Hindsight

M
ira noticed the body on the beach from halfway across the new bay bridge.

Jogging across from Likiba Isle to the mainland, trying not to look like an escapee from the sanctuary, she wore a cotton sundress instead of a tracksuit and stayed alert to every sound in the rising fog, and every shadow. Dawn chased her with the first sharp blades of the day but as she drew nearer to the body, she paused with her hand on the damp rail.

Heights and bridges always made her sway. Her violet sunshades helped to some extent, the darker hues making everything appear more solid and real. Still, she couldn’t help the feeling that the ghostly bridge might evaporate out from under her at any moment, leaving nothing between her and the stunted mangroves that dotted the small cove and its crooked inlet.

Gripping her shades with one hand to prevent them from falling, she clamped tighter onto the rail and looked down along the small beach.

Through the violet haze, she saw a young blonde woman, much like herself, lying on her back, and except for one soggy jogging shoe, she was naked.

Mira clasped a hand over her mouth, feeling ill. The fresh corpse wasn’t the first she’d ever seen, but it was the first woman. Sunrise bathed the body in a soft ghostly glow, while the shallow waves of the incoming tide licked obscenely higher along the dead woman’s thighs. Semi-adrift against a patch of scuffled sand, her arm pointed above her head to a spilled bucket of fish, with a basket of tackle uphill and a long rod, still upright in the sand at the water’s edge. The line hung slack with the bait and hook bobbing at her knee, almost as if she’d caught and landed herself. Or perhaps netted. Her faux leather bikini was twisted around her mouth and head. However, it was the blast marks in her chest which had obviously put an end to her struggles. Three rounds at close range. Her hands were punctured and blown out too, as if she’d seen the shots coming and tried to shield herself.

A trail of scuffled sand stretched from the body to the bridge, disappearing below Mira into murkier shadows. Men’s voices came to her through the thinning fog too; the derelict tram bridge nearby was now muttering with local fishermen.

A violet seagull swooped down past Mira’s shoulder, startling her. It landed on the dead woman’s face and Mira hissed at it in reflex before she realised she was too far away, and far too late. The ghostly bird preened its wings, oblivious. Then rumbling beneath Mira’s feet, the long bridge trembled with the approach of a heavy rig.

Anyone who recognised her outside the walls of Serenity could pose a risk. Gate pass or no gate pass, the island sanctuary was still basically a psychiatric ward and it was unusual for anyone to make it so far on foot and alone at such an early hour, especially alone. Questions would be raised, and such delays were the last thing she needed today.

Glancing about, she calculated the chance of making a dash off the nearest end of the bridge onto the mainland. She might make it to cover in time behind a grassy dune, picnic bench or palm tree. Or she could stay and maintain the pretence of normality; just a local cane farmer’s daughter, out for a walk. Or perhaps a lost tourist. However, at such an early hour as 6am, she reassured herself it was common for delivery trucks to be as keen as she was to escape the compound after unloading; time enough for them to get through the security checkpoint and make it off the isle completely before any of the most dangerous clients were let out of their wards for morning exercises.

Sea hawks squawked a warning overhead, invisible against the violet sky. Mira heeded them and spun her back to the road, hugging the rail and shielding her glasses just as a gust of small stones and sand whipped past her from the speeding wheels. She heard a series of jolts as the truck accelerated off the bridge, but by the time she uncurled herself from the rail, the engine was already fading inland, dissolving into foggier swamplands and cane farms towards the interstate freeway. Within seconds, she heard the familiar growl of another engine — her friend’s old Camaro headed her way, this time through the maze of cane fields.

Much more than a friend soon, she hoped. Bennet Chiron may have started out as her social worker, but if all went well in the matron’s office this morning, he’d soon be her legal guardian — or as close to it as the law would allow, given their particular circumstances. At thirty-two, he was only ten years older than her but a lifetime wiser, despite the dark shadow over his own past, and she didn’t care about any of those technicalities anyway. Without his skills as her therapist, she’d still be a sedated lump in a straitjacket who couldn’t be permitted full consciousness without becoming dangerously violent and desperate to escape. Thanks mainly to Ben, she’d been granted her first chance in ten years to regain some of her independence and perhaps move back out into the world — at least as far as his secluded beach house for a temporary trial period. With no other friends in the world, aside from the quirky young matron at Serenity, she could easily call Ben her
best
friend, but that seemed far too cheap a sentiment, considering the depth of affection she’d come to hold for him. Yet she dared not think of him as her boyfriend. Not after all the trouble and heartache she’d caused him, so far inadvertently.

Her hands trembled with excitement, tempered by shyness and nerves. He’d been in hospital himself for the past ten days, and she’d been limited to supervised visits of only an hour each morning, which gave her nearly no time to discuss or plan their coming weeks together. So much to do if she was ever to convince a psychiatric review committee that she was fit and safe to resume a more permanent role in mainland society.

Mira hurried over to the overgrown picnic area to meet him, but the meandering footpath led her closer to the beach first as it followed the low dune towards the old public parking area.

A horn sounded and brakes squealed as Ben slewed against the kerb to her right.

‘Mira!’ he called above the rough rumble of his engine. ‘What’s the deal here?’

The car backfired, making her jump.

‘You okay?’ His door clanked as it stuck open. She heard him jog up behind her, leaving the engine chugging, but she didn’t turn to greet him. ‘Does Matron Sanchez know you’re out here?’

She shrugged, and a cold shiver caused her to hug herself. A platinum pass gave her authority to come and go from Serenity any time during the day as long as she returned in time for meals and other scheduled activities, and caused no trouble among the locals, but no walking distance ever seemed far enough if she could still see Likiba Isle. As a gloomy backdrop to the dead body, it seemed almost inevitable that someone would have died here.

‘Hey, Mira,’ he said, with a cautious step closer. ‘Are you with me?’

She nodded, wishing she never had to go back there.

‘So, what’s the problem?’

She shrugged, hardly knowing where to begin. It seemed too much to tell him all at once without sounding insane. She rubbed the cool mist from her arms, keeping her back to him. Still no point in turning to look for him. No matter how hard she tried, even with the help of her darkest sunshades, she suffered a sensitivity to certain light frequencies that made him invisible against the violet haze — same as the noisy sea hawks, the truck that she’d never seen despite its long approach to her and anything else that had moved in the past ten days. Over-crystallisation within her eyes would be the simplest way to summarise her problem, but he knew that much already. Diamond eyes, he called them. Most light reflected off the surfaces, leaving her effectively blind, while much slower light frequencies refracted enough to make it through to her synapses, enabling her to see the way things had once been. Different shades of sunglasses or tinted windows could filter frequencies enough to see different dates, so if the things around her weren’t positioned or moving precisely as they had been at those moments, they seemed invisible to her. That included her own body as well as her friend’s.

Invisible friend.
She shivered at the idea. It really did sound crazy to think of Ben that way considering everything else she could see, albeit blurrily.

‘… Mira?’ He stepped closer until she felt the soft caress of his warm breath on her bare shoulder. Ordinarily, she would have found his nearness comforting, even exciting, but not today. She shifted her feet nervously.

‘This whole place gives me the creeps,’ she confessed. ‘If you’d been here five minutes ago, you’d have seen me freaking out at a ghostly seagull.’

‘A bird?’ he asked, lowering his voice. It wasn’t uncommon for animals with night vision to exhibit reactions to her inside her ‘visions’, as if they could sense that she’d cross their path at some time in their futures, but this had never happened before with a bird. ‘Do you think it sensed you too?’

‘If it did, it ignored me. No, it’s not that. It just seemed so real, I reacted in reflex, as if part of me is still confused — still deluded, as if it’s possible for me to interact with everything.’

‘It’s only been a few weeks since we discovered what you’re really seeing, Mira. It’s going to take time to get used to living in two worlds. Most blind people have enough trouble coping with the surroundings they can feel. At least you can have peace of mind now, knowing you’re not crazy. Everything you can see was once real.’

‘Oh, please,’ she said, tightening her fingers into fists. ‘I told you it’s not that. It’s the frustration! I’m my own worst enemy, can’t you see? Keeping two distinct time periods straight in my head isn’t so hard now that I understand what my visions really are — and especially now that we’ve learned how different coloured lenses can change how far back in time I see. I simply see one day and feel the other. It’s so much easier now without medication and regular sedation messing around with my head. But to have my body react with a mind of its own to things that aren’t real any more, is like — don’t laugh, Ben. It’s betrayal.’

He laughed anyway. ‘You’re too hard on yourself … Maybe you should try getting used to one set of shades at a time. Perhaps change only once a month or so.’

‘I had no choice today. Besides, the more I change, the easier it is to remember what I can see is no longer real … except for the things that don’t move, naturally.’

‘Okay, great. I’m glad to hear it. So what’s the lag time with that pair?’

‘Ten days, give or take a few hours.’ Mira slid them higher on her nose to improve the focus. ‘Not as blurry as my last few pairs. I can read all the print on the
No Swimming
sign over there.’ She pointed down the beach, but if he looked at it, he didn’t say anything. Perhaps someone had changed or moved it after the last storm. She sensed him lean closer to her ear.

‘If you’d said that six weeks ago …’ He didn’t need to say the rest. If she’d insisted she could see when her eyes were so obviously blind, he would have called for an extra dose of medications — a cocktail which always included sedatives and made it even harder for her to keep a grip on reality. At least now that Ben had helped her to go cold turkey and get clean, she’d been able to learn how to use the old world she could see to help navigate the updated version she could feel, almost as well as any sighted person. Occasional stumbling made her look clumsy, but she could live with that; as long as she kept her mouth shut about it she couldn’t be mistaken for crazy again. Or so she hoped.

She heard Ben’s crisp cotton shirt rustle and sensed the warmth of his hand hover nearer to her bare shoulder — still without touching her, as if he wanted to draw her against his chest but couldn’t now that his role was changing from friend to guardian. Then she heard him take a step back, and the air turned cooler between them as if he feared touching her at all would cause him more pain. From the cramped sound of his movements, he still wore a sling to help support the shoulder wounded by a gunshot. The shooter’s face sprang to mind and Mira shuddered. She closed her eyes, stung by guilt and the knowledge that Ben had only been caught in the line of fire because of her, when she had been on the run on the mainland. The more she thought about it, the more death seemed to precede and follow her everywhere. The ghostly body on the beach served as further evidence. For Ben’s sake, it would be best if she helped him to maintain a safe emotional distance. It hurt to think that he might be thinking the same thing, but she needed him now more than ever — not just as a friend, but also as her best means of finally escaping a life of being passed from one psychiatric facility to another, and if keeping an emotional distance was the only way to keep him safe and comfortable with the situation, she’d do it. Or at least try.

Hugging herself, she turned away, but felt all the hairs down the back of her neck reaching out for him.

A gunshot cracked, and she spun to grab him to safety. He grabbed her too — until she realised it was only his engine backfiring again. They both laughed nervously.

‘Sorry,’ he said, sounding embarrassed as they released their grips on each other. ‘The old girl always runs rough after a few weeks in a garage.’

Mira patted his chest as she let go. ‘I can sympathise.’ A few days in a rubber room always left her feeling out of sorts too. Soft floors usually strained her calves and ankles on top of any other damage she managed to cause herself, while blander foods also became necessary as they were the only things she could stomach after periods of high stress, which in turn was always complicated by additional medications. She never did get a chance to recover fully between events. She’d only have to open her eyes each morning and her regular daily cocktail was enough to drive her back over the edge. ‘Before I met you,’ she said, ‘I was running rough at least twice a day.’

‘You’re looking pretty hot now, though,’ he said in a tone that suggested more than one meaning. She sensed him lean nearer to her shoulder. His breath touched her neck again and she shivered in anticipation of feeling his lips against her skin. ‘Hang on … are you
sweating
?’