The Janus Cycle

by Tej Turner

  And what about that whole freaky experience at the park? Did I really just step through time and revisit the past? Could I do it again?

  I stared at the ceiling, and recalled the state of mind I reached back then; the sense that the reality of space/time was layered like the leaves of a book. The white plaster above me drew closer, peeling back, revealing a scene. Two people were sitting opposite each other with a desk between them, as if they were conducting some kind of interview.

  As I floated towards it, I became aware of the fact that, if I was really about to step into another space in time, the two people in it would be shocked to see me appear from nowhere, but I also somehow instinctively knew that I had the ability to cloak myself. I recalled the way my body went translucent the last time I travelled back in time and applied it in a different way.

  “So, what makes you want to join this monastic order?” the robed man on one side of the desk asked.

  The person he was interviewing was Stephan – though not as I have ever seen him. He had a green wave of hair raised from the centre of his head and silver rings in his eyebrow, lip, nose, and upper ears. He was dressed in a pair of torn jeans, and a red sleeveless top. The whole effect was quite cliché and it was a shock to see Stephan this way.

  I was standing right beside them, but neither could see me.

  That bright, enthusiastic and excited smile I recognised lit up his face, and he began to talk.

  “I have always been fascinated by Buddhism, and I have been following the precepts of—”

  I left that scene behind – I had seen enough. It was time to search deeper.

  Four weeks before I met him he was a punk with enough piercings to kill a small mammal. Every time I went back further his appearance altered to whatever his latest fad was but his childish way of getting excited and swept away by things never changed. He had told all his friends he had cancer once, but I couldn’t find a place or time where he was actually diagnosed. He got his parents to send him to rehab when he was seventeen, but I couldn’t identify any signatures of a drink problem.

  His religious pursuits began when he and one of his friends practiced ‘satanism’ in his room (this was in his goth stage, of course); they turned out the lights, sat opposite each other with a candle and an upside-down pentagram between them and chanted a prayer to Lucifer from some trashy book he had found in a shop. The whole effect was so juvenile and desperately histrionic that I had to stifle giggles behind my hand. He has since been a confirmed catholic, baptised protestant, high priest of a wiccan coven, initiated member of the Ordo Templi Orientis and, shortly after the terrorist attacks in America (when Islam was controversial), he became a Muallaf. He entered each progression with elated excitement, interest, and a disavowal of the previous religion he’d embraced.

  How about his girlfriends before me? Well:

  He ran away from his parents with a girl when he was fifteen and returned after a week. It was all a stunt to get his parents to notice him, and the next day he dumped her. He has been engaged five times. With one of them he even got as far as to arrange the whole wedding, but failed to appear at the altar.

  I think you are starting to get the picture. But what I guess you are wondering is why? Why would someone develop such a flighty personality?

  Cause and effect.

  Upper-middle class family. His father was a cold and distant atheist who wasn’t home much. He had four brothers, and he was the one in the middle, and received the least attention. The only time his parents paid him any heed was when he did something wild and crazy. Apart from that, his upbringing was prosaic, uneventful, and as boring as the awkward little boy who spent the first few years of school sitting alone during lunchtimes.

  His father just ignores him now, as do the rest of his family. They have all grown weary and bored. Not to mention embarrassed.

  My heart bleeds.

  None of this is an excuse. Your past sets the foundations for where your life begins but most people of the western world are lucky enough to be the masters of their own destiny and can choose which direction they can take from there. Letting initial obstacles turn you into a flaky thespian that doesn’t mind who they hurt in their efforts to be noticed is just the result of an innately weak character. By all accounts I should probably be either in prison or out on the streets selling my body for drugs, considering my upbringing. Hell, I know the state of my life is far from perfect, but I think I have reaped a pretty impressive harvest from my meagre sowings.

  So what have I learned about my new-found powers by now?

  Well I can transport myself back in time (that much is obvious).

  It is for a limited period. If I stay too long my form begins to fade and I am pulled back.

  I can make myself unseen/unheard if I choose.

  While in the same state I can also walk through walls.

  I always go back to the same place, time and position I was in before I left.

  Considering the last four points, I think it is reasonable to conclude that it is not actually my body which goes back but more a corporeal manifestation (a ‘projection’ to put it more simply).

  But yet, for some reason even I do not know, I can take little souvenirs back and forth with me, as long as they are not too heavy. My clothes – for example.

  I suspect that I can never meet myself: whenever I try to go back to a time/place I have already been to, something blocks me.

  Often when I return I find that I have a set of memories for all the things which turned out differently due to my intervention. These memories sit alongside the old ones – it gets a little confusing sometimes, but I am always able to tell which one is the ‘new’ timeline.

  The whole time machine thing in the movies where you type in a date/time is a load of crap. Years, months, days and hours are human constructs, and the layers of the universe seem to be defined by events rather than the Gregorian calendar. When I choose to go back somewhere, I think of a certain occurrence that must have happened and I find myself there.

  So... let’s go back to the first time Stephan fucked Pandora...

  It was night, and I found myself in Pandora’s house. From the clothes scattered over the bedroom floor, I deduced that it was the night I took them out to Janus to celebrate Stephan’s new career. It all made sense; they were drunk and it was the following day that Stephan changed.

  They were on the bed with their bodies entwined like a pair of lusty pagans. Pandora turned Stephan around so that he was on his back and straddled him.

  She let out a soft moan, and I cringed as I noticed a tensing of their bodies’ that could only mean that he had just entered her. To be fair to Pandora, it must have been the first time for quite a while, judging from the ecstatic moan which escaped through her closed lips.

  “Oh,” she groaned. “Oh... Jesus!”

  I decided that this was the right moment to make myself visible to them. I was standing at the foot of the bed and I began to clap my hands together in a slow, steady pace. They tore away from each other, gasping, as their eyes widened to the reality of my presence.

  “That’s it!” I exclaimed, flatly, still clapping. “Do it for Jesus, Pandy!”

  She huddled the duvet over herself to cover her breasts and shuffled to the opposite end of the bed, terrified, ashamed, shocked and confused. Stephan was comparably stoic about the whole thing; he tried to make himself seem small by covering all but his face with the bed sheets, as if I would almost forget he was there if he remained inconspicuous.

  “Oh my God!” she exclaimed, looking around the room. “Frelia! How did you get in? The doors and windows—”

  “You always said I was special,” I replied, grinning at her as I folded my arms across my chest.

  “Oh my,” she whispered, turning her head low and running her fingers along her forehead. “I’m… I don’t know.”

  “It’s ok, Pandy,” I said, sneering at the figure of Stephan, still hiding himself under the duvet and unabl
e to face me. “I think you’ve done me a favour. Anyway, I would love to spend some more quality time with you guys but I must dash, people to see, things to do, you know. Oh, and Pandy, I know it might be against your views and such, but I suggest a condom for next time.”

  “Wait! Frelia!” Pandora exclaimed, shuffling out of the bed and reaching for something to cover her modesty as I left the room. I slammed the door behind me and let myself be pulled back into the present again.

  I opened my eyes and I was back in my room, staring at the ceiling. I laughed as I thought of Pandora and Stephan rummaging through the house almost a week ago now, checking every window, door and cranny to find out how I possibly got in and out.

  A new set of memories came to me: Stephan never met me that day after I exploded in the classroom. In fact, I never saw him ever again. Pandora has been trying to call, and keeps sending me endless text messages. I never quit college.

  The next visit I made was to see my mother.

  She was sprawled out on a small couch at the end of her bed, watching TV. Some kind of brain-numbing soap opera. Her glassy eyes were fixed on the screen, empty and uninvolved. I watched her for a few minutes with spiders weaving webs of guilt around my stomach. This was an evening a few weeks ago, just a few hours after I shouted at her for telling me my father was a time traveller.

  I drew a deep breath to prepare myself for this encounter and let it out slowly as I lifted my veil of invisibility.

  My mother was so spaced out from all the drugs she was on that she didn’t even notice me for a few moments. I stepped in front of the screen.

  “Frelia!” she exclaimed, jumping from her seat into an upright position and clasping her knees. “What?” her head turned to the single window and door. “How did you get in?”

  She then turned back to me and her eyes widened, as though she were seeing me for the first time. An unfamiliar clarity appeared in her usually forlorn expression. “Oh my!” she gasped. “It’s like your—”

  “Father,” I finished for her as I turned the TV off. “Yeah, that’s right. I’ve figured it out.”

  An expression of relief graced her features, I had never seen her so happy. Tears fell from her eyes and wet her cheeks as she clasped her face. “Oh my god!”

  “God has nothing to do with this,” I said.

  “What?” she said. “Even after all this you still don’t believe?”

  “So I can travel through time,” I said, shrugging. “I am exhibiting the same survival abilities and traits as my father. That’s called DNA, mum. How is that proof of God? Anyway, why are you crying? Shouldn’t you be happy someone finally believes you?”

  “I am,” she whispered, as she wiped another tear from her cheek. “It’s just… I reached a point where even I began to question. I thought that maybe they were right and I was… well, you know…”

  “Crazy,” I supplied, as I walked over and sat myself next to her. “Well on that topic I have two things I would like to say, Mum.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “And the first is that I am sorry. I am sorry for all of the crap I said to you, and all the times I called you a liar.”

  But I then withdrew my hand and stood up. “But I also want tell you that you are, in fact, a bit crazy. Though not enough to justify dumping you into this place. I’ve been on enough benders to know that if you coop anyone into a confined space and feed them drugs they eventually go a bit loopy. But Mum, you owe me an apology. You should have just lied, put a gay friend of yours as my father, or something. Just anything but the truth. Anyone sane would know that what you did was asking for it. Why couldn’t you just lie?”

  She looked down at her knees and sighed heavily. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer but she lifted her head back up and looked at me. “Because I shouldn’t need to,” she replied, more bold and sure of herself than I have ever seen her. “Why should I have to lie just so people don’t think I am crazy?”

  Her eyes became ignited with an idea. “You!” she exclaimed, grabbing my sleeve. “You can prove it. Show them what you can do! And then—”

  “No,” I said, pulling away. “Not over my dead body. I’ve just managed to create a somewhat stable life for myself, and you want to turn me into a spectacle? No!” I shook my head. “This is my secret, you understand?”

  Her face fell and she nodded her head in resigned conviction. “Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking. Terrible idea. I want what’s best for you, Frelia. I always have.”

  “Well you should have been there for me then!” I exclaimed. “Now, mother. Tell me, where do we go from here?”

  She blinked a few times.

  “If you want to make things right you need to bite the bullet and play by their rules,” I said. “It’s sad, I know, but it’s just a fact. I know that it’s not right you being in here, but what are you doing to help yourself or the world by just accepting that? If you want to be a part of my life and make the world a better place, you’ll have much more opportunity to do that if you convince them you’re not crazy.”

  She nodded her head. “Okay…” she whispered. “I will try. I can’t promise anything though, Frelia. I have never been very good at… pretending. But I will try.”

  When I slipped back through the veils of space-time I landed back into my bed, back into my body. I clasped hold of the sides of my mattress for a few moments as I grounded myself.

  When I opened my eyes there was a dark figure standing over me.

  I jumped in terror and scrambled, pulling my legs towards my body and flattening myself against the wall.

  “What the fuck!” I exclaimed as my eyes turned to the door. It was still locked, so was the window.

  I dared myself to look back at him and he was still there, staring down at me, impassively, with a frown on his face. He looked familiar but I could not remember ever seeing him before.

  “Who the fuck are you?!” I yelled.

  In a flash he was beside me, with his hand over my mouth. “Sshhh,” he hissed into my ear. “They’ll hear you.”

  I tried to scream again because, let’s face it, I’m a teenage girl, and some strange man has entered my room – if my guardians or any of my fellow housemates were there, getting their attention was a pretty wise course of action. But he held my mouth shut and I struggled against him.

  “Stop it!” he urged, as he held back one of my wrists. “I know what you are Frelia! I know what you’ve been doing.”

  I looked at him again, and suddenly it all made sense.

  He was my father. That was why he looked familiar. He had my eyes, and the outline of his face bore a resemblance to that which I saw in the mirror every day.

  “What do you want?” I asked when he stepped away, finally giving me some room.

  “I want you to stop!” he said firmly. “Stop going back. You shouldn’t—”

  “You think you could just come in here after all this time and try to tell me what I should do?” I spat, feeling angry. “Screw yourself. I’ll do whatever—”

  “You don’t understand,” he whispered, crossing his arms. “It’s for your own safety. You weren’t even supposed to be born. If they find out—”

  “They?” I repeated. “Who’s this they?”

  He hesitated and I could tell from his eyes that he was going to tell me as little as he possibly get away with. “My kind,” he eventually said. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  I massaged my forehead, feeling a headache coming on. This was all too much to take in at once. It was hard to think that I had only discovered this new ability a few hours ago – in passing time, that is, I had probably clocked almost a whole day of projecting by now.

  “And what if I say no?”

  “This is for your safety,” he said. “Like I said; you’re not supposed to exist. If they notice—”

  “Why don’t you just fuck off,” I retorted. “Do you know where my mother has been all this time? Do you even care?”

  For a moment an emot
ion close to guilt could be seen in his eyes, but he turned away and looked at the floor. “It was for her safety… look, your kind aren’t supposed to know about us. If it ever became public knowledge you’d be in danger.”

  “This is the twenty-first century, dude,” I said. “You could host a skirmish between a gang of goblins and unicorns outside St Pauls Cathedral and the next day all the journalists and academics would stand outside the bloody remains and rationalise it as a mass hallucination or some shit. I don’t think you have much to worry about.”

  “You will stop!” he exclaimed, angrily banging his fist against my desk, making me jump in surprise. He glared at me for a while and then his face softened. “Please, Frelia, I know it’s hard to understand, but you must! I am sorry about your mother but it was the only way I could keep you both safe.”

  After he left I didn’t feel safe in my own bedroom anymore so I went to the only place I could think of: Janus. I went through the back entrance, as usual, and slipped into the maze of winding corridors. I searched the rooms, looking for Namda or any of my other friends who would listen to my story without thinking I was crazy. I needed to talk to someone.

  It was busy that night. I then remembered it was Friday. The rooms were all crowded. Mostly with the bracelet-wearing, logo-flashing, black-makeup-smeared wannabes, who usually inhabited the main hall downstairs. It seemed that they had finally catapulted their way up to the top corridor and invaded the heart of Janus.

  I scowled at them as I shifted my way through, looking for a friend, any friend, as I drowned in a sea of middle-class rebellion and pseudo-idiosyncrasy. I was lost.

  I heard raised voices up ahead and became aware of a commotion going on. I scrambled forward, pushing and shuffling my way through pale shoulders, eventually seeing someone who wasn’t a clone of everyone else around them. A girl with long brown hair, in a black trench coat and purple skirt. She was trying to reach the toilets but the black-clad swarm of teenagers around her were all pushing and pulling at her with cruel sneers on their faces.