Rewind, page 15
There was now two of these objects in the same timeline.
Bridget took the tissue and wiped her nose. Her ears had finally stopped ringing but her head was still pounding.
“You okay?” Max was nearly stricken with worry, she had a million thoughts running through her mind with the ferocity of a speeding train.
“I’m ok. I think,” Bridget winced as her headache responded with a sharp stab of pain.
“I need a drink,” Bridget added.
“Alcohol?”
“No, just water will do…” Bridget didn’t really want a drink, she just needed Max to stop firing questions for a minute. She need a moment to think. She’d done it, she had rewound this far back. Max’s theory had worked. Now she just had to wait to see if the world would vibrate again. She was aware that there was a huge chunk of missing time in her personal timeline. Would she fall out of time once more? If she ended up back in future max’s bedroom, then she needed to go further back. She estimated she had maybe five minutes before the quake happened. The moment she disappeared and resurfaced two weeks later.
She had decided that she would merely wait these five minutes out, she wasn’t going to exert any energy if it was to be in vain.
Max returned a minute later with a glass of water. “What happened? Why have you come back to this point?”
Bridget took the glass, she sipped the water. She pressed the power button on the phone, it illuminated a picture of her and Max. It also told her the time. 17:50pm. Surely it wasn’t that much longer?
“Is that my phone?” Max recoiled in surprise, her head flicked to her own phone sat on the desk. She crossed to it, pressed the button. It displayed the exactly same wallpaper. Her face crunched in confusion, what the?
“Not yet,” Bridget answered. It was Max’s phone, but it wasn’t yet. It belonged to the Max two weeks from now.
“Oh god… That’s my phone, from the future… isn’t it!?”
Max was sometimes a little too intelligent and Bridget sighed. Now she ought to explain this paradox. “Yes, yes it is…”
“But how is that possible?”
“I don’t know…” Bridget shrugged. She really didn’t. How the hell did she explain it? She had brought something from the future, something that might not ever come to exist. Bridget was considering three possible outcomes; the future-phone might suddenly disappear when the timeline recalibrated, or the past-phone might disappear to be replaced by the future-phone in the recalibration or the final theory was that Bridget had well and truly fucked time up. She hoped for either of the first two.
“So why do you have my phone?”
“You came up with a theory that I could travel further back in time if I used photos as a sort of checkpoint,”
Max nodded impressed, she suddenly felt proud of her future self.
“So it worked, when did you come from?”
“Two weeks from now,”
“What happened to make you come back?”
“I fell out of the timeline and disappeared for two weeks…”
Max’s face slackened and she didn’t know what to say.
“My mother was in hospital, my Dad’s been arrested because of some shit that Christine told on TV, saying that he’d locked her up captive and had abused her… Arthur was the number one suspect for my disappearance, Amy-”
Max put up a hand. She didn’t need to hear anymore. It was uncanny, as it always was. These vital scenes playing out in a mirrored form.
It was also incredibly strange to be discussing these future events in the past tense. They were still to happen but for Bridget they already had. Max’s future was Bridget’s past…and her future…
“When do you fall out of the timeline? When does shit literally go to Hell?”
Bridget checked the time on this future-phone.
17:56pm.
Surely it had happened by now?
As sure as day, a ripple of energy waved through her. If the timeline vibrated back into place before, this time it was liquidy. It was softer, a low hum. The very fabric of reality rippled visibly around the room.
Then it was done.
Was that it?
She checked the phone.
17:57 pm.
She was still here. She hadn’t fallen out of the timeline! “Just then,” she answered Max.
“So you didn’t fall out of time? So that future you just came from, doesn’t exist anymore?”
“No, it exists until I hit the moment where I reversed. That quake, that’s the timeline reacting to the changes. Until that point, nothing is set…” Bridget suddenly realised. The future Max still existed but only for two weeks, then she would be unwritten. The same went for this phone.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, I need to check on my mum… I don’t know when she has the accident! I need to make sure she’s safe. I also need to somehow stop Christine saying those awful things on TV…”
“Ok, well call me if you need me. I’m gonna try and wrap my head around the timeline…”
“Keep this, you might need it. I don’t know what will happen to your phone…” She handed Max the future-phone.
“Should I check it?”
That was a good question.
“I don’t know… I don’t know what’s on it…” she answered.
“Whatever is on it, it hasn’t happened yet…” Max trailed off. Was she ready to peek into her own future?
“It might not happen at all,”
“…Which is crazy, because it already has…” she rendered herself mute. Her head was spinning. Just when she thought she understood the basics of time-travelling and continuity, did Bridget go and bring a new problem to light.
“I’ve got to go,” Bridget left the room.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
18:05 pm 2nd November 2015
Was Bridget going to break time itself? It was a question she couldn’t answer. Ever since that original rewind, the logics of her travelling failed to make anything but the most delicate of sense.
She certainly felt like time was buckling underneath the pressure of her constant manipulation. That was before she even contemplated there was another force at play, something else had been manipulating the timeline.
The ripple had unnerved Bridget, why was it only a ripple? Was it because it was a rewind within a rewind? Her rewinding over somebody else’s rewinding. The first rewind had thrown her out of the timeline, now she was back in it because she had rewound over it. Only that first rewinding had still happened when she rewound herself. She had no idea what this was doing to time. God, it was enough to turn your brain to mush.
Who was playing with time besides her?
She rounded the corner of the street. She stopped spooked. Across the road, a little boy and his puppy were stuck in an endless loop. They were both rushing forwards, the little boy’s ginger hair ruffling in a breeze, and then rewinding the same motion back. This repetitive loop continue to play endlessly. It made Bridget feel cold. Had she truly fucked with time?
She watched the broken spurt of action repeat itself endlessly.
Was time a fabric and now it was beginning to tear?
She hurried down the street, aware that there was an uneasy silence to the world. There was no birds, no traffic. It suddenly occurred to her she’d not noticed a single car pass her.
She glanced to her right and saw a man cleaning his car. He was doubled over, repeating the same sweep of the sponge on his red sports car’s bonnet. He too was stuck in a loop.
Panic was slowly starting to rise inside her.
Had time actually broke?
She crossed the street and found a trapped car repeating the same hesitant exit of a drive. A mother two doors down from that was stepping backwards and forwards carrying several bags of shopping. She, like everyone else in the world, was stuck in a loop.
Had Bridget’s rewind over the rewind which thrust her out of the timeline broken everything?
But if time was broken, how had Max not been affected by it?
Was it because she’d time-travelled? Was she immune, because of that, to whatever crazy glitch had affected the world?
She was approaching her house. How the hell was she going to fix this? She needed to find whoever shared the control of time. Maybe that person would understand the power more than her? Maybe they would have a better idea of how to fix it? She needed to find that mystery person who had broken time as much as she had. As much as she held herself accountable she was also very aware that it wasn’t just her meddling that had broken things.
This new objective overrode every plan of hers. There was no way she could save her parents if time was stuck in a constant loop.
She entered the house.
“Mum?!” she shouted. She didn’t really know why. She suspected her mother might be trapped in the same prison of time as everybody else.
A macabre fear flushed through her, what if her mother was stuck in a loop of whatever incident caused her to be hospitalised. She couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to be replaying the same painful scenario over and over. Actually she could… She thought of the mysterious time loop with Arthur. That particular moment hadn’t made any sense till it suddenly occurred to her that maybe what she’d experienced was the other time-manipulator rewinding time? Had this mystery person been forced to keep rewinding the same moment, trying out different combinations of events?
So many goddamn questions and theories…
She prayed that she wasn’t too late to save her mother. She needed to change her parent’s fate. She needed to stop her mother from becoming hospitalised and she needed to stop Christine from ruining their father’s life with her malicious lie. She knew she had sworn to stop messing with fate, but again she couldn’t stand by and let someone die. She had to intervene. She had to undo the giant mess that had become her life.
There was no response to her call.
Then as she approached the stairs, a happy face appeared. Frank came rushing over, his cute little curly tail wagging furiously. “Hello boy!” she greeted rubbing his cheeks.
Another one unaffected by the time distortion outside.
She suspected her theory about Max applied to Frank too.
He snuffed, snorted and bounded away back to his food dish.
She climbed the stairs.
She could hear movement, could hear stuff being moved around.
“Bridget?” Christine appeared out of Bridget’s room. She was dressed in a red and black chequered shirt, black leggings and a white vest. Bridget recognised the outfit immediately, they were her clothes. Christine looked surprised to see her. “You’re alive?”
“Yes, I’m alive…” Bridget recoiled. What a strange thing to say.
Then it was like a cloud had lifted and she suddenly realised.
Christine was unaffected by time. She was exempt from the time-loop. Only Bridget had never took her through time. She was…
The realisation occurred to Christine at the same time.
“You!? You’re the one rewinding too?!” Bridget shouted.
“No fucking way, how did you?” Christine snapped back in anger. She stalled, shook her head in disbelief. Then she charged into her room and slammed the door shut.
“You’ve been rewinding time!” Bridget reached her door and began banging against it angrily.
It suddenly made sense. Christine had fallen out of the timeline! That’s why she disappeared without a trace. That’s why she’d been so perplexed it had been two years! Just like how Bridget felt when she lost two weeks!
“How did you manage to undo it?!” Christine screamed through the door in a fit of rage. She was having a tantrum. It was so typical of the prodigal daughter to figure it out.
“Undo what?”
“Your disappearance you dumb bitch! How did you do it?”
Bridget kicked the door. It was locked and wasn’t going to budge. She didn’t feel like sharing her time-travelling secrets with her brat of a sister.
“Fuck you!” she forcefully booted the door.
“You bitch! How did you do it!? Why can you do it and I fucking can’t?” Christine screamed and threw herself at the door.
“I’m not telling you that! Look outside! See what’s happened to the world. Don’t you think you fucked time up enough?!”
“Me?!” Christine shrieked in disbelief.
The door unbolted and swung open.
“ME!?!” she screamed in Bridget’s face.
“Yes you,” Bridget shoved her away.
“You’re the one who went and fucked the timeline with your little heroic shit! Rescuing people like some goddamn fucking superhero!” Chris snarled vehemently.
“Says the girl who obviously fucked with time that much she fell out of the fucking thing!”
It suddenly dawned on Bridget that Christine had been playing around with time and she’d been completely oblivious. All those years ago and Bridget’s fate could’ve been rewritten countless times and she never knew. It chilled her blood that someone as malicious and vindictive as Christine had power over time.
“Fuck you Bridget, that wasn’t my fault!”
“Then how else did you fall out of it? You must’ve been playing with time… We both know how it works!”
“You obviously know more than me! Work it out genius!” Chris sounded bitter. It made Bridget feel a small flicker of satisfaction. She half turned from her, feeling a little victorious.
“I finally had everything right, then you fucking unwound it! Brought us back here!” Christine snarled and took her rage out on the nearby vase. She smashed it to the floor. It burst into a thousand tiny pieces. The pieces then froze mid-air. They never crashed back to the ground.
“Had everything? You mean Dad being imprisoned? Mum in hospital? Me gone…?” Bridget realised the answer as she finished shouting. Of course, that would be the perfect outcome for Chris. Did she truly hate them all that much?
“Yes, fucking yes! Finally everything was right!”
“How can you say that?”
“How can you three just get on with your lives?! I fucking disappeared for two years and nobody gave a shit I came back!”
Bridget recoiled. How could she be that audacious? Was she truly that thick, or just fucking ignorant?
“Are you for fucking real? You destroyed our fucking lives when you disappeared. You didn’t just disappear, you left behind all your shit. We found out you was hanging with Rodney, a fucking junkie! We found your diary and all the shitty little things you thought about us all…” Bridget growled. That vat of poison had erupted. It was finally being pointed at the source.
Christine didn’t have a response. For once someone had called her out on her bullshit.
“You ruined our lives, why the fuck would we be happy you came back… You didn’t even come back and change! You’re just the same person…”
“Of course I am! I lost two years in a fucking blink of an eye! I didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t even know I’d fucking gone ANYWHERE!” Chris screamed.
Frank nervously emerged from Bridget’s room. He nervously glanced from Bridget to Chris.
Bridget didn’t respond. She was seething, seething so much her body was jittering with rage.
A red mist had descended and she was a hair breadth from losing the plot.
“It’s so fucking typical that you got this power too. Couldn’t just be mine… Couldn’t just be something for me… Just when I had everything that I wanted… You fucking undo it!”
“Are you really that childish? Do you think I asked for this? You know how complicated this power is!”
“Then let me rewind, stop getting in my way!”
“Why do you want to rewind?!… What was so good about that time?”
“YOU!” Christine hissed, “YOU were gone!”
“You hate me that much?”
“Yes. I fucking do! You know why?! Because one time, I got rid of you and I thought maybe they’d love me just like the way they loved you,” Christine’s hands were fists and she was clenching them enough to crack her knuckles, “…But they didn’t, they mourned you. They loved me even less…”
Bridget was shocked that she’d died in some previous version of time. Even more shocked that her sister so vehemently hated her. Knowing her sister had killed her made Bridget’s head swirl.
“Maybe if you was a better person, maybe then they’d love you? Maybe because you’re such an evil toxic bitch, nobody wants to know you…” Bridget growled.
It pushed the wrong button. Chris exploded in a scream of rage.
She flew to the side and kicked Frank square in his face.
“STOP THAT!” Bridget screamed. Frank hit the wall with a whelp. She shot forward to the poor dog’s aid.
Chris intercepted Bridget on the landing, throwing her to the floor.
“GET OFF ME!” Bridget roared trying to throw her little sister off.
“IT’S MY POWER! MY CHANCE!” She began raining punches down on Bridget’s head.
The first punch hit Bridget on the cheek. They both felt a pulse of energy roll through them and the world swirl around them.
18:23 pm 3rd November 2015
Bridget shielded herself from the next blow. She protected her face and Chris’ blows deflected off. She spun over, trying to knock Christine down. Her younger sister landed on her side, affording Bridget the chance to climb on top and throw her own punch. She caught Christine’s nose and it broke in a satisfying crunch. Another ripple of energy.
18:23 pm 4th November 2015
It happened again. Time spun around them, blurring in a disorientating flurry. Bridget’s rage was all consuming, she could see nothing but bright red. The vial of toxic vitriol she’d been carrying for so long was now a volcano. Black burning hate was exploding inside her.
Her second punch caught Christine’s lip, splitting it.
18:23 pm 5th November 2015
Every blow they exchanged seemed to thrust them through time. Christine shrieked and threw her sister off. Scrambling onto her feet before she threw a mean left hook straight across Bridget’s mouth. As they fell through another ripple in time, a tooth dislodged and disappeared.
