177 - One Hundred Seventy Seven

[TRANSCRIPT]

[click, static]

Okay, sorry, I— I had to move. I thought I heard…

(a dark laugh) It’s just like the early days again. Jumping at every sound, looking over my shoulder. Except at least then I had Harry and now she—

[click, static]

I have to think she ran. I have to think that wasn’t his first time in the house and that she ran. Because the alternative—she’s dead and buried already, he’s abducted her…is that what this is? He took Harry already and he came back for me because we’re just rats trapped in a maze laid out for one dead man’s revenge? All that shit about Eternity and stones and ripples and this really is just purgatory after all. 

Fox said I didn’t destroy the future. Just my future. You can’t put emphasis in morse code but I think I got it anyway. 

I don’t even know his first name. Billings. That’s the only name I have for him. I only heard it once or twice from the other guards as we were being loaded into the transport. 

He had green eyes, blond hair. He had a kind of crooked tooth in the front of his mouth and the fairest hint of dimples on his cheeks—I’ve spent so much time thinking about how he probably had a really sweet smile. 

He was older. Mid-forties, maybe? He wasn’t a small guy, but wasn’t all that tall either—I guess he was the epitome of average height and build. I think about that a lot too. How even though I’m tall and pretty hale and hearty even before I spent six years chopping wood and fixing holes in our roof, I’m still…well, a male prison guard my same height in the prime of his life probably would’ve been able to…

I don’t know. Maybe what happened would have always happened. Maybe his middle age didn’t make him slower, or weaker, and I always would’ve—

[click, static]

Yeah, I can’t do this. 

[click, static]

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