Killers

My brother died twenty-five years ago—twenty-five years to the day. I wish there was some kind of poetic poignancy I could attribute to this fact, that this seemingly random date holds some cosmic significance beyond my own personal tragedy. But the fact that I’ve arrived at this significant moment in my life precisely one quarter century after this fatal accident seems to be nothing more than coincidence. 

The memory remains visceral in my mind, not as though I have recently experienced it, but if I were constantly experiencing it, an unfortunate skip in a worn out record. A busy city street sidewalk—businessmen talking on large mobile phones with extendable antennas, a line of kindergarten-aged children holding hands wearing the same bright green t-shirt. Crackheads in tattered clothes, asking for change, muttering to themselves. The smell of weed, diesel exhaust, and urine blending into an aroma worthy of a bizarro-world Yankee Candle scent. Cars whooshing around in the background. Brakes squeaking. The occasional blast of an articulated car horn.

My brother was being a real pain in the ass that day. I had been placed in charge of him against my will, and we were making the trek from our uptown hotel to the theater district, both dressed in clothes we didn’t want to wear on our way to see a ballet we did not want to see. My goal was to accomplish this task as quickly as possible, hence my hurried stride. My brother, on the other hand, seemed as though he was trying to run out the clock, like perhaps if we took our time we would arrive impossibly late and miss the performance all together. Walking with him was like walking our dog when he was in the mood to stop and sniff every flower, bush, and tree we passed. Every few paces my brother would lag, and I’d have to yank him by the arm, eliciting a protest in the form of a whine or a fake sob. It was miserable.

We approached the intersection of Atlantic Street and Fifth Avenue where a crowd had gathered, waiting for the light to change. It was a busy time of day—the crowds for the evening musical performances and sporting events were descending upon the city while the nine-to-five workforce went home for the day. My brother and I filed into the group, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with pedestrians of all types wearing suits and hockey jerseys.

The walk sign illuminated, and the crowd in front began to move. As we were about to step forward, commotion erupted to my right. Unable to see beyond those closest to me, I grab my brother’s hand harder, fearful of a kidnapper or murderer who might be slithering through the crowd in search of easy prey.

“That hurts!” he screamed, kicking me. “Let go, you butthole!”

I did let go, but not because he asked—his foot had found the most sensitive part of my shin bone. If my brother possessed any talents, it was kicking people in the shins. He knew how to do it so that it would hurt like hell but not leave a bruise.

As I lifted the afflicted leg, rubbing the injury while cursing his rotten name, the clamor from my right increased in volume. Everyone had turned in the direction of the noise, but all I was focused on right now was the burning pain in my shin. Maybe he had left a mark this time that I could use as evidence to—

“Get the fuck out of my way!”

Before I can face the man’s voice, the weight of what had to have been a hundred bodies barrels into my right side. Already in a precarious position while standing on one foot, I easily topple over into my brother. The kid was only seven years old and couldn’t have weighed more than fifty pounds, while I had just recently hit my growth spurt, so when I fell into him I easily knocked him from the safe confines of the sidewalk into the busy city street.

The sound of the port authority bus crushing my brother’s body is what sticks in my mind most effectively. A wet crunching sound, like stepping on a soggy branch and breaking it, multiplied exponentially. I knew he was dead before I looked up, because that sound wasn’t an idle piece of wood, but a human being with bone and muscle and blood and organs. The last glimpse I have of my brother while it was even remotely possible that he was still alive was of him being pulled under the hundred-pound bus tire, changing the status of his body from human being to human sludge, pasted into the patchy asphalt, squeezing bodily fluids from every orifice—a grotesque, obscene version of a Chia Pet.

And as the screams enveloped me, as I reached out for what remained of my brother, as I was pulled back by another pedestrian who saved me from being squashed by the bus’s rear tire, I confronted two harsh truths: 1) That my brother was dead, and 2) That I had failed in my responsibility to take care of him, that this—despite what everyone would tell me in the coming months—was my fault. The match of guilt was lit somewhere deep inside my mind, igniting a fire that would never go out. Tears blurred my vision as I inhaled the coppery tang of my brother’s blood and emotionally lost control. 

So, like I said—visceral. But it’s okay. Yes, that’s right. I said it’s okay.

Because for the last twenty-five years, I’ve been building a time machine.

And today, I’m going to use it.

I know what you’re wondering: How does it work? Because this isn’t a Tom Clancy novel, I’m not going to write out the unabridged technical manual, but let’s just say I cracked the quantum code. After a quarter century of painstaking work, I can now predict the motion of sub particles within the atomic structure. And if you can predict that motion, you can control that motion. And if you can control the motion, you can control time, because that’s all time is—one thing changing into something else.

My time machine is basically a vacuum sealed capsule made of a beryllium alloy—look, it doesn’t matter. Hit a couple buttons on the computer, go into the capsule, close the door, and voila, all of the atoms in the capsule (including those that make up your body) are sent to the time and place of your choosing. It’s easy, painless, and you don’t even have to take your clothes off. Its only drawback is that the trip is one way, so you better be sure.

And I am sure.

I just need to let go. That’s what every therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, medical doctor, clergyman, police officer, social worker, friend and family member has told me. Just let go, like my little brother being crushed by a bus is a trapeze swing, and all I need to do is release the tension in my hands and have faith that someone else will be out there in the ether to catch me. Like it’s easy. Let go, move on, honor your brother’s memory. Heaven gained another angel. Everything happens for a reason.

The problem with the aforementioned list of humans is that none of them went through what I went through. They are simply reading the script that is to be read to someone in my situation, but their advice is not based on experience. It’s like this—if someone came to me seeking advice on how to build your own particle accelerator at home, I could give that advice because I’ve done that. How to open a bag of chips without launching spud detritus all over the living room like a Mr. Potato Head murder scene? Seek advice elsewhere.

So I haven’t been able to let go, despite the advice of those closest to me. I know what you’re thinking—others who have endured tragedy have been able to let go, to move on and live normal lives.

Well bully for them, but I’m not them. If you want my honest opinion, I think they’re fakers. They haven’t let go of anything, they have become experts at pretending that they have, because they need to get back to overcharging their credit cards and watching Friends reruns and playing pickleball and whatever else it is that normal people do.

For twenty-five years, I have not been able to let go.

And now I don’t have to.

I know what you’re thinking—did my drive to build a time machine come from my inability to let go? Or was I unable to let go because I believed I had the ability to fix what had been broken?

A moot question, because today I will travel back twenty-five years into the past and prevent my brother from being killed.

The darkness of the time capsule gives way to light in the blink of an eye, and suddenly I am back in the city where it happened. No one is using wireless headphones, driving a Tesla, or holding an iPhone. I have successfully traveled back into the past.

But something is wrong.

My watch is set to 5:07 p.m., the time that the machine was set to. An electronic sign across the street from me states the time as being 5:14 p.m. The time machine, like any other piece of technology, needs to be told the value of time; i.e., what a second is, what a minute is, et cetera. It also needs a starting point. In preparing my complex calculations to input the time into my time machine, I was apparently seven minutes off. I am several city blocks away and have only minutes to reach the scene of the accident. 

(In my defense, with the age of the universe being estimated at 14 billion years old, being off by seven minutes is pretty damn good.)

I sprint up Fifth Avenue, running much faster than I have in some time. A cramp forms in my upper left abdomen, but I push through the pain, grunting and groaning like a woman inducing labor as I find another gear and go faster. Passersby stare at me like I’m a psychotic nutbag, but my concern for them is nil. This is my only shot. I must make this work.

With two blocks to go, I see a tight circle forming under an awning of an apartment building. The closer I get, the more obvious it is that some emergency is taking place, and I instinctively slow down to see what has happened.

“Excuse me, sir,” an old woman says while approaching me. Her face is red and wrinkly, brow furrowed by worry, eyes moist with tears. “Do you know CPR?”

“I do,” I respond reflexively.

“My friend—I think she’s had a heart attack!”

She gestures down to the lumpy body on the ground. There lies another old woman dressed in a mint green sweatsuit, a short wig of gray-blue hair separated from her barren scalp like a lid removed from a jar of peanut butter. Even from a few feet away I can tell she isn’t breathing, and her face is unnaturally white, as though no blood has been pumped north of her neck for several seconds.

Deep down, I want to help. The woman who has reached out is beside herself, fraught with worry for her friend’s well-being. And I know how she feels, which brings me back to the whole reason I am here to begin with, which wasn’t to save octogenerians from dropping dead along Fifth Avenue. Even if I did perform CPR on this woman, and even if I was able to revitalize her, the brain has trouble recovering from cardiac arrest if the heart is inactive longer than thirty seconds. Beyond that, you’re at serious risk to wake up as a vegetable. 

Besides, heart disease is typically a self-induced disorder. This woman could have been a smoker. Maybe her diet sucked. Maybe she’s spent the last seventy years of her life as a massive, wound-up ball of stress. If I save her, and she wakes up still remembering her full name, she’s just going to return to her crappy lifestyle, and six months later she’ll be in the same place.

She’s had her shot at life.

My brother, on the other hand…

“I’m sorry,” I tell the old woman. “I can’t help you.

Sprinting up Fifth Avenue, now less than two blocks to go, I tell myself doing both was an impossibility. That I’m here for my brother, my family, the person who actually was my responsibility twenty-five years ago. That I’ve spent my entire life since the accident working and toiling for this moment, and I must maintain my focus on the task at hand. That I had broken something, and today was all about repairing.

Less than a block to go, and I spot the crowd ahead—I’ve fantasized over this image, the cluster of people on this specific street corner waiting for the light to change. They are utterly ignorant to what is about to happen, and if all goes as planned, that will not change.

Half a block to go and the pedestrians on the corner begin to cross the street. If I’m going to do this, saving my brother will culminate in a photo finish. Despite the fact that my legs, stomach, and chest are all screaming at me, I run faster and breach the crowd.

I’m blocked from my destination by business suits and hockey jerseys. Men yelling into gigantic cell phones and women in expensive pantsuits. I try to weasel my way through, but city pedestrians are well-trained to look in any direction other than at someone who is trying to do what I’m trying to do.

But I won’t let this stop me. Ignoring decorum, I push through the crowd, using my arms to create a space between a woman who reeks of cheap drugstore perfume and a man wearing a corduroy suit that struggles to contain his ample mass. Both cry out in protest as I push forward like one of those boats that breaks up ice chunks in the Arctic Sea. People are pissed, but when they see what I’m about to do, they’ll understand. I continue pushing and shoving, and I’m making expedient progress until a burly guy in a faded hockey sweater pushes me back, and a good old-fashioned mêlée forms right here on the corner of Atlantic Street and Fifth Avenue.

“Get the fuck out of my way!”

I’m shoved from behind with about twice as much force as I had been inflicting upon those in front of me. I domino into the burly guy who loses his balance and falls in the direction of the street.

A few seconds later, I hear it—soggy branches breaking underfoot. The thump of a hundred pound tire crushing a fifty pound child. The mystic hiss of a soul escaping its body.

The crowd cries out around me, and I replay that familiar sentence: “Get the fuck out of my way!”

I know what you’re thinking. It was me that said it.

But that’s not exactly true.

I turn slowly, head twisting clockwise. Chaos has exploded around me, but at this point, the only thing I’m thinking is the exact same thing I was thinking the last time: Who pushed me? Who knocked me into my brother, knocking him into the street?

There is a man standing behind me who looks strangely familiar—my height, build, eye color, facial structure. His hair is grayer but mostly dark like mine, and he appears to be somewhere between twenty and thirty years older than I am. His clothing is strange, and he wears some type of transparent watch on his wrist that I’ve never seen before. He stands up, as do I, and we contemplate each other, locking into intense eye contact.

Of all the physical qualities I recognize, spotting his despair, his desperation, his lust for control—it’s like looking into a mirror. Like me, he is out of breath as though he’s just run several city blocks, and like me he does not appear surprised about what has happened mere feet from us.

“No,” I say quietly, a hush beneath the dim of chaos around us, but he hears me and says,

“Yes. We are—”

“Killers.”