You're in a dark room. In front of you, a beam of light cuts across the floor. A laptop screen. Somebody's left it on. The screen is locked. An image of a woman looks back at you, her eyes right - on - you.
You blink. You're not sure how you got here. You're not sure why here doesn't seem to have any lightbulbs that, you know, actually work.
You take a hesitant step forward. Will yourself to forget all the horror films you've ever watched. "Hello?" you say, and then, because you're English, you immediately apologise. "Sorry, but I'm a bit lost?"
A crack, a sharp, precise sound, replies; it comes from your left and then, nothing. Nothing but silence.
Do you try [[speaking again]]? Or, do you try instead to [[retrace your steps]]?
It's hard to know where to begin when the room's so dark, but begin you do. You take a slow step backwards, the memory of the door guiding you, and your hand reaches out for the help of the wall. All rooms have corners; all rooms have doors. This one has both.
Had.
The distinction is needle sharp, and startling. There's no door. It was there, you were certain of it, because you came in there. It wasn't even that long ago.
[[Maybe you're disoriented?]]"Hello?"
It seems such a stupid thing to say but really, it's all that you've got. Life doesn't give you manuals for these moments. Life gives you manuals for those moments you understand. The kiss that you've built up for days, that you've made everything slide into position. You understand that. Her. Him. You understand the people you love and the people you've loved.
Love. Why are you thinking about that when you're in the middle of a horror set?
Because, says a small voice inside your head, maybe love and [[darkness]] and [[passion]] and pain are the same thing?It's quite possible. Your memories aren't quite as clear as they should be. You came to do something, or - to meet a friend? Something like that. A destination. You came here from choice, you remember that much. The house at the end of the lane, past the park and up, underneath the shade of the tall old oak trees.
You take a deep breath and try to will your brain back into gear. Sharpness. Clarity. You'll take either right now, as long as something starts to make sense. And so, you try to practice what you preach and take another long and deep and too-loud breath.
You turn back around and run your hand along the wall, trying to see the image in your mind. There's [[fog]] but there's still something there. Is there? Maybe it's something around the edge of the room. The pictures that [[Susan]] must have put up?Susan.
You [[step forward]], your eyes fixated on that bright beacon of a laptop screen in front of you. Susan.
You're in love with a girl called Susan, and she's looking right back at you from the laptop screen. Strange to have her face there but suddenly it seems to fit.
You're so madly, feverishly, foolishly in love.
(But you also fix laptops.)
You work for an IT repair service. It's one of fifty names you might pull from the internet, but for some reason she rang yours. She can't have known that it was where you worked and you didn't answer the call. But you recognised the address when it was logged. Susan's new place. The one she bought after -
after what you were, together.
You start to wonder what you should do next. She's clearly not in, even though the door was open, and it's all a bit weird but then again, so much about accidentally on purpose slipping Tony a fiver so you could take his call and go over to solve your ex's laptop problems is.
And then you realise that you've known what to do all along. You need to do what every IT guy does in a crisis. You need to [[turn it on and off again]].
Fog. It's like a door opens inside your mind. Ironic, really, but there you are. The fog brings clarity. Reminds you of the taste of sunlight on your skin, the bright bare-boned sky outside. It is a beautiful day and you were out there enjoying it.
But then you heard something from this house, and you know this house and you know that a something shouldn't be here. This is Emily and Jack's house and they're away in Australia, doing something that they'd like to call travelling but really involves spending too much money in boutique hotels and moaning about the backpacks that block out of the sun.
You had a key, that's how you got in. You've been keeping an eye on things. Things. Not somethings.
But then, really 'somethings' aren't things you keep an eye on. They're things that [[keep an eye on you]].Your heart starts to beat faster, even though you know that it's just your imagination. If anything, your hear should be resting. Science. Fact. You've barely moved since coming in here.
But that laptop, the way she looks at you,
(the way her eyes follow you)
it's not helping things.
You take a deep breath and decide to take control of the situation. "Hello?" you say, "It's - it's -" and then you realise there's no way you can make this better because you don't quite know what this is.
"Hello?" you say, and then because it's sensible to do things that don't involve hyperventilating in a corner, you try [[speaking again]]. "Hello?"Stepping forward shouldn't be such a conscious decision, but you have to force your body to work. Everything feels - heavy. Slow. As though you're walking through mud and wading through water, all at the same time.
Technically you need to fix her laptop. Right? That is why you're here after all.
So maybe you should [[turn it on and off again]]?
After all, that is what the IT guy does.
And that's what you are - aren't you?Reboot.
The hiss of the laptop powering down, the sudden darkness that floods the room. You sigh and sit there, waiting for that little light to flash back on and for the machine to pull itself together.
Your thoughts start to drift. Susan's always been a bit flakey. You're not surprised she's gone out. She's clearly not here and so, you should really leave.
But then, what's that going to look like if you do? The front door was open and you can't lock it. She might not have a key. She might not even be coming back.
Why wouldn't she be coming back? The thought sits strangely inside your head; lines start to come together, dots start to make sense, the sense of a brain finally starting to realise what's happened.
Something has happened. A capital letter sort of something has definitely happened.
But to who? Has it happened to [[her]] or to [[you]]?Love isn't about darkness, you tell yourself, and you tell yourself it quite firmly because you are not here for that sort of thing. You're here to help her.
And then, suddenly, memories come so quick that they feel like bullets. You almost stagger under the weight of them. Chocolate cake. Raspberries. Beaches. Laughter. Pokemon. Salt-crusted hair. Light on water. Bookshelves with too many books. Yorkshire puddings. Coffee. Stealing too many paint cards in B&Q.
The fragments of what you had, of what you were -
"[[Susan]]" you say.
Yes. You loved her.
She loved you.
It's as simple as that, but the past tense, there, that's the rub. That's what you are, you're over. You're done.
That's what you remember. The sensation of absence, the way that you rolled over in the morning and saw nothing but the great maw of a white sheet, the stillness of snow on a winter's morning, the place where your lover once lay. And now she does not.
You were once two and now you are one, and that's the hardest thing to deal with - not the darkness, not the horror, not the still there sense of confusion in your mind, but the duull realisation that there should be somebody stood next to you.
An arcane instinct seizes you. You speak her name; call her to you.
"[[Susan]]", you say, "Susan."
And then, an unknown thought makes itself heard, the word "Please" comes out of your mouth.
Please. "Susan," you say, "Susan."
A memory. The two of you walking up the hill, the two of you stood there beneath the stars and pledging your love to each other. You've always been happier in the night. It frees you somehow, it lets your other side out and lets it breathe. It's not that the night scares you - or you it - but you find it freeing. The absence of light. The potential of a world at four am, when everybody's asleep or dying or being born - there's nothing quite like it. The stars at night are big and bright, after all [[skies at night<-deep in the Heart of Texas]]And the moment you realise that something's happened to you, well, that's when it happens. You look at her face, and she looks right back at you.
No, you think. This is an image on a laptop, a screensaver, and they don't do that. You know this sort of thing, like you know the sun rises in the morning and sets at night, and all the best reduced things in Waitrose are there on an evening, and the way that all the bus drivers in town seem to hate their job with a fiery passion.
You know things. Her. You. Us.
Screensavers.
You shake your head. "No," you say, "No."
But then she starts to speak, a low - constant - monotone.
"What is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare no time to stand beneath the boughs and stare as long as sheep or cows no time to see, when woods we pass where squirrels - "
"Stop," you say, disbelieving, "Stop it." And you ball your fist into your hand, make the nails cut into your skin, but she doesn't stop.
"-hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like [[skies at night]]-""are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas-" says Susan.
No. The screensaver. The image. Your mind.
You take a deep breath. "Stop it," you say, addressing not her but rather the madness that seems to be developing inside your brain. Screensavers don't talk. They don't read minds either.
She smiles. No, she doesn't. Yes she does. The image on the laptop is smiling and it's that smile that she does when she knows she's in the right and you're in the wrong. It used to infuriate you but now, it just sort of acts as a reminder of what you've lost.
"I loved you," you say, and then you realise you're lying.
"Love," you say, "[[Love.]]"So this is where we are. This is where it ends.
Where it began, with you looking at the face of the woman you loved, you love, shall love for ever.
"We are fated," she says, her lips moving slowly against the backdrop of the laptop screen, "You are me and I am you and we are in Texas and the sunlight burns away all of the darkness."
"You're not real," you say again. "I shouldn't have come."
"Don't go," she says, and again you stare at her and wonder if this is what you think it is. But then, what do you think it is?
Is it [[real]] or is it a [[dream?]]
The light in the room flickers. You look up, attuned to every sign that this might be a horror movie in disguise, but then Susan laughs. And when she does that, oh how quickly you realise that this is a person, watching you, and not a screensaver in the slightest.
"Hello baby," she says.
"Hello," you say.
"I didn't think you'd get to this point so quickly."
She holds up her hands and twists a little, revealing the background behind more. She is in a room, all clean and clear plastics and white tiles. It looks like a laboratory. A memory starts to take shape inside your head; a memory of electrodes pressed to your skin, and a consent form to be signed.
"You can wake up," she says confidentially. "Don't forget that. You can wake up, and remember it all. The good times. The bad times. But you don't have to do that yet. You can go back to [[The beginning]], and try to figure out where you went wrong."
She smiles at you.
"Or maybe where I went wrong. After all, both of us were involved in this."
[[Realisation]] hits. Is it a dream? No. Stories that end in dreams are cheats, to the reader and to the characters, and you know this. Just like you know this story to be [[real]]. It's always been real. Your name is Scylla North. You work in IT.
You understand systems; you understand the way x + y =z, you understand the miracle of something in one country communicating with something in another, and you used to love a woman called Susan.
She was smart, fiercely smart, and when you broke up, it broke you. It broke you both, really, in that shattering way that love can do. Love is love is loss is pain. The darkness that comes with the light.
You saw her name in the newspaper. Dead tree press, something you'd not read for weeks but only picked up by accident on the bus. Susan Fielding; the most important scientist you've never heard of.
But you knew her. And you knew that she'd told you about her ideas once, a long time ago.
"Can you imagine what if we could go back," she'd said, "If we could go back to that moment when we turned left instead of right, and turn left instead. And see what we can change. Of course, we can't change anything - it's <i>time</i>, but we can see the alternative. We can come to terms with it. Trauma. Crisis. Understand where we went wrong, and figure out where to go from here."
And that's why you went to see her, and offered to be one of her first patients. You understood the risks. You just wanted the chance to understand.
You just wanted to know if you could love, just that little bit, any more.
"[[The beginning]]" you said then, and you say it now, "I want to go back."
And as the room goes dark, you look at her and you realise something. You start to shake your head but it's too late to stop the process. Your eyes close.
You're going back.