n. a moment that seemed innocuous at the time but ended up marking a diversion into a strange new era of your life-set in motion not by a series of jolting epiphanies but by tiny imperceptible differences between one ordinary day and the next, until...
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I blink onto the street with Hazel. Looking around at my surroundings, it looks to be the same street where world war three was taking place.
"Okay... what the hell was that?" I ask Hazel, as we sit on a bench.
"The end of the world, November 25, 1963." Hazel replies.
"'63" I chuckle slightly. "You know, Hazel, I'm no history buff, but I don't recall there being a nuclear holocaust."
"No shit." comments Hazel.
"What about my family? Marah?" I ask, needing to know that they're okay.
"Dead, like everyone else." Hazel says solemnly.
"And, where am I now?" I question.
"Dallas. Same street. Ten days earlier." Hazel answers.
"Plenty of time to restore the timeline." I whisper, sitting down next to Hazel.
"...and save them." Hazel adds.
"Okay." I mumble. "So where do we start?"
"We? You're on your own here pal." Hazel says, looking down sadly. "I'm just here to keep a promise to Agnes."
"Is she...?" I ask, not wanting to say it.
"Dead?" Hazel asks.
"Yeah." I respond
"Cancer." Hazel chuckles. "Took her quick. But we had 20 good years together. I guess forever just wasn't in the cards."
"I'm sorry Hazel." I apologize, not knowing how i'd feel if I lost Marah in a similar way. "What about the commission?"
"I quit those assholes, remember?" He reminds me. "I don't owe 'em the fuzz off my peaches."
I look across the way, and see three tall white guys with guns getting off a bus and walking towards us. "Well then, who the hell are those guys?"
The men start shooting at us. "Run!" says Hazel as he hands me the briefcase, slipping something in my pocket before I blink behind a car across the street. I look around the car to see Hazel, dead, on the bench.
I look down at my briefcase to see the holes in it and the smoke coming out of it. "How many times did I say 'bulletproof briefcases'?" I question to myself.
I blink to a rooftop nearby as the men start shooting at the car I was previously at.
Once I catch my breath, I blink back to the alleyway I originally landed in. I look up at the roof of the building to see a whole bunch of cameras, and a man in the window with a camera as well. I blink inside the building and come across a door.
I knock on the door waiting for it to open, only for the one next to it to open instead.
"What do you want?" asks the man from the window.
"Hi, I'm selling encyclopedias for my youth group. I was curious if..." I lie to the man, getting the door slammed in my face. I blink into the room, promptly scaring the man.
"How'd you do that?" asks the man, now holding a butter knife.
"Don't really have time to explain." I state, looking around at the room.
"You from the Pentagon? Huh?" he questions, moving farther away from me.
"Definitely not." I scoff.
"CIA? FBI. KGB?" the man asks. I notice a pot of coffee on the table in the kitchen.
"Is that fresh?" I ask, blinking towards it and pouring myself a cup. The man screams again, dropping the butter knife. "Hm. This Colombian?"
"It's my own blend." mutters the man.
I walk into his living room, to see boards filled with pictures of strange sightings, aliens, and UFO's. "You ever heard of, uh, Area 51?" I ask, wanting to mess with him a little. "Roswell?"
The man chuckles behind me. "Hot damn! Whoo! See, I always knew we weren't the only ones." The man says, coming closer to me. "See, Eleanor thought my head wasn't screwed on tight, but... but it's all true, yea? UFO's, crop circles..."
"Well, the truth is out there." I sigh out, looking at more of his stuff.
"No, no, no, no, no. The... the truth, it's..." starts the man, walking closer to me. "right here in front of us. Tell me, wh... why is it always an anal probe?"
"Any closer and I'll melt your brain." I threaten, not liking the close proximity of the man.
"He needs a little space. Yes. I'll be over here." the man, walking to the other side of the room.
"All those contraptions on the roof, you built those, right?" I ask, curious as to what he was looking for.
"Oh, yeah, yeah, sure." the man mutters. "Yeah, I've been tracking anomalies in... in the atmosphere. Just waiting."
"Waiting for what?" I question.
"For you." he admits. "For all of you. The first one was in 1958. A young girl, fire red hair fell out of the sky and landed in that back alleyway. Then two years later, the year the Silvertone Omega was released. I was in the middle of a sale when something very.... strange happened, again. So, for the past three years, I've witnessed five energy surges in that alleyway out back. Well six, if you count the one in 1958.
"Same thing every time. A bright blue light, then something appears." the man continues.
"Did you get a good look at any of you?" I ask.
"Yea, the red head, then the second one, and then the big sensitive one." the man states.
"Sensitive?" I question, wondering which one of my siblings he was talk of.
"Yeah, cried a lot." the man explains. "kept coming back to the alley, sat around for hours calling a woman's name, uh... Allison."
"Luther." I whisper.
"Yeah, he... he wasn't the only one." the man says. "Uh, the others came, too, off and on, over the years, looking for each other. Eventually, they... they stopped."
"So, my family is alive." I whisper, looking at the photo of Marah. "Shit. I think I stranded them here. Now listen to me..."
I stalk towards the man, he falls over the couch in fear.
"Elliott. Elliott. My name's... my name's Elliott." Elliott sputters.
"Whatever, all right?" I say rudely. "I got ten days to find them and save the world. Now, I need your help to do that."
"You need...my..." Elliott whispers. He picks himself back up moving towards a table full of papers. "You know what? I, uh... I always thought that this, uh, mugshot looked a lot like arrival number five. And this article talks of arrival number one."
"Diego." I say, looking at the mugshot. I pick up the article and see Marah, in handcuffs being led out of a courthouse. "Marah."
