the butterfly effect ; prolouge

Caleb

It’s all over now.

Vira’s gone, and there’s no way to save her. She fell into the darkness, tearing herself apart. Maybe it was always there, but I was just too much of a coward to do anything. I was too scared to try and help her.

I’ve lost her so many times, but this time, there’s really no getting her back.

My first thoughts are to destroy everything I can get my hands on. We’re staying at a crappy apartment these days – wait. No. Not we. Not any fucking more. Now it’s just me.

Here alone, all by myself.

Shit V, why’d you have to leave me by myself?

First thing to go is the lamp. It feels so good to hear the loud shatter of the broken glass when it makes contact with the wall. The broken pieces all sparkle off the ground, taunting me. They don’t deserve to look so beautiful.

I feel the need to destroy more, more, everything. Just like how I destroyed her.

A few minutes later, and the table is tipped over. A few (now shattered) glasses are part of the shimmering mess on the floor, and my hands are covered in long and deep scratches that are slowly dripping a bright and sickening red. The sight of them brings back memories so fast from the deep hidden crevices of my mind that they are almost painful. My eyes sting and cloud over, my head pounding like a drum.

Mason at the bar, harsh and drunk words he had said about Vira and Connor, anger, roughly shoving him back, the deadly crack his head made when it hit against the wall, and blood all everywhere.

Vira’s face when he told her Mason was dead.

If only I could change it, go back, stop from Mason being killed. Make Vira tell me the truth about Connor from the beginning. Not become who I am today, the feeling less murderer. Everything would be better then. Things wouldn’t be crap like they are now.

Vira wouldn’t be dead.

I leave all the glass on the floor, making my way back to the bedroom. But all I can think about is that she’s gone. Seeing all her stuff, just the lack of her presence here, reminding me every single moment that she’s gone, it’s all too much for me right now.

I end up just ripping her clothes out of the closet, throwing them all to the floor. I hate them. I hate it all.

I hate everything but her.

There’s a box all the way in the back of the closet. It’s just an old brown cardboard box. It always came with us whenever we moved places, but Vira never opened it up.

I had no clue what was inside. Vira never told me, or let me even look at it. It was the one thing she never shared with me.

 So I guess it was time to find out.

—-

Pictures, newspaper clippings, notes, and random objects from Connor’s childhood. So many memories packed away for safe keeping.

That’s what was inside the mysterious cardboard box.

I shuffle through them slowly, looking at each and every picture, trying to remember if I was even there, and see if I can tell what there from. There’s a lot of Connor when he was little.  There has to be one from about every single birthday of his. There’s some of him playing outside and on the first day of school, and of course too many pictures of him with Keira.

There’s a few of Vira too, and some from her and Mason’s wedding. There next to each other in that classic wedding pose, him in a dark suit, and her wearing a white dress. She looks nothing like the Vira I knew, but she’s still beautiful.

 I think I’m in about two of these pictures out of all of them. There’s nothing from high school in here.

I reached down to the bottom of the box, pulling out a long newspaper strip that was very sloppily ripped out of the original newspaper. I remember it almost perfectly. The picture of me and mason at top, the little article announcing his death, and also telling the world about me being a suspect in his murder case.

It had been everywhere.

It talks about Vira and Connor, the little boy who was left behind because of the moment of violence. It also attempts to detail out the night, as if the person actually was there to even know what had happened. I wonder who told the reporter all this, because it was definitely not me or V.

She wouldn’t have done something like that to me.

I drop the newspaper slip on the floor dejectedly, just staring at the picture. I wished, more than anything else in the world, to just take the whole entire night back. To go back and change everything. To somehow get Vira back.

And almost instantly, the room started shaking. It was like an earthquake or anything, nothing falling off the walls or moving around, but more like a vibration, barely even noticeable, but slowly moving through the whole room. I felt lightheaded, and couldn’t pull myself off the ground to go and see what the hell was going on. I was stuck to the floor in a shaking room, staring at the newspaper article. The last thing I saw was me and mason, smiling.

And then, everything went black.

—-

Have you ever fainted? You know that feeling, where all of the suddenly everything goes black and you’re unconscious but you don’t actually feel it until you wake up and it hits you?

It was like that.

Except instead of waking up on the floor of the apartment like I expected, still in the middle of the vibrating room, I’m… outside. And I’m standing. Where the hell am i?

Leaning against some building as the blurriness leaves my eyes, I look around. What the fuck? It looks familiar, some back road that I was walking. I had been here before. I’d been here many times before, but it wasn’t possible.

I was in Illinois.

How the hell was I in Illinois? I haven’t been here in years. I decide to start walking just to try and figure this out. I had a feeling of deja vu, and just let my feet take me wherever they were going.

This had to be some weird dream. Yeah, there was an earthquake or something, and I fainted, and now I’m dreaming. Some crazy ass dream because everything’s that happened has left me stressed out and my subconscious is telling me something.  

Yeah, that didn’t sound crazy.

And that’s when it hit me. Actually it’s when I saw the yellow house right in front of me. I knew what this was. It was the night. This was the night that had changed everything in my life. I would walk up those steps, Vira wouldn’t be home yet and Connor would be at daycare or something. Mason would be there, hug me, looking older and definitely more tired. And I would invite him out for the night.

And the rest was history.

Yes, this was definitely my subconscious or something. There’s no way I could have gone back or anything, I mean, that’s fucking impossible.

But why did it feel so real?

—-

It’s a dream.

And dreams got to play out.

At least I can change this one.

Instead of going in, I climb into the back yard, waiting on the porch out of sight until later, when Vira’s car pulls in. She gets out of the car, and she looks a bit younger, more like high school Vira. She takes Connor by the hand, leading him into the house.

I wait.

I hear a slight murmur in the house, then the tv being turned on. Dinner being made. Polite conversations, nothing that I can really make out from my hiding spot. Lion king playing while Vira and Mason go upstairs. Then fighting. Silence.

I wait.

The rest of the night is silence. Mason goes to sleep or something, retreating farther into the house. Connor is probably asleep, considering it’s so late. This was about the time anyway. In another world, another dimension, Drunken me had just killed his own brother. Drunken me was clambering up those steps, hands covered in blood and evidence.

But not here. Here and now I was just watching, not disturbing their not so perfect life.

It’s time.

I climb of the porch, heading in the direction of the path. No one dies tonight.

Back in the house, there’s one light left on. I glance back, and Vira’s there, and it’s all too vivid and clear. For a moment I don’t even care if she can see me. For a moment all I want to do is run back and hold her and have her back.

Instead, I turn around, and continue down the path.

It is done.