1979

I couldn't feel my hands in the slightest, my fingers were utterly frozen numb. Why didnt I bring gloves? I am an Idiot, that's why. My legs were moments away from giving up entirely. They'd been asleep for the past twenty minutes. But still, I crouched. The sagebrush made me itch and the cold fog froze my skin, but I couldn't take my eyes off of her. She was maybe ten yards away, standing completely still over the rotting corpse of a magnificent elk. She just stood there, breathing so heavily I could match her breaths from where I hid.

I had seen the elk die. It was only a couple weeks ago and, I can't lie, I had been waiting for her. She never did show, but the elk had stumbled into the clearing and I watched with terrified curiosity as it tripped drunkenly around, its eyes went black, and it lay down and died. No blood, no sign of a fight, just like it had blacked out.

But now, as the maggots and mushrooms began to take claim to the body, you could see the pool of liquifying organs under the dark ribcage. The sight was enough to make someone puke, but Gynni stood there like a statue over the corpse. Even when her hair whipped violently against her face when the wind picked up, she did not move. So neither did I. I didnt need to. Just being near her, or as near as I thought I would ever get, was enough to keep me going.

And then, Her breath picked up. She kneeled next to the rotting elk and, to my horror, dipped her hands into its stomach. The pool of blood and decomposing organs swallowed her hands like fingerpaints. When she pulled them out she lay them on the little fur left on the chest and hips of the creature, then she put her ear down as if listening for a heartbeat. I was so petrified I could have fainted. Her breathing only intensified and her breath began to whistle, the wind blew harder, blowing her long skirt around her legs and soaking up elk blood. As the wind picked up and the whistling got unbearably loud, something incredible happened. The elk raised, first only a little bit, then above Gynnis's head. She started laughing, this deep uncontrollable laugh full of pure joy, and hearing it I couldn't help but smile. The wind brought pine needles up and they circled the elk like a wreath, the fog cleared just around her and the animal, now probably seven feet in the air, as she jumped up and down in glee. 

I'm sure I sound crazy. But she brought that decaying carcass to life. Right before my eyes, this rotten lifeless being became a beautiful elk again and it ran off into the fog. That's when she saw me. I guess without realizing it, I had stood up in amazement during the chaos. Gynni was spinning in a circle cheering to herself, I was standing there like an idiot staring at the spot where the elk was and she immediately froze.

“Eric.” She spoke, looking so scared it hurt me to look her in the eyes. I felt so terrible I couldn't move. She had to walk to me. I can still feel how frantic my nerves were as she got closer to me, this lovely mix of infatuation and terror. 

“Eric,”

She knew my name!

“How much of that did you see?”

We became inseparable after that. I can't remember exactly how I convinced her not to kill me for stalking her the way I was. But she didnt, and I somehow convinced her to be my girlfriend. She didnt like that label, “girlfriend and boyfriend”. she preferred to just be called “stars”. When she would introduce me she would say, “This is my star, Eric.” I was alright with it.       We tried not to speak of that day with the Elk, or anything related to it. I was dying to know what happened, but I was dying for her to love me more.

On October sixteenth, I had a huge test in my poetry III class. My teacher, Mr. Ives, was an intellectual arse and hated me for reasons unbeknownst, so naturally, I was nervous. Gynni kissed me goodbye outside the school and left, I would have given anything for her to have stayed.

I passed the test, I know I did, but that god damned Ives kept me after class to lecture me about being distracted or whatever bullshit he could taunt me about. That's when Gynni was brought up. I immediately felt a rock in my stomach. Gynni was homeschooled and had only moved to Oregon a year prior, no one knew her. There was especially no reason why Mr. Ives would.

“You know Eric, I have a newborn at home, so I know how important close relationships with people you love are, but I'm worried this girl might be taking up too much of your time.” He practically hissed with this smug grin on his face. He was only maybe ten years older than I, but he acted like he knew the wisdom of the world.

“She isn't.” Was all I could respond without getting violent. Then I walked out.

On my walk home I was so filled with anger and I wasn't even sure why. This was the first time anyone had ever brought up Gynni or even known her name, it made me

uncomfortable. I was trying to calm down, kicking rocks and ripping up leaves, when I heard a noise. Babbling. I heard a little baby babbling and spitting. This might not have been weird if it weren't for where I was walking. There was this strip that went behind some shops on Main Street, just garbage cans and stray cats. Beyond the strip was the woods, nothing else. It was probably 6 o’clock but already nearly dark out. So I followed the noise despite my gut and there it was, hidden behind a small dumpster, a wooden bassinet. 

“What the hell,” I whispered to myself as I lifted a lace blanket draped over the bassinet. A little baby girl swaddled in pink satin stared up at me in awe. There was dirt on her face and the swaddle but besides that, she seemed pretty content.

That's when I heard footsteps, two pairs coming from opposite directions. I was terrified it might be the guy who’d taken this kid and he was armed or something so I squeezed between the dumpster and an abandoned stove, taking the little baby girl with me. As the footsteps approached I could hear a man mumbling to himself, probably some hitchhiker I thought. The other pair were lighter. Then, when the man was nearly to my dumpster, he yelled out.

“Gynni?”

Both footsteps stopped abruptly, then the lighter ones took off running and the man soon followed. As he ran passed the dumpster I heard him mumble,

“How'd that witch get here?”

My brain couldn't slow down. There were so many questions flying around my mind it made me sweat. Who was this man and how would he know Gynni? Why was Gynni even in this alley? No one but me ever comes back here! Why did she run? All the while I'm holding this baby I found behind a dumpster and I'm freaking out and I just take off running. I'm still holding the kid as tightly as possible but I ran and ran and ran until my thoughts quit whirring and the baby started crying and somehow the sound soothes me. Then, before I knew it, I was in the clearing where I had first touched Gynni. Somehow I managed to get the baby to stop crying and I sat there with her in the dark field and looked up at the stars. 

I heard Gynni panting from deep in the woods, she was running toward the clearing. And for whatever reason, I began to cry. As she approached I turned away so she wouldn't see my tears.

“Eric?” She yelled panicked, “Eric oh my god is that you?” She was crying out to me, she practically collapsed behind me and held me as she cried. “Sweetheart, are you crying?” She noticed after a minute, she pulled herself up to look at me and instead saw the baby girl. You could feel her heart stop beating.

“Why do you have a baby, Eric?” She said, I could feel her trying to calm down.

“Do you know anything about why she was behind a dumpster?”

“You found this baby behind a dumpster?” She replied, unconvincingly.

“Please don’t act dumb,” I uttered, looking up into her green eyes. Tears were streaming down her face. I have never seen someone look so sorrowful. “I heard someone chase after you in the alley,”

“I was,” She choked back some tears. She looked so beautiful in the moonlight. “I was going to tell you-”

“Gynniiii,” A man's voice rang from the woods.

Gynni froze. 

“I'm so sorry,” I saw her mouth to me before planting a kiss on the top of my head. She grabbed the baby girl, now fast asleep, from my arms, and stood up to face the man's voice. That's when he emerged from the trees.

“Hello Ransom,” She called, her voice was strong but tears still flowed down her cheeks.

“Don't you know it's disrespectful to call your parents by their first names?”

I couldn't believe it. It took me a second to place him, but there in the trees was my poetry teacher. He looked different though, his eyes had taken on an animalistic quality.

“You look very beautiful my dear. What year is this look?” Ransom Ives quizzed.

“1979,” She responded, falsely defiant.

The year was 1960.

“You’ve grown into quite the young woman,”

“Please shut up,” Gynni quaked, her lip trembling as she looked down at the baby in her hands. 

“Gynni what were you going to tell me,” I asked apprehensively. Apparently, Ransom hadn't seen me and he jumped up with fright when I spoke, yelling some nonsense. This nonsense cast a large boulder to begin rolling from the hill behind us toward me at a rapid pace. I screamed and tried to run, but was frozen stuck.

“You demon!” Gynni cried out and threw her hand up. The boulder stopped rolling. Everything went quiet.

“You're giving me a lot of spoilers as to who you turn into, Belle,” Ransom giggled.

“It's not going to matter, I'm stopping this. You aren't going to turn me into a monster too.” She exclaimed, pressing the baby girl to her chest. 

When I was younger, I was really good at riddles. So good in fact, I won a few little competitions at my school. So, to avoid breaking the obviously tense situation that was for whatever reason occurring between my girlfriend and poetry teacher, I turned it into a riddle. 

She said something about her style being from 1979. Why would she know what the style in 1979 is going to be like? Why was she holding that baby like that? How on earth could Mr. Ives be her father, he was only in his late 20s. Gynni herself was 19. And what in the hell happened with that boulder?

 I guess I had been thinking about it for longer than I thought because when I zoned in, Gynni and Ransome were screaming. I couldn't decipher exact sentences, just a few words here and there. “Going back”, “That Boy”. The argument got so intense I felt I could see their words rocketing through the sky. That's when I heard the word “kill”, Gynni's eyes went wide, she threw her hand up again, and Ransom quit talking. He quit doing anything actually. He froze, solid.

Gynni turned to me, panic and anger and sorrow screaming from behind her eyes. She ran up and embraced me, she was so cold. The baby between our chests was burning hot. For a short moment, I felt whole. I was holding my girl and this baby that wasn't ours. In the midst of this chaos, we were together. It was so lovely, and then.

“I've been lying to you.”

Shit.

“I am so sorry Eric. There is so much to explain but in a second he is going to come out of this trance and I am going to have to go back.”

“What- Gynni, go back where? What in the living hell is going on?” I was almost laughing, I thought this was all too insane to be anything real. She had to be making this a bigger deal than it was and soon we were going to go home and watch a movie.

“1979.”

“What is your thing with that year, Gin?”

“That's where I have to go back to. I'm from 1979, Eric. This me is.” She spun around with a little flourish, “This me is from the now. From 1960.” She nodded down to the baby in her arms. Then flashed a nervous little smile at me.

I felt sick. I thought it was a joke, I genuinely thought this was all some big joke. I looked up at Gynni and it was like she was reading my mind. She could not stop crying, her cheeks were nearly maroon with wear from the tears. She had to sink to the ground a little bit, gasping for air in between sobs. I stood looking down at her hair as it fell around the baby. I went blank. I didnt know how to comfort her.

“I've been here for the past six months trying,” She was muttering her words between sobs, it was hard to make out, “I've been trying to rescue myself from him!” She bawled, pointing at Ransom across the field. “He did a good job at hiding her, or me, or whatever! But I finally have her and I have to move me away from here or I'm going to grow up to be a monster like him,” She was practically yelling her words she was crying so hard. She looked like a drowning victim. It broke me. “Eric I'm so sorry, you were never a part of the plan. It was so selfish for me to get involved. I just-” She gasped for air, grabbing at my jeans with her free hand, “I couldn't help it.”

I reached down and stroked her head staring blankly across the field at Ransom Ives as tears flowed and landed in her hair. 

Take a time you felt completely alone. Now multiply it by a million. That's how I felt. 

I'm sorry Your Honor, what did you ask me about the night Ransom Ives went missing? Oh yes, I do believe it did snow.