And then she said.....

And then she said….

By JBlondin

 

 

“Get your ass out of bed!” Deb yelled as she pulled the sheets off me, completely off the bed in one single jerk.
 

          “We don't have time this morning for any games.” she said turning around and dropping the sheets on the floor then heading into the bathroom. The cold morning air hit me and in a second changed my starting out happy mood to one of damn its cold in here. I had tried to convince her that maybe we could spend just a little more time in bed on this Monday morning but that did not work so well. My ardor as well as everything else disappeared in the blast of cold air.

Getting showered and dress is its usual chaotic mess as it is every day. We have a very small place with a very small bathroom so we are always bumping into each other, sometimes on purpose and sometimes with results that makes us nearly late. We reached the front door at about the same time. Putting my hand out to stop her I said, “Allow me.” And with a flourish, a bow and overdone theatrics I open the door. We both stand there and stare at what use to be our front steps and yard.

          There is nothing there and I mean nothing. No concrete steps down to the concrete walkway; no grass on either side of the narrow yard between the neighbor’s fences and no fences, no street where our car was parked, no car, not a damn thing.
          It's not dark nor light; it just was. Beyond our door was nothing. I turned and looked at Deb, “What the fuck?” I said in a hushed tone. She was still staring wide eyed out the door. Our happy morning has just turned weird.
          “Shut the door!” she said hurriedly, “Shut the damn door!” Pulling at my sleeve she stepped back. I did as she asked talking one last quick glance out at nothing before closing and locking the dead bolt.
          “What the hell is that?” I said indicating the outside with my thumb over my shoulder. “Where’s everything?’’
          Deb turned quickly and ran down the short hall that connected the front of the house to the back then she pulled open the back door and gasped.

“There is nothing out here either.” She said a bit louder than necessary. I am standing right beside her also looking out the door into nothing. Turning sideways I gently I push past her and holding my breath as I stick my head out so that I can see past the edge of the wall. Looking left and then right there is nothing to see. Taking a tentative breath the air is somewhat cool. There’s no air moving. Looking down the side of the house even the flowerbeds are gone. Nothing stops at the house. I can see the house as I look but where the house ends nothing starts.

          “OK let’s go upstairs and see what’s outside the windows. Maybe this is just along the ground level and down here we can’t see above it.” I suggest. Turning we nearly run up the carpeted stairs and turn right into our bedroom. We both stop at the shaded window, standing stock-still. Neither of us wanting to pull up the blinds and see what’s out there. Slowly I reach out and grasp the cords pulling up the shade. The same nothing is outside the window. Looking down I see the edge of the windowsill but nothing beyond that.
          Then it blinks, the nothing blinks and for an instant we both can see everything like normal outside. The grass, the sidewalk, and the car all as it should be. Sunshine is blinding as it blinks through the window replacing the uniform white for an instant. Everything outside is like a snapshot and then it’s gone again, nothing is back.
          Both Deb and I step back with an intake of breath. Deb grabs me and scoots behind me wrapping her arms around my middle bury her face in my back. I can feel her voice better than I hear her.
          “What?” I say gently removing her hands from my middle and turning around. She grabs me again and buries her face in my chest.
          “What the hell is going on?” is her muffled question. “I have no idea.” I reply looking over my shoulder towards the still uncovered window at nothing that is still there.

“This is like something out of some weird movie.” I tell her as I kiss her head. “Let’s go back down.” Taking her hand I lead us back down to the living room.

 

Back in the living room I'm staring out the window at nothing and Debbie is sitting on the couch a blanket pulled up to her chin her knees drawn up. She is watching me as I pace back and forth.

          “We have seen two blinks now and each time there is something a bit different did you notice that?” I ask. Saying nothing but shaking her head no she looks to the window again. Moving back to the window I point outside.
          “Each time that I saw the blink I have a feeling that there is something different but …..” The nothing blinks again and there is the sidewalk and the grass and the car, then nothing.
          “Deb I got it, did you see that?” Spinning around I ask again, “Did you?” She has a confused look on her face, as she says, “No I was looking at you and then the blink. It happens so fast that I did not get a chance to look out this time. What did you see, what was different?”

“The car …. the car was different. The driver’s door was open and I was sitting in the driver’s seat leaning out to grab the handle as if I was going to close it.” I turn back toward Deb and in the reflection of the mirror over the couch I see the blink again. This time I was standing beside the car and Deb was seated in the driver’s seat.

The blinks are happening about every minute or so. There’re like a moment in time frozen on film and then projected on nothing outside of the house for us to see, projected on the nothing that is the outside.

“Debbie” I say as I move to the side of the living room window not taking my eyes off the outside. “I am going to watch from here. You go to the back and look out the kitchen window. When the blink comes just look, don’t try to see anything or fixate on anything, and just take in the whole picture.” As I turn to look at her nothing blinks again but this time I miss it. I am not in position to see out the window or in the mirror’s reflection.

“Damn it I missed it.” As I look back to the window I hear Deb get up off the couch and move to the rear of the house. “Did you see anything?” I ask her. She shakes her head no.

“Are you ready?” I shout out not looking anywhere but the window at nothing there. “I’m ready,” she says. 

We wait. What's going on here I’m thinking. Shifting from one foot to the other I don’t dare take my eyes off the window for fear of missing another blink.

For the next fifteen minutes we watch and each time the nothing blinks we tell each other what we see and each time what each of us sees is the same. After the third blink that we saw together Deb grabbed the shopping list off the refrigerator and started taking notes. I don’t know why I did not think of that, nine blinks later Deb comes back into the living room to stand beside me at the window.

“Every time there is a blink it is the same here as well as the back of the house” she says consulting her notes. “Every blink shows the same scene with a slight variation. You, me and the car are in each. The differences seem to be where we are in each one. Let’s see” she says laying her notes on the window ledge. Blink

“What was in that one?” she asks sliding her notes to one side and getting a clean sheet of grocery list page.

Rubbing my eyes on the back of my knuckles I report. “Everything this time was the same as it has been except something odd. OK let me back up…” I start again, “I was in the driver’s seat, you were the passenger, doors closed. I was holding the wheel like I was driving. The sidewalk and grass was replaced with a different sidewalk, one that ran alongside the car…… shit, we were driving this time not sitting.” Closing my eyes I’m trying to review the scene.

“OK the car looked the same but the back ground was blurred…wait a second… got it.. We were moving so everything behind the car was a blur. Sidewalk ran parallel with the car this time instead of the one out front that goes from the front door to the car park.”

“What else?” she prompts. “Close your eyes again and look at everything. We’ve got about forty seconds before the next one.” I close my eyes and start at the beginning looking for something different, something significant slowly going through each picture as it was presented. She is really getting into this now.

“Nothing honey, I got nothing else.” I say with a sigh, shaking my head. Going over her notes again Deb starts reading off the blinks as she's recorded them.

“They started off with just the car sitting at the end of the sidewalk. That was all the same but the difference was where we were in each blink. Each time we were in a different place or doing something different.” She stops and stares out the window waiting.

Blink.

 We both started talking at once. Glancing over to her she is bent over her notes furiously writing on the next page. Without looking up she starts telling me what she saw.

“This is what I saw. First the car was moving again as you said it was. Next thing is that I was driving and you were the passenger. I also saw that the headlights were on……”

“OH FUCK” I shout interrupting her. “Lights… the brake lights were on in the one before, the goddamn brake lights were on! Shit I missed that..” Turning from the window to quickly look at Debbie, she was smiling and adding a note to the previous page.

“Alright what else?” she says pencil hovering over the page. “In which one, this one or the last one?” “This one” she says her pencil moving back over the new page.

“Tell me what you saw that I may have missed.” She says.

“I saw you driving and I saw the headlights. I didn’t think about the brake lights until you mentioned the headlights.” I say. “I was in the passenger seat as you said but I was leaning forward with my head turned to you, mouth open like I was saying something out loud.” Looking back out the window I go over the picture in my mind’s eye. “You were driving, I was saying something to you, and headlights were on, brake lights off. Ah….Nothing else different.”

“Whatcha got?” I ask. She tells me that she has the same information I gave her, she has nothing else to add. We both turn back to the window. After a few moments I quietly tell her what I have been thinking.

“Deb, honey, I am going to go open the door. I want to be able to look at a wider picture. I am going to lean our like I did in the beginning, just to see what I can see. OK?” I can’t look at her. I don’t want to see the look on her face.

There is a tone of fear as she says, “Are you sure that is a good idea?” Glancing in her direction the fear in her voice is reflected all over her face.

“I did it before without a problem and maybe I will be able to see something that we can’t see from here.” Looking back to the window, “I won’t go until after the next…” nothing blinks.

 This time we see the car and the street but this time I am again driving. This time Deb has both hands on the dashboard arms straight out as if she is bracing. I am leaning to the left with both hands high on the steering wheel. The front tires are somewhat obscured but something but neither of us can tell what it is.

Deb quickly writes down what we see as I move to the door. Gripping the knob in my right hand with my left hand palm down on the face of the door, I slowly turn the knob, and when it clicks I pull it open a little at a time. My right pulling and the left pushing back as if one hand was attempting to keep the other from opening the door; when it is about half way open I look towards my lovely wife wink and pull the door open the rest of the way.

It is the same as it was before. Nothing stops at the edge of the threshold. I reach out my hand slowly and move past the edge of the door frame into nothing. I can still see my hand although the nothing grips it like water nothing tightly between my fingers. I cannot feel anything. The sensation is as if I had reached out at any other time in my life, there is no feeling of nothing.

Looking back towards Deb I smile shaking my head. Waving my hand around there’s no sensations, no feeling of air moving across my skin, there is… well….nothing.

“I don’t feel anything,” I say withdrawing my hand. Placing my hands on both sides of the door and leaning forward I slowly push my head out. Taking a tentative breath I draw in air. Without pulling back I report. “I can breathe just fine except there is not smell, no taste to the air. It’s air but that’s it. How much time we got left ya think?” “Probably just a few seconds” she replied. No sooner than she spoke then nothing blinked again.

I didn’t get to see much because I blinked at the same time. I got a fleeting image but couldn’t make out what anything was, nothing was back and I missed the blink.

“I missed it” I say to her, “What did you see?” I can hear her writing as she speaks.

“The car again, I was driving. I couldn’t see you but somehow I know you were in there. I know why we could not see the tires last time.”

Leaning back in both hands still on the door frame and look at her for a moment I ask,

“Why?” then I lean back out. “Smoke…. blue smoke. I think that the front tires were locked, the brakes I mean. I think that we were trying to stop, hard.”

“Trying to stop? I say over my shoulder not taking my eyes off nothing. I am looking to the left side of the house, out into nothing. Left is the direction that the car seems to be heading in the blinks. I am hoping that by looking left I will be able to see what is in front of the car.

“You watch” Deb says, “I am going to go through my notes, there seems to be a pattern here or at least if feels like there is. I think that we’re missing something.”

Watching left and trying very hard not to blink I wait. The blink comes and goes like before and as before the after images linger. It seems that I’m getting better at recalling what I see. I can mentally walk through the blink and get details that at first I couldn’t get.

“What did you see?” Deb asks.

“Well firstly there is nothing in front of us or the car for that matter. It seems that what we see is just around the car. Directly ahead there is nothing just like behind it. It seems that the only background that we can see is directly behind the car as we look at it as well as this side. Anything on the passengers’ side close to the car is the only other thing in the picture so to speak.” Closing my eyes I go through the blink narrating aloud to Deb.

“This time I was driving. I could see you but not much of you. I was kind of leaning forward but it looked awkward.

“What does that mean, awkward?” Deb interrupted me.

“The position that I was in did not seem natural. Wait a minute. I am looking at the car again. The front of the car is down more than the back. Deb you said earlier that you saw smoke from the front tires right?”

“Yeah, one or two blinks ago.” She said.

“OK there was no smoke this time. Who was driving when you noted the smoke?”

“I was” I can hear the rustle of papers as she looks at the notes. “Two blinks ago I was driving and we were stopping and there was smoke from the front tires.” Leaning back into the house enough so that I can see Deb I say without turning my head.

“Honey this time I was driving and I think we were stopping again but the tires weren’t smoking. What do you think is going on?”
 

I can see her in my peripheral vision she is leaning forward looking out the window her legs resting against the bay windows large sill. In front of her are all the shopping list pages laid out in what I assume is the order in which she has written them. She is holding the pad and her pencil ready to write again. The nothing turns to a picture again. We both are looking and we both see what this time is there.

“Oh shit!” I say. I hear Deb’s intake of breath.

“You saw right? You saw what I just saw Deb?”

“If you saw the front of our car caved in and part of another car stuck in it then yes I saw it.” She responds with a hushed voice. “Johnny I think I know what’s going on, I don’t understand it yet but I think I have an idea.”

“What?” I ask. If she has any inkling as to what the hell is going on then I want to know because I sure as hell don’t.

“You watch while I re-read my notes.”

“OK” I say as I step back into the house. Looking over Deb is moving the notes into a line along the edge of the sill. As she reads she is moving some pages up and others down forming two parallel lines from left to right. She is tapping on a page as she reads.

“Alright….” She starts and then stops. Continuing to read she starts again. “You were driving here….. and …..” Moving another page she says, “I was driving here.” Another page moved up and the following page slid into that one’s place. “Ah… wait.” She is not talking to me but to the pages as she works with them. Deb has always loved word puzzles and games. I think that this has become one of her games.

 I look back out the door at nothing and wait. Deb’s muttering has moved to the background of my mind. I am trying to figure what is going on. The morning started out nicely and about normal. Everything we did was about the same as every day with a few exceptions. This all started when I opened the door or maybe before that. The window shade was drawn this morning so nothing could have been outside for a …..”

“Johnny….Johnny!” Deb’s shout brings me back to the awful present.

“Yeah.”

“I have re-read and re-read these notes.” Nothing turns to color and light but just for the second. The images are burnt in my mind. I’m in the driver’s seat again but I am turned towards Deb. The car is not moving and the driver’s door it open. I cannot see my face but I can see the panic look on hers. My right hand is up on her shoulder. “Did you see anything else?” I ask her after relating what I saw. “No” she says scribbling on her note pad, tearing it off and adding it to the top row of notes.

“What are you thinking?” I ask her. “What does your puzzle playing mind tell you is happening?”

“I think,” she says pointing to her notes, “that what we are seeing are glimpse of the future.” I start to interrupt but she holds up her hand, palm out in that old talk to the hand gesture.

“Wait.. let me finish before you ask anything. Each blink that we see are either related to you or to me. We’re together but each image we see follows the one before except it is focused on you or on me every other time, like each blink is the next picture in the story. You then me then you again but each moving along the timeline.”

Picking up a note she points at it. “Here’s an example. In this blink you were driving and we were what looked like we were moving along but stopping. Then when I was driving the wheel was obscured by blue smoke from what we both think was the tires burning from a hard stop.” She picks up another page and shakes it gently.

“Then you and then I am driving. Each time it seems that you are stopping but when we get near the end it’s like I have hit something, a car.” Nothing blinks and although we are talking and we’re also looking. We have become use to the rhythm of nothing’s blinks and we are no longer missing the blinked scenes.

This time Deb is behind the wheel again but in this blink she is plastered against the air bag. I cannot see me in the picture.  There are pieces of metal and steam frozen in midair as the blink returns to nothing. The front end of a red car is crumpled into the front of ours. We cannot see anything back behind the hood of it. Our cars rear wheels are up in the air as the nose is dived downward with the force of the collision.

We are both silent. I can hear Deb breathing heavily as she hurriedly writes on the quickly diminishing pad of paper. I step back into the living room and move to her. She is trying hard not to start crying.

“Oh my God” I whisper to her as I reach out. “I think you might be right. Now all we have to do is to figure out the sequence and ….. and then… and then what?”

She looks towards me with tears in her eyes. I wrap my arms around her as a sob escapes her.

“We’re in a wreck.” She says almost under her breath. “I hit someone.”

“Maybe they hit us honey, maybe it is not your fault.” I say as I try to sooth her. “Maybe it is not what we see.” I hold her and we don’t say anything for a few moments then as one turn towards the window as nothing blinks again.

            “You were driving” is all she says. Looking at the images burnt into my brain I see that she is right. As I review the picture Deb seems to be moving from the passenger’s side to the driver’s side around the front of the car, striding really. I am standing beside the front fender of our car. There is a red car stopped just feet from our front bumper.

            “I got it Johnny; I think I know what’s going on.” She adds the last blinks notes to the long line that now threatens to overrun the windowsill. With a sweeping motion she starts telling me. Pointing down to the left she starts on the top row.

            “In this entire row you are driving and in all of this row I am” pointing to the second row. “As each scene plays out we move further along the line towards that end” again point but this time all the way to the right. “At that point where we are now you have stopped the car but I have not. You have somehow managed to not hit the red car but I plowed into it head on.”

            She stops as we once again shift our focus to nothing but nothing remains. No blink. No pictures for us to see, nothing tells us nothing more. Quietly we stand for a minute, two minutes but nothing remains nothing.

            “Is it over?” I ask. “Deb is it over you think?” I look towards her but she is not answering. She has a faraway looking in her eyes, a look I know very well. She is in deep thought and the rest of the world is now shut out. All I can do at this point is wait for her return. After a few minutes she turns to me.

            “Ok I think what we have been seeing is pictures, mere glimpse of the future or of two futures, yours and mine. I think in one we do something different that changes the outcome, what I don’t know but something.”

            “I see that.” I say “but what do we do with it not to mention why we are getting it.” Stepping back over to the door I start to pull it shut when Deb says, “wait, leave it open.”

            She is back over her notes again picking up one, reading and then putting it back down. She gets to the end and starts again picking up different ones than the first go around.

            “If you are right and I think that you are Debbie what are we supposed to do with it, what are we to do? There’s nothing outside just blank nothing.”

            “Johnny I don’t know but I feel like I should know. Give me a minute.” She continues to scan the notes laid out in front of her. She picks up one and then another stacking them in her left hand. Once she reaches the end she turns and says. “I do not know how or what but I do know that the change happens here. In all the early blinks we are both doing almost exactly the same.” She plucks out one note from the top of the pile.

            “This one is the changing point. It’s when you go to the passenger’s side and I drive, this is where the lines move apart.” 

            “So what do we do with it?” I ask throwing up my hands. Pointing again outside, “there is nothing out there.” I stare at her for what seems like minutes and then it hits me.

            “Deb, this is gonna sound crazy but what if we start over? Everything you said all starts from when I open the door this morning so what if we shut the door, walk up stairs and then come back down? What if I open the door again and see if our world is back or nothing is?”

            We stare at each other for a few seconds and then she nods gripping the wad of notes she moving towards the stairway with me tight on her heels pushing the door closed as we pass. We walk up to the top, peek into the bedroom and out the window to see nothing.

“Ready?” I ask as we turn around.

            “Yeah” she answers and we start down me in the lead just as it was this morning.

 We get to the bottom of the stairs and turn towards the door. Again I hold up my hand and again I pretend that we are on stage. With a sweeping gesture I say, “Allow me” as I open the door.

Nothing is gone and our world is back. We stand there not moving simply afraid to move. Slipping my hand in hers I step out onto the front step of our home with Deb holding tightly to me. Moving down the sidewalk and to the car we are like two timid cats waiting for a sound or something to send us running back into the house.

Everything is normal, the sounds and the smells are as they should be. I touch the car and it feels like the car. Turning to Deb I say, “How about I drive?” releasing her I reach down and open the door sliding in. Deb gets into the other side and we just sit there looking around.

“What do ya think?” I ask her without turning.

“I don’t know but I think we have been given another chance for some reason. For some reason we were shown what would happen in the next little while if I drove today.” We look at each other. “I have no idea why or who but I know we are going to do it right and make it.” She smiles, reaches out, and pats my arm.

“Are you ready?” I ask as I start the car.

“Yes” she says fastening her seatbelt, “Let’s go.”

 And then she said

Blondin
9/15