Time Did Reverse

There’s darkness. The smoky flavour of ash crumples in his mouth, grit, grime, and tears and blood, and he thinks that there is more to this than sensation alone. There’s a soul-weary ache seared into the fibres and fragments of his bones that severs any conscious thoughts from coming into fruition. It feels frustratingly lonely. It’s bitter. It consumes all of him like a great, hungry beast.

He does not know his name. Doesn’t remember.

At that moment, he is weightless. He is nothing and everything all at once, existing and erased, and his mind futilely tries to grapple for the words to describe it all in its entirety. He doesn’t succeed.

He sees nothing but blackness - inky depths, but he’s awake enough to grasp onto the fact that there is also music. There is music out there, somewhere, and it’s beautiful. He longs to weep. The dark, deep cadence of it thrums through the fractured hollowness of his mind. It passes through like a ghost through the inner walls of his defences, the tattered consciousness of his existence. It glides softly through the rush of air in his ears, like a caress held aloft by a breeze. It breaks and burns a bright light against the tremulous, shuddering pathways of his brain, and tears the frayed and fragile nerves apart in aborted ouroboros of motion. 

There’s darkness and then there’s light. Faces that he’s sure he’s never seen before pass by in a flash of colour and smoke. The names they give him drift by his recollection in a lazy, wispish cloud of smoke. They claim that they know him. 

They know him, even as he doesn’t know himself.

They tell him his name is Rob. Robert Cohen. It doesn’t sound familiar to him, even as he grips onto it like a lifeline and turns it over in his mind. It’s unfamiliar. An elderly man sits by his bedside, with clouded brown eyes and the most tremulous of grins, and tells him that he’s a lawyer with three dogs. Young, successful, and a whole other slew of words that he can’t quite grasp onto.

The old man tells him that they’re family - father-and-son, he thinks weakly - and feels inexplicably bad when he can’t reconcile with that fact. A part of him doesn’t trust the old man, because the eyes are guarded and there are secrets lurking behind. His eyes seem to scream that there’s so much more to it. 

They say that he’s a hero.

They don't meet his gaze.

They don’t tell him why he’s even here, or who tore him open like this. 

-_-_-_-_-_-

He’s standing in a large, decadent room. It’s furnished with strange artefacts and classy chairs, but the puzzle pieces mend themselves together, and he doesn’t linger long contemplating the decor of the surroundings. It’s a curious, but oddly perfect fit. There’s a woman standing in front of him, grinning at him with an intimate warmth that sends similar sparks shooting through his spine.

Messy, curly hair swept backwards, a nest of various shades of browns, deep blue eyes and a face that is terrifyingly familiar. He knows this person, has seen the haunted outlines of the same features plastered all over the bathroom mirror when he dared to look in. His mind shivers. Olives, Olivia, Liv. He knows her from somewhere else too, in all over the news just a few days ago, the infamous-

It’s the person he killed.

The words wring itself dry in the hollow of his throat. He stares, dumbstruck in horror, as instinct drives him to take a step back from the smiling spectre. Finally, he - Robert, he is Rob - speaks.

I killed you, he means to say. You’re dead.

What comes out instead is, “You killed them all, didn’t you?” 

The phantom presence of grief and anguish wrought from that statement strangles all the breath in his lungs.

The change is abrupt and a terrible thing to behold. Rage devouring softness, and grim determination overtaking regret. 

In that moment, Rob knows.

There’s a body pressed against his, before he can react, and something sharp buried into the pit of his gut, murmured apologies rasped into his ear. Rushed endearments and apology, and a cruel viciousness that is mockery of past memories. There’s a wetness against the skin of cheeks, a thin flimsy layer that doesn’t feel like blood. 

There’s darkness in her eyes, something that was far worse and scorched the depths of his soul. He looks straight into fever-bright brown, almost cerulean, eyes, at a face that he has seen mature from childhood to adulthood, hand-in-hand with his own. There’s a flash of nearly outwardly colour, the shadows of fangs peeking around the side of a too-wide grin and jagged smile.

Through the pain, Rob wonders if his twin is crying. 

(He knew that he is.)

Rob crumples to the floor with his strings cut, and there’s a suffocating ache in his heart that sufficiently burns away the last vestiges of calm. 

He doesn’t know which of them is more shocked when he reaches and pulls out a gun. He fires until it clicks empty, and his beloved twin is dropped lifeless onto the floor beside him.

-_-_-_-_-_-

There’s a rickety chair in the corner of a warmly decorated room, and there’s a large, shaggy dog sleeping on his feet. Two more appear from nowhere and clamber onto him like a perch. The sunlight catches the pink tongues lolling out with some sort of gleeful grace. They bark and shuffle, but the noises coax out a joyous and relaxed sensation, rather than the threatening kind.

It’s a beautiful place, he thinks absently.

It takes him an embarrassing amount of time to notice Olivia standing amidst the sea of dogs. There’s a stark difference in attire contrasting them, but there’s no doubt that she’s his sister. They share the same face after all. Not so immaculate now, because she’s dressed head to toe in a dark shirt and jeans, surrounded by noisy, jostling dogs. It’s quite a contrast to the meticulous, steely woman in the apartment who stuck a knife in Rob and then consequently died by his hand.

She looks over at Rob and smiles. 

-_-_-_-_-_-

It’s peaceful. 

He’s younger. He’s sitting on the grass, and there are long legs lying parallel to his - growth spurt, he recalls hazily - and the heavy weight of a body pressed against the flat of his chest. Smaller, daintier fingers entwine with his. Above, the sun is overcast high, and the rays tickle pink and yellow the world around them. Beside, the spine of a book digs sharply into the side of his right shoulder. 

Rob, Rob, Rob, she says, complains, when he attempts to tamper down a violent shiver. It must appear as if he’s trying to shift.

Olivia’s face peers down upside-down in his view. The lines around her face are gone, and the seriousness drained away, as if all the shadows had been spilled away into nothingness. She grins at him, silly and wide, and a surge of grief threatens to bash his insides into dust.

Why did you do it, he wants to ask, I would have gladly given the world to you.

He doesn’t say a word, instead merely staring at the serene river ahead of them, wondering why he feels so un-alive.

Pain lodges itself in his chest.

You just had to ask, Liv, he murmurs wordlessly, and turns his head away, ignoring the tremulous pound of his heart against the cage as he struggles to coalesce this person that he knows and loves with the monster that would rather gut him in a heartbeat. 

-_-_-_-_-_-

They’d grown together, small bodies toddling around the expanse of the green gardens of the property, to the adults working in tandem, side-by-side forever just as how they were always meant to be. The distance would never be broached, twin-hearts beating in sync as an invisible, red thread wrapped the two in an ensconced shell. 

She was never cruel, never had been, but there was a wildness to her spirit that left him yearning for his own. Rob had always struggled to keep up, enraptured and consumed by the awe and brilliance of his younger sibling. It had always been just them, and he supposed that a part of him had hoped that it would always be that way. Family was a nice concept, but Older Brother was buried in the gardens so they never really knew him, and Mother and Father were always too sad and stern to be happy.

The world had been theirs to explore and mold, and they’d shaped each in equally destructive and breath-taking ways. 

He’d loved her.

Hadn’t it been enough?

(He’d thought it had, until the first body had turned up, the first funeral. And then, the next, next, next-

...until there was no one in line but him and Liv and father - three ghosts among a sea of graves.)

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Olivia’s laughing.

She looks younger like this, strangely, inexplicably innocent, like a shade of her child-self, and Rob wants to preserve her, to never let this smiling, joyous creature fade from sight- 

There’s a golden wreath of yew and thorns wrapped around his head. It gouges into the hollow sockets of her brother’s eyes, blinding him. Frustration surges in her heart, and she wants him to hear her, understand, because she was doing this for him, for them-

She’s curled upon herself on a couch, trapped in her own skin.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

He traces the unblemished scar on his abdomen, and wonders-

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

He’s awoken to a noisy world of bright lights and colours. The blanket is warm against his skin, and he’s the youngest that he can remember. Two or three years old, maybe, and there’s nothing to worry about except for food and sleep and shelter. He’s not alone, though.

He gurgles cheerfully, and reaches towards the nearest person. His constant, his shadow.

He entwines their small hands together.

“Olivia and Rob.” Their Father whispers in a hushed voice. There are tears in his eyes. “Rob and Olivia.” He repeats, and weeps. 

My name is Rob, he thinks. He looks at the smaller body next to him, his twin.

I can’t let you go. I’m sorry. 



I’ll hold you close. He silently promises himself and the other, the wordless cry ringing fiercely and desperately in the space between them.