I Didn't Mean to Kill Her

I walk through the passageway of... a house. 

I blink. Where am I?

Who am I?

I look down, doing a quick assessment. 

Sex: Male. 

Height: Maybe about six feet?

I seemed to be a holding a bag. I open it. Groceries. Cheese, a couple of tomatoes, some lettuce... 

I lean to the doorway in front of me, and shiver as I feel the cold metal. 

Then I touch it. 

The cold attacks me again. 

Wait. What just happened?

I pull my hand back, and try again. A less severe cold tingles my fingers before I touch it again. And then I feel it once more. 

What?

I open and enter this time, and look at the room around me. A sofa to my right, table for two to my left. A kitchen beyond, comprising of a fridge, stove seated on a granite platform and a microwave. I remember this room. I sieve through my memories.

“Hey, how are you?” a concerned voice asks. 

“I love you,” I say to her.

A brief kiss, a hug. 

“Thank you,” she says, her voice teasing. I lean against the wall in mock gratitude, my back scraping the peeling layers. “The blue’s showing again,” I say. She smiles. “We’ll take care of it.”

I snap back. The cold from the cheese I was holding in my hand is now too much to bear, and I throw it back in, warming my freezing palm in my jacket. I place the groceries on the platform, and close the door behind me. I walk to the wall I had leaned on and graze my fingers against the smooth surface. The blue in my ‘memory’.

What the hell?

Just then, my brain chooses to remember something else, and I am pulled down. 

“8th September 2025,” a man begins. “To the happiest day of your life.”

My thoughts pause, like static crackling, and start up again.

“I do,” I say, my lips perking up, pure happiness filling me.

“I-” she begins. But she never finishes it. An arrow strikes from behind, piercing her through the chest as blood spatters onto me, droplets covering my torso. Then it spurts, a stream jumping onto my face as I leave her hand and jump out of the way. Before I burst out crying. I stand up, walking in a daze, not realising as I reach the end of the platform and I fall-

-back on the bed. Thousands of thoughts battle inside my mind, none of them making any sense. 

I look at the calendar in my phone.

29th December... 2019. 

What?

I ask myself for the past, but all I have to offer is the future. 

The years go by in my memories, but they begin from 2020.

‘Happy New Year!’ someone shouts. ‘Welcome to 2020!’

A firework goes off, and I flinch instinctively. “4th of July, 2021,” my friend records. “Jake, here,” he says, pointing to me. “Is scared of fireworks.” He lets out a deep throaty chuckle.

Jake. I am Jake.

My wife, my future wife, smiles. “Happy second Anniversary! It’s been an amazing year with you! I love you, Jake.”

Blood. Her collapsing towards me, but I don’t even stand. I move away. So much blood.

I get off the bed, stumbling to the door as the bell rings. 

The man from the 4th of July ‘memory’ stands there.

“Help!” I say. “Please... help.”

“Jake?” he says, concern in his eyes. “What happened?”

“Help,” I beg. The world sways around me, I want to fall, I want to relax- and then his hands are under my back, strong, warm, and-

My eyes surrender to the unrelenting yet comforting darkness

“Jake? Jake?” the man prods my chest, a worry in his eyes.

“The... the arrow...” my words slur, falling over each other haphazardly. I reach my hands out, to hold them still, help them stand, yet I am too weak to.

“Jake?” he says, but I am drifting back into the dark.

My eyes blink, trying to focus onto something.

“He mentioned the arrow,” my... friend says. “That’s all he said to me. ‘Help,’ and ‘the arrow’.”

A voice, that I felt I might have known replies, but I cannot place it. Yet, it makes me feel comforted. Almost at home.

“What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I called you.” His voice seems almost... respectful.

Their faces blink into focus, and I see a man, about fifty years in age, I estimate, sitting on a chair at the table. My friend sits adjacent. Seeing my eyes open, the man looks over at me, and his brows furrow. I notice some emotion in his eyes, but I cannot gauge exactly what.

“Jake?” he asks, his voice gentle. “How are you?”

“I don’t know,” I say truthfully. “Confused.”

“Do you know me?” he asks.

“No, I don’t.”

He looks over the table and meets my friend’s gaze, the concern intensifying in their eyes.

“What do you remember?”

“Is this 2019?” I ask.

“Yes...” he says.

“Then all I ‘remember’ is the future.”

His eyes narrow, then expand wide. 

“Jake, do you remember the Academy?”

Confusion whirls through my mind as I try to fixate on a memory, swirling in water as it rises, trying to hold on to an anchor, any anchor, but I fail to. 

“Nothing comes to mind,” I say.

They frown.

“Jake,” he says softly, and I look at him.

“Hmm?”

“Hercules,” he whispers.

Something clicks in my mind. It feels as though a dam has broken, and thoughts and feelings and emotions and memories... so many memories burst through, and I hold my head with my hands, pressing in as it threatens to explode. Handling this onslaught is too much for it.

My friend smiles at me. “How’s the Academy treating you?”

I raise my hands, a spiral of fire ensconcing it. “Amazingly.”

“Pull your arms back, and shoot!” the man shouts, and I struggle, my arrow reaching the mark a split second after the others’. “Jake...” he says, and I wince. “Next time, be here an hour early. 4 am.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, my voice small.

“Pull back and let go, Jake,” the same voice says, but gently. “For your life. Because you are shooting to save it.”

I look to him. “Is it really going to happen? Is someone going to try to kill me?”

“It will,” he says back. “But this arrow will ensure it doesn’t happen. Fire.”

I let go, and it zips through the air, disappearing.

“It’ll be there when you need it, Jake,” he says, and I smile. I will live.

I wake up shouting. “I shot that arrow? I did?”

“Who did you see it hit?” the man asks me.

A sob wrecks me. “My... my love...”

Dozens of emotions go through me, and I see it course through their eyes as well.

“I killed her...” I sob. “I killed my wife... I...”

He walks over to me as I bundle into his embrace, tears flowing out of me. 

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” my voice breaks. “I didn’t.”

“I didn’t.”

“I didn’t.”

I didn’t.

I didn’t...