by Abra Ebner
Parallel: The Life of Patient 32185
By Abra Ebner
Text Copyright © 2009 Abra Ebner
All rights reserved. Except under the U.S. Copyright act of 1976,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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The characters, events, and locations portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or real locations is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Ebner, Abra 1984 -
Parallel, the Life of Patient #32185 : A Book / by Abra Ebner
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“It is not humanity at fault,
It is he who cannot accept the world that is to blame.”
• A.E.
Letter
Found in the Personal
Effects of Patient #32185
Vincent Memorial Hospital, Boston
July 12, 2009
My name is Jordan Mckay, and if you’ve found this, then you have seen the consequences of what led me to my death. There may be things about me that you will find strange, but if you could understand the life I’ve lived, then you will know more about the nature of my makeup. I am different from everyone; special, unique. I am what I have come to understand is called a Shifter.
Within the boundaries of our life from birth to death, we can travel from one age to the next, leaving a foggy line between our present, past, and future. Here we are able to see how events can change the world, or at the very least, change just one life. If we can manifest a thought hard enough, then we can go there. This is the key to our talent.
I am not completely certain how many of us there are, or why we were created, or even where we came from. I can only guess that it’s a glitch in human kind and a chance at playing God. In this world, we learn to fend for ourselves and fight for our basic need for selfish gain. For me, my gain was the love of a woman. A selfless act in my eyes only, but now as I grow to learn what it’s done to her, I can see that it was all a mistake that I can no longer take back.
Either way, I have seen that there is a pattern for disaster in this world, and a fear so dark it could swallow the night. I have learned now that you cannot hope to erase all the wrong, only replace it with another. After all, you cannot change your luck; you can only try to change the events that caused the misfortune in the first place.
Manipulation of time is a powerful tool but something I fear is deadly if not completely understood. I hope to reach out to those like me, to save them as I have failed to do for myself, and to tell them that no matter what you do, you cannot hope to make things better. My personal belongings will tell the story…
Jordan McKay
Statement from Dr. Ashcroft, Vincent Memorial Hospital, Boston
August 3, 2009
11:56 p.m.
Agent Donnery:
When did you meet him?
Dr. Ashcroft:
I met him at twenty-five.
Agent Donnery:
But it say’s here that you knew each other since you were six? How is that?
Dr. Ashcroft:
I met him a couple times throughout time, but if you understood what Jordan can do, then you would understand what I mean when I say that we met for the first time when I was twenty-five, and he was twenty-seven. At least according to his driver’s license.
Agent Donnery:
What do you mean, according to his license?
Dr. Ashcroft:
Think of Jordan’s life as a timeline, only his timeline has been chopped up and rearranged in an order that does not fit science. He could leap around from one place to the next, each place revealing something that has changed, each a parallel life of the one you were just in. When I met him at twenty-five he may have been in the body of his twenty-seven year old self, but his mind had just been six. It’s a terrifying thing to have happen to you when you think of it.
Agent Donnery:
I see. So what happened? How and why do you believe, or I suppose know, all this is true? (laughter) It just seems far-fetched is all. I’d like to hear your side of it.
Dr. Ashcroft:
It’s hard to believe, I know, but considering the fact that you’re from a branch of the C.I.A. that is set up in order to research just such happenings, I believe that there is more out there than I can even try to understand, and that you actually do, or can, believe me.
Agent Donnery:
I can see your angle. It is true that the somewhat fictional nature of what happened here is not too uncommon. Our world has been polluted with so many chemicals and synthetic agents that you would not believe the things I’ve seen, the things you never thought possible, but of course, you’ll never know of them either.
Dr. Ashcroft:
(laughter) Except this.
Agent Donnery:
True, but I also expect your explicit secrecy on the subject.
Dr. Ashcroft:
I’m a doctor, Agent. I’m good with confidentiality.
Agent Donnery:
Then we understand, so please, tell me about Jordan McKay.
Dr. Ashcroft:
(pause) It’s difficult for me to accept, even still, but my life was stolen from me. If I had known all along about what was happening, I suppose I would have tried to stop it, though it would have been hard. I have been lied to, led down a path that I no longer see as my own but I am now forced to live. When I was a little girl I used to think I was lucky, that all the great things in my life were God’s choice for me, but now I see that God had nothing to do with it.
Agent Donnery:
So you believe that you were at the mercy of Jordan instead?
Dr. Ashcroft:
Yes, he made the decisions, took over God’s roll, so to speak, but I only saw it as my reality. I did not know I was like a modern day puppet. (pause) There is nothing left of my real destiny but the stories of a man describing a life I thought was no more than a faint memory, imprinted on my mind like a dream.
When I think back, I can remember it all but it hurts too much to imagine. As I sit here I still can’t believe that I fell for it, that I took the easier path that ended with a life that was false.
In the end, I suppose all I can do is live with the cards I have been dealt. I’m in love with my fate, the fate that took me on this parallel path into a place I was never meant to be. I only hope that grace can still find me here, and that I will be forgiven. After all, if God was no part of it, then I guess love is the devil’s creation.
Agent Donnery:
I see, so you loved him too?
Dr. Ashcroft:
Yes, I suppose that no matter what, I would have always found myself drawn to him. It was fate after all.
Agent Donnery:
Will you tell us how it happened?
Dr. Ashcroft:
I can try.
Agent Donnery:
(pause) Here, these are the journals you requested, that we found in the office, splayed across the floor.
Dr. Ashcroft:
(pause) Thanks, I (pause) I’m sorry it’s just that that the last time I held these, everything changed and my whole world came crashing down.
Agent Donnery:
I understand. (pause) We’ve gone through it and tried to make sense of it all, but unfortunately it jumps around and it seems things may be mi
ssing, or are out of order. Many of the dates are very old.
Dr Ashcroft:
(laughter) Agent Donnery, I’m certain it isn’t out of order, that’s what you need to understand. See here, each page is numbered in order from beginning to end. You cannot go by date because his world never worked that way. (pause) Here, let me begin telling you what I know, what he knows...
Formulated from the journals
of Patient #32185
May 21, 2009
9:34 p.m.
I was ripped from the park bench where I sat eating the melting popsicle and dreaming about my life, now thrown through a dark tunnel, landing with a sudden crack on the seat of a bus. I grabbed my head in agony, the blood pounding through my swollen veins, making me lightheaded.
A woman in a pink nurse’s uniform ran toward me. “Sir, are you okay?”
Her concerned green eyes blinked rapidly, and her figure blurred as I tried to focus on her face.
“Sir?”
She referred to me as sir, but I was only six, or so I had thought. The pain in my head subsided and I sat up, looking at my hands. At first I was confused by the size of them and the aged appearance of my skin, but upon closer inspection, I found they were still my hands, as the scar I had gotten when I was four lingered on my palm but was faded as though healed over time.
“Sir?” she asked again, her voice reverberating loudly in my aching head. I quickly put my hands into the pockets of my jeans to hide them, also shocked by the size of my legs as they protruded from the seat.
What was going on? I looked at her as I finally nodded, swallowing to ease spit down my dry throat as I looked around the bus, unable to handle her stare for too long.
Was I dreaming? I had to be dreaming. I pinched my leg through the pocket of my pants but it didn’t work. I then thought about the fact that if I were dreaming, I wouldn’t be wondering if I was because in dreams you typically aren’t as conscious as I felt now. As far as I could tell, I was wide awake.
As my eyes darted around the bus, I noticed that the nurse and I were the only ones on board. I could see the driver eyeing me from the front seat through his large rearview mirror, judging me in a way that reminded me of the mean teachers at pre-school. Looking away, nerves overcame me and I grabbed my head as it throbbed like a swelling bruise. The driver cleared his throat and shifted in his seat, and I knew I was making him uncomfortable.
“He’s alright!” the lady yelled to him, also noticing his discomfort.
The driver looked relieved as she said this, and he nodded, focusing his gaze on the road ahead.
I rubbed my eyes with my giant hands, feeling as though my brain had somehow expanded in the split second since I had leapt from the park bench to here and I feared it might leak through my ears. It seemed that all I had once known had tripled in size as though someone had plugged a microchip into the back of my head, filling it with years of information and knowledge.
“Sir? What is your name?”
I looked back into the woman’s green eyes, finding them piercing and beautiful as a feeling I had never felt before rushed over me like a hot wave of water. I shrugged, finding myself at a loss for words, my memory too scrambled to speak. I had no recollection of how I got here, no clue as to where I had been.
“May I?”
The woman motioned to search my pockets and I nodded, feeling like a scared little boy. She felt in the lapel of my coat for something, finding whatever it was and pulling it back toward her. I was wearing a green coat that I recognized as my father’s, except I now filled it out like I never had before, my body like that of a grown man. My brow began to sweat below the black baseball hat on my head, so I pulled it off, resting it in my lap as I pressed my sweaty curls back, my hair an unacceptable length and a far cry from the maintained crew cut my father had forced me to wear.
A wallet now lay in her grasp and she flicked it open, fishing inside with her dainty fingers, her fuchsia nail polish chipped around the edges. I watched her as she scanned through the compartments, my gaze turning to her face where I noticed a scar. It spread from the right side of her nose back to her ear, leaving a large discolored patch of skin that had tried to mend itself over time, as though a burn from her childhood. Her hair was a deep auburn that was pulled back in a messy ponytail and fastened with a pink rubber band. A few thick strands fell on the right side of her eyes, shielding what it could of the scar, though the attempt was useless.
“Is this you?” She pushed the wallet toward me and I tried to focus on the tiny image as I looked down at the card behind the clear plastic cover. There was a dusty driver’s license squeezed into the slot and I touched it with my dirty finger, finding the dates and photo all wrong as I furrowed my brow, my stomach now nauseated. I swallowed hard, reading the name and recognizing it as my own; Jordan McKay, blue eyes, brown hair.
I opened my mouth and narrowed my eyes.
“Er…yes.”
I swallowed, frightened by the deep tone of my own voice as I brought my giant hand to my throat, shocked by the Adam’s apple that now protruded from the front like a broken bone.
“But…” I brought my hand back to the image and tapped my finger against the plastic, looking at her.
Her green eyes scanned my face.
“It looks like you,” she assured.
I nodded, taking her word for it.
She sat down beside me and looked about the bus with frantic eyes. She seemed to be trying to formulate some sort of plan for me, her lips parted as a gentle breath escaped into the air. She looked down at the wallet one last time, her mouth forming words as her eyes traced the blurred letters of the driver’s license and address. She perked up then, causing me to shy away out of sudden fear.
“Driver, next stop please!” She looked out the dusty windows that reflected the neon lights inside, searching for some sign of where we were on the route. I couldn’t stop watching her and I wondered what was wrong with me, and why I still felt the same strange wave of warmth crash over me, again and again. Another sudden sharp pain racked my body but this time in my stomach, and I winced, grabbing my side.
“Oh!” The woman touched my arm and my mind forgot about the burning in my side and instead focused on her warm hand. “Are you alright?”
I nodded and gave her a shaky smile, forcing down the pain. She focused back on the bus, looking out the windows. I watched her blink as I continued to shut out the pain and swallow the sick taste in my mouth.
My grandmother had often taken me on bus rides, so I was used to the ride and motion, though my large body was hard to keep still. I looked back down at my hands and legs, wondering what had happened to the time between ages six and now. I must be dreaming but it felt real, as though that time had been stolen from me, like what I imagined would happen if I had been in a coma. I wiped a bead of sweat from my brow, my hand scratching across the stubble that grew on my face. I felt my chin, amazed by the feeling of it as it scrubbed my fingers, reveling in the fact I was man enough to grow a full beard.
The bus screeched to a halt and she hooked her arm under mine, lifting me from the seat as I stood on weak legs, the altitude a far cry from that of a three-foot tall preschooler. It was then that I caught a glimpse of my body in the fogged reflection of the bus window, my eyes shocked by the large figure staring back at me. I froze for a moment, taking in the reflection of myself in the green coat, my hair just below my ears, and my face rough and tanned. This could not be real, this could not be happening to me. I was lost.
She led me down the stairs as my body shook. We stepped into the cool night, my hot skin welcoming the cool air as it soothed the warm feeling that still plagued me. She looked from side to side, looking at house numbers as she craned her neck to see over each stoop.
She exhaled sharply, and I could tell she was annoyed but I didn’t want her to leave either. She brushed the hair from her face, mumbling something under her breath as she pulled me to the left. I stumbled over my big fee
t as we went past one stoop after the next, stopping at each to assess the house numbers.
Finally, her pace quickened and I struggled to keep up as a few fat drops of rain fell from the sky.
“Oh thank God,” she whispered, stopping before the last stoop on the street and looking up at the numbers.
The few drops of rain turned to a sudden downpour, and she pulled me by the arm up the steps to the door. This time she didn’t bother to ask as she rummaged through my coat pockets and found a key. She fumbled with it in her hand, the shiny silver catching what little light there was on the street. I heard the metallic clink of it as it met the lock, turning with a soft thud and releasing the jamb.
She pressed the door inward and pulled me with a firm grip as she searched for a switch. Light erupted across the apartment as she succeeded, and my eyes fell on a scene that felt comforting somehow, as though my brain and body recognized it but my soul did not.
