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October 11th, 2013
Arcadia Bay Lighthouse
The rain lashes against us as we watch over the chaos below, the town below being pelted with debris as the tornado slowly makes its way toward landfall, a leviathan with no way of halting it. A monster of my creation. The skies are black, impenetrable; even if the sun is shining above, no light reaches below the apocalyptic death-blanket that covers the Bay, only the dim flow of the city and the occasional flash of lightning providing any small degree of illumination.
Chloe pulls away from me for a moment, sodden with the incessant rain. She pulls something from her pocket, a small white square, putting it into my hands.
"Max, this is the only way." She declares, voice rife with fear, with pain, sorrow.
I take hold of the small piece of paper and look at it properly. It's a Polaroid of a small, blue butterfly. The photo I took moments before all of this began.
"I feel like I took this shot a thousand years ago." I utter, hoarsely. For me, it may as well have been longer still, like punishment from whatever being above forced this curse onto me.
Chloe stands beside me, her voice raised to be heard above the biblical weather. With every word, her voice wavers as she fights against the feelings and thoughts that threaten to tear her apart.
"You… you could use that photo to change everything right back to when you took that picture…" She turns away from me for a moment, no more willing to face that suggestion than me. "All it would take is for me to- to…" Her attempts to remain composed falter, and she breaks down into tears, her face in her hands.
My heart threatens to burst as I try and dissuade her. "Fuck that! No, no way…" I can barely hold myself together, trying desperately to think of something, anything, that might allow for the storm to be halted without having to lose Chloe. "You are my number one priority. You are all that matters to me."
Chloe uncovers her face once again, bringing herself to look at me again. "I know. You've proven that over and over again… even though I don't deserve it."
I can't bear to hear Chloe degrade herself like this, as though she has no worth.
"I'm so selfish…", she continues in her soliloquy. "Not like my mom... Look what she had to give up and live through... and she did. She deserves so much more than to be killed by a storm in a fucking diner." She takes a step away from me, looking out into the abyss. "Even my step... father deserves her alive. There's so many more people in Arcadia Bay who should live... way more than me…"
"Don't say that!" I retort, the maelstrom surging around us all the while, the black skies above impenetrable save for the sporadic flash of lightning. "I won't trade you…"
The roaring winds and crashing thunder make it hard to hear one another over the storm.
“You’re not trading me.” Chloe argues, her voice wavering all the while. “Maybe you've just been delaying my real destiny... Look at how many times I've almost died or actually died around you.”
I look away from her. I can’t look her in the eyes, not with the feelings tearing at me right now. “Look at what's happened in Arcadia Bay ever since you first saved me. I know I've been selfish, but for once,” Chloe tells me, placing a hand on my shoulder and turning me to face her, “I think I should accept my fate... our fate…”
“Chloe…” I rasp. How can I make that decision? How can I condemn Chloe to death, after all the trials of this week, becoming friends with her again, becoming… more, perhaps? It’s not right, just a sick game the gods are playing.
“Max, you finally came back to me this week, and…” Chloe stops, taking a breath. “You did nothing but show me your love and friendship. You made me smile and laugh, like I haven't done in years. Wherever I end up after this... in whatever reality... all those moments between us were real, and they'll always be ours. No matter what you choose, I know you'll make the right decision.”
“Chloe…” I beg, “I can’t make this choice.” Why do I have to be the one to decide this? Chloe’s life, or the city? What kind of a fucked-up choice is that to have to try and make?
“No, Max.” Chloe says, as firmly as she can. Her hands press gently against my shoulders, as she looks me in the eyes. “You’re the only one who can.” Her voice is barely a whisper.
Even with the electricity in the air, and the hammering rain, the next few moments feel like they take lifetimes each to pass.
Her life, or the city?
I make my choice. My heart feels like it’s being torn from my body, tossed into the swirling abyss, but at the end of the day even Chloe has resigned herself to this being the only option.
“Max, it’s time.” She utters, stirring me from the argument within.
“Chloe... I'm so, so sorry…” I cry, legs weak. “I… I don’t want to do this.”
“I know, Max. But we have to.” She answers. Gone is the tremble in her voice, her heart fighting her head. She’s set on this being the only way for us to stop this cataclysm, this violence and destruction, once and for all. “We have to save everybody, okay? And you'll make those fuckers pay for what they did to Rachel. Being together this week…” She continues, pausing to try and compose herself once more. “It was the best farewell gift I could have hoped for. “You’re my hero, Max.”
I certainly don’t feel like a hero. What kind of a hero takes a life, rather than saving it? That’s not what a hero is supposed to do.
I look into Chloe’s eyes once more, memorising the lines of her face as I see them, the occasional flash lighting up her sodden form. The thrum of my heart fills my chest as I take a step toward Chloe, perhaps for the last time.
My hands gently reach up against the sides of her head, as I lean in toward her, giving her one final kiss. A kiss of death, some might say. The crashing storm, the driving rain, the incessant roar of the tornado below… everything fades into a null, distant nothingness for those few moments we spend in our embrace. We break away once more, and I look into those deep blue eyes for what I know are the final few moments.
“I'll always love you…” Chloe confides in me, as she backs away. “Now, get out of here, please! Do it before I freak. And Max Caulfield?” She asks, rhetorical. “Don’t you forget about me.”
There’s maybe six feet between us, but it may as well be six miles for all it would matter.
“Never.” The words leave my lips, coming out as a whisper. I take a few paces toward the barrier at the edge of the cliff, taking the Polaroid in both hands. As best I can, I attempt to drown out the sounds of impending doom that envelop this place, focusing in on the small, almost vibrant colours of the tin bucket, and the frail, fleeting blue butterfly resting on its rim. The image begins to flicker, before a flash of white overcomes me.
No going back now.
October 7th, 2013
Blackwell Academy Womens’ Bathroom
The flash of the camera briefly startles me as I become aware of my surroundings again, and the butterfly continues on its way. All the while, I’m still left with the dread of what comes next circling in my head. The dread intensifies as I hear the door open, and Nathan’s panicky, rambling self-pep-talk once more.
“It's cool, Nathan... Don't stress, you're okay, bro, just... count to three. Don't be scared. You own this school... If I wanted, I could blow it up. You're the boss.”
I’m not a hero. The thoughts continue to churn in my mind, as I question the choice I’ve made. What right of mine is it to take Chloe’s life in place of the Bay, even if it’s her wish?
“I hope you checked the perimeter, as my step-ass would say.” I vaguely hear Chloe tell Nathan, as she loosely checks the bathroom is empty.
Why does it have to be her? Does it have to be her?
The grim realisation hits me, as I hear the commotion.
“You don’t know who the fuck I am or who you're messing around with!” Nathan roars. I don’t even need to look out at what’s happening to know that fucking gun of his is pressed against Chloe.
“Where'd you get that?” Chloe asks, the confidence in her tone falling away. “What are you doing? Come on, put that thing down!”
What if I’m not the solution to this problem, to this violent puzzle? What if I’m the cause ? What if everything that happened- will happen- this week is because of my having these powers in the first place, and not because of what I did here and now?
“Nobody would ever even miss your punk ass, would they?” Nathan taunts Chloe.
In that moment, I feel that I know what I’ve got to do. It’s not Chloe’s life that these forces, whatever they are, seek to remove from this earth. It’s mine.
I step out, an arm outstretched. I force the powers surging within me to the bottom of my mind, pacifying them. “NO!”
Nathan, startled by my presence and outcry, turns around to face me. His movements are as if the air is made of tar.
The black, impenetrable depth behind the muzzle of the gun is pointed directly at me. Chloe is frozen in place. By fear, by confusion, perhaps a combination of the two.
Nathan’s finger twitches on the already tensioned trigger. A bright flash, and deafening crack disorientate me. A sharp, hot pain spreads from my left side, like a rod of fire stabbed through me. The silence is so eerie, so unnatural, that I can hear the casing from the bullet ‘tink’ as it strikes the floor. A wisp of smoke rises up from near the back of the open gun as it slides shut.
Nathan’s eyes widen in shock. Chloe’s features drop, horrified as the two realizations strike her at once. My legs bow and crumple, tumbling toward the dingy, scuffed, cold tile. I barely feel my head crack against the floor as I struggle to breath, a wet, metallic sensation in the back of my throat stifling every attempt I make to do so, a sickly rattling meeting every heave of my lungs. Chloe hits Nathan in the back of the head, kicking him as he goes down. The gun falls from his hand and skitters out of his reach, under the faucets. Chloe, two Chloes step over him and toward me. I feel myself being lifted a little ways off the floor. Chloe's handling, so gentle, as though I'm made of paper; a single jarring movement could tear me in two.
“Max?” I hear her plead, the sound swimming in my ears. “Oh God, please not you! HELP! Don’t go, Max!”
All sense of colour is beginning to fade from me, the contrasts merging into a greyish blur.
“No, no NO! MAX!” I hear Chloe scream, anguished and raw. The last thing I hear clearly.
A faint drumbeat. It vanishes. The thrum of my heart, slowing.
“BP crashing, she’s going into cardiac arrest.” An indistinct, unfamiliar voice states, matter-of-factly.
Sight. A glimpse, of a darkened city block. Graffiti, indistinct.
See these eyes of green...I could stare for a thousand years… A distant, faint voice sings, detached from anything else.
The sounds of an ambulance siren. A vitals monitor, its beep slowly but surely decaying away.
Colder than the moon…
A girl’s chuckle. A vision of a girl. Wait… is that me , when I was younger?
“Max, if you can hear me, keep fighting!”
The sound of the emergency siren morphs into something else. Another, one that I’m not familiar with. It sounds… old, foreign even.
It's been so long...
I hear a woman’s agonized wail. A familiar voice, at that!
Feel my love enraged… It's just the fear of losing you...
A darkened tunnel, an underpass maybe. A figure towers in front of me, gun in hand, pointed at my head. Sobbing, to one side of me.
Don’t you know my name
A flash of red, the figure from before is sent tumbling to the ground.
You’ve been so long
A yellow spark, a lighter next to me. The features of a face that I’d know anywhere.
And I’ve been putting out fire
“Preparing to shock. Clear!”
An electrical whining fills my ears, drowning out anything else. All the while, the visions become brighter and brighter, until they are saturated altogether by white. A thudding noise echoes, shattering the deafening whining. The white that drowned out my eyes recedes, although the ceiling above me is out of focus while I readjust.
“With gasoline!” The voice from earlier bellows, no longer distant, although it doesn’t sound like someone next to me. It's more crackly, grainy, like a... radio? The fuck?
The foggy, unfocused details before my eyes slowly come into sharper clarity. A dingy roof slowly becomes identifiable above me.
Except it isn’t the dingy, dimly-lit white ceiling of the Blackwell bathroom. It’s a creamish colour, stained yellow. In lieu of the harsh artificial lighting of the windowless room, there's a few yellowish, underpowered lightbulbs and faint natural light bleeding in through the windows. The faint smell of bleach is supplanted by something else, a yeasty smell. Like the smell of the empty beer bottles in Chloe’s room. A wooden tabletop of sorts catches my eye, with some stools below. Well, above where I am, but below the tabletop.
Where the fuck am I? What the hell is this place?
“Ooh, that looks nasty. You alright, lass?” A feminine voice asks me, in an accent I don’t recognise. I sit up sharply, wincing and whimpering at the sharp stinging that fizzes through my head. My stomach roils and tenses as my head spins, the now-clear surroundings making even less sense than the woman’s voice. Another dull pain in my chest squeezes me, choking me for breath.
“Careful! You took quite a nasty whack to the head, you’ve probably picked up a right concussion.” Another, gruff, unfamiliar voice warns me. “Maybe take a seat, I’ll get you some water.”
“Where am I?” I whimper, barely able to breathe. What happened to me? What is this place?
“What was that, love?” Another woman, another unfamiliar voice, asks me.
I have to get out of here. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I need to leave.
Without any thought beyond that, and ignoring the numb pain in my head, my limbs frantically scramble into action. I tumble clumsily toward the nearest door, old-looking and wooden, to surprised and confused outcries. Out into an unfamiliar, bleak, street. Overcast skies. Bleak brick buildings flanking each side of the road, imposing, towering along the street as far as I can see.
Where am I?
A car honks its horn at me as I stumble breathlessly across a street. Jet black, looking like it came out of an old film, its dashboard littered with all kinds of clutter. The driver leans out of the window and berates me, a similarly unfamiliar accent to their voice. I meet eyes with a couple of people as I run, vaguely catch a glimpse of their clothes. Muted colors, a style of dress that looks way out of date. Greyish suits, straight trousers. More of that accent from where I found myself, the accent that I can’t identify.
Where am I?
A park glimpses past me, past the old, black, gothic railings and gates flanking the entrance. My surroundings flit and blur as I continue further still through this alien locale. Another park, two imposing statues of some kind at one end. A cannon. An arch.
Where am-
What little breath is forced from my lungs as the imposing white palace, protected by a fence of black wrought-iron railings, stands before me. An imposing, shining, metal statue sits atop a marble podium, taking center stage amid the open area. To my left, a promenade runs back, almost in the direction I came from. People mill around outside, some with cameras. Cameras that look like mine, except that they seem to be brand-new, or some of them at least. Somewhere to my left, I hear a booming chime. I try and catch my breath, as it continues to elude me. The blur of activity around me begins to slow, as I finally start to take in the details more clearly. The cars that definitely aren’t American, and definitely aren’t familiar to me. Hell, they look like they were made around the same time as Chloe’s truck. The accents, some of which sound familiar from some of the shows I’ve watched. English accents. London, even.
My stomach clenches and twists as my legs tremble. I hold back the urge to be sick as I try and process everything going on in my head. I screw my eyes shut, and open them again.
This has to be some kind of weird, twisted dream. This doesn’t make any sense. How-
“Are you alright, miss?” Someone asks me, off to my right. I yelp and fall over as I jump, glancing up at them. A pair of smart-looking black shoes, the tops of which disappear under clean, creaseless black trousers. A black jacket, shining silver buttons fastening up its front. A mustached face, under a distinct, black helmet, a distinct crest on its front.
“What?” I mutter, breathlessly, as I stand and try to compose myself again.
“I said, are you alright, miss?” The man- police officer, I think?- asks me again. I shake my head, trying to look a little less out of place.
“Er, not really.” I answer. “I think I’m a little lost. And I’m confused, I guess.” I sigh, glancing over my shoulder. “Stupid question: Where exactly am I?”
The police officer scoffs, chuckling. “You mean to say that you don’t recognise the most well-known landmark in London? Or second-best, depends on where you put it alongside Big Ben.” He says.
“I know this question is going to sound a little strange, but…” I hesitate, as I figure out how best to word it. “ When am I?”
The policeman looks at me strangely, as though I’ve just spoken in a different language, his brow furrowed even under the brim of his helmet. “Are you sure you’re not having me on, miss?”
“What? No!” I mutter. “I’m sorry, I’m just- confused.”
After a moment of staring, the policeman answers. “It’s Sunday. March 11th, 1984.” He pauses for a moment, adding, “It’s about three minutes to one in the afternoon.”
I try and keep a neutral expression, as what he’s just said sinks in. “Thank you.” I utter, as I step away, trying to keep my head from reeling.
This has to be a bad dream. A hallucination. I reach for my jeans pocket, assuming that if this is just some weird fever-dream, I might find my phone. My hand comes into contact with a pocketless material. I look down across my clothing, trying not to completely freak out. Gone are my thin hoodie, my T-shirt, in their place is a yellow tank-top under a leather jacket. In place of my jeans, a pair of faux-leather pants; my sneakers replaced by a pair of ankle boots.
I put my hands on my knees, leaning over as I try and make sense of everything. A grasp for my satchel proves fruitless; a pronounced weight over one shoulder and against one side of my back prompt me to check there instead. I find a gym bag over it. I pull the strap over my head, and put the bag on the floor as I open it up. A passport, my passport. I flick it open frantically, scanning over it.
My name, and where I’m from make sense enough. I’m still Max Caulfield, and still from Arcadia Bay.
It’s everything else that makes no sense. My date of birth is no longer 1995, but 1965 . And the photo of me- I run a hand over my head to make sure, gasping. My hair is nothing like what I would normally style it, nor is it anything like the length I’d normally have. My effects, too, are nothing like I’d expect to bring with me. Aside from what looks like a cassette tape of some kind, nothing I have me matches what I’d normally carry.
Then, I find a letter, addressed to what I can only assume to be where I came from, back in Arcadia Bay. Handwriting that I recognize, would recognize anywhere.
Glad to hear you’re able to take the job op.
When you land in London, meet me at Camden Market, 2 o’clock sharp. :P
C.
I wince, as a stinging pain courses through my head. This makes even less sense: if “C” is who I think it is- Chloe- how the fuck is she HERE?
I stuff the contents of my bag back into it, and sling it over my shoulder once more. This can’t be real. This isn’t real.
Is it?