Today was a difficult day. A very early start, a busy day, a busy evening, and I only got a chance to sit down with my laptop at 22.15. Fortunately, I had a reasonably good idea of what I wanted to write and managed to scribble it down in a grand total of 299 words...
Pop.
It’s an instinctual thing, it’s not something I consciously control; but as soon as my body senses mortal danger it hurls me back three minutes in time and gives me a chance to try again.
The first time it happened, I was nine. I’d run into the road to chase after my football and looked up to see the lorry bearing down on me, horn blaring, and then pop I was back in the park and watching John Kelly score a goal I’d already seen him score minutes earlier. Then continued to watch as the next set of passes played out exactly as I remembered; the ball trickling past me and into the road. Except this time I just watched as the lorry hurtled through the junction and over the top of the ball.
I began to think it was a dream, and then it happened again when I was 13. Showing off in front of my mates and balancing on top of the wall of the multi-story carpark; then a slip and I was hurtling to the ground. Pop. I was back on top of the carpark and listening to what seemed a replay of my friends daring me to climb the wall.
All in all, this ability of mine has saved me eight times in the forty three years I’ve been on this Earth. Aside from those first two, it has saved me from electrocution, drowning, three car crashes, and from being stabbed. Truth be told, I’ve begun to wonder if maybe I’m immortal.
But this time I’ve got a problem.
The pop sound is still ringing in my ears as I look around the cabin and grimace at the stewardess. I’m 40,000ft up over the Atlantic and three minutes isn’t doing me much good…
I felt like I was in purgatory, as though my karma was being laundered.
ReplyDeleteI stared at the video playing on the screen.
There she was: my sweet Molly. She looked happy. She was happy.
It was the park, on some random Tuesday afternoon in August. One of those long summer days where you barely look at your watch the entire day. On days like that, only the darkening sky and slight chill in the air can usher you home, nature’s gentle bookend to a perfect day.
Molly glanced at the camera, face beaming, her entire soul haloed by the summer sun.
My life.
My world.
The person who had come into our lives accidentally but turned it upside-down in the most powerful and beautiful ways.
We’d never planned on having a family, but Molly’s arrival transformed us into so much more than the sum of our parts.
Sleep deprivation and a house that perpetually smelled of something nasty and nondescript gave way to epic fucking canyons of utter joy.
And then, she was gone.
And then, so was my marriage, my friends, and my job.
My life.
My world.
Molly was the glue, and some fucking drunken cunt in a Mercedes was the solvent.
“Watch it again.”
“Again?”
“Watch. It. Again.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking coward.”
Silence hung in the air.
I didn’t recognise the man at first – he reminded me of a stranger who came to our house the night after my mother died, but I couldn’t be sure – but I knew that he’d been holding me hostage for weeks, torturing and tormenting me until I somehow lost my mind.
I reached for the remote and hit rewind.