“I never did got stopped. I made my way in and of town without so much as a stare. In the library I paid for half an hour’s Internet access and searched for your friend on 192.com. There were three other women listed with that name. I wrote down their home addresses and telephone numbers, which were on the website. One of them was way too old to be your friend and the second had since emigrated. That only left one. I called her number from a public phone box. After several rings, her answer phone cut in and I recognised her voice from when she had spoken to me as she fled the morgue. Over the next few days, I rang that number again several times and each time there was no response, just the message left on her answer phone. Each time I listened to it, the more I became convinced that I had the right Kiera Hudson. But, I knew that I could only be sure if I went to her flat and checked it out for myself.
“So I packed up my things, and running out of cash before leaving Beechers Hope, I withdrew some money from a cash machine. I know I shouldn’t have done it, because if anyone was checking my bank records they would know where I was, but as I was leaving the town, I guessed it wouldn’t matter,” I told him.
“What did you find at the flat?” he asked me.
“Not much,” I said. “I’d only been there long enough to check out a picture that was by the window when you showed up. But as soon as I saw that picture, I recognised her and knew that I had found the right Kiera Hudson.”
“So what are you going to do now?” he asked me.
I didn’t know what I was going to do, if I were to be honest. I hoped that by going to Kiera’s flat I would find something, although I wasn’t exactly sure what, and prove my innocence in some way. “I could come with you,”
I suggested, lowering my eyes so I didn’t have to look at him.
“Impossible,” Potter said.
To hear him dismiss my idea so quickly hurt me, but also made me angry. “You can’t just leave me, Potter,” I said, staring at him. “What am I meant to do?”
“Hide,” he said, and now it was he who looked away from me and into the fire.
“Hide!” I snapped. “What sort of plan is that? What, you’re seriously suggesting that I spend the rest of my life pretending to be somebody else?”
“So what where you planning on doing?”
he grunted, taking a cigarette from his trouser pocket and lighting it.
“Not ripping the fucking heads off of several cops, that’s for sure!” I shouted. “So you just walk back into my life, cause a massacre, and then disappear again? You know, it isn’t going to take a freaking genius to work out that those cops were killed by something other than a human.” “I never walked back into your life,” Potter said, blowing smoke into the air. “You walked into mine.”
“You said that you came looking for me,”
I reminded him.
“Yeah, well maybe I shouldn’t have,” he snapped. “I made a mistake, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay!” I hissed, standing up.
“You can’t just walk back into my life, stir up old feelings, then disappear again!”
“What old feelings?” he asked, looking up at me as I stood before the fire. “You said you didn’t remember me.”
Clenching my fists, I shouted, “Why don’t you just piss off, Potter!”
Without looking back at him, I stomped up the stairs. I went to the room with the pink coloured bedding, closed the door, lit a candle, and threw myself onto the bed. I just wanted to scream, but I didn’t want him to hear it, so I placed a pillow over my head. I felt lost, confused, and angry. I was angrier at myself than Potter – I hated the feelings that I had for him.
But hadn’t they always been there, hidden just beneath the surface? Potter said before the world had been
pushed
we had been lovers. Maybe somehow those feelings – just like the letters – had seeped across time, through a tear in the fabric of reality and come back to haunt me.
However hard I tried, I couldn’t help but feel love for the obnoxious prick who sat downstairs before the fire. I didn’t doubt what Potter had told me. I knew in my heart that we had once shared some kind of life together. As I lay on my front, my head buried beneath the pillow, I remembered how sometimes, when Marty was smoking a cigarette, he had reminded me of someone else and that someone else had been Potter. It was like he had been seeping through into my life for as long as I could remember. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to remember him – but now that he was back, I just couldn’t forget.
I’d heard a story once about a young woman who’d had an accident and had been in a coma for five years or more. When she finally woke, her fiancé had moved on and married someone else – but she had woken feeling the same for him, just as she had when she had slipped into that coma. At the time I had thought how awful that must have been for her – and now I really understood the pain she must have felt. I wanted to go with him. I didn’t want to be left alone. I’d been scared of him once – but I was different then. I didn’t want to think about him anymore, I just wanted to go to sleep. So swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and standing in the centre of the room, I slipped off my tree-hugger dress and my underwear. Then, as I stood naked, the door to my room swung slowly open and Potter stepped inside.
Potter
I sat before the fire and listened to the sound of Sophie’s feet marching up the stairs, followed by the slam of a door. With smoke lingering around the tips of my fingers, I brought the cigarette up to my lips and inhaled deeply. The cravings for the red stuff were bad tonight and I knew that I would have to get back to Hallowed Manor soon. The nicotine masked it, but not enough – not tonight.
Why had I come looking for Sophie? I told myself that it was to try and find out what had happened to the world while we had been away – but I knew that was bullshit. Sophie had been
pushed
too – so she wouldn’t have known any difference to the life that she was now living. But, she had remembered me. Why and how? And why had those letters turned up? I had sent them from another place, another time, where my heart had been crushed by her. Like I said, it wasn’t so much as another
where
– it was another
when
.
I took another cigarette from the pack and lit it, as I thought of how finding Sophie again had brought back some of my own feelings that I had for her. Was that bad? Was I wrong for having those feelings as I had Kiera in my life now? With the cigarette dangling from the corner of my mouth, I couldn’t help but remember how much I’d loved Sophie. I could feel the pain again as she screamed at me, telling me to get out. The pain felt real, all over again. I could see myself wandering aimlessly for weeks, from one town to another, writing her those letters, hoping that she would accept me for who and what I really was.
Had I been stupid to send those letters? No, I’d been naive and in love. But, then, hadn’t Sophie?
Hadn’t her reaction to me been normal? Christ, what had I expected her reaction to be on seeing a giant bat perching on the end of her bed? And I’d been a numb-nuts coming back to look for her. I’d used her. Whatever had happened between us, Sophie deserved better than that.
I flicked the end of my cigarette into the fire and got up. Taking off my coat, I made my way up the stairs to her room. At the end of the landing, I paused outside her door. Not knowing if again I was doing the right thing or not, I pushed it open and stepped into her room.
She stood in the centre of the room, and she was naked. I half expected her to cover her breasts with her arms and yell at me to get out, but she didn’t, she just stood there, her arms by her sides and looked at me.
“What do you want?” she asked me.
“Do you want me to leave?” I said.
“No,” she whispered, and the room flickered with candlelight. “Do you want to leave?”
“No,” I said, closing the door behind me.
I turned to face her again, and I couldn’t help but think of how beautiful she looked in the soft glow of the candlelight. Her long, blond hair flowed over her shoulders and settled against her breasts. Sophie came towards me, and as she did, I felt a thumping sensation race through my body.
It was like a ghost of a heart, racing inside of me.
She stopped before me, and we were so close that I could see she was trembling. “I do remember you,” she whispered. “I remember everything. I remember how much I loved you and I know how much I hurt you.”
“How do you know?” I whispered back.
“The letters you sent me,” she said, her eyes looking into mine. “They were full of pain.”
“I’m not hurting anymore,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she asked as she folded her arms about me. She pulled me so close that I could feel her breasts, soft against my chest and her breath, warm against my cheek.
“I’m sure,” I said, closing my eyes. “I’m in love with another.”
Sophie seemed to flinch in my arms and pull slightly away from me. “Kiera Hudson?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her. “I love her more than anything.”
“But you loved me,” she frowned.
I opened my eyes to see that she was staring into them again, and the hurt that I could see there was almost unbearable.
“That was a long time ago, in another
where
and another
when
,” I told her.
“What about what we shared,” she smiled, pulling me close again. “What about us?”
Gently easing her away from me, I said, “There is no
us
anymore, Sophie; I was wrong to have come back to look for you.”
“You came back for me because deep down you still love me,” she tried to convince me.
“I came back because I wanted to know what had happened to the world,” I explained, not wanting to hurt her feelings, but knowing that I had to be honest with her. “I had no one else.”
“You don’t mean that,” she said, but I could tell by the tears that were standing in her eyes that she knew I was telling her the truth.
“I’m sorry,” I shrugged.
“You can’t just come back and open up old wounds then disappear again,” she whispered, a tear slipping down her cheek. “You might have had time for your feelings to have changed, but to me it seems like only moments ago that we were making love in my room.”
“So why didn’t you answer my letters?” I snapped.
“I was a child back then,” she cried. “I was scared, Potter, but not of you.”
“Of what then?”
“Me,” she said. “I was scared at how much I wanted you, even though I knew you were a -”
“Monster?” I cut in. “Is that the word you were searching for?”
“Yes,” she said, and looked away. “How could I have been in love with a monster? What sort of life would that have been for me?”
“Kiera loves me, even though I am a monster,” I told her.
“It’s easy for her,” she said. “She’s a monster too.”
“Kiera fell in love with me before she knew what she was,” I told her. “She knew I was a monster long before she knew what
she
truly was. Yet, she accepted me for who and what I was. Kiera loves me for everything that I am, for my foul mouth, my chain-smoking, my bad attitude, and violence. Kiera is freaking awesome. There is no one like her.”
“She is very beautiful,” Sophie mused.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” I said, looking at her.
“Get what?”
“It doesn’t matter to me how beautiful Kiera looks,” I tried to explain. “I couldn’t give a monkey’s toss if she looked like the Elephant Man and had an arse the size of King Kong – although she does have the sweetest cheeks I’ve ever seen. But that means nothing to me – it’s what Kiera stands for – that’s why I’m so in love with her.”
“So what does she stand for?” Sophie asked, and I couldn’t help but notice the slightest hint of resentment in her voice.
“She has this really annoying habit of wanting to do the right thing the whole time,” I said, smiling inside as I thought of her. “She wants to do the right thing by everyone, even if it means that she loses out somehow. She threw herself into the arms of a serial killer because she couldn’t bear the thought of others suffering. Kiera is the smartest, bravest, and most selfless person I have ever known. But deep inside, she is so gentle and kind, and sometimes I think that I’m not even good enough to hold her hand, let alone share a life with her.”
“She sounds truly amazing,” Sophie shrugged, pulling away from me. I watched her take a blanket from the bed and wrap it about her shoulders.
“She is more than amazing,” I whispered.
“I’ve never been very good with words or explaining how I feel, but Kiera makes me feel whole and although we’re together, she makes me feel free – that’s the only way I can describe it.”
Brushing the tears from her face, Sophie looked at me. Then, silently she came towards me again, and kissing me softly on the cheek, she said, “Maybe in another
where
or
when,
things might be different between us, but I’m glad that you are happy now and I’m truly sorry that I hurt you the way I did.”
“That’s done with now,” I told her, heading for the door.
“Don’t go,” she said softly. “Stay with me tonight. We are miles from anywhere, no one will ever know.”
“I’ll know,” I glared, leaving her alone in the room and closing the door behind me.
Sophie
I wrapped the blanket around me and rolled onto my side. I felt hurt and humiliated. Why had I asked him to stay the night? I’d just given him another opportunity to knock me back. Maybe that’s why he had said no, he wanted me to know how it felt to be hurt, just like I’d hurt him. I couldn’t believe that he didn’t feel anything for me anymore. I only had to read those letters to know how much he had felt for me. But there was that word again – “had!” Those letters had been sent from another place, another time – from a world that hadn’t been pushed. Potter had had a chance to overcome the hurt that I had caused him – whereas, the feelings that I had for him were still fresh and very real.
He made Kiera Hudson sound wonderful and if all the things he had said about her were true, then she was really special. But wasn’t I?