo. My center of gravity overbalances my feet. I force my knees to buckle beneath me, vainly hoping to drop straight down onto the tiny platform upon which I stand.
My reaction is too slow. I topple forward. I scramble to snatch at any piece of the metal latticework with hands still curled in cramped memory from each rung of the three-hundred-foot climb.
This morning, I receive full seconds that feel like long, unattended moments to consider how much trouble I seem to have with falling in these timelines. As the darkness rises up to meet me, I opt to close my eyes. The ground results in more of a breathtaking shock than pain.
Then the night is fully mine.
---
I slowly, languidly return to consciousness from episode after episode of la petite mort, wondering if my churn of little deaths is done.
I recognize the bed beneath me as body-hugging foam. My head rests on a forgiving pillow that cradles my neck. The sheet covering me smells crisp and clean. The blanket atop it comforts me with warm security. That warmth consolidates along my right side.
As I fully ground myself into this reality, I feel my right arm curled around a mass of gently purring fur. An undulating feline pleasure-calm surfaces to barely audible, as much felt as heard.
Cautiously, I slit an eye and take in my surroundings, the previous memories unravelling into unreality like a herd of wild nightmares chased away by dawn. Dappled sunlight seeps through my half-cracked lids to form a constellation of colors burning the blackness from my eyes.
Fully open now, they take in the light slanting through the nearby window, as if a jar of Tupelo sunlight has overturned upon the bed. Its honeyed contents pool into an array of tiny, winking suns filtering through the swaying palm fronds outside. Beyond the window, clear, pure notes from small, soprano wind chimes give voice to the restless air like belled and chained faeries singing to the sunrise to set them free.
In a curving line across the white cotton blanket, I spy fresh pawprints trailing to my side, like delicate tracks in freshly fallen snow. I gently sweep the nearest away as if smoothing the sand in a Zen garden. As if by brushing aside each impression I can deny that my feline companion has ever been anywhere but by my side. I recognize her markings. My eternal familiar. The one who saved me from despair when no one else would or could.
I know exactly where I am now but not when or why or what else might await me should I choose to disturb this precious creature curled against me, sharing her unconditional affection, warmth and time.
I have no idea what timeline I’ve entered. I have no idea if I still face some fresh trial to relive, or have some new lesson to relearn. I still have no answers.
And this morning, I don’t need to.
© 2020 Edward P. Morgan III
