Rewind, page 17
“You can’t save yourself Bridget!” Christine laughed loudly.
Bridget steeled herself, forcing herself to work around the pain. She had to make it. She had to do this! She had to undo everything! Had to reset the timeline! She hit the last step, her sense of balance failed her and she crashed to the floor.
The lounge was beginning to spin around her, there was no way she’d manage to climb onto her feet again. She had to crawl.
She was beginning to feel faint.
She needed to reach the mantelpiece. The photographs were up there.
“B, B, B? What are you up to B?” Chris sang making her way down the stairs slowly.
Bridget dug her nails into the carpet and dragged herself forward. She squeezed between the sofa and the coffee table.
She was beginning to feel sick, and tired. She was struggling to keep her eyes open, her legs felt numb. She would never reach the mantelpiece at this rate. She grabbed the TV remote from the coffee table, then blindly threw it at the mantel. It was a limp toss but several photos came clattering down.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Chris called in alarm watching.
Bridget’s fingers were turning numb, she struggled to grasp the nearest photo-frame.
Just a little more. Hang in there.
She plucked the frame, turned it to face her.
This would have to do.
Chris sensed something was wrong, she tore forward. Too late, Bridget threw them both backwards in time.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
13:49pm 23rd July 2002 [redux]
“Cheese!”
The flash of the camera blinded them both, both children were caught off guard. Bridget squinted and blinked several times, scrunching her slender face up into itself. Her ears popped and began ringing. Christine began crying, bawling loudly.
“Hey!” Their mother soothed dropping the camera from her face. She closed in on her bawling two year old.
Bridget turned away quickly and wiped the blood away from her nose. She was still synchronising with her body, it felt sluggish under her will. Christine wailed louder and shirked out of her incoming mother’s grasp. The embrace was met with thin air. A look of defeat swept their mother’s face. Her eyes drooped to the dirt embankment disappointedly. Then, reapplying her bright smile, Diana lifted her face back up. Bridget was studying her intently, her little four year old features stiff with concern for a moment. Bridget couldn’t believe it had actually worked. She could feel the faintest trace of a phantom wound in her chest. The hole that Chris had cut into her chest a fragment of a historic-future. Something still to happen if Bridget didn’t change it. Seeing her youthful mother was strange, almost hypnotic. It was a rare glimpse into a world she couldn’t remember. The pretty features free of the marks of time, the bottle blonde hair she had abandoned.
Her mother’s smile teetered on her lips briefly. She was somewhere else in thought, some land of her own.
Their eyes locked for a moment, a wordless moment. Bridget’s mind saw her dying mother clutching at her throat, futilely trying to halt a geyser of blood. Her last moments had been ones of horror. Bridget couldn’t let this pass.
Forgive me mother for what I plan to do.
Then Bridget smiled, a little friendly and warm grin that broke the momentary spell. I have to play along, I have to play this perfectly…
She could barely remember the chain of events, she was going to have to hope for the best. She was four years old in this memory, she needed to act like one.
But she also needed to act quickly. She could feel her own powers were drained, she didn’t know if Christine’s were too.
Bridget brushed past her, her hand grazing Diana’s back for a second.
Need to get Christine. Need to re-enact the lake incident. Bridget didn’t know what Christine would be thinking? She was hoping that she would be disorientated. Still, her sister was only two at this point. She would be easier controlled.
Diana’s gaze followed her, watching her close in on her still bawling sister.
Was Christine crying because she’d been torn back to this point in the past? Or was she simply a child having a tantrum? Bridget didn’t know. She just knew this was her best shot.
She collected Christine by the arms. Christine was still bawling but she complied.
Bridget began leading her to the little wooden fishing pier. Bridget stepped onto it and began guiding Christine onto it by the hand. So far so good, Christine was compliant.
“Be careful!” Diana called to them both. She smiled when her warning fell on deaf ears. Bridget was dedicating her sole attention to her younger sister, her little face furrowed in concentration as she navigated her clumsier sibling down the small step onto the pier. Christine stopped crying. She suddenly began to resist Bridget’s guidance. Had she finally realised how far back in time they finally were?
“If you come with me, I can fix everything,…Come on,” Bridget said softly as she tugged Christine forward.
Christine snuffed. She opened her mouth to say something but only noise came out. Her eyes looked horrified for a split second.
“You can have everything you want, I promise…” Bridget was banking on Christine not remembering the full sequence of events. She was too young at the time to remember them. Christine nodded hesitantly, she was too young to be able to speak, the muscles in her mouth not adequately trained enough.
With a smile Diana turned her attention away and began walking towards the campsite.
Bridget tugged Christine further onto the pier.
She led the way to the edge, the cool water of the lake knocked against the wooden slats.
Bridget glanced back, the adults were occupied. Her mother was helping some old friend with a tent, their father was helping another friend.
“On three, we jump!” Bridget brought Christine to the edge.
Christine tried to pull away but Bridget was stronger, she held her little sister’s hand firmly. This was a glorious age difference.
“No, you can’t do that!” Bridget’s little voice scolded, “you wanted to kill me, now is your chance… There’s lots of seaweed at the bottom of this lake, dive deep and don‘t rescue me when I get stuck… Don’t try to rescue me or you’ll nearly drown and nothing will change…”
Christine’s eyes shifted.
“If you don’t save me now, everything will be different. There won’t be me to get in your way…”
Christine’s eyes narrowed a little, then a dark moment of realisation filled them briefly.
“On three, one…”
Bridget took a breath.
“Two…”
She closed her eyes. God forgive me.
“Three!”
She jumped, pulling Chris with her.
They both plunged into the cool water, breaking down past the surface.
They broke away from one another instantly.
Bridget waited a moment, then swam to the surface. She emerged alone.
She spluttered, she’d swallowed a mouthful of stagnant water. It made her retch.
“Christine?” She called.
There was no response.
She paddled back to the embankment, her foot catching on the weeds briefly. They snagged around her naked foot but she managed to break free. The same could not be said for Christine, her foot would be stuck. She was trapped underwater, ensnared in a trap of weeds. Bridget had tricked her. She’d made Christine believe that it was trying to save Bridget that made her nearly drown.
She reached the bank, turned back and watched. The water was deceptive, it bore no trace of the little girl trapped underneath.
She began to cry, big fat tears rising to the surface of her eyes. She couldn’t quite believe she was going through with this. What had she become?
She stifled a sob, she didn’t want the adults to hear her crying.
It was horrible; the minutes she needed to wait felt like they were stretching out indefinitely. And she continued to wait; she was waiting as long as she could to be sure that Christine drowned. She couldn’t save her. It was the only way to undo everything that had been done to time. Bridget had no idea what damage Chris had been doing to the timeline before she developed the powers herself. She’d been so worried about the damages she’d been causing herself, when she was only adding to her sister’s mess. Christine had obviously done some serious modifying or she would’ve never fallen out of the timeline in the first place. Bridget wished she knew more about those changes were, but she never would.
It chilled her to the core that she had been part of the timeline then, she had been re-sculpted without her awareness. How many times had her fate been sculpted against her knowledge?
If Christine died now, so did all her changes. Bridget could reset the timeline from this one specific point. She understood that she was playing God all over again, but someone had to step in and protect her family from Chris. Someone had to undo everything that her sister had done. Even if that meant Bridget had to undo everything she’d done too! Everything; Max’s rape, Amy’s suicide, the care home fire - it all linked back to Chris. She had messed with the timeline. Bridget was just undoing it and preventing it from happening…
Was that why she had developed the power? Was it truly her destiny to undo Chris’ changes? Max had sworn there had to be a balance to the power, was that what Bridget was? Was she the reset button?
She closed her eyes. She had no idea what was going to happen from this point forward. She had opened a completely different future. The great unknown laid ahead.
She waited a moment longer.
It had been five minutes, Christine would be dead. She had killed her sister.
She wiped her eyes and steeled herself. She needed to remember Chris as she was at the end. The dark embodiment of hate. The wielder of the knife that ran across their mother’s throat. She needed to remember that. That’s who Christine was, that’s why she had to die. The world was literally going to be better without her.
“MUMMMY!!!” She began to scream, pointing into the lake.
“BRIDGET?” it was her father’s voice.
A split second later.
“CHRISTINE?! CHRISTINE!?”
“In the water Daddy!” Bridget burst into tears.
*************************
17:38 pm 16th November 2015
“Hot chocolate?” Wendy enquired. Bridget and Max nodded.
“Coming right up ladies!” and she disappeared back to the counter.
Max’s phone vibrated on the table. She glanced at it, “Amy says she’s coming, she’s just picking Arthur up,”
“Cool,” Bridget acknowledged warmly.
The café was exactly as it had been in the first timeline. In a strange echoing of the original timeline this place had become her and Max’s favourite spot all over again. There was much of life that had repeated itself in this new sequence. There was also plenty that had changed too.
Bridget had found it a difficult road to reach this point. She had lived through 17 years of her life already when she rewound back to being 4. She’d had a hard time being a young child, especially one trying to disguise the obvious maturity Bridget exhibited. As the years went on it slowly got easier. The days of entertaining small children and their small minds was gone. It had become a gruesome hell having to pretend to be on the same level as a five year old. The petty politics, the boyfriends, the lessons. It had all been hard.
Initially she’d screwed up, her intellect unable to be reigned in. Her mother and father thought they had created a child prodigy, they pushed her hard. Wanting her to head for grammar school, wanting her to capitalise on this unusual intelligence. She’d had to break their hearts slowly, acting out a slow fall from grace. She had wanted to replicate the original timeline as much as she could, she didn’t want to swept off into higher education before her time. Besides, she wasn’t smarter than the average 17 year old. She was just a seventeen year old replaying life all over again.
Christine’s unfortunate death created an unexpected effect on their family. Her mother and father had split up, their marriage lasting two more years after the death. Her mother had remarried a man called Bradley Cooper, who’s son was none other than Jimmy Cooper. She was now connected to Jimmy in this timeline, he was her half brother. He was a good guy, a good half-brother to her. He’d still ended up working in the care home. She had, however, chose to distance herself from him a bit, he wasn’t that prominent in her original line of events and she intended to keep it that way.
Her father never remarried, he did however end up in a wildly different career. He was a math analyst, whatever that meant. Her and him lived in the same house as she had done last time around. It was strange to come home to that house, see it filled with completely different furniture. Her father had tried to encourage her to choose the room Christine had, but Bridget couldn’t. She didn’t want to reside in that memory. Her sister had never grown up to decorate it in this timeline, but Bridget could clearly picture the details of Christine’s room. It was a haunting memory.
Much like how sometimes, when the sun fell just right through the windows, she could picture the dreadful scene of death frozen on the landing. It was an odd sensation, she felt comforted by the familiarity of the house but it was also riddled with dark memories.
In a peculiar reshuffling of events; Gran-Pat went into care, but went into a home near Leeds as her Aunt Clarica took over looking after her. Frank, the pug, did end up at the White residence however. He was exactly the same overweight boulder on legs as he had been first time around. The day her father brought him home, she had wept all day. Wept with tears of relief. The last time she saw his face he was frozen in time on the landing, a knife had been slipped into his guts.
Her father had never understood quite why she’d sobbed so hysterically and Bridget had never offered an answer. It was filed alongside the other strange quirks and moments with his daughter.
On the whole her parents were much happier living their separate lives, it had definitely been a twist she never saw coming. She wondered if perhaps they had been splitting up in the original timeline and Christine had tweaked it, but she wasn’t convinced Christine would care enough. It didn’t seem befitting of her character, but that didn’t mean Bridget had a good grasp of her character…
Maybe Christine had played out the scenario of the divorce and rewound it?
It still made Bridget shiver knowing that once upon a time she’d been completely at the mercy of her sister’s intentions. Who knew how many times Christine had manipulated time itself? Maybe that was why Bridget developed her time travelling powers, because Christine had been eroding the fabric of time with her constant changes? Like a VCR tape fading with over-use…
Bridget couldn’t deny she felt a small portion of guilt rest uneasily in the depths of her heart. Drowning her sister was a cruel and terrible thing to do yet she suspected it was the right thing to do. They had broken time between them, it needed to be undone. The power needed to be forsaken and it wasn’t something Christine would’ve done.
Bridget had once thought that if she could go back in time she would’ve loved Christine more, nurtured her and worked hard to avoid her falling down the wrong path. But would it have worked? It wouldn’t have mattered where in time they both went, Christine would always remember. She would always be toxic.
So as heartbreaking as it was, it was indeed for the better good. Some damage can’t be reversed. Now Bridget had to carry that secret for the rest of her life, something she’d grown at peace with.
The hardest part of juggling this replay of life was actually Max. She came into Bridget’s life in exactly the same way as she had previously, a nervous hello on the first day of school. Bridget had struggled to steer the friendship in the path she wanted, in the path she remembered, and she continuously worried that she was going to mess it up. She had been a seventeen year old befriending a five year old, it was complex to say the least. When their friendship had blossomed once more, Bridget found it easier but sometimes she still nearly made comments about life that hadn’t happened. It was all too easy to forget she was living a whole new life. Thankfully Max was still the most amazing person she’d ever met. Nothing drastic had altered. As she sat opposite Bridget now, she could’ve easily been the past-Max displaced. The same long hair, the same dress sense. The same love of profanity.
Bridget checked her phone. 17:42 pm.
“You waiting for something?” Max cocked her head. She’d noticed Bridget had been continuously checking her phone all day.
“Kind of,” Bridget answered cryptically.
“Oh, there’s Amy!” Thank god for that distraction Bridget thought.
They both turned their attention out of the window. Amy and Arthur were climbing out of a car. The sight of Arthur made Bridget’s stomach flip, like it always did.
They waved Arthur’s mother off and entered the café.
“Hey babe,” Arthur slid up alongside her and kissed her on the cheek.
“Oh please, get a fucking room…” Max guffawed.
“We are, aren’t we babe, Bradford University…” he kissed her forehead. He was smiling broadly.
“Well I was hungry,” Amy remarked in mock-disgust. She flagged Wendy down. She made a gesture for two more drinks.
“I guess we’re on the hard stuff again, hardcore teenagers that we are!” Arthur groaned in mock protest.
Bridget jabbed him in the ribs. “I like hot chocolate, I’m sorry…”
“God, we’re so fucking hipster… If I go vegan, please fucking shoot me. I don‘t wanna be putting pictures of nut and leaf curry on Instagram,” Max sighed shaking her hands.
Arthur had come into her life differently this time around, she had bumped into him sooner than before. They met in the summer holidays before starting senior school. He’d been showing off on his BMX, made a wrong move and literally landed at her feet. Navigating Arthur was the most painful retreat of history for Bridget, she took great lengths to prod him in the path of Damian. Encouraging him to “explore”. It had broke her heart, but she knew that in the future he would cheat on her with him. She loved Arthur but she also knew what laid ahead, so she pushed him down the path that wouldn’t break her heart in the process.
