Post by Sahara on Dec 23, 2022 12:21:24 GMT -5
PREVIOUSLY
“Yo Frankie, I did it!” -Sahara
~~~~~
AND NOW
WALKIN’ IN A WINTER WONDERLAND
Merry Christmas.
Not happy holidays.
I said Christmas.
If that’s not your jam, don’t worry about it… just move on. It wasn’t meant as an insult.
For me, it was all about the sights, the sounds, and the lights. Where I’m from – the Southside of Chicago – it took a drab cityscape, covered with dirty smog infused snow and turned it into a wonderland of beauty and joy.
At least for a short while.
Soon enough, the lights will be gone, along with the sights and the festivities… and you can return to your no-so-wonderful world of drabness and overly sanitized and pasteurized safe spaces and and you won’t have to worry if someone accidentally offends you with a passing Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah.
Now they’ll say Happy Easter.
Look, I get it. For some of us, it can be the loneliest time of the year. Believe me, I know. It brings on feelings of loss, and sadness… to be without the ones we once took for granted, but would do anything to be with again.
But it’s also a reminder that all of this is temporary. All. Of. It. Everything in your life that you hold most dear will mean nothing to anyone within one generation.
So, for a few weeks of the year… just try to enjoy it.
Now sing along with me, “It’s Christmas time, there’s no need to be afraid… At Christmas time, we let in light and banish shade…” Hey, that song made starving children in Africa somehow sound fun and festive.
That’s the magic.
Family time.
A holiday tradition I don’t remember experiencing as a kid. Now that I can, I insist we all go out and do some Christmas type stuff together. Thad, Frankie, the twins… even Berta. A day of shopping, hot cocoa (with whiskey or something… probably), outdoor ice skating, and whatever else comes to mind. Maybe I’ll even find a nice mall Santa and sit on his lap to give the family a laugh and him a thrill. You know, the type of stuff haters would say is nothing more than capitalist bullshit that society has convinced us to take part in like happy little lemmings?
Truth be told, I don’t really care about any of that. So long as we’re doing it together – as a family – that’s what matters. I’ve spent plenty of Christmases alone in an empty apartment, wondering where my parents were… or why I was alone? So, if doing things with the people I love makes me a lemming?
I’m fine with it.
At least I’m happy…
I smiled as we found ourselves in a Home Depot. Why Home Depot? Don’t ask. Maybe I can’t get past the image of my husband – grease smudged across his face, holding up some sorta badass power tool – and it makes my knees buckle.
Hey, a girl can dream.
So anyway, here we are… in the land of the homes… and depots.
And lumber and stuff.
As we strolled the aisles looking for ideas and just talking and laughing, I couldn’t help but look upon my family with pride. It was just a year ago I was lost and alone… delving into self-destruction in an aimless stupor. Wandering alone. I was lost in life before them, and I know I'd be lost without them now. So, when I look from my husband, Thaddeus Duke, to our son Francis, to our little ones, I can’t help but feel as if my life is finally complete. That and I’m the reigning Paradigm Champion of OCW. It didn’t matter if we were in a Home Depot or at a–
I felt a disconcerting chill run down my spine to the point it made me shiver and shimmer. It felt as if my hair floated, as if static electricity had suddenly filled the air… and gooseflesh covered my body.
Then came a sound I’d never heard before–
I suddenly felt… disorientated. Disconnected. I can’t describe the feeling or that incessant sound ringing in my ears… it felt as if someone had buried a pickaxe right through the top of my skull; as if a single slice of my brain sent a wave of chemical reaction through my entire body. Serotonin. Dopamine. Endorphins. Oxytocin. It was painful, joyous, and absolutely orgasmic… everything all at once. I fell to my knees and clenched my eyes shut like vices. It was like I was out of sync… with something. With everything. I thought my head was going to explode…
“It worked! Finally! My God, it actually worked! Are you really real?!”
I felt the touch of reassuring hands on my shoulders and wondered if this was what a panic attack felt like… I could hear someone scurrying around doing something. I don’t know what, but it was something.
I could just imagine the crowd gathering around me in Home Depot. Good God, this’ll be in all the dirt sheets within an hour–
“This is amazing!” He quickly hugged me tighter than necessary before taking my face in his hands, looking into my eyes to get my attention. “Listen to me. Just breathe–” I could hear his familiar voice cut through the ringing in my ears. “It’ll pass. But I need you to pay attention.”
Pay attention? To what?!
I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see anything other than bright… brightness. It was like blinding whiteness…
“Breathe, goddamnit!”
I tried, but I felt like I was falling, as if reality was somehow unraveling.
“Breathe…”, came the voice again.
Finally, I exhaled right when I felt like I was going to pop–
And then it all stopped.
It was as if someone had flipped a switch. Suddenly, the ringing in my ears was gone… and my vision slowly returned. But the weird feeling of disorientation hadn’t yet faded…
“Your mind is fighting its natural inclination to disbelieve. It’s like a defense mechanism against falling into insanity.”
What the hell is he going on about?!
As the haze that soaked my brain faded, there was an odd old man looking right into my eyes, much too close for comfort. I quickly backed off and looked him up and down. He was… dressed in something. I couldn’t describe it if I tried. It wasn’t casual… it wasn’t a lab coat… or even a hospital gown. It seemed to shimmer and change color as if it were some sort of holographic overlay. It was just… something.
I reached out to touch it, but he gently moved my hand away.
“No time for that. Listen to me–”
He had striking blue eyes hidden behind years of wrinkled wisdom, with silver stubbled that was flecked with remnants of fading youth… and he was ranting in a very familiar voice about something… something about insanity?
Wait! My family!
I hurriedly looked around, but they were nowhere to be seen. I felt panic setting in again–
“W-where’d my family go?! I-I was just with them– wait… where the hell am I?!”
“They didn’t go anywhere,” he responded matter of factly. “You did.”
“What? Am–am I in the hospital?”
“Not even close,” he responded with a hint of laughter.
I felt panic gripping me, it felt as if something had taken hold of my heart and started to squeeze.
“So they’re just–they’re just… gone?!”
“Not exactly,” he somewhat contorted his face as if trying to figure out a way to explain the inexplicable. “They’re right where you left them, undoubtedly standing there in that Home Depot wondering where the hell you went…”
I held up my hands to put a pause on whatever the fuck this was.
“Hold up!” I grimaced and grabbed my chest, trying to push through the panic. “Hold the fuck up! What the shit are you talking about?!”
“Your family. Especially your son, Francis. He witnessed you vanish… I didn’t mean for that to happen, but timing these things isn’t exactly an exact science. But that’s not important right now, if this works, the people you love won’t remember a thing.”
My jaw clenched so tight I could have broken diamonds between my teeth.
“Old man, you got about two seconds to explain what the fuck is going on before I–”
That’s when I saw the way he was looking at me, and it stopped me dead in my tracks. He had a disarming little smile on his face, and an odd look of longing… as if he was seeing an old friend for the first time in decades. Whatever it was, it was much deeper than just a look.
Finally, he let out a little laugh.
“I almost forgot how jumpy you could be.”
“What exactly is this? Where are we? Who are you?”
“All valid questions, but describing this to you would be like trying to explain calculus to a monkey–”
“Gee, thanks–” I shot back.
“No disrespect intended, I can barely comprehend it myself and I’m the one that invented it.”
“Look, old man, cryptic responses aside, I’m about to sick my foot so far up your ass you’ll be tasting your own shit… so get to explaining calculus to this monkey before I lose it. Where the fuck is my family?! Where’s my son?!”
He let out another laugh, almost amused by my anger. I don’t know why he found this funny, because I was seriously about to kick his ass–
“You–you’re in what I call a temporal shift… it’s a momentary break in time. It’s like, how could I describe this in a way you’d understand? It’s like… I borrowed you from your own time, but that time then continued on without you. It’s like you existed up to that moment and then just ceased to exist.” He snapped his fingers to drive the point, “Life went on for everyone else. Your husband. Your son. The twins. But it’s doing so without you.
“And in the meantime, we don’t have a lot of time…”
If I ever had that confused bunny face, it was now.
“What?!”
The old son of a bitch laughed again.
“If this works, nothing that’s happening right now will ever actually manifest, but again… it’s not an exact science, so I have no otherworldly idea what it’s actually going to do when it does.”
The ramblings of a madman, I thought.
“Everything that’s happening in your time right now without you will be undone when I return you to the exact spot in which I borrowed you from, give or take a few seconds. Like I said before, it’s not–”
I chimed in, “Yeah, yeah… it’s not an exact science. I got that part. The part I don’t got is… well… every-fucking-thing else!”
He held up both hands to calm me, “Look. It’ll be like you were never gone, but in the meantime–”
“--in the meantime, you’d better clear this up cuz as far as I’m concerned you vaporized my everything when you took me from my family!”
He laughed and smiled, “I love how passionate you are about them. I always had a feeling you’d be this way…”
There it was again… that odd sensation as if someone I knew on some cosmic level was speaking to me.
“Do we know each other?!”, I finally spit out.
“Not yet we don’t…
“But I’m hoping this’ll make that possible…”
“Look here,” He motioned to a pane of clear glass that suddenly flickered to life, and on it was the frozen image of myself and Shane Donovan climbing scaffolding high above the OCW stage, watermarked with the tag, ‘Archival Footage, Docket #1001001001’.
First, I looked at the image on the glass, noting the yet unseen logo and set design from Hardwired to Self Destruct. Then, I looked behind the glass; it was as thin as a piece of paper! And there were no cords, no power, no nothing! I looked around for a projector, but there wasn’t one–
“How the–” I began to ask, but he simply shook it off.
“No time to explain modern technology, or what powers it… what’s important is what’s on the panel.” He once again motioned to the now opaque pane of glass– “Watch this footage carefully, because I don’t know how much time we have before this temporal shift collapses and rights itself! Pay attention, and more importantly, believe what you see... so when the time comes, you recognize it’s happening and realize this wasn’t a dream!
“And that’s gonna be the hardest part, Lauren. You’re gonna have to believe that dream was real, no matter how preposterous it sounds or feels when it begins to manifest.”
I could only imagine the dumbfounded look I had on my face.
“This goes down on New Year's Eve 2022, in your match against Shane Donovan, which sets off a chain of events that completely and totally destroys our family through time.”
Did I mention I was confused? Check that… I was in a place way beyond confused.
Wait, did he say our family?!
“Our–wait… December 31st, 2022?!” It felt like my brain was going to pop, “That hasn’t even happened yet!”
He slowly turned from the panel and looked at me with that longing look of sadness once again…
“For me it has… decades ago.
“And watching you die was the worst moment of my life…”
~~~~~
TO BE CONTINUED…
