The Flashback Trilogy

Chapter 7

I listened carefully, intently—heard only the wind and the rain, the thunder of lightning, dogs barking in the distance. At last it came again, only muffled somewhat, more muted: another splintering, another breaking of glass. This time, however, it hadn’t come from outside. No, this time it had born a kind of echo, a kind of interiority—as though it had originated from an interior space. As though it had originated from inside Wilber’s house.

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As for what I was thinking as I gripped the shotgun and stepped through the shattered doors, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it was just the fact that it felt good to have it in my hands again—the shotgun, I mean, the Remington 870—“Fat Man,” as we called it, our nuclear option—the one Bennet wasn’t ever allowed to use. Or maybe it was Mollie’s newscast with its mentions of President Tucker’s refusal to concede and Steve Dannon’s Daedalus Seven returning to Earth, the connection being—I suppose—that both of them seemed about as possible as a baby suddenly vanishing or a killer ostrich wandering the peninsula.

Or maybe it was something else entirely; the fact that I’d been so focused on grieving Cynthia (and, paradoxically, perhaps, boning Mollie) that I’d lost track of who I was. It’s possible even that, as I raced through Wilber’s house armed to the teeth and—having heard something shatter in his bedroom—paused outside his door, I just felt like myself again.

All I know is that all of that went out the window the moment I stepped out and levelled the shotgun—which also happened to be the moment that anything that wasn’t, well, whatever that was (although, I confess, having seen Jurassic Park, I had a pretty good idea), simply ceased to exist. Rather, it seemed as though something else took over: something primitive, even primal, something deep within my mammalian DNA. A holdover from when we were frightened, possum-like creatures hiding in the trees, perhaps—an ancestral memory. Wilber, for his part, just slept like the dead.

The thing is that I completely froze as it turned; froze to the extent that I saw every detail of its skin even as I glimpsed Bennet aiming his pistol outside and dove for the floor. As he opened fire and the thing began bouncing off the walls and smashing bookcases, as it thrashed about like a deer I saw on the internet once (which had crashed through the window of a city bus and then proceeded to destroy everything in its path) and basically went insane—reminding me of the crazed deer and yet not, for it was—in the end—a thing utterly without comparison in this world.

A thing which nonetheless wound up in my sights and got blown away—even as Wilber yelped and clasped his ears and Bennet hit the dirt. Which, in the end, only impacted against the wall and collapsed, twitching and convulsing, as I looked outside with my ears still ringing, and, despite the fact that we were on an evergreen peninsula in western Washington State, saw the tops of palm trees swaying in the wind.

That’s when I saw them: the people who were left—the shell-shocked survivors of the Flashback (or whatever they call it where you are). That’s when I knew that their friends and loved ones had simply vanished—simply ceased to exist—no less than Cecilia’s baby—or Cynthia’s grave marker; no less than Mollie—who I would come to learn had disappeared during the interview. That’s when I knew that Time had melted and that we (and maybe a few others) were all that were and had ever been; that, indeed, the world had been (at least partially) reset to primordia; and that most of those who’d existed, existed no more.

In short, it was when they looked at me and I looked back, knowing my purpose, knowing my role. And finally it was when I patted Wilber on the shoulder and went out—feeling oddly invigorated, oddly at peace. Feeling as though I might yet make a difference—even as I sucked in the post-storm air.

SUN-DOGS (2022)

Her voice, once so lyrical to me, so melodic, positively grates:

“The scene here again ... I hate to draw the comparison, but it is the same thing that we saw thirty years ago in this same area ... this, this part of the city just destroying itself, burning itself up. The streets themselves are, ah, extremely dangerous. There are cars running—we clocked one at about sixty miles per hour—ah, just running down the street; no lights on, nothing, we see that constantly. We took a break, to brush some of the glass off of us, and, ah, get something to drink. We were next to a shopping center. A car drove into that area and just started firing shots randomly into cars parked in the parking lot. Even now we’re circling what appears to be a holdup—of a gas station at Florence and Normandie—I mean, that’s what it looks like from the air; people running, waving pistols, taking cans, or whatever they can find, and filling them up—presumably to start fires. It is just absolutely out of control here in South Central Los Angeles tonight. I—wait a minute. There’s something developing right here in the middle of the intersection. A truck driver has exited his vehicle—there’s, ah, smoke billowing from inside the cab—and seems almost to be, to be ...”

I look around the viewfinder and squint, seeing nothing—just pools of light from the streetlamps and the glow from various structures on fire. Just the chopper’s busted side window—its edges smeared with blood. “I don’t see anythin—”