Rewind, page 13
His rationalisation, for the second time, didn’t help. Was it not enough to do this the first time around?
“…I cheated on you… with Damian…”
“Ok, I can’t…” she trailed off. Her hands shot up defensively. He faltered on the spot.
What was happening to time? Why had she suddenly looped back against her will?
“B! Please!” he dropped to his knees, his hands reaching out for her, “Please. I’m so sorry, I never meant-”
She felt the tug again. She was dragged off her feet, yanked out of herself. The world blurred around her, pain shot across her temples.
11:21 am 1st November 2015 [ 2nd Redux]
Then with a thud she was back in her own body again. Her ears popped, immediately followed by a ringing in them. She shook her head, her senses felt scrambled.
“-Bridget, I cheated on you…”
Her eyes looked up and saw his face, Oh no, not this again! Arthur’s face was once more contorted with anguish. What the fucking hell? Again?
“I cheated on you…” he repeated. This time it came out as a whisper. A shame ridden admission.
She’d just rewound again… Her mind failed to comprehend it. This was multiple rewinds, one after another. Bringing her back to the same point.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he sounded desperate. The looping conversation made her head spin. It was unfolding all over again, the same painful conversation, “I got drunk and it just happened,”
His rationalisation, for the third time, was like salt being rubbed in a wound. Was it not enough to do this the first and second time around?
“…I cheated on you… with-” Bridget turned sharply. She could not stomach to hear his name again. She began walking away. She knew she was changing the timeline but there was no way she could stomach to do this a third time. Her walk became a run, a flee that quickly took form.
“Bridget?!” Arthur called after her.
She couldn’t do it, she couldn’t stand there and hear it again.
She was several metres away, tears streaming down her face when she felt it again. That tug.
“No!” She moaned before being yanked backwards.
11:21 am 1st November 2015 [3rd Redux]
“-Bridget, I cheated on you…”
Seriously? A fourth time?
Bridget stepped back, her senses were even more scrambled than previously. It felt like the world had just been upended. Was this what madness felt like?
“Arthur, I can’t… Not right now,” she shot him down. She needed to step away, needed to get out of this situation.
“We have to B! You need to hear the truth!”
She fixed her blurred attention on him, that handsome face was once more melted into full blown guilt. Tears had welled up in his eyes.
Was she replaying this because she had to do something to the timeline? Max’s theories about her powers having a purpose echoed in her ears. Was there a particular outcome she was supposed to create here? She’d fled and rewound, she’d stood by and heard his confession and it rewound. What outcome did fate want?
“I cheated on you…” he repeated.
Was fate rewinding time till she got it right?
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” his desperation sounded heartbreaking, “I got drunk and it just happened,”
His rationalisation, that futile explanation, still didn’t make her feel any better. It just made her angry.
“…I cheated on you… with Damian…”
“Bastard,” she growled.
Arthur recoiled, his guilt briefly disappeared in surprise but then it returned tenfold.
“B, I’m so sorry…”
“Don’t fucking touch me!” she barked as he approached for an embrace. Tears welled up in her eyes. This wasn’t just salt in a wound, this was hot oil. This was awful, so many shades of awful.
“Please B, I didn’t mean for it to happen!”
“Then why did it happen?” her vitriol snapped out of her like black energy.
“I got drunk,”
“What a fucking bullshit excu-” she was yanked backwards.
11:21 am 1st November 2015 [4th Redux]
A dull thud announced her arrival back to the beginning of the conversation.
Her ears popped.
“-Bridget, I cheated on you…”
Bridget almost laughed, it wasn’t funny but she couldn’t believe it. Was fate taking the piss? Looping back for the fifth, was it sixth, time?
What had she done wrong now? What reaction was she supposed to have?
“I cheated on you…” he repeated in a quiet whisper.
Bridget couldn’t think of a new outcome, what else was there to do?
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” the desperate admission of guilt continued, “I got drunk and it just happened,”
Bridget clammed up. She didn’t know what to do. What if there was nothing she could do? What if she was going to loop in this moment forever? Was this Hell?
Was it Prometheus who had been doomed to a similar cyclical pattern of pain? To be eaten by a raven every night for the rest of his life…
“…I cheated on you… with Damian…”
This certainly was beginning to feel like Hell. Had she died? Had her time travelling cost her life? Was she being punished by fate? There was a whole box of rhetorical questions opening up in her mind, it was like Pandora’s Box.
“…We got drunk, and it… it just happened…”
Bridget shook her head, she couldn’t handle this information, especially not for the umpteenth time. She wanted to cry. This was Hell, it had to be…
“I’m not gay, I mean I don’t know… I still have feelings for you. I still love you. I don’t even know why it happened…” he was flailing weakly once more, drowning in a pool of his own guilt, “It just did… and I couldn’t forgive myself. I never wanted to hurt you,”
The feelings of hopelessness outweighed the betrayal.
He hugged her, sobbing in her ear. She let him, she allowed herself to be hugged. She stood there stiffly, convinced that any moment now time would loop back.
“I’m sorry…” then he backed off, he wiped his eyes. He was suddenly aware of the onlookers nearby, he turned on the spot and headed back into the hospital.
Bridget stood there, numb.
She kept waiting for it, kept waiting for time to yank her backwards. She stood there for five minutes, completely motionless and catatonic.
“You alright darling?” a worried onlooker approached her.
Slowly Bridget turned her face, her face was slack and unreadable.
“Don’t let him drag you down, you deserve better…”
She blinked.
It hadn’t happened…
Was this the outcome she was supposed to reach?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
20:07 pm 1st November 2015
“What a point to loop… Jesus Christ, it’s like the worst moment in your life, on constant loop,” Max surmised. Bridget gave her a withering look, it was a pretty insensitive thing to say.
“I just don’t know why it happened…”
Max shrugged. Her friend’s tale of uninitiated time rewinding was difficult to understand.
“You think I broke time?”
Max shrugged. They’d floated that theory before, but like most of their theories it was pure speculation.
“What was you doing?”
“I was following Chris,”
Max’s curiosity sharpened. “Following?”
“Yes, she crept out of the house…”
“That’s a bit weird,”
Bridget was comforted that she wasn’t the only one to think that too. Sometimes she wondered if she was unfairly suspicious of her sister.
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know, I got caught up with Arthur and his mother…”
“Where do you think she was going?”
“I’d originally thought she’d go to that squat, but she was heading in the opposite direction…” Bridget sighed. She had a headache, the constant rewinding had left her with a dull ache in both of her temples. She wanted to go home and climb into bed.
“Hang on, Rodney Smith… I think he lives near the hospital doesn’t he…”
“Max, I never kept tabs on the junkie who led my sister astray,” Bridget bitterly remarked.
Max turned her attention to her PC, she logged onto social media. She typed his name into the search bar, he was the third hit.
In the time since Chris’ disappearance he had reformed. He had maintained a year of sobriety, smartened up and even found himself a girlfriend. He had moved on. Max brought up his profile. She clicked on his photos.
“He’s a dad,” she remarked aloud surprised. Bridget felt uncomfortable.
“He does, he lives near the hospital…” Max was pointing to the family portrait on the screen. Rodney was stood holding a baby, his girlfriend stood by his side. They were stood outside their house, smiling awkwardly at the camera. His girlfriend reminded both of them of Chris. Skinny, long dark hair and a mean look about them. This new girlfriend had a nose piercing, a huge bulbous diamante stud. Instantly Bridget was put off about her own plans for the piercing. This girl looked… trashy. And young.
Jailbait young.
“You think Chris was going to visit him?”
Bridget shrugged. It seemed likely, why else would she be heading that way? Christine had wasted no time digging up her old associates, it had been less than 24 hours and she was already doing it.
“I’m gonna visit him, see if she did…” Bridget promised.
“…and what about Arthur?” Max guided the subject back to it, now that Bridget was less angry.
“What is there to do? Its happened, the truth is out there…”
Wasn’t that a tagline?
“I’m gonna say something crazy… What if today, the whole looping thing, was because someone else was rewinding time?”
A light bulb practically appeared over Bridget’s head.
“You mean, there might be someone else who can rewind time?”
“Maybe… You said you never had a nosebleed when you rewound, you only get that when you rewind time. I never had a nosebleed when you took me back… What if someone else had been rewinding?”
Max’s new idea shot holes into Bridget’s theory about fate pranking her. Was she just a victim to somebody else rewinding?
But who?
****************************
11:24 am 2nd November 2015
Bridget knocked loudly. She scanned both ways up the street. There was nobody around, the street was empty. It was a pretty, yet stereotypical, slice of modern English suburbia. Small houses nestled together, pretty manicured lawns. It was homely, if a little too American.
She heard someone approaching.
“Hello?” the young female opened the door. In the flesh she looked trashier. Her long dark hair was bundled messily upon her head, her eye-shadow was gaudy metallic green. That bulbous diamante stud held Bridget’s attention captive, she couldn’t help but focus on it. The girl, who Bridget had learned was called Ivy Graham, was painfully skinny. Her pink teddy bear pyjamas hung off her, the turquoise dressing gown hung open. She had a cigarette hanging out the corner of her mouth.
“Can I help you?” her voice was scratchy, that irritating high pitch that sounded like nails down chalkboards.
“I was wondering if Rodney was in?” Bridget enquired politely. She was trying to be endearing, but she sensed that Ivy was defensively apprehensive.
“Who’s asking?” she sneered. She took a drag of her fag without moving her hand.
“Bridget White…”
“You the sister of that missing girl?”
“Yes, did she come here yesterday?”
“Why the fuck do you want to know? Or you thinking that my Rodney is interested in her?”
“No, I was just trying to figure out if she’d been here… and why?”
“Yeah she came, but she fucked off pretty quickly. Came here like she wanted to talk, but she just turned around and fucked off…”
Bridget could picture Christine being stood on the doorstep, ready to reconnect with her past. Maybe the sight of this Ivy had sent her running? Christine was always a bit of a coward.
“So they didn’t talk?”
“No, they fucking didn’t… and I told her to keep the fuck away, my Rodney ain’t interested in that shit anymore. He’s clean, he’s a father now. So tell your fucking sister to stay the fuck away! I ain’t having that little fucking slag fucking his life up…”
Ivy was adamant and Bridget couldn’t blame her. She nodded, she was a little relieved that Ivy wasn’t on Chris’ side. When had it become about sides?
“Bridget?” a male voice appeared behind Ivy.
It was the first time she’d ever seen him in the flesh. He looked nicer than she’d imagined, he wasn’t as skeletal and gangly as his pictures made out. He had a pointed face, his hair short to the scalp. He looked like an ex-junkie though. Bridget always assumed she would feel rage when she finally met him, this was the man she thought led her sister astray. Yet Bridget didn’t, she felt nothing.
“Bridget, I don’t know why she came yesterday…”
Well, this was all very fruitless. Why had Chris come all this way to only turn around and leave…?
“Where has she been? The news says she won’t say…”
“I don’t know, nobody knows. Only she does,” Bridget shrugged. She was aware of how evasive that sounded, but she really had no answers to give. Christine had carved herself a beautiful mystery and she was planning to keep it that way too.
“Who else did she hang around with Rodney?” perhaps Christine visited other members of her past.
“…You heard of Charlie Black? Harry Brown?”
Bridget’s eyebrow bowed, what was this? A collector of colour co-ordinated friends?
“We used to hang with them…”
“Where can I find them?” Bridget was grateful for the lead, even if she was bemused at their names. She felt like it was a punch line to a joke, but she sensed no humour coming from Rodney.
“…I don’t know, I don’t see them anymore,” that meant they was junkies and Rodney wisely kept his distance.
“Try Will Street, there’s an abandoned house there… it’s the local haunt,” Ivy finished.
Bridget didn’t want to know how Ivy knew that. The split-second of shame on her face told her enough.
“Thank you,” she bowed graciously and departed.
******************
17:46 pm 2nd November 2015
“They’ve not seen her,” Bridget finished her recap of the day’s events. Max was sat fiddling with her phone. A shutter sound caught Bridget’s attention. Had she just taken a picture of her? Why did she do that?
“Nobody?” Max enquired still fiddling with her phone.
“Well, that’s what they were saying. They weren’t particularly interested in talking till I put some money on the table,” Bridget would’ve felt like a movie star at the time if she wasn’t so concerned about her safety. The junkie den had been frightening. It had been squalid, filthy and riddled with all manner of heroin paraphernalia. She had been quaking in her boots as she rooted through this dark and depraved world chasing her sister.
“You think they lied?”
“I don’t know… I get the impression they look after their own,” Bridget confessed. It had been a frustrating afternoon. She was adamant that Christine was hiding something, yet she couldn’t figure it out. The leads had gone cold.
The idea of Christine being part of that dark ugly world saddened Bridget. She had truly derailed if that’s the world she’d sought solace in.
Then Bridget would feel foolish, and then angry. Christine had set about her own demise, it was a fate she obviously deserved. Then she would feel sad and guilty all over again because her relationship with her sister was so complicated and bleak.
Part of her wanted to protect her and part of her wanted to cast her away.
Max came and sat next to Bridget on the bed.
“Come on, selfie!” She pushed her cheek to Bridget’s, the pair of them looked into the camera.
“I’m not feeling it Max,” Bridget sighed.
“Fake it, it’s the first step,” Max pulled a face.
Click. The phone flashed as the camera took their picture.
Max bounded off the bed and sat in the office chair. She roused her PC from sleep mode.
“I saw Arthur today,”
Bridget sighed. Jesus Christ this was the longest worst week of her life.
“…And?” she sighed.
“Well, he asked how you was doing…”
“And what did you say?”
“That you’re doing great,”
“Really?”
“I said you were fine, I also told him he was a dickhead and he’d be best to keep his distance from you…”
“Thanks…”
“I also warned him if he tried anything, I’d cut his fucking balls off…”
The empty threat made Bridget smile meekly.
“Amy however, well she’s feeling pretty guilty…” Max continued her volley of updates.
“So she knew the truth…”
“I really think so…”
“Well, I knew that anyway. She’s his best friend…Any more on those freak accidents?”
“I keep looking into it, but no official statements have been made. They’ve not even announced that it was Jason’s crash that caused the fire…”
Max had got her shit together quite quickly. She didn’t seem so bothered by Jason anymore, she had come to terms with the complicated scenario both her and Bridget were in. She’d made her peace with her own connections to the time travelling.
Quite simply Max was taking it all in her stride.
