Shadows Out of Time

She looked desperately for an escape route and saw the door in the wall, the one she’d been so fixated on before. There was no way she could unlock the main door in time, but if the door in the wall wasn’t locked it was her only chance. Maybe it really was just a pipe closet and she would only be cornering herself, but she had to try something. At the very least, she could put something solid between herself and this raving madman. She sprang for the door and grabbed the handle.

“No, don’t!” Professor Vaughan yelled.

She pushed the door open and ran through, but only made it a few steps before the shock of what she saw rooted her in place.

It was a large, brightly lit room, but how could it be here? There was no space in the wall for it, no addition to the outside of the building. She saw an array of strange, humming machines linked by elaborate webs of cords and plugs. On the far wall, shelves were filled with gleaming metal cylinders in neat rows, each about a foot high, their faces marked with three strange, triangular sockets. A vacant space on one shelf marked where a cylinder was missing from the collection.

Sean’s naked body lay on a surgical table in the middle of the room. She nearly collapsed at the sight. The top of his head had been removed, his cranium neatly and bloodlessly opened by an instrument far more advanced than a simple bone saw. She let out a scream when she saw his skull was empty, like a hollowed-out fruit.

Behind her, the professor spoke. “I told you I would deliver the smartest minds in my class, and I’ve kept my end of the bargain. Now take me to Arneth-Zin!”

He wasn’t talking to her. There was someone else in the room. She turned slowly. A dark shape stood partially hidden in the shadows behind the open door. It was the size of a man, but nothing else about it resembled one. She saw a segmented, crustacean shell that sported numerous insectoid appendages, all of which ended in sharp, pointed pincers. On its back was a pair of thin, bat-like wings. Its head was a hideous fleshy mass covered in writhing antennae, which split open and let loose a piercing, angry shriek.

I remember reading about a professor at McGill University in the 1950s who experimented with sensory deprivation. He discovered that prolonged isolation led to anxiety, hallucinations, and madness. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, floating in the dark, but I’m starting to wonder how much time I have left before I lose my mind. Not much longer, I think. It’s already taking everything I’ve got just to stay focused, to keep reminding myself who I am.

But then…something happens.

I feel a collision of sorts. I’m jolted, my sense of balance knocked off-center. On instinct I put out my hands to brace my fall, but I have no hands and there is nothing to fall against.

The impact does more than send me reeling. It shatters my mind into a blazing white supernova, fracturing my consciousness into innumerable pieces and scattering them to the winds of time. I’m back in Professor Vaughan’s lecture hall. I’m back in his office. I’m back in Sean’s arms. I’m a little girl. I’m being born. I’m back in every moment of my past, every second of my history, all at once.