A prostitute out looking for business walks up to a well-dressed man in the street.

She approaches the man, hoping to make a sale. She is confident, but the man looks faintly bewildered by her approach, and possibly by her shortage of clothing. He keeps his cool as she asks him if he is looking for any business tonight. It seems he is genuinely not sure what this means. She now shares his look of confusion, and suddenly they are locked. They are Newton’s 3^rd law, two opposing forces, each with no idea of how to interact with the other. A far less significant matter than it would appear, somehow with the very appearance of said significance subconsciously creating significance in itself. She repeats the word "business" in a slightly more emphasised tone, just as an ignorant tourist shouts orders in English at a Mexican worker in the hope that volume of his voice somehow would affect how much sense it made to the unfortunate man. She stares at him, repeating the word two or three times in a blind hope that it would trigger something in his mind. Jessica was good at reading people's facial expressions, and determining the outcome of most social encounters based on these. That was her name, Jessica. Jessica the prostitute, for the purposes of this story. That’s not to say there wasn’t a lot more to her than sleeping with people for money, but at this point in time it seems the only aspect of her life that knowledge of seems necessary.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Where we left off, we had Jessica, the prostitute, and the, well-dressed stranger who seemed to have no clue as to what Jessica’s job entailed, or even what it was. Before she had approached him the man had been simply stood in the street, not looking anxious, or impatient, or looking at his watch as people usually would be in this area of town, but just stood there. Stood, looking at, and doing nothing in particular. Content. He seemed to have no business there, as if he just wanted to stand there, simply for the sake of standing there. As I explained already, Jessica examined people’s manners and expressions, and she could usually tell things like this about a person, but this man was different. He gave off an oblivious, childlike impression, and didn’t fit into his dank, loathsome surroundings of the city’s backstreets. However on the third “business” something changed. His face became relaxed. His eyes alert and knowing. Any context that Jessica hoped to achieve in their interaction was now shattered. The balance had changed. Suddenly he was not the innocent, concerned, out of place man in the street being hassled by a working girl. He was in his element. This was obvious, even by the smallest of facial movements, and it made Jessica nervous. When she had first spoke to him he hadn’t seemed like he had even understood a word she was saying, but at least she was in the driver’s seat. At least she had approached him, and it was him that had wanted nothing to do with her. Now the man had a strange look of self-assurance, as if he knew something that Jessica didn’t. This made her nervous. Suddenly she wanted to walk away, and look for business elsewhere. She wanted to leave this man to stand on his own again, and to go back to whatever he was doing before she made the obvious mistake of interrupting him. Finally he spoke.

“Can you remember when you were twelve years old?”

“What?”

“Twelve years old.”

She stared blankly. She definitely wanted to walk away, but she daren’t even do anything that might be considered rude by him. But then, she thought, she should be rude. She should answer back. She should do anything that might give her the upper hand, as she once had.

“Fuck do you mean? Are you on something?” Perhaps not the wisest of moves, but it was the only defence mechanism she had.

“I am asking you to think back to when you were twelve years old. If you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up.”

Now she understood.

“Ah, I get it. You finally get what I’m talking about, and now you’re going to give me some stupid lecture on what I do for a living, and how it’s immoral, right?”

He stood calmly, and repeated himself slowly.

“I am asking you to think back to when you were twelve years old. If you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up.”

“Look man, I don’t give a shit what you think about who I am and what I do, so you can save it.”

“When you were twelve years old, what did you see yourself doing with your life?”

“This.”

That should shut him up.

“I see we are going to get nowhere like this. Very well, what would you say if I offered you twenty thousand pounds to get out of the business you are in?”

“Twenty thou…”

“Twenty thousand pounds to get out of this stupid business, and get a real job and a real life. That seems like a pretty good deal to me.”

This was stupid. This man wasn’t going to give her twenty grand just to get her to stop her job. This was ridiculous. And who was he to say that she didn’t have a real life? Who was this prick?

“I tell you what I’d do with it you freak. I’d take your money, and buy as much codeine as I could to ease the pain of talking to you. But that’s about the answer you expected isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes it is” his face looked solemn and serious now. “Which is why I am prepared with a backup proposition. What about if I drag you quietly into this alley behind me, put the gun I have concealed in my jacket to your head, and tell you that if you don’t accept that this is a foolish career choice, and leave it immediately, I will silence you, put a bullet in both of your kneecaps, watch you squirm for five minutes, and then put another through your skull?”

Jessica had heard enough. He wasn’t laughing, he wasn’t smiling. She was genuinely scared now. She turned to leave, but heard him calmly say “Don’t do that”. She turned back slightly. “Don’t run, or I will shoot you. You are going to stay here and talk to me; otherwise I will carry out my threats unconditionally.”

Panic.

“You’re Bluffing. You don’t have a gun.”

“Would you like me to prove it? New rule though; once I pull it, it doesn’t go back until there is a bullet somewhere in your body. That is why I would rather keep it away for now. But if you insist.”

“No!” He was playing with her. He was probably going to kill her anyway once he had said what he was going to. Jessica had seen enough movies with a premise similar to this. Movies that begin with that obvious shift in the equilibrium. Complications arise, ensue, and are overcome by the end of the picture. But those movies had structure, predictability. This man was anything but predictable. If anything, this was the beginning of the movie. Jessica was the change in the equilibrium. Or she was the open end, leaving way for a sequel. But this was no movie, this was real. This man could easily kill her and leave her in that alley a week before anyone found her. And it seemed that he had it in him to carry out such an insidious task.

“Very well. Answer my question, and do it honestly.”

“Well, I don’t know. I can’t remember that far back.” There was panic in her voice. Better to play along though, she thought. Just answer the questions for now. She could figure out a way out of this before her time was up. She hoped. “Maybe a vet. I’ve always liked animals.”

“No. Too cliché. Really think back.”

She really thought back.

“The only thing I’ve ever been good at is my writing,” she said, “and this of course.” She made a small polite smile, out of fear more than good manners. He seemed to have noticed this.

“I don’t want you to be scared of me; all I want is an answer. You don’t have to act polite because you think I will kill you if you offend me. Your manners are not the point of this, especially when driven by fear. But then again, I suppose that all manners are driven by fear. We are taught to say “please” and “thank you” and hold doors for people and always act according to society’s standards. While effective in creating a peaceful society, these lessons are always taught in the fear that be will be wrong and be punished if we act at all differently. Therefore, how is it possible to have any manners at all that are not led by fear?” She couldn’t answer. “You may think I am merely rambling, but this could be a valuable step in your rehabilitation.”

“Rehabilitation? What’s that supposed to mean? You’re going to rehabilitate me?” She was confused, and definitely didn’t want any ‘help’ from this psycho. He was delusional, making up philosophical theories about right and wrong, wondering if we had been lied to our whole lives by those higher than us in the food chain. Delusional. And dangerous. Definitely not the kind of man you would like to meet in a dark alley, so to speak. And surely not one that you would walk up to in a quiet backstreet on a dark night… But then again, she did this every night to several strangers, potential killers, rapists, cops. It was bound to happen sooner or later. She was bound to run into a totally deranged and mentally unstable lunatic such as this. A dangerous man who, for whatever reason, would make idle, casual threats into violence. She hadn’t seen any gun, but it was there. She could tell. Also, she didn’t want to risk running or defending herself against the probability that he did have one. Better to stand there and take this mans ‘rehabilitation’ with as straight a face as she could muster, and hope to God that if she managed to take in everything the man had to say to her without pissing him off too much, that he would let her live.

“Yes. Now the first step towards life affirming rehabilitation is to accept that what you are doing right now is wrong. You must get it into your head that this degrading, depressing lifestyle that you have spiralled into is not working for you, and must be stopped.” She didn’t know what to say. Of course it was degrading, being used all night every night by many men, and all for money. But money was important, and she got plenty of it doing what she was doing. The man sighed at her dumbfounded expression, looked around him for a second, and the gestured towards a dark step, where an old homeless man was sitting asleep. “This man,” he said, “is happier than you will ever be in your entire life.” This was obviously supposed to make some kind of impact.

“That homeless guy? Gonna’ have to call bullshit on that I’m afraid.” She raised her eyebrows at him. There was no way that an old homeless man was any happier than her. He was in a worse state than she was. At least she had money, a place to stay, people she knew. And there was no way this idiot could know anyway.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to. What is it that makes you any better off than he is? Because you have money? A home? Friends?” That was uncanny. “That seems to be everyone’s logic, so don’t think it’s just you.”

“Well, it’s right isn’t it? He’s got nothing. How can he be happy?”

“What worries you? What is always on your mind as you do this job?”

“I don’t know. Money, bills. The usual stuff.”

“And what does this man have to worry about? You will get home tonight, and count your earnings for this evening. Then you will use it to pay bills, probably go shopping in the morning, am I right?” She looked very confused now. His tone was raised slightly, and he sounded exasperated. “You will fight to the bitter end for material possessions, selling your body and your soul for a bedside table, or a new car, or a TV with a slightly bigger and brighter screen, or any number of useless, pointless items that you will never actually need, only think you need because you are blinded by media companies that only want one thing. To empty your pockets, and the pockets of everyone around you. This man, right here, has none of that to worry about. He is free from the slavery that these conglomerates put the public into, and he cares so little about the worries of the world, that he is free to enjoy his life for what it is. You don’t own your money, it owns you, and this man is owned by nothing at all. He laughs at your feeble nightly efforts to make that extra bit of cash that you will never have to spend. Now, what did you see yourself doing? Writing?” She had almost forgotten about this question. They were back to her career choices. “What do you write?”

“Well I used to write children’s books,” she explained, “but this job took up too much time.”

“Children’s books? What about?”

“I don’t know, just stuff kids like. Animals and stuff”

“Animals and stuff? I thought you were into this Jessica”

“How do you know my name?” This had startled her.

“You mentioned it,” she hadn’t. “Now tell me what happens in these stories”

“Well there was one, but it never got published, about a lion who makes friends with a zebra.” He told her to go on. “Well, all the other lions keep picking on him because lions are supposed to eat zebras, you know, and in the end he leaves the group of lions because he has more fun with the zebra. It’s supposed to have some hidden meaning about being friends with who you want to and not being a sheep, but it‘s stupid.”

“It most surely isn’t.”

“Why are you being nice? A minute ago you were threatening to shoot me.”

“Jessica, listen to me. If you try to ask a person, no matter who it is, personal questions about their life, no matter what the motives are, you will always have a hard time. When someone thinks you have a gun, you have their complete undivided attention.” She had heard enough. She turned and ran, faster than she could ever remember running before. She looked back once, and saw him still standing there, with a faint smile on his face. When she got back to her apartment she sat on the couch and burst into tears. She wasn’t crying from fear or shock of the man and his threats, she was well past that, and the man hadn’t even seemed so dangerous to her in the end. She was crying, because he had seen something inside of her that even she didn’t know existed. He had found her humanity, and this scared her more than any gun could.

The next day she threw out all of the clothes that she worked in. Burned them, to be exact, as did she burn the money that she had made the night before. It was difficult to do, but she would make no compromise. She had the fire in an old metal bin in her garden, and everything that reminded her of what she had done the past 2 years was destroyed. She was still crying, but they were not tears of sadness, or fear, but of pure emotion. She didn’t fully understand why herself. After everything had been disposed of, she sat down at her kitchen table. She took a deep breath, took a pen and a fresh sheet of paper, and began to write her book.

Equilibrium

Chapter 1

They were somewhere near Winnipeg when it happened. Jack could tell because he heard one of the hostesses over the speakers saying something about Lake Manitoba. He guessed this must be where they just passed over. Or maybe it was Minnedosa? He couldn’t tell, but over the damn crackly speaker that had been plaguing him the whole journey, mixed with the double shots of rum he had inhaled to calm his nerves, he was sure he over the border, even if he couldn’t quite work out where. It was worth a drink though. Jack hated flying, and the rum definitely calmed him down. Stone cold sober a slight knock from the outside of the plane would have sent him on some kind of mad freak-out. He could see himself now, stumbling out of his seat at the sight of the seatbelt light, screaming something about life jackets. The poor stewardesses trying to hold him down as he swung frantically for anyone he saw. There was no stopping a man once he was this deep in a psychological trauma, everything else just made it worse. This is why he would drink. A few shots from old Captain Morgan meant he was at a level of serenity to rival Ghandi, even if he did smell like a brewery. He still hated the flight, but the speaker that seemed to give nothing but vowels and static was annoying him a shit load more. There was no point in being negative, however. Despite the size and speed of the plane he was on it would still be a while before he reached his destination. He looked down at the fold-out table in front of him. He had laid out a brochure, a personal file, and a picture of his wife, carol, and his son, Michael. Carol. The poor girl was safe and sound back at Wyoming, awaiting his return in the huge Victorian house that Jack had lived in since he was a baby. The house was built by his Grandfather, also by the name of Jack, and was passed down to him on his 21^st birthday. Both his grandparents, and his parents had died in that very house, though he was too young to remember any of it. For most this would have been a perfect reason to get as far away from the place as possible, but not for jack. He felt a strange connection to it, a safety that he knew no other house would be able to give him. He had begun to wonder if he had been present for his parents deaths, but something deep inside him told him not to pry. When he finally got the courage and asked the rest of his family they simply exchanged flimsy glances and kept just about silent about the whole thing. The worst part was, they looked more scared than suspicious. He suspected that they knew almost as little as him about what caused their actual deaths. When he was 21 he gained rights to the house, and had lived in it ever since, not changing a thing on the interior.

He looked again at the brochure. And then at his file. “Aulavik National Park” definitely didn’t sound Canadian to Jack. But it just so happened to be “one of the biggest and most successful national parks in the whole north of Canada”. That might have something to do with why it was hosting the great “Apple Hollow Music Festival” this year. Perfect, Jack thought bitterly. A bunch of half pagan wood people singing about hockey and whatever else Canadian, on shitty guitars in the middle of a freezing cold field. But still, a job was a job. His job, of course, was to report this prestigious event. Investigative journalism could take him anywhere in the world, and instead it took him to the coldest end of nowhere for a swarm of Canadian hippies singing to the trees. Could be worse, he thought, he could be back in Mexico. And the lodge his firm had set up for him was very sophisticated, he noticed, as he looked again at the brochure. Living room, bathroom, bedroom, and the room that most captured his attention, the study. There was a picture of the study in the leaflet, and it was beautiful. His firm obviously knew him by now, as the study had a full oak finish on just about everything. It had paintings of streams and waterfalls covering the walls creating a feel of peace and tranquillity, even in the photos. On the centre photo was a huge leather armchair in front of a wide, oak desk. And on the desk, to Jack’s total delight, an antique Remmy typewriter. He hadn’t seen a Remmy in years, and it was just what he needed to cover the festival. The whole room was.

And that’s when it happened. A massive jolt that made his stomach flip up into his chest, and made every hair on his shaking, and already sweating body stand on end. The whole plane had felt to have risen up slightly and then quickly shot back down to its original position. He quickly looked around and saw a couple of passengers behind him with the same expression of angst, and some of clear distaste towards the pilot. One couple were clutching each other’s hands and didn’t seem to realise, and a business-looking man had closed his eyes lightly, and was clinging to the armrests with both hands, muttering something to himself slowly. Jack looked back in front of him, at the brochure, his file, and......the picture of his family was gone. How? Nothing else had moved, but his picture was gone. Strange, it must have just slid off the table. He stretched his neck down to the right to look under his seat, but there was nothing but a lifejacket, which he noted, and a sweet wrapper. A slight wave of panic washed over him. He could never make it three weeks without at least a picture of his family to keep him company. It was a huge downfall of his job that he would have to be away from his family for extended amounts of time, and up until now that picture had been the only thing that comforted him on his trips. But don’t panic, he thought, you’re on an aeroplane, it won’t have gotten far. He stretched down to his right and did a full sweep of the floor under his feet, he then checked his lap, got up, and checked all of his pockets just in case. Nothing. His nerves began to weaken, and he could feel that slab of angst slide a little further down into his stomach. But there was something else. Something at the back of his mind that was nagging at him to go and check it out. The pilot had given no indication of an explanation or an apology about the turbulence. This was slightly aggravating, but more so unnerving. The other thing that he had just noticed was that the sound of the engine was getting quieter. The high pitched buzz backed up by the low rumble of the plane cutting through the air was gradually fading away, as if the engine was dying out. Jack was suddenly dreadfully aware that he was sober. As sober as he had ever been in his life. The warm comfortable feeling that had kept him restrained the whole flight had worn away, and a million thoughts were rushing through his head. Why had the plane jumped like that? Where had his picture gone? Why had the captain not said a word to the passengers about any of it? And why the hell was the plane slowing down? Pure panic shot up Jack’s spine, this was too much for a man afraid of heights, while being suspended by a few pieces of metal at 30 000 feet. “Come on Jack what are you doing?”, but it was too late, he had dragged himself up and out of the safety zone of his seat, and towards the door of the cockpit. But what did he expect to find behind it? A number of horrible and outrageous situations were playing over in his mind, none of which involved the pilot sitting there, telling him not to worry, that they had to slow down because of the turbulence, but everything would be fine. Everything was being taken care of. Everything would be smooth from there on. He would maybe buy another small drink, arrive safely, go to his lodge and get a good night’s sleep. This situation did not occur to Jack once, because a man in his situation could only expect the worst. He swung oven the cockpit door and his heart stopped. Of all of the situations he had imagined, this was at the top of the list, right next to the idea of his dead parents walking towards him holding his childhood dog’s head. He stood there, frozen in terror, staring at the two empty pilot’s seats that casually sat before him. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t make the slightest reason out of any of it, until finally his brain snapped and pulled itself together, as if some unknown factor of his mind was gathering all the rational sanity left in his body and focusing it on solving the problem at hand. No one had left the cockpit, or gone in. There was no other door in the room, and no sign of any struggle. He ran back out of the cockpit, and straight up to the other end of the plane, to where the stewardesses sat. He found them both sat talking behind a curtain, looking slightly nervous, and wearing seatbelts. They obviously had not expected any turbulence either. One of them, the louder one, was blonde and stout, with too much makeup. Obviously trying to compensate for her weight problem by layering on every bit of makeup she could, in the hope that someone would find her more attractive because of it.

“Trish” she was called. Jack had noticed this earlier as he got on the plane, as he had noticed her arrogant, egotistical, relentlessly self publicising nature. Jack hated people like this, as they were the only type of people he could never understand, as much as he tried. In a conversation with someone, Jack always worked at trying to indentify the other person’s traits, social habits, and why they say the things they do. With these people the only answer he could ever come to was attention. He had also noticed her friend, however, and how she was the exact opposite of Trish. This woman was genuine. And she was genuinely gorgeous. She had short, dark hair, shaved even shorter on one side, and the other side was left to fall over the side of her face. Her eyes were a mixed shade of green and brown, and they were perfectly formed and placed on each side of her nose. They were young, happy, and full of life, and had not yet taken the glazed over effect that most people’s did when they reached Jack’s age. In thinking this, he also noticed that she was considerably younger than him, but not young enough for him to feel guilty about noticing her beauty. He was also sure that they had shared a moment at one point when he had first got on the plane, of which he did feel slightly guilty.

She had been struggling with one of the overhead lockers right next to him, and he thought the courteous thing to do would be to stand up and help out. Well, consciously he thought this. His subconscious however could have been switching to the most primitive of instincts, help the beautiful woman in need. He stood up on this impulse, but in what hope? That she would instantly find him irresistible from this simple polite act, and proceed to drag him to the back of the plane and “overpower” him into sex? Well, that would be justified in his mind, despite his wife, and although there was around a one percent chance of that actual scenario, or any other like it, occurring, this was still only his subconscious kicking into gear.

He found that one of the bags had been jammed to the roof of the locker, and pulled it flat, shutting the locker door. As he turned to look at the stewardess he found she was already staring deeply into him, smiling delicately, and he knew that he hadn’t shared a moment like this with anyone he had just met, in quite a while. He felt wanted, and attractive, and young, as no woman this young could ever look at him this way unless she thought these things. She said “thank you” in a voice that was an obvious attempt to sound casual, but still sounded like silk to Jack’s ears. He watched her walk away slowly, as he once again took his seat. All of a sudden, as she got to the front of the plane, he felt as if every eye around him was delving into him, watching him and judging him, as if they all knew he was married. This was what pure guilt felt like. He tried to think of Carol, but that same sexual scenario from before was playing over in his head, each time getting more and more graphic, until he was sure that if he just went and talked to her....

This was when he knew he should think about something else.

But now, as he dragged the curtain to one side, both women just stared at him, alarmed. He obviously looked flustered and terrified.

“Sir, if you could please take a sea.....”

“Where the hell are the pilots?”

A look of confusion and slight panic swept across both their faces.

“The...... sir the pilots are in the cockpit, flying the plane, where they always are.” it suddenly hit him that they both thought he was some kind of madman.

“I’m not crazy! The plane just jumped, and I went to look and they’re not there! Both pilots are gone.”

“Alright, sir” his girl looked him in the eye for a second, and then turned away, “wait here Trish I’ll go and look”. Trish just sat in one place looking stunned, but the other stewardess unbuckled her seatbelt and followed Jack to the other end of the plane. For one stupid, irrelevant moment Jack felt the same intimate connection to the girl as he had felt earlier, but he soon discarded it and tried to focus on the situation at hand. As they walked into the cockpit the girl’s look of angst and unease suddenly turned to pure horror. She looked, mouth slightly open, at the empty seats, then at Jack, then at the seats again. She was taking huge panic breaths, and Jack thought she may be on the verge of hyperventilation. Neither of them said a word until....

“Trish!” she had finally turned her panic into affirmative action, just as jack had done when he first left his seat.

“What’s going on?” demanded one of the passengers. It was the business man. He had cautiously got up and made his way across the plane without them even noticing. Jack could have kicked himself. Why had he not thought of the passengers? He was bad enough panicking on his own, but a plane full of people suddenly noticing that the pilots have disappeared? Things were about to get a whole lot worse.

“Nothing sir! Please stay in your...”

“Jesus Christ!” one of the other passengers could apparently see through the small opening of the cockpit door. Instant uproar. People screaming, shouting, pushing to get a look at the empty cockpit, as if they didn’t believe it, they had to see for themselves. Jack suddenly understood the concept of containment, the reason the military, the police force; the CIA and everyone else in power hated the news networks. The reason they all hated journalists. The very sight of these cockroaches swarming to get a glimpse of the very thing that was about to kill them all, blew every idea he had about his profession straight out of the water. This was exactly what Jack didn’t need, and that must have been the case for Trish and her colleague, as he could faintly hear them shouting at everyone to keep calm, and stay in their seats. Only faintly though. They could speak up, the crowd isn’t that loud. And the engine of the plane had stopped altogether, so there was no noise there. In fact, everything was quietening down. Everything was getting quieter, and his sight was blurring too. Before he fainted, he felt the nose of the plane take a sickening dip, which caused him to black out altogether, and the screams of all the passengers plummeting to their deaths to slowly fade away.

‘Am I dead?’

Jack felt as if he had just woken up, but he had never been asleep. He felt as if instead of opening his eyes, his surroundings had somehow faded into him. But what were these surroundings? Where was he? There was a brilliant light shining from every possible direction. There was no floor, he had no shadow, he was simply suspended on blindingly white air. He couldn’t move, but didn’t really want to. There was a peculiar calm atmosphere around him, and somehow knew that he wasn’t dead, no matter how much his surroundings might suggest it. His first thought was initially heaven, as that seemed the only rational explanation, but this wasn’t heaven. It wasn’t a dream either; it was far too clear and realistic. He was in a secluded place, filled with peace and quiet and serenity, but something wasn’t quite right. Jack felt uneasy. This place wasn’t just secluded. It was empty. He was alone and vulnerable. The place felt dark, sinister. Something definitely wasn’t right. The silence and loneliness was getting to him. Jack suddenly wanted to move. He started moving his head around, and found that he had full function of his body and face, but couldn’t move anywhere because there was nothing under his feet. He turned his head to reveal that he wasn’t actually alone. There was someone else there. A tall, black figure. He couldn’t make it out, and suddenly realised, now that there was something to look at, how blurred his eyesight was. He looked at his hands, which he could barely see, and then quickly looked back up at the figure, not wanting to let it out of his sight for too long. It seemed to be bigger than when he first looked. Or was it closer? Jack suddenly wanted to move. The figure was definitely getting closer to him. He was panicking again. It was like being back on the plane, although that seemed like a distant memory now. The figure got closer and closer, until it overwhelmed him, and enveloped him in darkness.

It was taking him somewhere. Good, Jack thought, anywhere was better than here. The blackness lifted him up and he felt like he was being carried, but he was as light as a feather. He didn’t like it. He was being abducted by something he could barely see.

Jack blinked.

Suddenly he was floating down a long tunnel, with the figure by his side. There was a tremendous sense of speed, but there was no wind. It was the same feeling as being in a car as it takes a steep drop. Or a plane. He didn’t like it. He tried to say “what do you want with me?” but no sound would escape him. This thing was going to kill him. That is, if he wasn’t already dead. But the question remained, where was it taking him now? What was at the end of this darkness? He feared his question would soon be answered, as he could see a tiny speck of light in the distance, growing and growing. It suddenly exploded in a flash of brilliant white that burned into the back of his retina and made him recoil in agony.

And suddenly.

He was home. He was in the kitchen of his house, as clearly as he had been just a few hours before he boarded his doomed flight to Canada. Jack cast his bleary eyes around, and could see that it was around midday. It was bright out, and the sun glistened off the metallic utensils hanging from the rack above the counter. There was one small difference however. Everything looked enormous. He stumbled around a little, before bringing himself to a halt, wondering if his vision would ever clear. He could see the giant kitchen table, and staggered over to it and clung on, with great difficulty. He wondered why it was so tricky to grab the end of the great wooden slab, and looked at his hands. He gasped as he squinted down at his once strong, rough palms, instead he saw white, stubby little fingers. His skin felt soft and fragile. What was going on? And why could he still not see? He was getting scared and frustrated with the whole situation, yet the feeling was overpowered by the tremendous relief of being alive. That is if he was still alive. Where was the black figure? Had it dropped him off here, half his normal height and barely able to see, for no reason at all? Then it hit him. Was this a flashback? Was he reliving his childhood? After all he had lived in this house since he was born. He didn’t think they even existed, but this was a flashback from his past, and he was going to replay some forgotten memory in his mind, like an ultra-realistic dream. He walked over to what he supposed was the kitchen counter, and grabbed hold of one of the drawer handles. It felt cold in his hands compared to the table edge. He wished he could see, so he could make some sense of the situation. He was sure this was his house, this was him as a child, but what memory was he reliving? He hoped to God that it wasn’t one that his mind had repressed. A sickening slab of fear slid down his throat, and lay in the pit of his stomach. This could be it. He couldn’t watch his parents die. He wasn’t ready for it. He wasn’t mentally fit to handle so much grief all in one go. But this was bound to happen. He was bound to have seen it at one point, with the intensity that he had locked the whole incident up, there had to be some break in the tension. There had to be a leak. There was no way a human mind could confine such a distressing memory for too long without it getting out, and destroying them completely. If only he had dealt with the problem sooner. If only he had confronted it head on, instead of letting it fester inside him, letting his demons get stronger and stronger, until they finally broke free, in the form of the black figure that had brought him here. He finally understood all the anthropomorphisms of “demons” as being people’s unfinished business. They were real. His very own demon brought him here, and now it was going to force him to witness his own parents’ untimely demise. He let the force grow stronger and stronger until it took down an entire plane full of people just to get to him. The idea was stomach-churning. It was an absurd notion that he caused the death of over 50 people by not dealing with his own issues, but after everything else that had happened it now seemed highly likely. He brought down that plane, with a part of his subconscious that he had allowed to gestate inside of him for so many years, and turn into something so horrible it had no need of shape or form or figure. It was simply an entity, an idea, pure blackness of thought. It was every impure, sadistic, perverse notion that had ever infected his otherwise unpolluted psyche.

The drawer handle had started to numb his hand, and he suddenly realised just how cold it was. In fact, he was cold all over. Especially his bare feet, which had gone very numb on the tiled kitchen floor. He turned and walked towards the brownish rectangle that he supposed was the door to the living room, which was right next to the kitchen. As he clumsily made his way over the freezing ground he thought back to the house’s history. He looked around and, though he could barely see it, he realised that not a lot had changed since he was a child. The kitchen was still a dazzling white, the countertops were the same shade of brown, and there was still that god-awful draught that came from the back door. Hardly anything had changed since his parents...passed on. It was probably down to the fact that he subconsciously wanted to keep things the same in memory of them, and to preserve the personality and aesthetic of the house so that he would never lose the atmosphere of when they were alive. It was almost haunting, in a way, to go back and realise what little he had absent-mindedly done to the house’s interior. Had he really been that unstable about their demise? Had he not dealt with it the way that he should? Admittedly he had not been able to talk about it to anyone, as he hadn’t even witnessed it, and whenever he asked about it he was told that a tragic accident happened inside the house, and it was all in the past, no need to know the details. It maybe was an unorthodox way to deal with a teenager’s questions about his parents’ death, but coming from the right people, it was damn effective, and definitely shut him up.

Now however, after all those years of worrying that he would never find out, he was worrying that he would find out. Maybe he did witness it. Maybe he was about to relive witnessing it. If only his vision would clear he would look for a calendar, or something to help him find out at what point in time he was in. The fear and sickening novelty of being back in time had worn out now, and he was frustrated by the fact that he didn’t know when he was, which was a strange thought.

Jack reached the door and peered inside, to the best of his ability. As he gazed around the dimly lit room he saw nothing out of the ordinary. The only strange thing was that the living room seemed much brighter than the kitchen, which couldn’t be possible as the curtains were barely open, and the light wasn’t coming from a bulb. It was getting brighter too, and Jack had to squint as the room flashed white once again, just as it had done when he arrived.