Eyes of Time - 1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Awakening

Headphones on my ears, music playing mid-volume, my rollerblades dancing and dodging the sidewalks. This is how I like to cross the town on my daily errands and routines. I tried taking the subway for a while, I really did. For my Dad’s sake more than mine, in a last effort to conform. But the first two weeks were hell. The closed spaces, the asphyxiating overtly breathed air, the notion of being buried underground in complete darkness in case of any technical failure. And there I was standing among all those people, so self-absorbed on their pitiful existences, or escaping them by reading their blockbuster books, and me wondering what kind of people they would be at the end. When real life strikes.

When you have witnessed such painful sights, so much raw blunt degradation of human life, entire families left with gaping holes for wounds in the switch of a second, you start registering patterns, repetitions. You start asking yourself: which of them am I? Am I that woman who despairs at the prospect of her crushed limb, or am I the man that even half-buried in detritus talks to said women, asking her questions, focusing her mind elsewhere, so that she won’t despair so much? Am I the fighter or the one that just gives up? And there I was, despairing while I stood there, looking at them all, and looking inside myself, not even the music I love helping to take the edge off of things. The breaking point was an old man feeling me up during the rush hour between stations. From then on I grabbed my wheels and haven’t let go of them since.

This way I don’t have to care about things like that. I don’t have to stare them all right in the face with nothing else to do but stare. I’m a free soul and these streets are my kingdom. Rolling the flat planes of the city I let go of all worries and I feel like myself. No pretends, no hiding what I’ve seen. No facing it either. I am who I am, what I am, the way I want to be. Who doesn’t like it can just sidestep when I pass them near.

I cross the jamming traffic right before the switch of the red light signals the start of roaring engines. I’m running late already, and so try to make it up in a twist of acrobatics and speed, dodging car and pedestrian traffic alike.

I guess this sort of move is what makes me such a menace in step-mother’s eyes. Even though I was never involved nor was I responsible for any accidents before, she calls me an irresponsible citizen and a bad example to my kid half-brother, Adam. But I can deal with her, for no matter how low I may feel due to the prospect of her criticism, the bright light of Adam’s eyes, his joy and his pride when he sees me are always enough to cheer me up. He alone makes it worth to endure the weekly family dinners. And I’ve learned to ignore and stop caring about her critics a long time ago. All sort of things in me set her nerves on edge. From the purple strakes of colour in my hair, to my more often than not ripped jeans or skirts. And let us not touch the subject of my tongue piercing, nor the multiple metal bands on one of my ears, anything more than one is after all equalled to being a junkie. My roller-skating skills are just another flaw that adds to who I am.

Sometimes I wonder why she is so cold with me. She isn’t mean exactly, just judgemental and non-loving I guess. My strongest guess so far is how much I remind my dad of the women that left him, who was getting claustrophobic in her own house. I was five when she took me and we travelled the country in a road trip I can still picture to this day. Not concrete things but warms feelings and sweet smells I associate with pictures that even today decorate the walls of my bedroom. Vivid colours and shapes that I sometimes still dream about. A rollercoaster of a road movie made of recollections faded in time, reduced to blurs and blobs that despite the fadedness remain as some of my dearest memories. How I miss its simplicity sometimes, and my mother’s presence too.

It’s a shame she had to die, and in such an awful way too. No human should be made to bear with such suffering, treatments, surgery, mutilation, and still have to die and leave the world bare and empty of one of its brighter smiles.

But I also shouldn’t have to go live with my dad for a year and a half and there was no escape to it. For that time I had to swallow every remark on how I just wasn’t good enough every time my father didn’t stand with me. I had to try and be something I was not, force myself to actually conform to the expectations, and pretend to myself that I actually shared such views. The day I reached 18 was the turning point. After my first blackout I woke to a particular nasty remark in a disguise of maternal concern and I asked myself why? What’s in it for me?

Life is just like this I guess. Trauma and disappointment faces us all on the street, gets to our houses through the media, everyday in this twisted Russian roulette some like to name fate, and it never asks before it shoots the first bullet shattering our undisturbed path. The ugliness of it has a way of putting things into perspective. Why comply with others expectations if the time you have can be short and you may die alone? It just wasn’t worth it and I left from that house as fast as I could.

I recall all of this and still get amazed sometimes how my gift enabled me to take hold of my own life. How it gave me strength to accomplish all that I have in this past year. It isn’t much but it’s mine, and I got it on my terms. With that I am in peace.

My musings are interrupted by my arrival at my destination. This is where I spend my time when I’m not at college, doing homework or at the park hanging out with the few friends I still have or with the skaters practising some new move or another. I prefer the second because they don’t ask too many questions. They only care for my next move. That can be quite liberating.

This is my part-time job, and I usually feel pretty good here, unless I had a particular bad day at school or if a stupid stubborn customer had the idiotic idea to step through the threshold of the music store I work at.

“Maybe I should start to do like the other bosses and discount your check whenever you get in late.” That would be Sam, he’s my boss. His voice rings on the almost empty store as I cross the entry door. Sam was a life saver when I needed him. I knew him already, as I passed most of my teenaged afternoons hanging on this very store, listening to the latest arrivals, and later helping with some shelving so I could get a discount on my obsession of the moment. This was the first place I looked into and I not five minutes had passed before I had the job. That’s Sam for you. According to my friend Tina the only reason I got it at all is because he has a major crush on me, and that I am a fool, her words, not to correspond or at least take advantage of.

“Then maybe you should also start paying me for all the extra time I spend in this place?” I joke in reply. He just laughs of course. He knows I only stay so I can enjoy all the free music available.

I make a straight line for the back of the store, where my locker is and where I keep my gear while at work. I’m almost ready when Sam comes in, his shoulders sloshed somewhat as he leans on the door looking in every direction but mine, sitting on the bench in front of him, tying my snickers. I guess it has been a slow day then, if he can spare me the time.

Sam has one of those openly friendly faces with kind eyes. Those features go to match his personality and good nature. He’s somewhat good looking too, even if the ten year gap between us is already starting to show. Treats of being the boss I guess. Those worry lines and the fidgeting are what alert me to the fact that this is my friend, not my boss, and that he wants to touch a subject I won’t like. It’s funny really, how he’s so much of the tough guy to the rest of the world but gets nervous as a kid when it concerns me.

He avoids it for the most part, I thank him for that, but from time to time his protectiveness towards me gets the best of him and he has to feel like he did something to show me he cares and that he can make a difference in my life. He hasn’t yet caught with the fact that he does it already on a daily basis just by being there. Just for being the person he is, there aren’t many of them after all. The gods forged the cast, made a few specimens though times, and broke it accidently after creating Sam. He’s the last of his kind, the best person, most naive, trusting and caring individual I had the pleasure to welcome into my life. Too bad I was never able to fall in love with him, even though I love him with all that I have.

“I know you don’t like it when I meddle in your business, but you know how I sometimes worry about you” he looks at me. I stare, I do know how he cares but I don’t want to allow for any openings here. “And I wondered if you had looked into that card I gave you, you know for the help? Because of your weird blackout thing?” He looks extremely uncomfortable. Suddenly he opens his eyes wide. “Not that I think you weird or anything like that. You know that right?” As I look through my bangs to look at him once again, I can’t resist and but crack a soft smile at his staggering. How he still doubts my friendship and devotion to him astounds me.

“It’s ok Sam. Stop apologizing.” I get up and turned around, using the excuse of arranging my wheels inside my locker to avoid his enquiring gaze. The silence stretches a bit and I can sense his discomfort in the air behind me. I sigh and lean my forehead on the door I just closed.

“Sam, I love you like a brother, you know that, and I know you care, but I told you. I looked into it once and it didn’t work for me. I know what I saw. I researched it afterwards and I hadn’t even heard about it before. There were technical details I had no other way of knowing and yet I got it right. I wasn’t projecting, or dreaming, or delusional. I. Was. There.” He started to talk but I stopped him with a gesture when I turned around abruptly. “I don’t ask you to believe me, just to respect my decisions. And unless you have any insight on what I can do to control it or on what I can do with it this subject is closed.”

I pass past him wanting to start my shift but I stop. “I’m really sorry If I’m coming across like a stubborn idiot but I’m tired of having this thrown in my face like if this it’s some sort of illness, a madness poor me was cursed with. Even though it gets crazy most times it is a gift someone somewhere thought I ought to have. That or it was fate’s idea of a joke. Either way I won’t ignore it or try to make it go away. I won’t be that ungrateful. And who knows, maybe one day I’ll finally understand what it is meant for.”

The afternoon was a long one. Apparently costumers prefer music after lunch this time of year. The store was frantic and thankfully after that discussion Sam acted as if nothing had happened. Again I thank the gods for making him the person he is and that I need around me for grounding.

**

I was on my way home, afterwards when my accident-free record and my always to the point instincts failed me for the first time. And wasn’t that a life changing experience?

As always I travel with my songs as soundtrack for my life. I can feel the bubbling rush of the city on the frantic rhythm of stepping and jogging of the pedestrians around me. They actually make me slow my pace, so I can pass unscathed trough the masses. I hate this time of year, so many people on the streets, too many sparkling lights on the window-shops.

I’m crossing the street with these thoughts in mind when I start feeling the familiar dizziness. Not now is my first thought. But I can’t follow it with another for this time the effect is mind-blasting and soon I can feel myself falling somewhere, sometime else.

I don’t even have to look around me to know this is a different experience from all my previous ones. I keep on feeling dizzy when the scenery materializes completely around me. It had never happened like this. Furthermore I feel aghast with tiredness, it seems to me my body went on a very big journey of endurance and forgot to give me notice. Colours swim in front of me, even though the masses are not fluid. The vision presents itself to me just like it does any other time. It is my body, my mind and my pounding heart and headache that seem to be rebelling against it.

I make an effort of taking deep, slow breaths of air, but it also seems more rare than usual, making the spinning worse. I struggle to keep my equilibrium, try not to fall to the ground, but to no avail. Apparently a change in gravity was what I needed, even if it still seems like it wants to pull me through the ground, the force seems a bit less effective and I can start pulling myself together.

If I still had any doubts about the dissemblance of this situation from any other time, I was corrected when I was able to look up. Through the bangs of purple hair I am being witness to something of which I cannot conceive. It isn’t possible, makes no sense at all. My heartbeat rushes again in my chest, rebelling against what my eyes are perceiving.

Endless queues of people are being directed at gunpoint, along gigantic fields of mud and dirt. Their foreheads with vivid big numbers painted on them. Different colours on different queues, no apparent distinction between one individual and the other that would warrant such segregation. Women and children trying to contain sniffles, that as soon as they’re out are frowned upon by the big men with the big guns.

At least what I assume to be guns. These share common elements with the ones I had seen before on the media. But they seem at the same time entirely different. Its material, the copper and turquoise colours, not really metallic, not really anything else.

A noise behind me distracts my analyses, I turn on the mud to look in that direction, noticing the damp feeling in the ground soaking my bare knees, a slime feeling to it that reminds me of death stagnated swamps.

I look up to see a big closed truck, more tank like than truck, arrive at great speed and swivel into a break a few yards away. From the front of the truck more soldiers appear. Even though their uniforms seem like nothing I have ever seen a soldier wear, dark blue with a silver insignia of considerable size on the chest, it was what looked like an horizontal ‘8’. They were opening the back of the truck and bringing more people to be numbered and lined.

My stomach twists in revulsion as my mind starts understanding the enormity of what I am seeing. Even though such a situation must have happened somewhere in history, with the gathering of prisoners by a winning army of some despot or another, this is much too recent to comply with any of those situations. Its scale to great to have been kept hidden from the media. The entire process makes no sense and suggests no clue to what is happening. This vision is entirely too different from everything else I have witnessed so far, and that thought alone causes a shiver on my nervous system.

The noise of a row gets my attention to focus again on the action taking place. A bald, middle aged man struggles to get free of a soldier’s hands of steel. He is trying to get away and for that gets thrown to the ground. The soldier stomping his boot on the middle aged man’s back. The copper gun is pointed to the temple of the fallen man on the ground. I can’t distinguish the words among the anguished cries of the few women that dare open their mouths. Even the children seem too terrified to cry aloud, letting some smudged tears roll down their cheeks.

I startle as a blue light ray shoots from the gun point and causes the man on the ground what looks like horrible convulsions. The horrible part being reinforced by the man’s pained raw screams. I close my eyes tightly and have to direct my face somewhere else. As if such a feeble act could possible ever erase what was just presented. The screams of the man echo in my head for long excruciating moments after they have effectively stopped.

Such a gratuitous act of cruelty upsets me to no end. Despite all the awful things I have witnessed, this kind of direct hate, constructed suffering delivered directly by the hand of one human being to another is something entirely new to me. Before, all disasters had seemed natural, or even incidental, even if caused by human hand. Some later research proved itself inconclusive of its causes. Here I have no doubts of what is causing such terror. This realization adds to the previous dizziness and the hard conditions of my staying. My mind wants to leave this place even though my body seems stuck in this constricting place.

When I look again the man isn’t moving. Some occasional muscle spasm is still noticeable though, but I have no doubts about his death as the soldiers carry about in their task of rounding the other people to the correct lines, as if nothing exceptional had taken place mere minutes ago. There are again the engine rumbles of trucks, this time on the other side, where I was first facing. They work about collecting the queues of dirty and undignified people. When they leave only a couple of lines are left. The soldiers loose not time shooting their light rays at them. It’s sickening to notice they have a long range of reach, as they can still target those who were able to start running away. After a few minutes none of them are standing.

I feel like vomiting. Never before the inability to act made me feel so soiled, so despicable for dragging my next breath still. The world around me starts to blur, and for a few moments I am uncertain as to what it’s causing it.

Apparently the vision is coming to an end, the sense of sickness gets worse as I take in how much different this experience was. It was not the past that I just saw, of that I was sure, and none of my visions have proven wrong before. The only conclusion available to me is that this time I must have jumped forward. Sickening thought indeed.

I come back to the present to the screeching sound of tires coming in my direction. As my eyes get blinded by the car lights fastly approaching in my direction, my brain tries to process the fact of its inability to recover from shock in a time span that allows me to keep my life. Somehow I know that is now up to driver to spare my life and I lift my eyes to lock with his. Time has no meaning as I stand there waiting for his approach, it’s nothing but a mere commodity to those who still have it to spare. That’s no longer me.

The impact it’s much weaker than I would expect, had I the ability to predict such a thing. Obviously the driver had decided to allow me a longer life. My rollerblades helped to it by driving me backwards with the impulse, landing me with my arse floored to the ground, my back complaining the harsh impact, my helmet preventing my skull from smashing an indentation on my brain.

As I look up into the dusking sky, not yet night, but no longer day, I have yet to register the seriousness of this situation. The only thing I recognize in the middle of the void of sound, time and motion that has become my range of awareness, is the bright clear eyes of the owner of that car. I blink as I start to focus on him. I start to register the features attached to mentioned eyes, that I have yet to name a colour for. It hasn’t yet been invented I’m sure.

He has skin the colour of chocolate, and somewhat long dreadlocks with a myriad of thin threads of every colour in the rainbow interweaved with them. It has the same effect as if Van Gogh had decided to make a painting of his head, painting only a hair a day and not having enough time to get any near of finishing it. In that moment it became the most interesting thing I had ever seen. I hurried to assume that to be the result of my addled brain.

This attractive sight was trying to get my attention, I notice it as I blink again. I take my first breath, trying to give answer to his call, and all of a sudden, as if a fast-forward in time had taken place I regain the use of my senses again, in a cacophony of bright lights and loud voices. The headache that had been threatening to make an appearance made reservations for a long stay and I groan in protest.

“Don’t move. I called an ambulance already, don’t worry. Just stay put until they arrive.” His honey velvet rough voice still seems off, like it is out of synch with his lips. It sounds worried though, his hands holding me down as if I’m something precious. That or most likely my senses are still off.

I can already recognize the sirens loud statement cutting the residential blocks nearby. Maybe they would put me to sleep and I could forget everything that had just happened. I am in overload as it is. The aberration of both time journey and my first accident co-existing unsettles me, my only wish being to be far away, inside someone else’s life if possible. It’s the first time since my first vision that I feel this way. The prospect of a likely failure on my part a dead weight on my conscience.

Such a concept had me even forgetting where I was. I come to the reality to the movement of paramedic paraphernalia surrounding me. How long has passed? How are they here already? Apparently my time notions are all distorted.

The rough velvety voice grabs my attention again to what I think is my left side. At the moment nothing seems to be in its right place in what concerns me.

He’s looking at me, talking with someone on his cell phone. His expression hardens and in that moment I get the cold vicious feeling of an iron blade crossing my senses in its all freezing wave. The man that was concerned with my well being is now a cold hollow creature staring past me with his phone still to his ear.

He hangs up and in what seems very business like, questions the paramedics about my condition and my whereabouts afterwards. He gives them his card and states his need to be somewhere else. They seem unsure to accept it but he is walking away before they can refuse him. It’s a pity he had to leave I find myself thinking. I like his voice, and his unnamed eyes. This is my last awaken thoughts as darkness surrounds my mind.