by Sean McMahon
Malcolm focused on the plumes of his breath reacting to the cold air, a constant stream of exhalation that kept him centred enough not to snap under the mild anxiety being generated by being so exposed to the unpredictable idiocy of the human race.
Over dinner the night before, they had discussed an unexpected opportunity for Malcolm; a position had opened up for a trainee post within her team. One that, if he were successful in his application, would mean that they could work together.
The benefits her career had afforded him thus far were plentiful, but there was something intoxicating to him at the prospect of actually having a role in a specific field that would further facilitate his chosen…lifestyle.
Despite having not actually applied for the job, Ophelia had done so for him, rationalising that he would work better under pressure and with no notice to object.
She had been right of course. And for the past hour he had waited for her here, surprisingly eager to tell her how it had gone.
Ophelia had been pulled in as a consultant for a training day with the local police force of Chelmsford, to impart wisdom on a topic that was something of a speciality for her, given her published thesis on crime scene contamination. He found himself smirking at that, as a familiar voice caught his attention.
‘Sorry to keep you Mal’,’ said Ophelia, looking notably frazzled. ‘Why they run this thing on a Friday I’ll never know. No one can concentrate on a Friday. So…’
‘So what?’ said Malcolm, still staring at the reverse waterfall of his own breath.
‘You know what!’ said Ophelia, scowling at him. ‘How’d it go?!’ she added, jabbing him in the arm.
‘It was…as expected.’
‘Jesus Christ Malcolm, did you get it or not?’
‘I did.’
‘Squeeee!’ she chirped, hugging him, causing the scent of coconut to fill his senses. ‘Could I be any prouder of you right now?! You know what this means don’t you? I have some really great cases that you’ll–’
And she kept talking, as he urged her to walk whilst doing so, to wherever it was that she had parked.
*
Ophelia repeated the same statements over and over, as Malcolm pulled out of the multi-storey car park. Things such as “you had the qualifications needed for an entry level job.” How she’d “pulled a lot of strings” to make this happen.
He hadn’t so much as offered to drive, as he had been forced to, the keys thrust into his hand by his over-excitable sister. She had kicked off her heels, her bare feet up on the dash, seat-belt, as always, unfastened.
‘Seat-belt,’ said Malcolm sternly.
‘Oh please, with you as the driver? You always stick to the speed limits, and–’
‘And feet off the dashboard,’ he added, like a cantankerous driving instructor.
‘It’s my fucking car!’ exclaimed Ophelia, sticking her tongue out at him but lowering her legs anyway.
Malcolm chuckled.
They had a system that worked.
From a young age, Malcolm had showed an increasing fascination with dark obsessions. It started small, such as wanting to know how machinery worked. But it soon became apparent that his desires leaned more towards the biological variety. At least that’s what he had told her, that time she found him carving his way through a fox he had captured during a particularly depressing trip to the Norfolk Broads.
But rather than recoiling, or running away in fear, she reached out to him.
From then on, she kept him grounded. Whenever his urges got the better of him, Ophelia alone knew how to bring him back around to the realm of rational thinking. Which is how she knew he would be perfect for this job. She reasoned that being exposed to such crime scenes would soothe his already desensitised sensibilities. That he could, in theory, get the hit he needed without actually needing to, well, hit anything at all.
He often wondered what life would be like without his sister around to keep him in check. Would he finally act on his impulses? Would he graduate from fantasising about ending the lives of others and actually follow through on them?...
On numerous occasions, Malcolm found himself experiencing a surge of what he assumed must have been diluted guilt. Having no barometer to determine the authenticity of such emotions, he had merely labelled it as such, so as to expedite the process of getting on with the dark fantasy itself. The days when he added an extra layer to his dark secret;
Dreaming of a world where Ophelia was not around just so that he could act on them.
He took a sharp intake of breath, expelling the notion once more from his conscious mind, but it was still there, lurking…yearning to be released. Aching to be acknowledged and explored.
As they made their way through the city streets, the roads oddly dead, considering the time of year, his sister leant over and switched on the cassette player between them.
‘What the hell is this?’ barked Malcolm over the top of the odd music that filled the cabin of the vehicle.
‘I…don’t know,’ said Ophelia, as the cassette continued to churn out a frenetic number she had never heard before in her life.
She wasn’t sure if she liked it, but felt reluctant to turn it off until she knew for sure.
‘Turn it off,’ said Malcolm, eyes wavering from the road and glancing down at the cassette player.
Ophelia did nothing, until Malcolm reached out to eject the cassette, and she slapped his hand away.
‘I’m listening!’ she hollered.
Malcolm swatted her hand away, accidentally cranking the volume up further, the unusual music drowning out their squabbling.
‘It’s my car,’ Ophelia reminded him through a playful laugh. ‘Lighten up,’ she added. ‘Why does everything new scare yo–’
Her words were cut horrifyingly short, as Malcom’s head hit the wheel, a vast whiteness filling his vision, the confusion causing him to accelerate violently, sending the car into the central reservation and snagging on a guard-rail, pushing the vehicle back out into the road, until eventually their progress was halted by a sickening crunch, followed by an incessant bellowing of the car’s horn.
Malcolm’s eyes shot open, a blackness filling his peripheral vision and stinging his eyes. A blackness he quickly realised was his own blood filling the canvas that was the air bag his face was currently pressed against.
He stared at Ophelia, her glassy eyes staring right back at him.
“No…through me.”
The vacant eyes of the dead.
His mind didn’t try to shield his feelings with something as trivial as hope, he simply wasn’t wired that way. She was quite dead. And yet, he felt compelled to say her name.
‘Ophelia…’
His voice still lost amidst the deafening, intermingling decibels of the car horn and ear-splitting music, Malcolm tried to move. He felt a surging pain in his leg, and realised quickly that something sharp had sprung forth from the compressed front of the car that housed the engine.
Malcolm sensed movement ahead of him, and attempted to reposition himself again, as the cassette player gave up the ghost, though the horn continued on like a banshee.
Straining his aching neck, he was able to just see into the left corner of the windscreen, which had shattered but not fallen in, past Ophelia’s empty shell of a body, and over the crumpled dashboard. It was then that he witnessed the distorted occupants of the car that had collided with them, their faces fractured thanks to the fragmented glass.
As the pitch of the horn shifted, the electrical current that powered it having trouble maintaining its connection to the relay, Malcolm could just about hear the fleeting words and broken sentences of those responsible, bickering, seemingly debating whether to help them. Or, most likely, flee the scene.
He managed to isolate two voices; that of a man with a growling voice, and a second voice so high-pitched he reasoned it must have either belonged to a woman, or a man indulging in a spot of helium inhalation.
‘No, no, no!’
said the helium-absorbing observer. ‘How can this be happening?!’
‘You did this!’ growled the man, the three simple words echoing in Malcolm’s mind, creating an inexplicable feedback loop, ingraining themselves in his psyche as he committed them to memory. In that moment, he made a promise to Ophelia; if he lived through this, he would find them.
‘Help me open the door,’ Malcolm heard the man shout.
Still unable to turn his head fully, due to the air bag keeping his head predominately faced towards his dead sister, he realised the man was trying to force the driver’s side door open.
‘We can’t,’ replied a third voice. A second woman. Firmer. As if she were taking charge. ‘You know we can’t.’
‘Need to leave,’ said the high-pitched coward. The last words of his sentence faint, as if he were further away than before. Malcolm could only catch brief words now. ‘Stay. Think. Mistake.’
‘Then go,’ barked the man. Not a request. Not even an order. He simply didn’t seem to care whether his cohorts remained there with him or not, as long as it didn’t act as an interruption to his goal.
Malcolm suddenly felt giddy, and he knew he was losing consciousness.
As his head grew heavy, and his eyelids fluttered, his remaining senses were overloaded with nonsensical gibberish.
A sound of thunder.
A rush of air.
Then darkness.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The Relativity of Truth
180th Restart – Friday, August 24th, 2018, 12:47pm
'Is any of that true,’ said Kara, feeling both moved and doubtful all at the same time.
Malcolm’s detailed recounting of what apparently sent a man with violent thoughts over the edge into a life of violent acts was perfectly delivered. His tone adopting sadness when it mattered most, inflecting anger over what had been taken from him, and notable melancholy over his all-too-real discovery that death operated without discrimination. That, much like a Black Friday sale weekend, it was cold, heartless, and ultimately out of everyone’s control.
But it also seemed almost too perfect. Too convenient. Too…well told. Rehearsed, even.
Though it did more than explain his reaction to the crash site on their previous restart, making it seem not only justified, but an indication that he was indeed human after all.
Malcolm smiled, his previously softened, almost tender features hardening once more, and forming an all-too-familiar trademark sneer, his eyes showing a flash of reciprocated cynicism.
‘Does it matter to you if it isn’t?’ he replied darkly.
Kara didn’t respond, instead merely searching his eyes for the faintest glint of anything remotely resembling a soul, before ultimately coming up empty.
All she wanted to know was what drove him to this life. But she couldn’t help but wonder if she was looking for logic where there was none. Projecting her own moral code on that of a sociopath.
She was shaken from her ruminations with a start, as Malcolm responded with what appeared to be some kind of residual telepathy. For a moment she wondered if such abilities were that far-fetched in their current state, and instinctively clenched her jaw, as if doing so would bring up a cerebral shield around her thoughts.
‘That’s your problem, Kara,’ said Malcolm, almost humming the words, upping the creep-factor considerably. Hal and Fearne seemed to feel it too, both shrugging off an unexpected shiver. ‘You’re looking for logic in my actions. Searching for the best in me. The problem you’re facing is that you’re looking for what you want to see, instead of what’s really there. It’s precisely why you are not ready to face the younger version of myself.’
‘And what is that, exactly?’ asked Kara. ‘What’s really there?’
Malcolm seemed perturbed by the question. Almost as if he hadn’t predicted it. Though Kara wondered if she was misinterpreting anxiousness for ambivalence.
‘Nothing, Kara. Nothing at all.’
Kara exhaled sharply, feeling like she’d just taken one step forward with the man and two steps back. ‘I refuse to believe that.’
She rested her head in her hands, sensing an inbound migraine.
‘Some things are true whether you believe them or not,’ replied Malcolm bluntly. ‘The three of you…always thinking in absolutes. That good and evil are quantifiable terms. But who defines those terms to begin with?’
‘Well,’ said Fearne, having heard all she could stomach on the matter. ‘I personally think you’re full of shit,’ she said simply. ‘I doubt there even is an Aurelia.’
‘Ophelia,’ said Malcolm, enunciating the syllables before pursing his lips, as if containing a crackling rage.
‘Whatever,’ said Fearne. ‘Maybe we should focus less on psychopath story-time and more on getting on with this.’
‘I’m just amazed Malcolm here has a mum. I just assumed he was forged in the caverns of Mordor or something,’ said Hal, stirring from his own close examination of the exchange between Kara and Malcolm. ‘But I agree with Fearne. If past-you is currently licking his wounds, sooner or later he’s going to figure out he can’t drive his way out of here.’
‘We hope.’
‘So what’s his next move?’ said Hal, ignoring Fearne’s pessimism.
Malcolm sucked his teeth as he processed the variables.
His past-self going off-script like that had left him in a bit of a quandary. He knew what was going to happen, but it seemed his younger self was able to make decisions outside of the predetermined path he was attempting to re-enact.
Which wasn’t good.
His memories, once perfectly catalogued, now felt alarmingly jumbled. At odds with each other even, and he was begrudgingly forced to admit he had no idea what was coming next.
‘Well, we can’t keep running,’ said Hal. ‘We need to find a way to end this before it gets even more out of control.’
‘Running is the only thing keeping you all alive. He’s demonstrated that none of you are a physical threat to him.’
‘What if we capture past-you?’ said Hal, going back to an old idea that the Malcolm of their future had already vetoed. ‘Try to reason with him?’
‘It won’t work,’ said Malcolm, rationalising that if he had no memory of such an encounter they must not have gone that route, much less succeeded. ‘The only way forward is to take him down. Permanently.’
‘Yeah, not going to happen.’ said Kara, the quiet words of her former conversation with Malcolm echoing in her mind. ‘Besides, with you out of the equation, you said it yourself; we’re no match for him. I’m with Hal. We try this first. It’s decided.’
‘I don’t…’ said Malcolm, a recollection swirling into his mind.
The memory of being tied to something.
Being interrogated. Being–
‘Damn it.’
The Restarters stared at him, waiting for him to spill whatever it was he had just seen. They knew that look; it was the face of a man obtaining a new memory.
Hal smiled.
‘Did we just Timecop you?!’ he said excitedly.
‘I literally have no idea what that mean–’
‘Ha! We placed an idea of a plan into the time-stream, and just by discussing it we’re making it solid! Tell me you don’t remember us catching you.’
Malcolm wanted to, but clearly hesitated for too long.
‘Maaaalcolm,’ sang Hal. ‘Don’t hold out on us. When does it happen?’
‘Tomorrow,’ he said miserably.
Hal stood up and started playing air guitar, muttering something about wild stallions.
‘We’d best prepare,’ Malcolm said glumly.
*
Malcolm told them everything about the memories that had been crowbarred into his brain. Most notably, the small inconsistency that pulled into question the validity of Malcolm’s claims that the events leading to the capture of his past-self were indeed going to take place in the next twenty-four hours.
‘You saw that
?’ said Hal, his brow furrowed.
‘Yes. You were wearing your costumes from your original restarts.’
‘But we don’t have those,’ said Kara. ‘Are you sure it was us?’
Malcolm knew she meant the versions of Hal and Kara from their current timeline, and not somehow an iteration of themselves from the past.
‘I am sure.’
‘So we need…disguises,’ said Hal, clearly excited by the conundrum that presented.
It made sense.
If Malcolm’s past-self was on the lookout for their current incarnation, switching their look to mimic a former appearance would certainly give them an edge. The problem was that none of them were in-phase with the costumes that were frustratingly waiting for them on their respective beds back at Fir Lodge.
With the exception of Fearne, who was currently wearing hers.
‘Perhaps…there is a way,’ said Malcolm, disappearing like the crack of a whip.
*
Malcolm returned a good hour-or-so later, holding Hal’s Ghostbuster outfit and Kara’s Velma Dinkley costume.
There was blood on his shirt, and more than a dash on the garments he was clutching.
Kara, Fearne and Hal shared a troubled look.
‘Where did you get those?’ said Fearne, her voice laced with a quiver that implied she’d probably rather not know.
