TIME BEING Chapter 1. TIME WARP

An old woman trapped in an unconscious state finds herself traveling through time to significant points in her life, but things are not the same as she remembers them. Past and future become mailable, hers to mold, but how can she know where her time-sculpting may lead? Accompanied by a handsome young stranger and her childhood cat, she picks her way among the visions, hoping the choices she makes will be the right ones.

 

Chapter 1: TIME WARP

 

You’ll never guess where I am! That’s because I can’t believe it either.

I’m sitting at my little desk in my bedroom, except it’s the room I had as a child. It must be a dream. It makes no sense otherwise. But it’s a nice dream, and I hope it lasts a long time.

 Those were the words Sylvan wrote in her diary, the red volume given to her by her father when she was eight. He’d been away—he was often away, and she recalled the pain of that separation, but the memory was strange, as if drifting on smoke.

“This whole thing is strange,” she reminded herself. “A dream, though a particularly vivid one. I’m really somewhere else, some-when else, but for the life of me I can’t remember…”

The place that had slipped Sylvan’s mind was the narrow bed in the nursing home that had been her residence since the stroke a year ago. The staff at St. Vincent’s were kind and solicitous, but there was only so much they could do for the woman. Word was, she had been a well-known author in her day, though no one was curious enough to look it up or read her stories about fantastic places and beasts of myth. Now her readers were few, her books lost among the millions that never made it onto the New York Times Best Seller List.

Sylvan shook her head. Thinking made her head ache. Rising, she went to the window and looked out on the familiar sight. The old garden—except it wasn’t old anymore. The grass was freshly mowed, and primroses bloomed along the border. The apple tree blossomed pink and pretty. From her room, looking down, it seemed especially glorious.

This isn’t right, Sylvan thought to herself. Didn’t Uncle Fran come and cut the tree down? They said it was rotten inside. I cried and cried. Yet there it is. I don’t understand.

Sylvan was brought from her musing by a meow outside her bedroom door. A gray cat pushed through, first a nose, then a dainty foot. The cat stared up at Sylvan, blinking amber eyes.

“Brie!” Sylvan cried. She ran to the cat, and falling to her knees, grabbed her in her arms. For a moment, she buried her face in the velvet fur, then she sat up, her brow scrunched in a bewildered frown.

“Brie?” she muttered again. “But how…? You died.” Like the apple tree, Sylvan thought. You were dead a long, long time ago. So long I can’t even remember what you looked like.

Sylvan held the cat at arm’s length, studying the ash-colored fur, the slightly-pudgy torso, the curve of the feline face. The eyes, eyes that shone like jewels until Sylvan could see nothing else.

Brie briefly allowed the awkward hold before she squirmed out of Sylvan’s grasp. Throwing the girl an enigmatic look, she stalked to the door and flowed through the crack like water. Since Sylvan could think of nothing better to do, she rose and followed.

Everything was just as she remembered it—the long, dark hallway that had frightened her so when she was little. When was that? Way back last year? But now she was nine, and neither the high ceiling that disappeared into shadow nor the long, narrow corridor scared her anymore… at least not as much.

At the far end of the hall was the odd-looking door with its translucent window—the water closet. Separate from the rest of the bathroom, a claustrophobic chamber of its own. The cat had stopped halfway there, gray coat blending with the shadows as she sniffed the floor with great interest.

Sylvan moved toward her. “What did you find? Oops…!”

Suddenly Sylvan’s foot was flying out from under her. She landed on the floor beside the cat. As she flung out a hand to brace herself, it met with something sticky. She looked down—her palm was black. At first, in the gloom, she thought it was paint. But it didn’t smell like paint. It smelled like blood.

Sylvan’s nine-year-old self could not have known that smell, but her other self, the one she suspected was still lying in a hospital bed caught up in a dream-mare, knew that odor all too well. During her decades on earth, she had been a nurse, then a medical assistant. She’d even thought of becoming a doctor, but things changed, and her career path veered into a writing life. Later, as she aged, she had smelled that scent again, her own blood as the anti-coagulants she took to stave off stroke had made her bleed at the slightest provocation. The stroke had come anyway, a big one that had incapacitated her.

All the more reason why…, she thought to herself. Why this—the cat, the hallway, the blood—can’t be real.

“Why can’t I wake up?” she groaned out loud.

Because you’re not asleep, came the clipped answer.

Startled, she peered around her, but no one was there. She looked at Brie, but the cat was busy cleaning blood off her paws.

“Dead, then?” she asked the invisible speaker.

Not yet.

Then Sylvan registered another sound, a soft moan, no more than a breeze. Staring into the shadows, she made out a figure lying propped against the wall farther on. Brie was there too now, rubbing her sideburns along the outstretched leg.

Sylvan got to her feet, careful not to slip again, and followed the trail of blood leading up to a man.

“Help me,” he whispered. “Help me out of here before they come again.”

Sylvan paused just short of the downed man’s reach. This was all wrong. Her childhood home, her cat, her red diary—these were things of safety. There had never been blood in the hallway, never a wounded man fallen by the bathroom door.

She glanced around her, picking out details of her past, so familiar as to be ingrained in her psyche. The pattern of the hardwood floor, swirls and lines that she had in childhood games pretended were roads, rivers, and plains. The papered walls with their faded cabbage roses twisting and twining on blue-green vines to the picture rail molding above. Then her eye caught something else, the full-length hall mirror. Her reflection was dim in the shaded gloom, but she could make out enough of herself to know this, too, was familiar.

As it is when one sees oneself, she asserted. Still, something wasn’t right about it. The little girl staring back was most certainly her, but not her as it should have been. Memories came in flashes: other times, other mirrors, other selves.

The tall, slim frame of a teenager.

The full-blossomed body of a woman.

Then those first moments when her breasts began to sag and her belly fatten.

Age had taken its toll. Sylvan learned to live with it. Her last impression of herself was a hush of a human, a near-empty shell, yet here she was at the start again. How could that be?

“Help me, Sylvan,” the man pleaded once more.

She had forgotten all about him. It seemed easy to forget things in this surreal dream of hers. Now it was her self- confusion that was lost as her concentration turned to the injured stranger.

“Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”

“Aron,” he gasped. “Call me Aron.”

He struggled to rise, failed, and sank back against the wall with a groan.

“Help me up, girl. We’ve got to go.”

Sylvan had an odd feeling about this demanding stranger who was messing up her childhood hallway, but the feeling was changing, morphing into one of awareness. She was sure she had never met this Aron before, as a child or any time after, but she was equally certain they were acquainted. More than acquainted. More than friends. But what more?

She sank down beside him, peering at a gash running through the curls of his hair. Carefully she touched it.

“Who hurt you?”

Aron flinched but didn’t pull away. He didn’t answer her question either.

“It doesn’t look too bad. The bleeding’s stopped. Let me get something to clean it up.”

“We need to go,” Aron gasped, but halfheartedly.

“Clean up first, then I can assess the damage. After that, you can go if you wish.”

“We…” he corrected, but Sylvan was already off.

She headed into the bathroom and approached the porcelain sink. Strangely, she found a small flame burning in the drain. The shock of the absurdity made her heart race with unfounded fear, but she needed to move quickly.  Crossing to the bathtub faucet, she cleaned her hands and wet a washcloth, then with another glance at the peculiar fire, she returned to the wounded man. As she removed the caked blood from the cut, she had a thought: her nine-year-old self would not have known how to do that. Sylvan hadn’t learned first aid until much later in her life.

“Humph,” she muttered. This dream was getting more complicated by the minute.

“It’s not a dream, Sylvan.”

Sylvan looked up. “What did you say?”

“This isn’t a dream. Ouch!” he added as she tended his wound.

“How would you know? You are part of the dream.”

She began drying his hair with a face towel embroidered with the letters, M-R-S. Her mama’s towel. Mama would be angry for her ruining it, Sylvan thought with childlike remorse.

Aron flinched again. “Here, let me do that.” He took the towel and pressed it to his head. “Not a dream,” he muttered under his breath.

“Then if you know so much, tell me what it is?”

“I’ll tell you everything, but later. Now we’ve got to go. The watchers are already here, and we have to save the baby.”

Sylvan shook her head without comprehension. “Huh?”

Aron lurched to his feet and took Sylvan by the hand. His first step was shaky, but he rallied. With long strides, he made for the staircase, dragging Sylvan with him.

Sylvan pulled out of his grasp. “Hold on. I need to get something first.”

Running back into her bedroom, she grabbed the red diary, then picked up the cat. Cradling Brie in her arms, she rejoined the tall stranger who wasn’t a stranger.

“Now I’m ready,” she told him as they dove into her future past.

 

Chapter 2: THE STRANGER, coming next Saturday.