Continuity

A bit lengthy. To a special someone, who shares the month of October.

It was a bleary October evening, chilly and damp, as October evenings tended to be. Despite the rainy condition, the street below a particular apartment, 9 Cabbot Place, was crowded. Kids, adults, the elderly, the very old; some were clad in dark colored suits, bound for work. The majority of these pedestrians were on their way home. All of them were busy living their lives - static and random - to notice a man peering from the window.

For the resident of 9 Cabbot Place, apartment 2A, a mister Leonard Crowley, today was the day he was going to die. 

It had been a long time coming, of course, but he was no longer afraid of his impending doom. At the start, perhaps, he felt the yellow touch of fear but that sensation was long since forgotten. Now he felt nothing as he watched the hours fade by with the intensity of frozen glass. His reflection in the window was faint as he watched the traffic below pensively, a faint facade pasted on grey glass before him, barely covering the backdrop of life and concrete. 

All a moot point, he had told himself, wasn't it? To live, to love, to die, all ultimately alone, apart, separate and aside from the others? To live and die in a heartbeat, nearly overnight, like a fruit fly, eventually forgotten in a week, a month, a year? It was all a moot point. It was all futile. 

He had been here, before. The apartment, the wet and foggy glass, the October evenings, all of it. The wave of nostalgia and memory tumbled over him, cresting and then came crashing down, hard, making his stomach reel and his head spin. He felt the strain as far-off memories, long since buried, resurfaced viciously and Oh! Susanna! the levees were breaking, letting the water in. He was here back in '63; the assassination of JFK was practically bombarding the television. Then, in '64, when The Beatles, a trendy new band from the UK, kick-started "Beatle Mania" and the "European Invasion". He was here at other times, too, earlier times. He was here in '32 and '57 and '43 and the eighties. He was a man, always a man, and every time he had to die. 

He always faced the window before it happened.

In a way, he was glad that the reflection staring back at him was faded and distorted. The realization came, years ago, that it was as accurate a reflection as any: he, himself, had become faded and distorted, warped by time. 

Outside, the clouds appeared a faint viridian color in the dimming purple October sky, high above the "Y2K" and "Are You Prepared for the New Millennium?"billboards. They were all very unsightly. 

It was all a cycle, he had come to realize; in another thousands of years, they would be preparing for another new millennium. It was a cycle that he himself was grafted onto, eighty five years ago was the start of it, in 1914. The night of the occurrence was a night that had haunted him relentlessly, continuously, because it revealed who he truly was and flashed the ugly truth before his eyes, mockingly, at every chance it had. 

He was a factory worker, then, in New York. He made cans. The hours were long, the pay sorely meager, the work difficult, and the conditions of the workplace in dire need of improvement, but Leonard never complained. It was a job, he always reasoned, and he needed a source of income regardless. On the night in question, Leonard had left work feeling particularly sore and groggy and decided to take a shortcut home that took him through several of the city's alleys. Despite the darkness of night or the exhaustion of factory work, Leonard saw the deed clearly when he stumbled upon it; in his haste to get home, he turned down into one alley and, although initially unaware of what was progressing further in, became aware that a woman was being raped. Rather than cry for help, sound an alarum, or even attempt to fight off her attacker (for Leonard was a man of fair build and athleticism), he fled without a second glance or thought. The sight of it horrified him and wormed its way into his skull; the woman, bent over, body rocking rhythmically as it was ravaged by her attacker. Her face was wet with tears and running makeup, covered by the burly palm of the man doing the deed. Her eyes screamed at Leonard, pleading.

A week later, Leonard was found dead in his flat, swinging from an overhead pipe via his belt. 

After being transported to a nearby morgue, there was a flash. He awoke and was back in the alley, on the night he fled from the scene. This time, rather than flee, Leonard loosed a cry for help and attacked the rapist, beating him to death with his bare hands, ignoring the pain of bloodied and split knuckles. And ever since, when it seemed the end, the cycle wheeled on, spinning and jarring this way and that, far beyond the measly grasp of his control. There would always be a flash and he'd wake up, sometimes in years he would recognize, others that he would not conceivably live to see in his own life span. And on the rare occasion of returning to 1914, something would always be different, altered, changed, although always in subtle ways. He'd always receive a clue secondhand; either through idle street chatter, a radio announcement, or perhaps even fliers, advertising events or products, or even sometimes people, from the future - and he would have to go out and set it right. 

Now it was 1999 - the edge of the millennium, some called it - and something was very wrong. He could feel it in the nape of his neck. The little hairs pricking there gave it away. A string of recent kidnappings and rapes have been occurring wildly, leaving the city in a vice-grip of fright. At the start of it, Leonard had shrugged it off; every city suffered from crime, the deranged, the violent, the twisted. But as the attacks grew more serious, breaking past the boundaries of age, race, gender, more reports flowed in until, one night, an artist sketch of the animal at large was released over the airwaves on the nightly news. Leonard could only watch in stunned silence. It was an animal he knew well; the man from before, from 1914, in the alley. 

Since, Leonard had tried, in vain, to track the man down but it was hard. The city thrived and overflowed with people, making finding anyone difficult. He was out of place here, amidst the billboards and the traffic and the modern glass spires. But he had a feeling that lingered at the nape of his neck: something would transpire soon. Very soon. Tonight. Tonight was the night. He shuddered. After tonight, everything would reset. About him, the cycle wheeled on savagely - the snake spinning, spinning, devouring its own tail. 

He grabbed a kitchen knife on his way out. 

The street below his apartment was alive with excitement. "Down a few blocks," someone had said. "Cops all over the place." And indeed, the sound of police sirens was on the wind. As he drew near, the sirens blared louder, mingling with the sounds of a crowd and a voice shouting over a megaphone. He approached, drawn to destiny, and saw the commotion:  a man, high up, on a ledge. He held something in one hand, waving it, a gun, perhaps. He pressed it against the head of a girl, who he had trapped via an arm wrapped around her tightly. He was shouting but Leonard couldn't discern what was being said. Obscenities, perhaps. But it was him! The man he had killed, all those years ago, the second time he lived through 1914. Without fear or hesitation, he circled the building and grasped a hold of a fire escape, hauling himself. Up, he climbed, up and up and up, ignoring shouts from the crowd or police warnings. The metal rungs of the fire escape, weather rusted, made his fingers hurt. It was a sensation similar to that of.....

He scrambled up on the roof, sneakers digging lightly in the gravel there. His heart raced and roared in his ears: the man was less than ten feet away, back turned. He made no indication of knowing that anyone had climbed up onto the roof as Leonard drew near, slowly, slowly, pulling the knife from the pocket of his trousers. Within three feet, Leonard gripped the plastic knife handle so tightly that his knuckles  hurt and popped, in anticipation. And quite suddenly, the man whirled about.

"Hold it! One more step and I blow this little b***h's brains to Kingdom Come!"

Leonard froze and rose his hands in cooperation. He let the knife clatter to the rooftop. 

"Now, back your a*s up and -- wait," said the man, lowering the gun momentarily. Recognition dawned in his eyes. "I know you...... you..!! From the.... the..... alleyway! I....how is this possible? That was so long ago..... I thought it was just a..... f**k this. You don't do what I say, I kill this little f**k. Got it?" the muzzle of the gun was pressed hard against her temple. "Not moving, huh? You want this twat to die? What are you gonna do? Gonna stop me?"

Leonard saw the muscles in the man's trigger finger tense up, coiled vipers waiting to strike. He knew he had a small window of time to act, just like..... just like the raping in the alley. He looked down to the girl. She was a young thing - fourteen? Fifteen? It was hard to tell - and realized it was so similar to before. Her face was smeared with tears, sweat, and mascara. He smiled at her reassuringly. 

And then Leonard ran straight at the man from 1914. Somehow in the fleeting seconds of confusion, the girl was pushed aside as Leonard slammed into him. Off they went, flying over the edge of the rooftop. A scream ripped from the man, a roar of shock and surprise, horror rose up from the crowd below, and a stray gunshot rang out as the man's finger spasmed, pulling the trigger on the way down.

Leonard smiled. He should've known that each and every cycle inevitably grinds to a halt, comes to a stop. His was about to end. Then came the darkness and then the flash.