Time Over and Again, Chapter 2

To read the previous chapter, click here.

Len and Sasha stared down the deserted, broken-down streets of the once-somewhat-nice neighborhood. They walked down the sidewalk, Sasha trying to chew the clearly dead grass. Len picked her up and pulled her away from the grass, but she just ran back over to it.

“Do not eat that,” Len said.

“Why not?”

“It is not good for you.”

“How do you know?”

“It… just is not. Leave it.”

Sasha barked at him. “Don’t tell me what to do, you don’t own me.”

“Please do not, then?”

She growled. “Fine.”

They continued walking around for a little while.

“What the heck happened to this place?” Sasha asked.

“I do not know,” Len said. “The last time I was here was… Well, I do not really remember. I think… maybe… something happened.”

“That’s a lot of information at once, I don’t know if I can take it.”

They continued down the sidewalk for a bit until; eventually, Len came to a stop in front of one of the houses. The door was boarded shut and the porch railings were falling apart. A broken bike lay in the yard, along with a spare tire for a car. In the driveway sat a charred black car.

“I should have come sooner.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“I knew enough. I should have been here a month ago.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Do you want to go inside?” Sasha asked.

“I am not sure.”

“How long has it been?”

“I am not sure.”

“Ok, well, this is pointless. Let’s get going—”

“No, no,” Len interrupted. “We should go inside, you are right.”

“I didn’t say we should do anything.”

“Well… we should, anyway.”

Len walked onto the porch, but with the boarded-up door, he knew he needed to find a different way inside. He looked in the window just to the right of the door, but it was covered in soot. He backtracked to the yard, then checked next to the porch steps, finding a small fake rock with a key underneath. He tossed it to smash the window.

“Good idea, I guess.” Sasha said.

Len picked Sasha up and carefully stepped through the broken window, avoiding any shards of glass.

“Do not step there, you will cut your feet.” Len told Sasha as he set her down.

“I know what glass does.”

Len nodded before turning to see more of the living room. It was covered in a thin layer of soot; however, the couch was completely clean; a nice red fabric, with only a few patched holes along the sides. He took a seat. He heard a window smashing and jumped up, only to see the window he’d just smashed was now boarded up.

All of the windows were, now, and the room grew much darker. A single, dim red light shined on in the hallway upstairs. He could hear Sasha barking from up there.

“Sasha, are you ok?” he asked timidly.

There was no answer for a couple of seconds, until he heard a yelp. He sprinted up the stairs, into the red-lit hallway. He could feel something pulling him into the room at the far end of the hall; a pitch-dark doorway like an endless void. He crept slowly forward, the damaged wood creaking beneath his feet.

A pair of hands grabbed onto him and pulled him forward. He tried to claw at the walls on either side to keep from being pulled toward the door, but it was no use. Just as he reached the door, he spread his arms and legs out, pushing on the doorframe against the force pulling him toward the darkness. Suddenly, he was dragged into the bathroom just to the left of the door, and the pull stopped.

“What was that!? What’s going on!?” Len yelled fearfully.

“Calm down, Len, jeez,” a familiar woman’s voice came from behind him. “You’re fine.”

Len turned to face the voice and jumped back when he saw his sister sitting with her legs crossed on the table.

“Was it quick?”

“I don’t know, Len. It happened in the middle of the night.”

“Oh…”

They sat in utter silence for a few moments. No birds seemed to be chirping outside, but Len wished they would. He turned to his sister and tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“Y’know, Leah asked about you about a month back,” she said.

“Oh, god, she did?”

“How New York is, whether you’re safe, some stuff like that. I told her you’d visit soon. ‘How’s our middle child?’ she said,” Lisa chuckled.

“I should have…”

“Oh my god,” Len gasped. “What the heck are you doing here?”

“Well, I’m kinda stuck here.” She said, a bit bored.

“Right…”

Len stood up. The bathroom looked much more pristine than the rest of the house, like it had recently been cleaned. It was unspoiled. Len heard a screech come from the dark doorway just outside the bathroom.

“What the heck is going on here?” He asked.

“Beats me.”

“How do I get—oh, god. Where’s Sasha?”

“Sasha? You mean—”

“The dog! Have you seen her?”

His sister nodded. “Oh, her. Yeah, I saw her running around Mom’s old room.”

Len nodded, and then tried to leave, but she pulled him back.

“Whoa there, mister,” she said. “Hold on. It’s not that easy. We gotta block that door so you don’t get pulled in there.”

“Well, how do we do that?”

She smirked. She stood up, then floated a bit to the door before ripping it straight off of its hinges.

“Here, take the other end,” she said.

He grabbed the other side of the door while she quickly backed up, using the horizontally-placed door as a shield. Rapidly being sucked into the doorway, the two of them moved fast to block it with the broken door.

“Hurry up, get that dog and run downstairs,” she said.

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry about it, I can get away fine, it doesn’t try to pull me.”

“She did miss you,” Lisa said.

“Why are you telling me that?”

“I… don’t know.”

“Ugh,” Len leaned back against the swinging bench.

Len ran down the hall and took a sharp left just before the stairs. In his mother’s room was an empty queen-sized bed, sheets all over the place, completely unkempt. The windows were entirely boarded shut, almost no light making it inside.

“Sasha, are you in here? We need to go,” he said.

He heard whining from under the bed. Checking, he saw Sasha hiding and licking her paw.

“Hey, what happened?” He asked.

She walked forward a bit, stumbling a tad on her front-left paw. When he checked, he saw that she had cut it.

“I told you not to do that,” he said as he picked her up.

“Shut up,” she said back softly as she buried her face into his arms.

Len ran downstairs quickly.

“Come on, let’s go!” He yelled back to his sister.

When he got downstairs, he set Sasha on the couch. Len’s sister floated down next to her and gave her a small smile.

“We need to get out of here,” Len said.

“I told you I can’t do that,” his sister answered.

“Oh…”

“Yeah.”

Len shifted uncomfortably. “Leah, I am sorry I never—”

“Leah?”

“Huh?”

“Len,” she said angrily. She chuckled dryly a bit before continuing. “Jesus, Len. She’s been dead for two years! You never call, and now you can’t even say my name? Really?”

“Wh—what are you… why are you trapped here, then?”

Lisa swooped forward, grabbing Len by the throat and dragging him upstairs. Frantically, he tried to grab onto the railing to get free, but he could not get a grip fast enough. She flew him straight to the doorway, dangling him inside as it tried to suck him in.

“Why, Len!? Why do you never, ever seem to call, huh? Was I not good enough a sister for you? Did I not matter as much as Leah to you!?”

“No, no! That’s not it!” Len struggled to speak through the hand clenched on his throat.

“THEN WHAT!?”

“I don’t—I don’t know,” he said.

“I deserve better, Len! I’m your sister, too!”

Len tried reaching out to grab onto the doorframe, but he was unable to reach far enough. Lisa grabbed onto his arm and drove her nails through his skin. He briefly cried out in pain, but he quickly grabbed hold of her arm with his other arm and pulled himself forward, closer to being face-to-face with her.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry I never call. I should. And I will. I promise, Lisa.”

The pulling force finally stopped, and Lisa released her grip on him, dropping him to the floor. He sat up and looked over the room. He spotted his old posters, his slightly broken twin bed, and his old box of comic books. Standing up, he turned to Lisa again.

“How can I try to make things right?” He asked.

She scoffed. “Do you really think I’m the one you should be apologizing to?”

“Mom?”

“Who else?”

He grabbed his arm uncomfortably, unsure what to say. Just then, he felt a small flake drift onto his face. He looked up and noticed the ceiling was slowly beginning to disintegrate, gradually decomposing into bits of ash and dust.

“Where is she?” Len asked.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Lisa said.

She shoved him downward and through the floor, slamming with a deep, wind-knocking THUD on the living room floor nearby Sasha. Sasha began barking at him and biting his shirt collar.

“We need to go, Len!” Sasha said.

Len slowly stood up and picked up Sasha before climbing through the now-decomposed boards that had previously covered the doorway. As he walked back out onto the sidewalk, he turned back to watch as his childhood home crumbled into dust, quickly blowing away in the wind.

He turned to see the entire neighborhood was now slowly decomposing into ash and starting to drift away. He further tore off a small portion of his sleeve that Lisa had ripped and used it to tie a makeshift bandage on Sasha’s paw.

“Do you think you can walk?” He asked her.

“Could you just carry me for now?” She asked back.

Len nodded as he began to walk off toward the sun.

Click here to read Time Over and Again, Chapter 3: absence