by C. M. Murphy
He shook his head and blinked. This couldn't be. She'd been here a moment ago. A wind funneled around him. Not the tornado-like wind like before. Just a swirly breeze that carried the dust away, the faint smell of pancakes and syrup disappearing with it. He'd killed her like his father had killed his mother.
Haniel crumpled to his knees and wept.
Alma peered out from the eyes of Irene Polk into darkness. The woman's eyes were closed in meditation. Alma knew she'd reached the correct day. It had been so easy to reach this point, Alma worried for a moment if this was her construct instead of the actual past.
Alma flipped through Irene's thoughts as the woman meditated. Tonight's class would start in two hours. Irene's husband, Lawrence, had already left for the evening. Alma hoped the man hadn't taken his gun with him. Deep in the recesses of Irene's mind, the woman hid away the memory of seeing her husband "prepare for a meeting" by tucking his gun into his coat pocket. Back then, Irene had her own secrets and hadn't confronted him. She'd tried to broach the subject, but the stubborn man always brushed it off. Irene gave up trying to convince him to get rid of the gun and let him do as he pleased.
Alma attempted to will Irene to open her eyes, but couldn't do it. Worry struck at Alma's heart. If she couldn't get Irene to open her eyes, there would be no way to control Irene enough to shoot James.
Alma found that her internal awareness had improved, but she still had no control. An idea struck her. She needed to create a construct to solidify her understanding. It had sped up so much of her learning before. She hoped it would now.
Alma closed her inner eye and the darkness of Irene's eyelids grew complete. She imagined a barrier between her thoughts and Irene's so she could keep them separate. She imagined herself climbing over the barrier.
The darkness faded from Alma's vision until she found herself surrounded by gears and wheels—almost like a cartoon version of the inside of a clock. She hunted around, found a lever, and pulled it. Memories from Irene's childhood flooded into her thoughts. Alma pushed the lever back and rooted around some more until she found a leather bucket seat.
She smiled, recognizing the seat from her father's old car. Alma slid into the seat and found herself sitting in Irene's meditation room like before, but this time Irene's eyes were open.
She could feel Irene's protestations. Alma tried to quell the woman's fear as Alma stood up and checked the time. It was an hour before class. Alma had taken more time trying to figure out how to gain control than she'd imagined. Irene fought for control, and Alma knew she would have to hurry.
Alma rushed out of the meditation room on the first floor to the main staircase and down the long hall to Lawrence's study. The door was open.
She went to the desk and tried to open the top-right drawer that housed the gun. Locked.
Alma skimmed Irene's mind for information about the key to drawer. Lawrence kept the key stashed in the bar, reasoning that Irene would never happen across it there. His reasoning was sound. Irene hadn't had a drink in over fifteen years, and she only knew of the key's hiding place because she'd seen him place it there once seven years ago. The memory wasn't even a conscious one. Alma could tell by the faint, fluttery feel of it.
Irene's hands lifted the roll-top cover of the bar and then opened a small side drawer that held two corkscrews and a bottle opener. The drawers didn't open all the way, so she slid her palm along the bottom of the wooden drawer to the back. She smiled as her fingertips brushed against a small, metal object. She curled her fingers around it and brought it out of the drawer.
Alma marveled at how it felt to move as another person. She hadn't appreciated how much each body colored one's experience of the outside world. A craving struck her. What would it be like to be drunk in another person's body? Would Irene be breaking her sobriety?
The oddness of such a thought shocked Alma. She could feel the brain of this body crave a drink, and that craving had triggered a thought in Alma's mind, not Irene's. Alma slammed the roll-top down and pushed that thought out of her mind. It was the first time she recognized the difference between her brain, the organ that enabled thought, and her thoughts. Until that moment she had always thought of her mind as her brain instead of it as the receptacle that housed her thoughts.
It was just like she'd always associated her body as being who she was instead of a vessel. Alma shook off her contemplative mood. She had a man to murder, and she needed that gun.
Alma marched over to the drawer, slipped the key into the lock, and took a deep breath. Please let the gun be there. She pulled open the drawer. Her heart pounded with relief upon sight of the old revolver. She picked up the gun. It was so much heavier than she imagined.
She glanced at the clock. She only had ten minutes before class began. The gun was too big to put in Irene's trouser pocket. Alma dashed to another room and into the woman's large walk-in closet. None of the blazers had pockets large enough and the thick winter coats with large pockets were in storage. The doorbell rang downstairs. One of her students was here.
Alma dashed to the master bathroom and snatched Irene's bathrobe from the back of the door. She pulled on the robe, tied it tight around her waist, and slipped the gun into the pocket.
Alma overheard her housekeeper let in the student downstairs as she hurried down the hallway. It was Stacy. Alma froze at the top of the stairs. Was she just going to shoot James in front of the class? Would he see her right away? He'd spotted her so fast before. She clutched the gun and vowed to shoot him on sight.
Irene's will kicked inside of their shared mind. Alma had gotten so good at separating her thoughts from the woman, she'd forgotten to factor in the part where Irene Polk would have knowledge of Alma's thoughts. And the woman did not want her to kill James at all.
Alma tried to show her how James would kill her soon, but the doorbell rang again. Alma stepped down six steps. She remained out of sight, but she could hear better and would be closer to James if it was him.
The sound of a male's voice talking with the housekeeper garnered Alma's full attention. She relaxed a moment later when she realized it was just another student and not James.
Alma shuddered as she remembered her last encounter with James in Irene's body. She'd almost died with Irene. Except, something about that didn't make sense.
The doorbell rang, and her attention switched to the door.
Her housekeeper answered it. She heard the woman laugh. Alma's ears perked up. James had that effect on women. They were drawn to those eyes and his charm. Alma started down the stairs just in case it was him. She slipped her hands into the pocket of the bathrobe and around the gun. The clunky heaviness of the gun added to Alma's nerves. She needed to get this right. Just as she hit the middle landing of her stairs she heard James's voice.
"There she is," James said, and after a quick moment he added, "Irene, are you sick?"
Alma glanced up to find James and the housekeeper, Adele, staring up at her.
"Just a bit," Alma said, careful to avoid James's gaze. "Give us a minute, Adele. Tell the other students we might be late."
Adele stepped away.
"Do you need me to help?" James asked. He sounded concerned and even kind. Irene's terror made thinking difficult.
Alma took three quick strides to get from the foot of the stairs to the foyer where James stood. She put her finger around the trigger of the gun. "I was thinking perhaps you could lead class today," she said as she rushed over to his side.
"I'd be honored," James said.
Alma whipped out the gun, pushed the gun into his side, and pulled the trigger. The bang echoed off the tiled floor and high ceiling of Irene's foyer. James stumbled and then looked up at her with an incredulous expression. Her lack of remorse at shooting him struck her as odd. She wasn't even angry.
Alma shot him again, but this time in the chest. He collapsed to floor. A woman's scream echoed in the foyer. Filled with numb determination, Alma stood over James's bleeding body and cont
inued to pull the trigger until the gun stopped firing bullets and clicked in her hand. The screaming stopped.
A raspy irritation scratched at her throat, and that's when Alma realized it was her own screams, or rather the screams of Irene Polk, that she'd heard. Students and the housekeeper stared at her with horror. They must've rushed into the room upon hearing the gunshots.
In all her planning to kill James, Alma hadn't stopped to consider that she'd be ruining Irene's life to save her mother's. She told herself that perhaps Irene could plead insanity.
Alma kneeled down over James to make sure he was dead. No pulse. No heartbeat. Lots of blood. Irene kicked and screamed inside of their shared mind. Alma "let go" of her embodiment of Irene. The sound of Irene's hysterical cries rang in Alma's mind as she traveled back to her own time.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alma opened her eyes and saw Tita Win smiling down at her. Her aunt was happy to see Alma, but she worried her niece wouldn't be happy with the state of the present.
"You made it!" Doug said, relieved to have her return unscathed.
Alma turned to see him kneeling next to the couch. She spotted Leo and Cassidy. She assumed that they must have come to the house while she'd gone back to kill James.
Alma sat up on the couch, enjoying the familiar feeling of her own body, but she was haunted by an odd sensation.
Reality didn't feel real, and the memories of her mother, Irene, and James blurred together. Alma peered out of what she had to remind herself was her own eyes. It was definitely Win Win's living room. The off-white sofa with the flowered cushions. The same glass coffee table. White walls with the large, hand-carved, wooden fork and spoon hanging on them. Nothing had changed. Except, it had to be impossible for nothing to have changed. Irene Polk killed James Hanker.
"Is Mom here?" Alma asked.
Win shook her head no.
"How has nothing changed?" Alma asked, half to herself and half to the others.
"I don't think it's possible," Win Win said.
"But you can't know for sure. Your memory might be different," Alma said. "Is Irene in jail?"
"Irene never went to jail," Cassidy said.
"Did you still meet my mother in Vegas?" Alma asked Leo.
"Yes," Leo said.
"And you're still—" Alma stopped short of mentioning his death or her own conception.
"You were still born, and I'm in this life at this age," Leo said.
"But I watched him die," Alma said. "I don't understand." Alma looked down at the carpet. Her plan had failed. She spotted the Irene's book on the coffee table and grabbed it. It was still signed. "Win," Alma asked, "was this book here the entire time?"
"Yes," Win said.
"I put it there after we brought you to the couch when you were..." Doug paused to find a way to phrase it, "recovering from your first trip."
Alma's mind was exhausted from time-traveling. The surreal experience of reality itself wore on her. But there was something about this book that didn't sit right with her.
She stared at it, and it struck her. The book shouldn't exist.
When Alma had gone back in time the first time, James had seen her in Irene's body. He'd killed Irene on the spot to try to gain Alma's power. If that had happened, then Irene wouldn't have lived to write this book twenty years later let alone sign it. But it had been here the entire time.
But what had happened in that moment with James? The effects had been seen in the here and now. Alma decided to double check. "You all could tell that I'd been hurt by James when I went back, right?"
Doug nodded, his face glum as he recalled her swollen face and bruises.
"I don't think you can change what happens," Tita Win Win said.
"But that doesn't make sense," Alma said, even though imagined she looked like she was pouting. Alma opened the cover of Irene Polk's book. The author's signature graced the page of the foreword. There was no inscription. Alma set the book on the table. "Then why did we even need this?"
"Your mother went through a lot of trouble to make sure you got it, but I'm not sure," Win said, picking up the book. She continued to talk, but Alma had trouble hearing her. Win's words were drowned out with white noise, and the room blurred into a field of white.
Alma found herself in her childhood bedroom, sitting crosslegged on the floor. The room was decorated just like it had been when she was in elementary school. She smiled as she looked at her Smurf poster on the wall, and her ABCs bedspread. Her bookshelf stocked with a ton of Nancy Drew mysteries and a complete set of Anzetta's A-to-Z Illustrated Encyclopedia for Children.
Something tingled in Alma's awareness. She wasn't alone. Alma shuddered with fear as she realized she hadn't come here. This wasn't like when she followed the spider into the hole and spotted her mother. She'd been brought here, and more germane to the point, here wasn't real. Alma needed to get out. She needed to get back and figure out how to stop James or whatever it was that was coming.
"It's okay," a voice inside of Alma's head said to her.
The voice reminded her not only of the way she talked to herself in her own construct, but it also reminded her of something from her childhood. The familiarity eased Alma's fear, but her grasp on her selfhood felt fleeting. She worried she would float away, and faced with that thought, she caught herself unable to recall her own name.
Her eyes closed. The unreal nature of this room that both was and wasn't her childhood bedroom was too much for her to absorb.
Alma struggled to remember what made reality real. After all, a dream seemed real to the dreamer until she woke up. And if a person could construct reality in their mind and walk through it in perceived time, but not time passing, why bother with time at all?
Time didn't exist. She didn't exist. Everything was an illusion. Just like this moment. A crack opened in her mind. Was it like the crack the spider came out? Should she disappear—
"Wait!" a woman's voice said.
The familiarity of the voice triggered Alma to remember her own name. Except, she wasn't in her own body. And if she—
"Stop!" the voice said. "Open your eyes."
Alma opened her eyes. The surreal quality of the room remained. It wasn't her room. It was a replica of it, a life-sized, plastic replica.
"I did my best," the woman said.
Alma jumped upon sight of the woman. Her long, straight dark hair, brown eyes and angular face looked familiar.
"Yes, that's right. You know me. We know each other. From when you were little."
"Kayli!" Alma said in a hushed voice. Memories of Kayli rushed into Alma's mind. The smile. The familiarity. When she was a kid, Kayli was her "grown-up" self, but now Alma finally understood why her grown-up self had a different name. "You're a future incarnation of me." Alma looked around the room. Now, she understood the unrealness of it. "This is your construct."
"To make you more comfortable, and to avoid some parallel universe stuff. Although, I haven't worked out if that matters so much."
"I need to get back," Alma said.
"This won't take any time," said Kayli.
Alma didn't like the riddle of Kayli's words.
"You used to trust me more when you were little," Kayli said.
"I also used to eat dog food," Alma answered.
Kayli laughed. The laugh sounded so much like her own, it disturbed Alma.
"If you can't trust yourself," Kayli said, "who can you trust?" Kayli stood up, and walked over to the door.
Alma didn't want to leave this room or see what was on the other side of the door. A silver string swayed in front of her. The way the light glinted off of it captured Alma's attention. A dark spot dangled on the string. It moved.
A spider.
Alma stared as its body grew in size, and its spindly legs fluttered around the string. It dropped to the ground and scurried toward the door.
"Our totem," Kayli said. "I'd forgotten all about it."
Alma had heard the term "totem"
before, but she'd never discerned its meaning.
"Like a spirit animal," Kayli explained. "The spider is a weaver of fate. Your lifetime is the first time I ever consciously saw it, but when I look back, the spider was always there."
It dawned on Alma that she wasn't in Kayli's mind. Kayli was in hers. That's how she knew Alma's thoughts. Alma stretched out with her mind to reach into Kayli's thoughts and memories, but was met with a brick wall—literally a picture of a wall made of red bricks flashed in her mind.
"I'm sorry. I don't know if you knowing what I know will put you into another reality, and I want us to try to stay in the same one. Listen, I know what you need to know, but I can't tell you too much, okay?" Kayli said.
The cryptic nature of the conversation frustrated Alma.
The movement of the spider caught Alma's eyes, and she looked down at it. It looked as if he smiled at her. She remembered the spider that led her to her mother and decided to follow it.
"Good," Kayli said as she reached for the doorknob and turned it.
Alma's stood. Her legs and hips tightened with anxiety as she took the three steps to the doorway. She knew it wouldn't be the hallway of her childhood home on the other side.
She stepped through the doorway into a dark room filled with what looked like a universe of stars. Alma worried she would fall into the deep expanse of space and into a black hole, but somehow she didn't. Alma told herself this was a construct that Kayli must've put together. But what did it represent?
"The illusion of time," Kayli answered.
Alma didn't understand what she meant.
Doug poured himself a cup of coffee in Win Win's kitchen and tried to muster the courage to pull Alma aside and tell her the truth. He just needed to figure out the right words.
The door remained open, and he could see Tita Win's birthday cake resting on the dining room table surrounded by the balloons. The juxtaposition of the carefree party look of dining room and the heavy concern in his heart made him shake his head.
