3:01

I sat on the corner of Third Avenue and Pine Street in downtown Seattle.

My scarred, filthy hands shook, while I held my nearly empty, paper cup. I stared at the sidewalk. My black, greasy hair hung over my eyes. I could smell my own reek: urine, beer, and apathy.

Now and again, some passerby dropped money into my cup. I didn’t have to peek into it. I would know when I had collected enough coins. I could tell just by the cup’s weight. Right now, it held almost enough for a cheap beer.

I’d gone hours with only a minimal amount of alcohol in my system, which meant that the hallucinations would start soon.

The way Christmas attracts suicide, something compelled my eyes to lift. I stared a newspaper dispenser. The front page stared back at me, though the dispenser’s window.

Its headline meant nothing to me. Its date meant everything.

October thirteenth. The accident happened today, up on Capitol Hill. 3:01 pm. Different year, same day. Somehow, the day had returned, offered me a mulligan.

I glanced at the clock that hung from the local Ross clothing store. 2:32 pm.

If I caught the bus, I could prevent the accident. I could save him.

I shook my head. Holes riddled my logic, but I couldn’t decide how. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t save anyone.

“Bobby,” an electronic voice said.

I glanced sidelong at the legless robot that crawled across the forest of legs. Pedestrians walked right past it. They couldn’t see the unfortunate fantasy.

The robot’s eyes glowed, sapphire-blue. They pled with me. The robot’s steel claws dug into the sidewalk. It dragged itself closer to me. Sparks snapped and hissed from its hips, where fate had cruelly ripped away its legs.

“Bobby,” the robot whispered. “Today was the day he died. You can save him.”

“Go away, Mom,” I whispered.

The delusion continued to crawl towards me. I looked in the opposite direction—and immediately wished I hadn’t.

A blue tricycle rolled across the street. Its tires left paths of blood.

My paper cup bounced, while someone dropped at least two dollars (dimes and quarters) into my cup, enough money for either a beer or bus fare.

I glanced at the clock. 2:38 pm.

I felt Mom’s cold, metal hand on my shoulder. “You can do it, Bobby. You can change the past, fix everything.”

. . . What if I could?

I uncoiled from the sidewalk. My vision doubled and tripled.

Down Third Avenue, I spotted the bus that would deliver me to Capitol Hill.

The bus driver frowned at the sight and stink of me. I shoved my money into the rusty machine beside the driver’s seat. I seeped across my own seat amongst the normals.

I closed my eyes, ran my long fingernails through my gravel-cluttered beard, over my rash-encrusted face and bloodshot eyes.

Something scurried across my arm.

With a howl, I slapped away the cockroach. More crawled up my legs. Their curious antennas twitched. Strings of drool stretched across their oversized jaws. I jumped onto my feet, shook the demons from my torn, piss-stained pants.

Dark red light filled the bus. Chucks of human meat, crudely cut, hung from chains spread across the bus’s walls, as if spun there by some titanic, mechanical spider.

Blood drizzled from the meat, which swayed with the bus’s motions. Flies buzzed. Maggots squirmed. The stench made me gag.

More roaches scurried up my legs. I danced, furiously swatted the grotesqueries from my shaking, calorie-deprived limbs.

I could feel the roaches explore my body, beneath my blistered skin.

The bus driver, now a giant rat in a judge’s robe, twisted around in his seat. “Hey, buddy! Calm down, or get off.”

I opened my mouth to protest—when a woman’s shadow caught my attention.

The woman (late twenties with long, black hair) hung on all fours from the bus’s ceiling. With a sickening series of cracks, her head twisted around on her neck, until, upside-down, she stared at me.

Her owl-eyes overflowed with sticky, crimson sauce. Her hands slipped from the ceiling, dangled. Sections of her face flaked away, until a browned skull sneered at me.

With another series of cracks, she twisted halfway around at her waist. Her neck twisted again, counterclockwise and loud. Her neck bone bulged from beneath her throat, ready to rip from her skin.

She opened her mouth. A stench of caskets wisped from it. Roaches crawled from her parted lips, scurried across her face and into her empty eye sockets.

I screamed louder. The driver pulled over the bus. His rodent’s teeth dripped amber poison. He demanded that I leave.

I spotted a clock the second I stepped off the bus. Ten minutes remained to prevent the accident that ruined my life.

My legs struggled to run. My stomach back flipped. My knees turned to jelly.

The sun painted the street with the shadows of airborne birds. The shadows morphed into the dark faces of stern jurors.

“Leave me alone!” I screamed.

More than a few heads turned. Someone threated to call the police. I stumbled faster, but the world resisted me. I lurched forward as if through molasses. I screamed in frustration, fought the nightmare syrup.

I stumbled and tripped, skinned my hands on the coarse street. Cars honked. I tried to stand, but I cringed at the sharp sting behind my left knee. Tears in my eyes, I dragged myself towards the intersection where my life had ended.

I heard sirens in the near distance. I spotted the boy on his blue tricycle. He rode across the sidewalk. His mother (late twenties with long, black hair) walked behind him.

“No,” I moaned. “Not again.”

I heard my sports car roar before it even arrived on the scene. I closed my eyes. I didn’t need to watch. I already knew what happened next.

Years ago, after I heard about the accident at the factory, which ripped away my mother’s legs, I drank myself into the sort of stupor for which Dad made himself famous.

Any moment now, my younger, drunker self would drive right up the sidewalk, crash it not just into, but through that kid and his mother. I would mangle them, twist and tear their bodies.

My front bumper would rip the kid’s head from his shoulders, as if Velcro had held it there. Had his mother a chance to digest her tragedy, before I slammed her, splattered her fertilized egg across the bloodstained sidewalk?

The judge and jury would hate me. I would spend two years in a cold prison cell, crowded with rats and roaches. Afterwards, the state would release me on parole, and I would evaporate, live off the grid, ingest poison, and weep for my losses.

I knelt in the street, oblivious to the cars that honked hatred at me.

Another car, one with a siren, pull up next to me. I felt the dragon’s breath bake off its engine. I heard its doors open as ravenous, metal mouths. Arms slither around my crumbled shell of flesh.

“Do you have ID, sir?” the officer asked me.

My eyes peeled open. The kid and mother had vanished. However, I witnessed, just for a second, my younger self. The bastard stumbled from his sports car and nearly fell onto his ass.

What made me ever believe I could save him?