Unravelling

one of one

What if time decided to stand still?

It’s not hard to picture. In Oli’s mind’s eye, he can see it all perfectly. A little too well, even, but that’s not what he’s worried about right now.

It’d be easy, really. Quick, simple, like breathing. A shiver of a breeze stopping seamlessly in its tracks; pedestrian feet left suspended in the air in a half-step; overhead birds gracefully pausing mid-flight. Eyes left unblinking, hearts ceasing their beating, air settling in windpipes; words left hanging on tongues and emotion freezing silently in the air.

It’d be a curious sight, for sure. Oli thinks he might want to see it.

***

What if time, though, decided to move backwards?

That thought cuts more, reaches deeper inside him. It has far more direct implications, doesn’t it? Still, it’s somehow even clearer to see than the last. Oli tries and fails to stop the sudden vision from taking over his mind.

It’s so clear, it’s like he could close his eyes and it’d come to life.

This time, pedestrian feet wouldn’t stop: they’d simply rise and go back the way they’d have come from. Words would shrink and find their way back to throats and clock hands would stop for the slightest moment and then slowly start to turn right. Rain would rise up and climb back to darkened storm skies, and the sun would sink among pale dawn clouds and rise in pink and orange and deep purple.

And the cycles of life and death would be reversed too, wouldn’t they? He can see children growing younger and younger and hiding back inside their mothers’ wombs, decreasing to an ever-smaller bump and eventually to nothing. He can see lines fading from weathered faces. He sees the beauty of youth replacing the wisdom of the old… and he tries not to see it, he does, but somewhere among it all the closed eyes of cold corpses flutter open again.

They’re blue. It shouldn’t hurt like it does.

***

By now, he’s seeing it all with such fierce intensity he’s almost living it. (Almost. It sits there, just out of reach, wearing its usual cruel smile… and he can’t allow himself to think like this, he can’t, but it’s sharp and beautiful and he’s never been able to turn away.) But it’s such a small almost that he’s able to convince himself and, well… by the time he starts to re-live his own life, it already means far too much, but as long as he doesn’t think about the pain it won’t be there.

He watches, idly at first, as the months pass – or, rather, melt away. Two, three, four and there’s barely any change in the restless loneliness his life has become. He should brace himself, really, because this is nothing compared to what he knows is about to come, but– but then five months have gone by and there’s no time left and he can only watch while he lowers down into the fiercest hell his life has ever known.

It’s only an echo of the pain. It shouldn’t be like this. But the line between vision and reality is blurring and blurring and– fuck, fuck, this is worse than he remembered, the sting of the guilt and the hollowness of being so alone and the vast, aching, barely-sane grief. It’s a storm and he’s in the most brutal part of it, torn mercilessly from side to side, and he’s so caught up in it he can’t even bring himself to care about the helplessness.

Still, it’s all moving backwards, so it’s okay. It’ll all be okay in the end. He knows it.

The funeral comes and goes in a rush of black and the familiar perpetual hurting. It’s still tinged with surrealism; this can’t be happening, it doesn’t make sense, it’s something that happens to other people. It does lead him to question, in an instant of clarity, whether six moths is anywhere near enough time to have accepted it… but then the moment’s gone, and he’s carelessly tossed back into the storm again.

For a second, it’s the most furious it’s ever been, and he almost can’t take it – if he screamed until his lungs gave out, until his head caved in, would it make it stop hurting? Even for a second? – but then suddenly, when he’s convinced he’s reached breaking point and that he can’t live like this any longer, it just– stops.

It’s a strange, curiously calm transition. There’s no pain anymore. There’s nothing there anymore: he watches the days go by in the wrong direction and it’s like he imagines being in a cloud would be like. There’s a still numbness, a feeling of being so far away from everything none of it matters anymore… and white everywhere, blinding amounts of white.

He feels like he’s dead. It’s a nice change.

As time unravels itself, however, everything starts to blur together. At first, it’s something faint and gentle – the white faces he sees looking down on him sometimes become softer, more transparent somehow, as if someone’s trying to rub them out – but gradually their outlines become so blurred there are barely any shapes there: it’s just one long continuous sliver of a spectrum, with pale tones shifting along it. His body itself, too, starts feeling like it’s fading at the edges. He doesn’t really mind. It’s not like he’s feeling much else with it anyway.

***

He knows what’s coming next.

Despite never wanting to touch it again, the memory’s still there, raw and blistering and feeling as fresh as it’s always felt. At this point, however, he’s so submerged in this nowhere-near-reality that it’s the only thing he has: it’s the only thing that exists. This is his here and now, and there’s a feeble light at the end of the tunnel; and that light, right now, is the only thing he lives for.

***

The fading, the fading… the fading, in the end, has turned everything to black. He has no body. He only barely has a mind. He doesn’t float, because the concept of floating is one so distant it’s forgotten: he’s just– there. He’s a presence, intangible, only barely real.

This lasts for a few long moments (there’s a sort of timelessness to this place that makes it unable to define time as anything other than that). He doesn’t particularly like or dislike it, but– but he thinks it’s what death would feel like after agonizing for hours, peaceful and cold. He’s seen worse.

But then suddenly, inexplicably, his eyes open again and it’s all forgotten in a heartbeat.

***

There’s a hand in his. It’s the first thing he notices. His mind works frantically for a second, trying to catch up with the situation – and that’s when the pain slams into him, leaving him limp and helpless, vision white-hot, like his brain’s transformed into a thousand live wires–

–and, in the smallest instant of perfect, agony-fuelled clarity, he realizes.

Josh.

The pain doesn’t matter anymore, because he’s holding Josh’s hand and despite the choking black smoke and the smell of blood and the screams that sound like he’s hearing them through water, right now it feels like his entire being is focused on the pressure on his palm and the five fingers that interlock with his own.

Josh!

He squeezes the hand. Nothing. He tries again, harder this time, thumb stroking against knuckle, feeling every moment of contact like he’s never felt it before– but it lies there still and unmoving, a dead weight against his own. Panic starts threading its way into him alongside the pain – which has focused into a furious burning in both his legs, his hip and ribs – and he desperately tries to call out, but his voice is lost somewhere in the wreckage of his torso.

Josh?

His fingers fumble – bruised, aching, clumsy – but, of course, they’re far too stiff and shaky to even try to find a pulse. Why isn’t he moving? The panic rises, his breath stuttering brokenly – but, as his fingertips stumble across Josh’s hand, they realize it’s still warm.

So, the minutes drag on, and he continues to hold Josh’s hand like a lifeline. At some point, his voice finally breaks free of where it’s lodged somewhere in his windpipe. The first word out of his mouth is a feeble, barely audible “Josh?”, closely followed by a wrack of helpless coughing and smoke climbing into his throat. But, eventually, he manages an almost-steady trail of voice, and once he does the words trip over one another in their urgency to get out.

Josh, once you open your eyes, it’ll all be okay, all right? We can continue the trip. We can go anywhere you want to go, okay? We can go to Barcelona after this and we can go to the beach there, and we can go to France after that and go to Paris and climb the Eiffel Tower, and then we can go to Italy too… dammit, Josh, just open your eyes, please just say something.

He talks and talks, barely caring about what comes out of his mouth as long as he’s saying something and there’s the possibility that Josh might hear him. He reassures, he gently pleads, he makes a thousand promises… and once, a half-broke, barely audible I love you slips through, because– well, because it’s the truth, it’s so true it makes him ache in all the places that aren’t aching already. He stops for a moment. Josh, he whispers again, and squeezes his hand (softly this time: not really wanting a reaction, just to transmit the reassurance that he’s there).

And then, in a tiny flicker of movement, Josh’s hand squeezes back.

Oli’s eyes widen and his breath stutters again – he feels his heartbeat take off like a hummingbird’s and for a moment the only thing his mind can process is Josh, Josh, Josh

The voice comes out like a whisper, like his own, and it’s whisper that’s small and feeble and so, so beautiful. “Oli?”

The sounds of the dying still surround them, Oli notices distantly, and he wonders how all these people can use their voice while he’s still struggling to find his own. So, instead, he shifts his head for the first time, neck screaming in agony, until he’s facing the place where Josh is lying beside him (shouldn’t the explosion have thrown them apart from each other?) and his eyes are bright blue even through the smoke and the blood, and they’re open and beautiful, and then there’s the explosion

He feels his body rise through the air and the deafening sound in a perfect parabola, and somehow manages to keep holding onto Josh’s hand–

–and then it’s over, and they’re sitting in the train again, and the train is whole and its passengers aren’t dying. Time’s gone back, and they’re still two boys on a giddy trip through Europe, and their heads are still brushing and their fingers are still tangled and they’re still messily, fiercely in love and very much alive.
♠ ♠ ♠
(shall we just skip the part where i express my genuine amazement at the fact that i wrote fransykes)

um, so the concept for the story was inspired by this song, but the events described are the 11-M terrorist attacks in madrid in 2004, as you may have realized from the summary. (or not. i have no clue if you hear about this outside of spain.)

anyway. i hope you liked it and feedback would be very much welcome xx