“Magical realism” was how our tutor described this assignment.
“What happens in that spare hour when the clocks go back? Delve into the world of fantasy and imagination.” We were given our usual word limit of 700, which I found particularly difficult with this piece of work.
It is still unfinished, although I think you can probably see where it was heading.
The Backshift
Most people slept through that first Backshift, and many of those who didn’t were unreliable witnesses, consisting as they did of so many stumbling drunks and drug-spangled clubbers.
But when the world awoke on that Sunday morning it was to an apparent mass hysteria. Online, crazy tales were being swapped: claims of teleportation and of events undone or seemingly never occuring. Instead of the usual Autumnal setting back of the clocks, here were people saying they had undergone a resetting of time itself, with the hour between 1am and 2am lived twice.
It took testimony from the emergency services for most of us to take it seriously. An ambulance crew in Nottingham reported a fatal road traffic accident that had now never happened. Their control room confirmed their story. They remembered allocating the call, although now no records of it remained on their systems. Finally, the un-victims started posting to Facebook about coming back to life after dying in a car crash.
A local news channel reunited these two groups of people who had now never previously met. It was picked up by the nationals who were soon inundated with others wanting their tales to be told. Human interest stories coallesced into something more substantial; sometimes worrying, sometimes life giving.
New tenses were desperately needed and logicians either despaired or sharpened their pencils.
There was a spike of accidents in the very minute of the Backshift. It became evident that some of these were the truly unlucky; people who had come back to life only to die again, smashing back into that wall or driving into that same oncoming vehicle. But most avoided repeating their fate; learning their lesson without having to pay the consequences, or so it was thought.
Others, startled by their backshifting, had fresh misfortunes founded in panic.
Reports back from the afterlife were inconclusive. Followers of Abrahamic religions reported gates of varying opulence and lights, always bright, always white. Sikhs, Buddhists and the odd Pagan spoke about temporary reincarnations. One old Led Zeppelin fan from Macclesfield claimed to have visited Valhalla, but his wife said he hadn’t been dead, just drunk as usual.
Survivor guilt took on a new meaning and trauma was suffered for events that had unhappened. Each of these was as belittled as it was misunderstood.
As the years went by, The Backshift became a part of more of our lives. Daredevils would come out for the first 1am. Racing tracks were granted licenses for an hour of night racing with significantly relaxed safety rules, to say nothing of the unregulated pop-up drag strips on sections of low traffic motorways, dual carriageways and industrial parks.
These weren’t the darkest enterprises to appear though.
———-
It was a dank, grime-filled night. Leaning hesitantly into the road Jean squinted into the drizzle from behind her umbrella. Backshift Night, nearing midnight and the streets were mostly empty. Dreary smudges of light puddled the tarmac. This, Jean thought, was hardly a night for hope. Still, she clenched and pulled her coat tighter around herself.
She stood waiting, thinking of her son, Jude. Jude, who was so light-hearted and sharp-witted, all fluffy hair, bright colours and inconsequential chatter. He’d left for university with a life before him and now he’d vanished. Sometimes she thought he had proved too light for the world, not substantial enough to retain a footprint in it, while in contrast her darkness cemented her in.
A dark red minibus pulls alongside her and its exhaust coughs. The front interior light comes on and she sees the driver in profile, consulting his A to Z. A young man gets out from the passenger side.
?Jean?? she nods and passes him her docket. Taking it he guides her to the rear of the bus and opens its door.
?Move to the front and take a seat? the young man surprises her with the softness of his voice. Jean shakes and packs her umbrella then climbs up and through the minibus. Looking forward she sees the cowled heads of her fellow travellers. She slips her own hood over her head, glides along an empty leather seat and sits against the window.
The overhead light in the front snaps off and Jean sits in the silence as the bus pulls away. The condensation from everyone’s breath has steamed the windows and it encloses the passengers in their own world.
They stop and another person is steered towards the back door by the young man. They sit alongside her, but Jean doesn’t turn to greet them.
They are driven out of the city, then off the main carriageway and along a winding, bumpy track.
