Chapter 4: 1967 - Insanity (main timeline)

My old Renault wheezed and groaned its way home, Marie beside me, a ghost in the passenger seat. I drove her to a doctor's visit, routine check up, but the silence in the car was heavy. Clock ticked past one, the sun, a pale eye through the windshield. She stared at the houses, bricks and mortar ghosts, same vacant look I saw after every argument. We'd been arguing a lot lately, me staying out a lot, thinking it'd give us space, but it just widened the chasm. I'd catch her eye, hoping for a flicker, a sign she wasn't completely lost in that fog of her own making. But her face was a blank screen, mirroring the hole inside me. She still wouldn't believe a word, and the distance between us, it was growing like a weed, choking the life out of what was left. Marie's resentment, I suspected at least partially stemmed from a gnawing suspicion, a phantom limb of doubt that reached for Anya's name. She hadn't the concrete proof, only  a slight changes in my demeanor perhaps. 

The echoes of that time with Anya, when for a heartbeat, she'd seemed to vanish, replaced by Marie, still disturbed me.

A beat-up Volkswagen barreled up alongside us, its occupants, three greasy, scowling faces framed by unkempt hair, leered and spat insults revealing that they were drowning in cheap whiskey and bad blood. They weaved through traffic like a drunkard on roller skates. They clipped my fender, a sickening scrape that sent a tremor through my bones, and nearly shoved me into the ditch. Pure instinct, a primal bellow against the recklessness, sent a blast from my horn. That did it. Their car pulled ahead, then slowed, blocking our path. I hit the brakes, hard.

"Paul," Marie said, her voice tight.

But they were out of the car now, three of them, surrounding us, their faces twisted into sneers. The tallest one, a brute with a broken nose, yanked open my door.

"You goddamn fairy," the brute roared, his voice a guttural rasp, spitting a stream of tobacco juice that landed with a sickening plop on my cheek. His eyes, two chipped marbles of hate, glinted in the dim streetlight, boring into me. "And your bitch of a wife," he snarled, a meaty finger jabbing at Marie, huddled beside me, "thinks she's something special, huh? Gonna be a real goddamn sight prettier with a couple of our cocks crammed down your throat." The other two, their faces smeared with a grotesque cocktail of alcohol and rage, echoed his sentiments, their words a chorus of vile slurs and promises of unspeakable violation. Marie, her face drained of color, clung to me.

Fear clawed at my throat, but a primal surge of protectiveness ignited within me. I had to do something, anything. Ignoring the tremor in my legs, I lurched out of the car, fists clenched, ready to meet their aggression head-on. But the brute, anticipating my move, unleashed a vicious right hook that connected with my jaw, sending me crashing to the asphalt. Dazed, I scrambled back to my feet, fueled by a desperate fury. I swung wildly, aiming for his gut, but he was a coiled spring, effortlessly dodging my blows. His fists, honed by years of brutality, hammered into my ribs, my stomach, my face. Each impact sent searing pain lancing through me, but I fought back with the ferocity of a cornered animal. Yet, he was stronger, faster, a relentless storm of muscle and malice.

Through the haze of pain, I saw the other two descend upon Marie. One grabbed her arm, twisting it behind her back, while the other, his hands slick with lust and cruelty, tore at her blouse, his fingers violating her breast. Marie screamed, a raw, primal sound, her struggles feeble against their overwhelming strength. She kicked and scratched.

The brute, satisfied with my broken form, delivered a final, brutal kick to my side, the impact stealing my breath. They left us then, sprawled on the cold pavement, my body aching, my spirits shattered. Their laughter, echoing in the distance, was the soundtrack to our humiliation. They were back in their car, laughing their asses off. A gratuitous punch-up, for no reason. They peeled out, leaving us choking on the silence, the kind that sticks to your throat like bad wine. I got to Marie, helped her up, dress ripped. She shoved me back, eyes burning with anger, but there was something else there, a flicker of something that made my heart ache.

A moment later, a deafening explosion ripped through the air a few hundred meters ahead. Shrapnel rained down, turning the asphalt into a grotesque mosaic of twisted metal and human remains. The Volkswagen, a mangled carcass, was consumed by fire, the remains of its occupants reduced to unrecognizable charred chunks of flesh and bone. The stench of burnt flesh and gasoline hung heavy, a macabre perfume. Marie retched, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

Then, something even stranger happened. People came running to the scene, but they weren't reacting with horror, with grief, with the natural revulsion one expects at such a scene. No. They started dancing! A grotesque jig, a waltz of the damned, accompanied by off-key singing and howling. Some ripped off their clothes, their movements becoming increasingly frenzied, their faces twisted in a mixture of ecstasy and morbid fascination. The whole thing was a fever dream, a surreal tableau ripped from the pages of some Kafka nightmare.

My blood ran cold. Because in that split second before the explosion, before the Volkswagen became a pyre, a surge of pure, unadulterated rage had coursed through me, a dark fantasy blooming in my mind: I had wanted this, this carnage to happen, it's like I had willed it into existence. And the twisted celebration of death that followed, was it a grotesque glee that clawed its way up from some primal, unnamable place within me?

Marie, still shaken, stared at the unfolding madness with wide, terrified eyes. She could see it too, it was really happening. I grabbed her hand, her touch grounding me in this reality, this terrifying, fractured reality. We got into the car and fled the scene, the jeering, dancing figures receding in our rear view mirror, like haunting memory.

Our car weaved through the streets, a desperate escape from the demons. My head throbbed, a dull echo of the explosion, but a sharper pain pulsed within – the realization of my own monstrous capacity. Anya. She had to know. She could help make sense of this.

Marie was quiet, but visibly shaken and terrified, her eyes on the road, her hands folded in her lap. I reached out, touched her hand, she didn't pull away.

Zoe was playing with her baby-sitter when we arrived, she ran to us, her face splitting into a radiant smile. "Mommy!" she cried, leaping into Marie's arms. Marie returned the embrace, her own face softening. Seeing this, a familiar pang of guilt stabbed at me. I knelt down, ruffling Zoe's hair, pretending nonchalance. 

The ache in my face, a roadmap of earlier aggression, was a dull throb. But it was the sight of Marie, the way the light caught the angry blue blossoming on her arm, the tear in her dress, that clawed at me. Zoe was a whirlwind of untroubled joy, none the wiser to the world's sudden tilt. But Marie, her eyes still holding the haunted flicker of the earlier scenes, of the things that shouldn't be, she now *knew*. I knelt beside her, my voice a low murmur against Zoe's babble. "You see now, they're real. The world's unravelling, and I feel like I'm caught in the seam, pulling it apart." The fear in her eyes, a mirror of my own, was a living thing. She reached out, tracing the line of a bruise on my cheek, her touch feather-light. "Paul, what's happening? What can we do? I am sorry I hadn't believed you before. This is so unreal, I'm genuinely afraid." I forced a reassuring smile, though my gut churned with a nameless dread. "We hold on, I will figure it out. I promise." But the promise felt hollow, like a soft breeze against the howling void.

I made a perfunctory check of the apartment. The mundane felt alien now, the chipped mug on the counter, the faded wallpaper, all imbued with a disquieting wrongness. It was as if the world itself was holding its breath, waiting for the next shard of its fractured reality to fall away. Marie believed me now, it was at least a fragile thread of understanding in the unraveling fabric of our world. I had to reach Anya, she could help me make sense of this insanity. After making sure once more that Marie and Zoe were all alright, and reassuring Marie again that I will get to the bottom of this, I took the car and drove straight to the office.

The fluorescent lights hummed in the building. The air in the corridor hung thick and stagnant, reeking of cloying jasmine that clawed at the back of my throat. Something was off. A disquiet, like a loose floorboard in the mind, made every creak and groan of the aging building feel ominous.

Anya's desk was completely empty, the faint scent a spectral echo of her absence. No trace of her, no books, no papers, no pens, not a stray hairpin, a forgotten coffee mug, nothing. The reading room, the staff lounge, the lab, all echoed with the hollow silence of abandonment. A prickle of unease, like a skeletal finger tracing icy paths along my spine, blossomed into full-blown dread.

Thomas, a creature of habit, was in his office, the rustle of papers a metronome marking the passage of time in a world tilting on its axis. I rapped on the worn oak, the sound swallowed by the oppressive quiet. "Thomas?"

His face, usually creased with the weary lines of a man wrestling with complex equations, was a mask of strained concentration that twisted into something akin to desolate pity the instant he saw me. "Paul," his voice laced with concern, "is everything alright? Heaven help us, what happened? Your face... Have you been caught in a fight? You look..."

"Anya," I blurted, the name a lifeline in a sea of spectral unease. "Where is she? I was just about to-"

A flicker of something unreadable, a momentary clouding of his usually sharp gaze, passed over Thomas's eyes like a shroud. Then, the flicker gone, his brow furrowed, a furrow etched in confusion, not feigned. "Anya? Who is Anya?"

The world stuttered, the fluorescent hum of the lab taking on a dissonant, maddening pitch. "What do you mean, 'who is Anya?'" I spat, the barb of my voice a betrayal of the icy terror gripping me. "Thomas, stop joking!" I snapped, my voice tight with urgency. "This isn't a time for levity. The situation is serious, come on!" His vacant expression, devoid of even a flicker of amusement, confirmed my suspicions. This wasn't a prank. Thomas genuinely didn't seem to know who Anya was, and the bewilderment etched on his face mirrored my own growing horror. It was incredibly strange, unsettlingly so. "Anya, our new colleague," I repeated, emphasizing each word, "The replacement of Victor as assistant professor."

"Paul," he said, his voice devoid of the usual dry humor, "there's no one by that name on staff, no one I know."

A scream, a strangled gasp, died in my throat. My blood turned to ice water, a glacial current coursing through my veins. "But... she was here yesterday, the day before, a month already. She joined from CERN. Anya Jesperes, auburn hair, blue eyes, she-" I choked on the words.

Thomas's face hardened, genuine concern piercing the vacant pity. He placed a calloused hand on my arm, the touch unnaturally firm. "Paul, are you alright? There's no one here matching that description. Never was. There is still no replacement for..." His voice trailed off.

The world fractured. Anya, her smile, the memory of her touch - all gone, bled from reality like water from a cracked cistern. A primal terror, a viscera-churning dread, coiled in my gut. Thomas's face swam before me, a grotesque caricature of the man I knew, his concern a grotesque grimace. I recoiled and fled. The slam of the door echoed in the oppressive silence.