Suspended

My machine works. I input a time and I’m taken there, as the time is now, all abandoned set pieces where the actors have since moved on. Everything continues in the present because that’s where the people are. I came here, twenty years in the past, intending to change it—and of course the present by proxy. But I’m still bleeding out, carrying the present’s fatal wound, and now that I’m here I’m content observing the suspended state of my youth. Or maybe I just want to be. Even as I feign acceptance, I’m scanning the room for any useful items or memories.

I run my fingers over the cool linoleum kitchen counter of my first apartment. There should be sirens distantly wailing, children screaming, a couple perpetually arguing, and doors slamming. But it's just my own heavy breaths, recycled TV lines, and maybe the hum of a dying fridge that’s been on life support longer than it was ever alive; so in that sense, the latter not so different from myself. Inside the fridge there’s nothing. Rarely was there ever.

And I liked it that way. Kept me on edge.

I close the door and lean against it for a moment, breath hitching, wound spilling blood that can never coagulate because it doesn’t belong here. My fingers fumble for the device and input a new time, or rather a different time.

My old office, where my hard-ass boss should be roaming, and where my coworkers should be discussing this stupid policy or that by the water cooler, or where I should be deep in my cubicle pretending to work. The first “real” job I ever had. It was the first time I lived outside a neighborhood where gunshots were more frequent than responding sirens, in a city my children would call home and their hometown, save for the eldest who was old enough by then to have formed memories of the old city. But it was good. Good enough. I scroll through old documents on my computer. Half are memos from my boss informing us of policy changes. I grimace and shudder. Maybe half my life has already flowed onto the desk and the counter before that. Hours toiled here, but never wasted, always in pursuit of a better life built an hour at a time usually wrapped up in twelve-hour blocks,

My greatest achievements stemmed from this office, although they never occurred inside the building; the law firm paid well, but criminals seeking to evade arrest paid better over the course of a year. The pettier the crime the more desperate they were—inversely proportional, I guess, is the phrase someone more educated than myself might say, was the relationship between the crime’s severity and the criminal’s concern about getting caught. Unlicensed weed dealers were my favorite clients.

The edges of my vision are darkening. I shake away the peripheral black and grasp onto consciousness while I shift around my chair, angling for a comfortable position that doesn’t exist and never has. It’s relaxing, just sitting for a moment without hot coffee breath invading my space, curdling in my nose.

I practice my breathing exercises; they’re easing the pain, or maybe the end-of-life chemicals flooding my mind are doing that. This is something like peace—something like the first time I’ve gotten to experience it, which unfortunately is merged with the last time I will experience it. The memory of being shot is fading like a reverse polaroid. Sharp wheezing is filling the room devoid of even ambient noise.

  I’m dying. I don’t care.

I’m dying and somehow that just doesn’t bother me, even though I should probably be pleading with God to give me more time—even though I went back in time in search of a cure for this warm wound gushing blood. My bloody fingers wrest themselves from my gut where they have been futilely pressed in a misguided attempt at self-preservation and click the device. Oblong, covered in rubber buttons, it’s really just a remote, or a clicker if you asked my grandmother.

But it doesn’t take me to the correct location. It has taken me to a children’s park occupied by preternaturally clean slides and empty benches and still swings and a crushing silence that could turn coal into diamonds. I lurch forward, backwards, then stumble until I land on a chipped green bench with a half-assed black paint job. All I’m gathering is that the machine is malfunctioning, because nothing is being evoked besides rage. There’s nothing here for me. It wouldn’t have been a suitable rendezvous for clients—not with a middle school a hundred feet away where a so-called resource officer lounges half the day.

It’s an insult from God or Darwin or the universe or some other controlling higher power—a reminder of my insignificance. Them laughing at my misfortune wasn’t enough. No, no. They needed me to see how little an impact I’ve ever had on anything or ever will, how temporary all my achievements ever were. At best I was an ant celebrating a crumb while a Raid can approached from behind. I can’t really blame whoever’s in charge for pulling the rug from under people, though; I’d do the same thing if you handed me the keys to everyone’s respective fates.

I unsteadily stand and explore the area for hidden cash or documents. Again, not an area safe for conducting illicit activities, so nothing turns up. Exactly as expected. My machine is not as perfect as I thought.

  Hot pain flares in my gut. I grimace. I take a deep breath. I press the button again.

And now I can barely move five feet in any direction, and now I must contend with the possibility of perishing in a dive bar—the very dive bar where I met my wife, from who love masquerading as lust produced two children. She was pretty then. Probably still is. I just wouldn’t know. I can’t remember the last time I actually looked her in the eyes. Her green eyes, I think, or maybe they’re hazel, or perhaps blue. They’re a pretty color, I know that. Prettier than I deserved. And though the people are absent, the alcohol is not, and so I pour myself a couple whiskey shots and down them as if they were water in the desert, and I wish I could come up with a more creative metaphor, but dying is a hungry business and doesn’t leave a man’s mental faculties much budget for artistically pleasing strings of words; words are just noise, and noise doesn’t matter when there’s nobody left to hear it—if a tree falls in the woods and there’s nobody there to observe the sonic waves, I’ve decided that’s as good as them never having been produced, and so I can’t be so narcissistic as to think my own words carry any more weight or meaning than nature’s greatest life-giving invention.

Blame the drinks, blame being an old man past his prime, but I think I’m crying. I’m actually scared, aren’t I? All the philosophizing in the world won’t even delay my fate by a single second. I drain one more shot. There’s a warmth about this place. It was where I met my darling Jane after all. Yes, Jane. The woman who gave me two kids.

Two kids, right, right. Braxton and Aurora.

There was a reason I stopped coming here, wasn’t there? It wasn’t just because I met Jane or the kids. No, not at all; I came here for almost a decade afterwards. So why did I stop? Well, no—more like half a decade.

Because I started spending my time somewhere else. And I know where I want it to have been.

The park from my memories. Where I took them both exactly one time.

I stopped drinking because I finally got my first real job. Because I moved us into a nice city. Because criminals wanted to know they were dealing with someone who wouldn’t get sacked for the appearance of impropriety and ostensibly possessed a straight-laced reputation.

I’ve spared my children a single passing thought since I was shot. Nothing I did was for them. I loved making a grand show of it when they were around—when anyone was around.

I earned this bullet. What inkling remains of my mind is telling me that much, backed up by blurry memories of memories. And I told myself I was doing it for the kids, to give them a better life. But I took them to the park once. One time. Twelve-hour days in the office, benders that lasted a week, and so many hours spent aiding the very criminals my own son would love to put away.

Everything I did was for me. I regret having those poor kids, and I regret not telling Braxton especially how proud of him I am. But I am. I’m deeply proud of him for being nothing like me. And for putting men away like me and the ones I helped.

I get it now, too. There’s nobody here because I can only transport myself into my own mind, and from there can only revisit what was important to me. A sort of way for the mind to save resources while trying to save the body from death, only looking through the most relevant experiences. My kids didn’t show up, my wife didn’t show up, and neither did my crimes. I didn’t love them as much as I should have, and now they’ll be free and better off without me. So, I guess in these final moments I do care about them.

I smile and close my eyes. Dying is the best thing I could ever do for them.

___

Braxton Hart waved for his fellow officers to enter the building. His throat constricted. Dad? But behind the sorrow, a burgeoning relief was attempting to fully surface. Mom would be devastated for a while, but it was better this way. He’d had an idea he was up to no good for the past couple years, and had somewhat suspected his father wasn’t a perfect citizen during childhood. He clicked his radio.

“Suspect is incapacitated, potentially deceased. Please send EMTs.”

About the writer: Alejandro Gonzales is a writer with stories in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Carnage House, Trembling with Fear, and elsewhere. He attributes the completion and success of this story and all others to the love of his life, Angie. 

AI image generated by Kelly Wright