Rewind, page 11
“-the fire that tore through the care home was caused by a car crashing into the boiler house. The police have yet to release an official statement, but it seemed the vehicle was involved in a high speed police chase. A police vehicle is seen here,” the camera cut away to a police car turned on its side next to a burned out car, the car’s front was embedded in the boiler house of the care home.
It was an eerie sight.
“That’s Jason’s car…” Max confessed in a small voice.
Bridget turned to her. “What?”
“That’s Jason’s car… I recognise that license plate. I always thought it was funny, FKU… like fuck you…” she whispered. A wash of white had painted her face.
“Jason crashed the car? He…” Bridget was struggling to concentrate on this new information. It seemed incredible.
“…This is all connected.” Bridget voiced the sentence that manifested in her mind.
“Is this because you stopped Amy from jumping? Has he died because she didn’t?”
Bridget didn’t have an answer, she could only add more fuel to the speculation. “He started the fire… Because of him those people in the home were supposed to die…”
“…So what repercussions come from that? Bridget don’t you see, this is like an escalating chain of events. Every time you change something…” she trailed off. The thought escaped her.
Bridget nodded slowly. It was all connected back to her too. How strange that he just happened to crash the car into the care home she volunteered at. Was fate deliberately connecting it to her life.
“…These six people you’ve saved, what’s going to happen with them?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well they were supposed to die Bridget, like Amy was. But they’ve not died now, what happens next?”
“I don’t know… I can’t read the future,” her response sounded sharp. She shook her head.
Max didn’t react. It was rhetorical anyway, she hadn’t expected Bridget to have an answer to hand.
Bridget was beginning to consider the fact that now she had six changed destinies to be mindful of. How would they connect back to her? When she spared Max she involved Amy, when she spared Amy she involved everyone at the care home. Max was right with her “escalating” description.
“Bridge… What happened at the party?”
Fuck. Finally that topic had raised its head. Bridget had been pleased it had not come up, but as per usual it had to rear its head at the most inopportune moment.
Bridget sighed and took a seat. She adjusted her baggy cardigan, a teal fluffy item that she saved for ‘bad days’. Her hair was bunched lazily on her shoulders, her eyes were undone and her black leggings were torn at the knee.
“We went to the party, you went upstairs with Jason…” she began, taking a deep breath, “while you was upstairs, Arthur came and he sat down with me, he told me he was still working things out and his dad was in a coma,” she was reiterating already known facts but she thought it prudent to piece together the whole story as one cohesive whole, “then next thing you came running downstairs, you was crying. I caught up with you, you told me that Jason had…” it was a difficult word to enunciate, “raped you, only you freaked out and you got ran over…”
Max was silent.
Bridget nervously fidgeted with her lip. She had carried this burden quite heavily and it didn’t feel any better to have shared it. The saving grace was that she could rewind this moment if it didn’t pan out the way she wanted.
“…I died, that’s why you rewound time…”
“Yeah… That’s the first time I did it,”
“So that’s why you wanted to leave the party, you wanted to stop me from getting raped…”
“I thought it would cancel out, I never thought that Jason would just rape someone else…”
“So because of that Amy was raped, so she went to the bridge to jump. She told me she didn’t think anyone would believe her… So she decided to kill herself… Fate wanted someone to be raped and then die…”
“I don’t think fate works like that. You never wanted to die, it was an accident. Amy was an attempted suicide…”
“Its still a rape and then a death…”
Bridget didn’t have a response. Max was right. Was she really changing time or was she merely moving pawns around a game board?
“But because you then saved Amy, you changed events further… Amy went to the police and because two girls filed allegations of rape against Jason, they accelerated the case against him. He was on the run… but someone still had to die, only his death…”
Max was good at piecing together a workable truth.
“His death started the fire that claimed more…”
The silence that fell between them was thick with pregnant thought. Max finally realised quite how she fitted in the chain of events. She was struggling to reconcile it with her sense of guilt, she really had been meant to be raped instead. She was conflicted that Bridget had saved her, at the expense of Amy. It was a difficult emotion and she was struggling to grasp a handle on it.
“Max, un-mute the TV,” Bridget was suddenly fixed on the TV.
“…there are no apparent connections between these random events, officials are calling them freak accidents,” the report showed the sites where they’d occurred. The ticker along the bottom informing of the mysterious accidents.
“Man suddenly appears in the middle of the motorway,” Max was reading the news on her phone, “is killed by oncoming truck. Driver and witnesses all testify that the man suddenly appeared from nowhere,”
The TV report cutaway to a church where a giant chunk of iron fence was presented. A diagram illustrated a man falling from the roof of the church and landing on the fence. He had been impaled. Bridget didn’t need a photo to know it would be grisly.
“Woman drops down dead in the middle of supermarket, Jesus Christ! Bridge there’s six of these stories. Six freak accidents…”
“You think it’s my fault?” Bridget was beginning to realise how naïve she’d been about changing fates. She felt foolish, incredibly foolish.
“Maybe… I mean you saved 6 people last night, 6 people who were meant to die…” Max wasn’t helping but she knew she needed to be honest.
“What the fuck have I done?”
“I don’t know Bridge, but I think we need to stop playing around with time…” Max concluded.
Bridget agreed. She had done some serious damage to fate when she intervened last night. Perhaps she wasn’t supposed to save them? But how could she not? How could she stand by and let those innocent people perish?
Bridget felt a cold chill slip into her when she realised she’d been playing God. She’d been saving lives at the expense of others. She’d unintentionally been killing strangers to save the ones she knew. Max was right, she had to stop playing around with the timeline.
*********************
14: 09 pm 31st October 2015
Her mum had called and said the coast was clear. She’d left for work and wouldn’t be home for tea. Her father wasn’t going to be home for tea either. So she had orders to feed herself and feed Frank. Her mother even went to lengths to remind her about the specialist diet food for Frank in the kitchen cupboard. Bridget knew very well that Frank was on a diet. Poor Frank.
The media that had camped out in the street had gone, just like her mother said. She entered her house with no drama. It was nice, she didn’t have any strength to deal with them. She’d been floored by the revelations and ramifications of last night’s events. She needed a quiet evening to process them. She felt heavy with thought, almost like she was sinking into quicksand. A quiet evening in alone would do her good. She’d already planned to take tomorrow off from college, she wasn’t in any shape or form to go in. She’d found normalcy a welcome remedy on Saturday, now she needed the complete opposite.
She just hoped the trick-or-treaters didn’t bother. She’d forgotten it was Halloween until she spied several people making last minute decorations. She would keep all the lights off and stay in her room. Maybe eat ice cream and watch a movie. She craved some quiet time, she didn’t want to see a single soul.
She shut and locked the front door behind her. At once she became aware of a strange sensation. Something was not right. She couldn’t place it, but something was definitely amiss.
“Frank?” she called. Usually the fat slob met her at the door. He was nowhere to be seen.
That was odd. Something told her to go to the kitchen and take a knife.
She then returned to the stairwell, armed against a possible intruder.
Intruder? She had watched far too many home invasion horror movies. Yet she couldn’t quite shake the feeling someone or something was in the house that shouldn’t be. She hovered near the phone, it sat in its cradle in the hallway. Take it? She decided not to.
She slowly crept up the stairs.
A small scuffling sound attracted her attention, then huffing and panting. It sounded like Frank. The top of the stairs came into view, she spied Frank. He was digging at the bedroom door, panting in frustration.
“Frank!” she scolded him with a hiss. He paid her no need, he returned to digging at the door. It was Christine’s bedroom. The time-capsule. He had never shown any interest in it before, in fact he’d never even set one foot inside it as far she knew.
“FRANK!” she hissed again. He took notice this time, stopping and giving her a goofy grin.
That strange feeling hadn’t dissipated… She still felt something was wrong. She creaked onto the landing. It wasn’t like Frank. He never did this, even when he did something naughty he would quickly stop.
Maybe he’d lost something under the door? It was her only rational explanation.
She crept to the door. An ice cube of fear slid down her spine and made her shiver.
Why was she so afraid?
Frank sat expectantly, watching her, waiting for her to open the door.
Was it still locked? She couldn’t recall if her mother had locked it?
She reached the handle. She wasn’t sure she wanted to do this, it had been a long time since she looked inside this room. It was like a slice of history; her bedroom. It reminded Bridget of the sister she’d loved, the sister who’d betrayed her and the sister who had turned all their lives upside down.
“Damn you Frank,” she whispered to herself as she turned the door handle. The door creaked open. Frank, with surprising speed for a portly fellow, bolted inside.
Bridget swung the door open, noticing Frank had stopped halfway across the room. Slowly her eyes lifted up and she finally realised what Frank was staring at.
“What the fuck…” she moaned aloud. Her jaw dropped, her knees jellified and she double took.
Frank growled, a warning gruff that was cute not menacing.
Christine slowly turned away from the window and turned her attention to her sister.
CHAPTER ELEVEN:
14:19 pm 31st October 2015
It was like looking at a ghost, yet Bridget knew she was real. This wasn’t any apparition, this was her. That undeniable look in her eyes, the one of darkness and discontent.
“Chris…” Bridget’s voice stuck in her throat.
She looked exactly like the last time she’d laid eyes on her sister. The thirteen year old girl who was trying to look cool with her dark smudged make up, her long brown hair streaked with black. She was wearing a white blouse, a long black cardigan and dark grey trousers. Her boots were the same ones she’d used to wear to school.
Nothing about her had changed. She still had the same sharp features, the same sunken grey eyes. Those crooked lips that rested in a semi-sneer. She looked like their father more than their mother. It was uncanny how she fitted into this time-capsule of her room, it was almost like she hadn’t been missing for two years.
“B…” her voice, how silky and slithery it was. Bridget had forgotten what she sounded like. It had been so long.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
Chris didn’t respond, she merely gave a little shrug of her shoulders. As blasé and disinterested as ever.
“Where the fuck have you been? Where did you go?” Bridget felt the questions erupt like water from a faucet. It was incredulous that she had just reappeared in their lives, like she had never left.
“I don’t know,” Chris shrugged the question away. She glanced at the pug, her look was a disapproving one. Frank gruffed at her again, then back-stepped to Bridget.
He did not know this stranger and he was wary.
“You don’t know? You don’t know where the fuck you’ve been for two years??!”
Chris’ eyes lifted up sharply. Her features shifted to confusion. “What? Two years?” she sounded surprised.
Bridget wanted to punch her. She felt a yearning to pummel her little sister mercilessly, how dare she waltz back into their life after all the damage she’s caused and pretend she doesn’t know she’s been gone for two years.
“Yes, two fucking years!”
Chris turned a shade of pale that caught Bridget by surprise. She watched Chris look at her watch, then sit on her bed. She looked lost in thought.
“I didn’t realise it was that long…” Christine murmured. She glanced around her room, now it made sense why everything was covered in dust.
Bridget took a deep breath, she needed to calm down. The flame of anger that was building inside was dangerous while she was still holding a knife. Get a grip, she really needed to get one fast.
She turned on the spot. She needed to leave, she couldn’t tolerate another moment in her sister’s presence. She stormed out of the room and headed down the stairs.
What should she do? Ring their parents? Ring the police? She wanted to ring Max, she wanted to yell at someone that her bitch sister had just swanned back into her life. She took a seat on the sofa, she needed to compose herself.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. If this was a Hollywood movie she’d have flung her arms around Christine and cried. Bridget put the knife on the coffee table as she realised her movie would have ended with her stabbing Chris instead. Why was she so angry? She felt irrational. Was it the old wounds finally rising to the surface? The old emotional fallout from Chris’ diary surfacing, a ghost that never been dealt with.
She’d never expected this, never expected her sister to return. She thought she was gone forever.
She heard thumping down the stairs, but when she turned to look there was no-one there. A few moments later, a calmer less-frightened Frank bound onto the sofa next to her.
“What the hell Frank,” she mused to him. He licked his chops and proceeded to push himself in for a cuddle.
It was just like old times, she was going to have sort out a “Christine” mess.
She went and collected the house phone. She then started by ringing their Father.
**********************
22: 09 pm 31st October 2015
“R U OK?” it was her mother. Bridget typed a reply “Yes, see you tomorrow. Need to stay away.” She sent it.
Hell had broken loose.
Just like it was bound to. The media re-descended on the house, this time with the most sensational story of the year. Missing teen mysteriously reappears after two years! It was over every news channel, it was all over social media. It was everywhere.
Everywhere except Max’s bedroom.
So this was her haven, her one place of solace from a world gone mad.
She was sat on the bedroom floor, in her pyjamas, with her back to Max’s bed. Max was laid on her bed, in her matching pyjamas. They was both absently watching a movie.
“OK LUV U” was the reply.
Bridget put the phone facedown on the floor. She returned her attention to the pizza. It was an order-in, thick cheesy Bolognese. The best kind.
Her phone had been a pulsing light display of messages and notifications, people reeling from the sudden news. She was frankly sick of it. Utterly sick of it.
“I know you don’t wanna talk about it, but I can’t believe she’s back…” Max ventured towards the subject. She needed to say something, she couldn’t tell where Bridget was heading emotionally. She understood the desire to flee the media, that wallflower dress had been apt, Bridget wasn’t an attention-seeker. She hated spotlights.
She just didn’t know if Bridget was happy to have her sister returned, or pissed.
“I don’t know what to think… She just reappeared, like nothing had ever happened,” Bridget sighed. She owed some conversation about it to Max, she couldn’t completely clam up.
“…Where did she go?”
“She didn’t say. She acted all surprised that it had been two years… Can you fucking believe that? Vanish, destroy your family and then come back and pretend you don’t know how long it’s been…” Bridget was pissed, Max didn’t need further proof.
“Well the story is she isn’t saying where she’s been…” Max informed gently.
“That’s so typical of her. Avoid dealing with the shit that she caused… Does she honestly think that it can all go back to the way it once was? That we can just rewind the clock and…” she trailed off when she realised the irony in what she was about to say.
“Would you turn the clock back if you could?”
“And do what?”
Max gave her a knowing look.
“Undo her vanishing? It wouldn’t be right, I’d still know all those things that she wrote in her diary. I would know that she fucking hates us all…”
“If she hates you all, why did she come back?”
“Because it’s Christine, it’s what Christine does. She walks through life and wreaks havoc, without a second fucking thought…” that vat of venom was surprising Bridget. It was like an open wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding, she couldn’t stymie the hatred.
“You think there might be a way to rewind that far back?”
Bridget shrugged.
“You said you’ve struggled to rewind anything more than like ten minutes, what if there was a way to rewind to a certain… ‘checkpoint’?”
