Beyond the Past

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Authors: Carly Fall
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set us up in an apartment.”
    “Yeah, they set me up in a shithole in Seattle. Told me to live quietly and to keep my mouth shut about the accident, and under no circumstances was I to try to get in touch with the rest of the unit.”
    Lucas nodded, stood, and reached for the tree branch again, using everything he had within him to bang out five more pull-ups.
    “You aren’t as weak as I thought you were,” Garrett commented.
    “I’m surprising myself.” He chuckled.
    “When did you start having your visions?”
    He put his hands on his waist and breathed in the cool air. “About a week after I got released from the hospital. I was sitting at the kitchen table wondering what happened to everyone. Did you all die, or were you discharged like me? Why was I told I shouldn’t look for you? Just question after question running through my mind. Then, suddenly, it was like someone held up a screen in front of my face and I saw a man getting gunned down in a convenience store. Like I was standing right next to him.”
    “Man, that’s harsh.”
    “Yeah, I know. I tried to ignore them after that, but the visions came without warning. I’d be in the middle of a conversation with Gabby, and bam! There it was.”
    “What did she say about it?”
    “I tried to hide it from her, but she thought I was suffering from some PTSD stuff because I’d just all of sudden stare into space. I just knew in my gut it had to do with that damn explosion, and since they came to visit me every month to remind me that I wasn’t to discuss what happened with anyone, I knew what took place in that goddamn jungle was bad. I wanted to keep Gabby as far away from it as I could.”
    “Can you bang out five more?”
    He groaned, but reached for the branch. “I’m going to need a nap after this.”
    “Naps are for babies and old people. You are neither, my friend.”
    “I feel like both.”
    “So how did things end with Gabby?” Garrett asked.
    After completing his five pull-ups, Lucas dropped to the ground. “I started drinking, trying to make the visions go away. When that didn’t work, I started recording them in a notebook. Then, while watching the news one night, they flashed a picture of some guy who was shot dead in front of a liquor store in downtown Portland, Oregon. Imagine my surprise when I recognized him from a prior vision.”
    Garrett let out a low whistle. “So these people you see dying, it’s for real? They’re really being killed?”
    He nodded. “Yeah. Once I realized that, I went back through my notes on the visions and picked out landmarks—addresses, street names, store names—and I did research. I could locate the stories on some of the people. It became kind of an obsession with me.”
    “And what did Gabby say?”
    “She thought I was looking for a job.”
    “Did she kick you out?”
    “Nope. I just left. I realized that what I was going through was putting a huge toll on our marriage, and that I was a fundamentally changed man. Those bastards who came to monitor me on a monthly basis said that if I told her what was happening, they’d kill her. By that point, I was such a mess, I figured she’d be better off without me. So, she went to work one day, and I caught a bus out of town.”
    “Man, that’s so cold!”
    “I know. I didn’t know how else to do it, though.”
    “Did you at least leave a note?”
    “Yeah, I did. I told her the marriage wasn’t working out for me, and I wasn’t happy. Gave her the old, ‘it’s not you, it’s me,’ line.”
    “You’re probably right,” Garrett said, shaking his head. “Gabby may be better off without you, especially after that bullshit stunt.”
    Lucas nodded, awed by the beauty of his surroundings and trying not to think about Gabby’s face, hair, and smile. He’d been on the streets for six months and hadn’t seen anything pretty. It felt good to be in the fresh air working his body and talking to his friend. “I miss her, and it kills me to

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