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1
I PARKED THE CAR and walked up the long concrete path to Helena’s garden apartment. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t understand how or why Helena was so eager to get together. She hadn’t been that forward when we had met in the real timeline. Even though my secret knowledge helped me score major points in our earlier conversation, it just didn’t make any sense that she would be calling a stranger to come over in the middle of the night.
I knocked on her apartment door. No answer. I knocked again and still heard only silence. I started to think that I had the wrong apartment. I tested the doorknob and to my surprise found that it turned in my hand. I slowly opened the door and entered. The lights in the apartment were off, but the moonlight filtering through the sliding glass door at the rear of the room gave me enough visibility to maneuver. I saw a side table next to the couch and noticed a photo of Helena’s parents. I had the right place.
I walked past the couch and felt the hair on my arms stand on end. In my world Helena and I had brought her sofa into our new home. It was this same piece of furniture that I had been sitting on when my first travel took place. I stared at the couch for a while, my mind suddenly overwhelmed by everything that had happened.
“Daniel?” Helena’s voice called. “I’m in the bedroom, come on in.”
I didn’t know whether it was the tone of her voice or the fact that she was inviting a man she had just met to her bedroom in the dark, but I knew immediately that something was very wrong. My pulse raced as I walked into Helena’s room.
“Are you okay? I don’t—” I stopped suddenly. In the dim light from outside, I could see the silhouette of two people, the taller one standing behind the other.
“Hello, Daniel,” said the taller shape. I recognized my own voice immediately. I stepped closer. There could be no doubt that it was a Daniel doppelgänger standing behind Helena, with his left arm secure across her chest. A large knife gleamed in his right hand.
“Who are you?” I asked. “Are you...are you from this timeline?”
Helena’s eyes bulged with fright and confusion. I didn’t know what the other Daniel had told her but she was clearly still absorbing the whole scene. The man holding her smiled. His face was scruffy and his hair was long and tangled.
“You don’t remember me?” he asked. “I’m hurt. I really thought we’d shared a moment out at Dirks that one night.”
Everything clicked into place. This wasn’t the version of me who belonged in the world we now inhabited. This was the Daniel I had met the last time I had screwed up the universe. This was the man whose life I had ruined by beating Jeff Berger to death in front of him...and I had told him about our ability to travel. Fucking told him all about it!
“Dan. Come on, man. Let’s sit down and talk. Let Helena go.”
“You mean your wife?” he laughed. “Nah, I don’t think so.”
I didn’t see any reaction on Helena’s face to the mention that she and I were married. She didn’t believe any of this. Probably thought we were twin brothers and at least one of us was totally insane. Her expression continued to only register complete fear.
How had he known about her? About our marriage? Suddenly I remembered. I had told him that too. What else had I confided in this twisted reflection of myself?
“It wasn’t enough for you to have your one good life was it?” He asked, no sign of the phony street accent remaining in his voice. “You destroyed mine and raced off to go back to yours. But you couldn’t stop yourself. You had to get involved again. You had to bring pretty little Suzy into your madness.”
I knew I hadn’t mentioned Suzy—I hadn’t met her when he and I talked. “How do you know about that?” I asked. I hoped my voice was cool, calm and collected. I didn’t know how to get Helena free other than the hope that I could talk my broken version down.
“I followed you, you arrogant ass.” He grinned again. “I knew you’d go back to 1993 to fix things. Took some practice but I eventually landed in ’91. Then I just had to wait for you. I knew the second that you arrived. It came to me in a dream.” He looked off for a minute, as if he was remembering the experience. “Of course, you came a little bit early and set up a sweet little summer fantasy for yourself.”
“You waited for two years?” My astonishment briefly cut through my fright. “How?”
“I’m a fucking survivor, Danny boy. You made me that way. And listen, I took your advice, boss man. Took all that time to clean myself up. Got better. But, hey, I’m two years older than you now so I guess I’m the one in charge, bitch.” He paused for effect, drawing out the terrible silence. “And now you know how it feels to be powerless, Dan. Just like the rest of us when you ran around and tweaked our lives. You built yourself your happy new life with good ol’ Suze, a life you didn’t fucking deserve, but I put an end to that didn’t I...Justin?”
“You...you were the one who called the camp? The one who called Suzy?” I felt dizzy. I felt scared. My cavalier attitude and confidence that I could escape from any trap had fallen apart. I’d created an enemy who could follow me anywhere...any when.
“Didn’t like when I burst your little bubble, did you?” he said. “But the damage was already done. Whatever you did back then screwed things up again and when I tried to go home...well, here I am, in a world that belongs to a Daniel Wells who puts even your shiny fucking life to shame.”
Oh, no, I thought. “Dan, where’s the version of us who belongs here?”
“Dead and gone, Danny boy. And now his life is mine... once I clean up a few loose ends, that is.”
I had never been so scared in my life. I tried to think of anything that could save Helena. Anything that could save me. “You can’t just kill people!” I said. “I know you better than anyone. You couldn’t just kill people.”
“Maybe,” he said, “but you, her, everyone in this world...you aren’t real people. Just pretend. Like a really fucking good video game. I’m the only one who’s real.”
I wasn’t sure if he believed it or not. There was something frantic about him. Something more than just craziness in his eyes. On some level, despite the dark path he had passed down, he was scared, trying to survive...trying to keep it together. I thought I had a chance if I kept working on him. “Look, you don’t have to clean up anything,” I said, my voice taking on an undesirable shakiness. “His life is yours. Just like you said. Helena’s got her own life. Just let her go. I’ll go back to the past, fix things and return to my own life. You can stay here.”
“‘You can stay here,’” he parroted. “Well, thank you very much, asshole. But you forget one thing. You and I both have no idea if this world will continue to exist once you fix things...assuming you are capable of fixing anything without shitting the bed again. The only way I can be sure that this world keeps on spinning with me in it is to make sure I’m the only Daniel Wells left standing.”
“But...why Helena? Let her go!” I yelled.
He smiled again. “Why Helena? Well, she was just the bait to get you here.” He took a deep breath, and his face took on the look I had seen when he used his street speak in the other universe. He was psyching himself up to play a role that he felt he had to play. “I’m sorry Dan,” he said with what seemed like genuine sadness. “You know how it goes...no witnesses.”
I saw his right arm begin to move and I rushed forward. I wasn’t nearly fast enough. He slit Helena’s throat with one quick movement and pushed her into me. I stumbled back against the bed, feeling her warm blood spill all over me. Tears clouding my eyes, I ran at him. I think he had expected no retaliation after what he had just done. Unprepared, he fell backward and the knife tumbled from his hand. I tried to pull myself on top of him, just as I had done to Jeff Berger when all this had started. The other Daniel anticipated this, and scrambled in a crab walk away from me. He regained his footing and ran from the apartment. I chased him from the building but he was surprisingly fast. When I reached the doorway and looked outside, he was gone. Vanished. Could he have gone into the past? I would never have been able to travel under conditions like those.
I returned to Helena. There was nothing I could do. No time to say anything. She was dead. Knowing that she wasn’t technically my Helena didn’t help. She was the same wonderful person and she had been murdered because of me. I pulled her into my chest, her blood soaking through my clothes, and I screamed.