Twenty-Three Years Earlier

Author's Note / Content Warning

This story contains mature and potentially disturbing themes and morally grey behaviour. Reader discretion is advised.

**


It's on every screen.

Televisions murmuring in living rooms. Radios crackling on kitchen counters. The big displays bolted above train platforms and propped in shop windows, playing to no one and everyone at once. Different cities. Different languages. The same story looping across all of them.
Today, the notorious serial killer stands trial.

Everyone's on it.

＊

The courtroom is bigger than a courtroom should be, the ceiling too high, the air too heavy, settling over the rows of people who came to see a monster.
In the middle of all that space stands a small, frail figure.
Three judges face her: one at the centre, one to either side.
"Mira Graves, you have heard the charges contained in the indictment. How do you plead to the charges of murder—guilty or not guilty?"
A woman. Small. Frail. Almost disappointingly ordinary for someone the world has spent months calling a monster. Her eyes are empty. She looks less like a defendant than like someone who wandered into the wrong room and hasn't yet realised it. 
From the side, she isn't frightening at all. Just an ordinary woman.

The kind you'd pass on the street and forget before the next corner.
Then she turns her head.
Not to the judges.
Not to the gallery.
To you.
Slowly. Almost lazily, as though she'd known you were there the entire time.
Those vacant eyes finally settle on something.
You.
Her mouth curves. Just slightly. A little smirk, the first living thing her face has done since she entered the courtroom.
"Let me tell you what actually happened.”

**

My name's Mira, and I was thirty-two when I died.

I'd lived a quiet life. People always said that like it was a compliment.

What they really meant was that I was a pushover, and they weren't exactly wrong.

I wasn't normal by society's standards. I was always shy, always quiet. The thought of becoming the centre of attention terrified me because attention meant people staring, mocking and laughing at me.

I was insecure, and instead of fighting it, I drowned in it.

Growing up, I decided it was safer to live in the shadows of people who shone more brightly than I did. I told myself it didn't bother me. Being invisible seemed like the easiest way to have a quiet, ordinary life.

Oh, little did I know.

People still noticed me whenever it was convenient for them.

At school, if nobody wanted to do a chore, someone would shout my name and claim I'd volunteered. If nobody wanted to solve a problem on the board, they would tell the teacher that I did.

And the teacher, either stupid or simply choosing to turn a blind eye, would go along with it.

Even after becoming an adult...At work, I became everyone's personal rubbish bin. They dumped their unfinished tasks on my desk, then went home while I stayed behind to finish them.

You might be wondering why I never said anything.

I wanted to.

I just couldn't handle confrontation. The words would form perfectly inside my head, but the moment I tried to speak, they became trapped somewhere in my throat.

I did kill those people at least ten times in my imagination, though.

That brought me some comfort.

**

It was raining the night it happened.

I'd decided to walk home instead of catching the bus. I still don't know why.

Maybe it was fate.

Maybe this was where my story was always meant to begin.

As I approached home, I saw two drunks fighting outside the off-licence near my flat.

One was throwing punches. The other was mostly missing them. People walked past without looking, which was exactly what I intended to do.

I lowered my head and stepped off the pavement to go around them.

Then one of them bolted.

Straight at me.

He crashed into my shoulder hard enough to knock me backwards. Something punched beneath my ribs.

For a second, I thought he'd hit me.

Then he pulled away and ran.

I watched him disappear around the corner before looking down at myself. There was a tear in my coat. Something dark was spreading through the fabric underneath it.

Oh.

The bastard had stabbed me.

I pressed my hand against my stomach and lowered myself onto the wet pavement.

When I pulled my hand back, my palm was red.

I didn't even know him.

There was no dramatic music. No slow motion. My life didn't flash before my eyes. There was only the rain hitting my face and the warmth spreading down my side.

I really must be a joke to go out like this.

Not an illness. Not a car accident. Not even someone who wanted me dead.

Just a drunk who couldn't run in a straight line.

By then, I couldn't feel my fingers properly. The streetlights above me blurred, stretching into pale streaks across the rain.

My only real regret was that I'd wasted all of it being quiet and 'good'.

I'd listened every time someone told me to behave, forgive and let things go. I'd allowed people to hurt me because fighting back would have made me difficult.

And this was what it had bought me.

Thirty-two years of swallowing my anger, only to bleed out beside a bin because two idiots couldn't handle their alcohol.

If I'd known my life would end like this, I would've done things differently.

A laugh slipped out of me. It came out weaker than I expected.

I'd finally grown a backbone and had about thirty seconds left to use i—

Everything went dark.

Something struck the back of my head.

I jerked upright.

Laughter broke out around me.

My cheek had been stuck to a page. I peeled it away slowly, blinking at the blue lines and the damp patch I'd left behind.

"Mira."

I looked up.

A woman stood at the front of the room with a piece of chalk in her hand. She wore a long brown skirt, a cream blouse and the sort of a disappointed expression.

Behind her, written across the blackboard, was a list of multiplication problems.

Blackboard.

Not a whiteboard.

Not a screen.

An actual blackboard.

"Mira," the woman repeated. "Would you like to tell the class why my lesson is interrupting your sleep?"

The children laughed again.

There were children sitting all around me.

I stared at the nearest one. A boy with a runny nose was grinning at me over his shoulder. Beside him, a girl had glittery butterfly clips scattered through her hair.

My heart began to beat harder.

I knew this room.

And the woman standing in front of the blackboard.

Mrs Wilson.

I lowered my eyes to the desk.

My hands were resting on an open exercise book.

They were tiny.

I turned them over. Small palms. Short fingers. Ink smudged along the side of one hand.

Someone whispered behind me.

"Maybe she's gone stupid."

More laughter.

I knew that voice too.

Rachel Saunders.

A cold feeling spread through my stomach.

Mrs Wilson placed the chalk down. "Well?"

I opened my mouth, but my voice didn't come out.

What was I supposed to say?

Sorry, Miss. I was stabbed to death and apparently woke up during maths?

"I'm sorry," I managed.

The voice that came out was high and thin.

Mrs Wilson watched me for a moment. Perhaps something in my face concerned her because her expression softened slightly.

"Are you feeling unwell?"

"I don't know."

That earned another ripple of laughter.

Mrs Wilson sighed. "Go and wash your face. Then come straight back."

I pushed my chair away and stood.

The room shifted around me. Every desk looked too large. The children seemed normal, which meant I was the same size as them.

Someone stuck out a foot as I walked past.

I saw it in time and stepped over it.

Rachel looked up at me, disappointment briefly crossing her face.

There she was.

Rachel had made my childhood miserable. She'd taken my things, spread rumours about me and taught the rest of the class that hurting me came without consequences.

Looking at her now, I expected to feel fear.

Instead, I felt nothing.

She was just a child.

A nasty one.

Rachel leaned towards the girl sitting beside her and whispered, "Freak."

I stopped.

Her smile widened, waiting for me to lower my head and hurry away.

I looked directly at her.

Rachel's smile faltered.

I continued walking.

The corridor outside was empty. Colourful paintings were pinned along the walls, most of them crooked. I passed a display made from paper flowers and found the girls' toilets near the stairs.

Inside, I gripped the edge of a sink and raised my head.

A child stared back at me.

Round cheeks. Wide eyes. Messy dark hair tied into a ponytail.

I touched my face.

The reflection did the same.

I pulled at my cheek. Pinched my arm.

"What the fuck?"

My tiny voice bounced around the toilets.

I covered my mouth.

That sounded deeply wrong coming from a child.

I searched the room for anything with a date on it, but there was nothing except a faded handwashing poster. I checked the pockets of my cardigan and found a folded piece of paper.

Monday, 24 February 2003.

I read it twice.

Then a third time.

Two thousand and three.

I had been thirty-two. If I'd gone back twenty-three years, that made me—

"Nine."

I was nine years old.

I stared at myself until my eyes began to sting.

This couldn't be real. People didn't die and wake up in their childhood bodies. That happened in the stories I read when I wanted to escape my own miserable life.

Maybe I was in hospital. Maybe this was the final nonsense produced by my dying brain.

But the sink felt cold beneath my fingers. My cheek still carried the faint imprint of my exercise book. Somewhere down the corridor, a teacher shouted at someone to stop running.

It all felt real.

A laugh escaped me.

I quickly pressed both hands over my mouth, but another one followed. It wasn't happiness. Not exactly. It was disbelief mixed with something dangerously close to hysteria.

I looked into the mirror again.

Nine years old.

Twenty-three years of mistakes waiting ahead of me.

Everything that had broken me either hadn't happened yet or had only just begun..

A bell rang before I could think any further.

The corridor erupted with noise. Doors opened, children shouted and shoes hammered against the floor.

I dried my hands on my cardigan and returned to the classroom.

Rachel watched me as I entered. Someone had drawn a crooked pig across the open page of my exercise book.

Underneath it, they had written my name.

I stood beside the desk, looking down at it.

I remembered this.

Not the exact drawing, perhaps, but hundreds just like it. I remembered pretending not to care. I remembered waiting until I got home to cry because crying at school only made them laugh harder.

Rachel covered her mouth, but I could see her shoulders shaking.

Nine-year-old Mira would have erased it, pretending like it's nothing.

I simply tore the page out.

I folded it carefully and slipped it into my cardigan pocket.

Rachel stopped laughing.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

I didn't bother responding.

Mrs Wilson called for everyone to settle down before Rachel could respond. She seemed annoyed being ignored by me.

I sat through the rest of the day without hearing much of what was taught. I was too busy watching people I hadn't thought about in years.

Some looked exactly as I remembered. Others were strangers whose faces had disappeared from my memory long ago.

Nobody knew what had happened to me.

Nobody knew that the quiet girl sitting among them had already lived, died and returned.

The final bell rang.

Children rushed around me, shoving books into bags and discussing television programmes I hadn't heard mentioned in decades.

Rachel passed my desk.

Her shoulder struck mine deliberately.

"Freak," she whispered again.

I turned my head and watched her walk away.

Last time, I had spent years being afraid of her.

That was almost funny now. I sigh and leave the classroom.

Outside, parents crowded around the school gates. Cars I hadn't seen in years lined the street.

I stood there for several minutes, trying to remember the way home.

The route returned in pieces.

Past the corner shop. Left at the crossing. Through the narrow path between the houses.

Then I saw my childhood home.

I stopped at the gate.

The house looked smaller than it did in my memories.

Mum and Dad would be inside.

The thought tightened something in my chest.

I wasn't ready to see them. My relationship with them was neither bad nor good, but still, i wasn't ready.

My hand shook as I reached for the gate.

Before I could touch it, the front door opened.

A girl stood in the doorway wearing an oversized T-shirt, her dark hair pulled into a messy ponytail.

I couldn't move. I could only stand there and stare at her.

She frowned at me.

"Why are you standing outside ?"

That voice.

"Anna?"

Her frown deepened. "Who else would it be?"

My schoolbag slipped from my hand.

My sister was alive.

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