Chapter 2
Max Caulfield was sitting on the porch of her beach house, chilling and not really focused on anything. Before her, the sea spanned infinitely across the horizon and out of her peripheral view. It was the perfect picture of serenity, blue cerulean sky with just the perfect touch of white fluffy clouds to relieve the sun's glare by a little, but not enough to cover it entirely. The sun itself was obscured behind some layers of cloud, giving off warmth and an orange-red hue in place of its usual yellow scorching heat. Palms clustered in the distance, gently shrugging the long, cold night away to welcome the new breath of life with every passing current of soft wind. The sand was not really yellow, but more precisely golden, a gradiant that faded into ivory-white the further it went, until disappearing altogether as it yielded superiority over to the navy blue of water. Waves after waves gently licked the border between land and ocean, white foam adorning the edge of each tidal movement. It was pretty, no doubt, perhaps even one of the most spectacular nature sceneries that any typical tropical beach could possibly offer. The colour composition was perfect, the arrangement was exemplary, and the lighting contrast was quintessential; if she framed it right, it could easily become a masterpiece. A simple ticket to grandeur, to greatness, to become the world-class photographer she'd always dreamt of becoming.
Used to, she reminded herself. Used to.
The impulse was there, under her skin, crawling upward her veins and agonizing her bloodstream, or at least that was how it seemed like. The artist in her was yearning to be unleashed, to capture the moment of pure tranquility before it could escape forever. The itch ran hot across her right hand, up her shoulder, and tickled the skin above her heart, beating in rhythm with the waves. It was almost physically painful, the urge pulling on nerves and not letting go, stubborn to have its demand met, to an extent that her own fingers twitched in response. Just a shot couldn't hurt, it had said, but she knew better, remembered better, and had already endured much, much better. But no matter how much she willed it to drop it and just walk away, it wouldn't. Like so many times before. Exact down to the micro-contraction of her neurons, to the twitch of her eyebrow, to the tremble of her lips.
With a sigh, she knew it was pointless to delay the inevitable.
Setting a marker, another fancy terminology to describe the act of kicking a rock away, she committed its image to mind. Here goes nothing.
Giving in to the temptation, she picked up the digital camera and took a shot. Just as she expected, even without much effort, it came out marvelous, splendid, gorgeous. Perfect.
Doesn't matter anyway, she thought to herself. Yet, the pleasure was still there, while the impulse no longer. It would do for now, at least. Closing her eyes, she enjoyed the tiny peaceful window of time that always followed after every wonderful shot captured, mentally counting down the seconds as they ran out.
Three.
A strong draft of wind picked up, and the palms started shaking. Dark clouds tethered at the rim of the horizon, while the waves climbed higher. The bright blue sky was tainted with tendrils of midnight darkness; the sun dimmed in intensity, its orange-red aura reduced to a pink glow.
Two.
The glow diminished with every passing second, until it was only an imperceptible dot. The palms now shook violently, turf of wind picking up clouds of sand in their raging wake, and the waves grew into miniature tsunamis. Layers of dark clouds interconnected to form a thick blanket, now engulfing half the sky, within it tiny flashes of lightning occasionally flared. Whatever left observable of the blue dome was now pitch-black indistinguishable matter.
One.
Each one after another, the palms cracked, doubled over at their middle. Sand clouds now twisted into dust typhoons, stretching far up into the air where they spat clumps of hail back to the ground furiously. The waves now rose high enough in the background to give off the impression of a giant wall of water, closing in on land with the intention of devouring everything in its path. Raindrops condensed into streams of muddy water, and lightning struck constantly without a break. But all of that was insignificant collateral damage compared to the truly catastrophic phenomenon still in its early formation, straight from the tip of her finger. The eye of the storm.
She couldn't bring herself to look up and face the misdeed of her own creation. It wouldn't matter, anyway.
Reaching out with her hand, she called upon the flow of her power, coursing through her veins and intermingled in her thoughts. It eagerly responded to her call; the power wrapped itself around the top of her extended fingers, curling underneath her palm and tickling her wrist. It trailed all the way upward along her forearm, through her shoulder and back to the crook of her neck, before morphing into a numb presence at the back of her mind. The command was simple, direct, without any unnecessary emotions or thoughts attached. It was only but what it was; nothing more, nothing less, than the very nature of a call. Her call. Upon whatever mystic forces to whom originated her powers yet unknown, but she couldn't bother to care beyond the immediate knowledge that it was her to command, her to call upon, and her to direct.
And so, in less than an instant later, everything relapsed, the world around her appeared objectively like film reel put in reverse, but Max didn't open her eyes until the end. She briefed across the timeline, feel the unnatural flow of time as it slipped through her fingers and trickled into oblivion, into the realm of unbeing where it didn't have already happened. Her only cue was the time marker, and when a rock made cold impact with the toes on her barefoot, she ceased her call. Reality snapped back to the natural timeline, and everything went on as it already had some minutes ago. Max opened her eyes to the breathtaking sight of the beach, untouched and untainted, still showing off its glorious beauty, oblivious of its fate in a reality came undone.
Max used to feel guilty for deliberately destroy a timeline just for a pretty picture. She was disgusted with herself, with how every snap of her camera could so effortlessly create an entire cataclysm, just like the storm so long ago. Having failed to prevent it despite whatever she'd done, she learnt the bitter lesson that destruction was so, so much simpler than salvation. Right then and there, a snap of her finger, and this whole realm of existence would bear the unholy wrath of the largest, wildest and most devastating hurricane ever known to mankind; meanwhile deleting the photo could no more reverse the damage done than her power could save her one true and only friend. Back then, the dellusion was so simple; Chloe's life for Arcadia Bay, and the storm would never have come, undone by a simple act. She could blame everything to fate, to her friend's disaccordance to her supposed death, to the great sacrifice that it would take to make up for. But never once did she truly question herself, if whether the true cause to it was the multiple shots she'd taken, and the storm that came anyway right after Chloe's funeral was the lesson she could never forget. Never, ever, to touch a camera again.
The lesson was deep, raw and painful, but revolutionary. She could tear apart a polaroid, but it wouldn't erase her act of already having taken it in an alternate timeline, or the storm that followed. Hence, her adaptation to the high-tech she so despised; for only a digital render of a photograph could truly be rewound. Of course, upon realization of the consequences that her thought-to-be harmless passion was capable of, she dropped it instantly, or at least made her best effort to. Ironic though it was, the very person whose command was heeded by the flow of time itself, could doom an entire realm of existence by capturing a moment, by freezing a window of time for what seemed like a harmless pastime. The curse of the time-bender was thought to be ridiculous, surely corrigible, she needed only never to take a photo, and it would never happen again. Yet, the artist in her had already become a sickness, a lust, a temptation past beyond any border of returning, and like a junkie who couldn't repress her addiction, Max fell prey to the pull of the photograph everytime, and as such the digital camera became the only thing that could satiate both. Each time she reached for the camera, her inside was twisted with guilt, but also a relief inexplicable, almost near pure-bliss. But over time, the emotion just numbed, leaving behind the artistic masterpiece that was the sweet reward, and a numb dettachment as its only price. After all, a reality that never happened, or a timeline that was erased from existence, knew no pain and loss.
The only victim of such a horrendous montrosity was the one person who was capable of creating it all along. The irony brought to her lips the phantom afterimage of a grin, but it always felt better off as a lopsided frown. Inside her was this void, born out of guilt and self-torment, and with her unhealthy coping mechanism of just bottling up everything inside, until the negativity ate away at her core to leave behind an empty shell of the wonderful person that was once Max Caulfield. Now she wasn't even certain whether or not she deserved that title, having deliberately destroyed countless continuity for her sick pleasure. The guilt already filling up the void brought a sadistic smirk to her face, and the terrible pain tormenting her conscience was a pleasant relief she didn't know she was seeking, but enjoyed nevertheless.
She knew she had problems, that torturing oneself mentally wasn't an acceptable behaviour, or a sane one at that. But she couldn't muster enough care to rectify it. That was just the way things were now, and she just had to live with it. If anyone was to blame, then it could only be her, for allowing her perfect, spotless life to spiral down into this hellhole. For turning everyone away when they offered kind, understanding hands. For burning down both Arcadia Bay and Chloe on several attempts to photo-jump backward and desperately clutch at straws that had already been broken. For creating this monster that walked around and caused insurmountable mayhem in the cover of Max Caulfield, with every shot of her camera that she did and didn't take.
There, another ting of pleasure. She was incredibly good at guilt-tripping herself, and such could only do too much good to a self-destructive individual who had psychological issues and gained relief from guilt. It bubbled up inside her, until she could no longer held back.
So she cried. And laughed. Despite the indiscernible jumble of emotions, she felt truly at ease, to be herself, to accept the monster that she had become. Max Caulfield had died with Chloe, with Arcadia Bay, and whatever it was that she ultimately chose, this was her only outcome, inevitable, inexorable. This was the monster that her power created, but it was her who fed it, her misdeed which raised it, and her choices that evolved it. It gradually devoured her, and instead of banishing it back to the wasteland where it should've remained, she willingly gave up on herself. She gave it a body to incarnate and made it who it was today.
And above all that, she knew she only had herself to blame.
"Max! Lunch's ready! You coming or what?" From inside the beach house, Chloe's voice called. Sometimes, she wondered if this Chloe was her Chloe, the one that went through everything with her, the one she sincerely wished that she had – or remembered that she had? – grabbed her hands, watched the storm tore away at everything, then together driven away from the remnants of the dead town for good? Or was it just another one produced from a broken timeline, a fresh blank slate having no recollection whatsoever, whom she photojumped and recreated entirely for herself, after she couldn't bear deliberately letting her friend die just for nothing? How she ended up with her was blurry at best, a jumble inside her mind as a result of exerting herself too much, of creating too much branches in the original timeline, of having lived through every one of them, only to come to the inevitable acceptance that any bizzare reality, despite how unwordly and utopian, was doomed beyond salvation the moment she arrived there. Eitherway, she could never truly look into her eyes and admit the truth that no, it wasn't your prolonged existence that doomed Arcadia Bay; it was me and my ability, my unicity, my curse, that was the undoing of everything.
"Coming!" Shoving everything aside, she swiped her tears hastily. She was selfish, that much was certain, but as long as Chloe was there, every ruined alternate reality and timeline can kindly go screw themselves. She was beyond a care at this point; playing the heroine was a past so long and distant that sometimes she even wondered if it was real. While her psych was a raging turbulence without rest, the girl always stood at the center of the storm, serving as the final bond that kept her grounded and on the verge of sanity, if barely. While being with her, Max could at the very least pretend that there wasn't a problem with her, and let Chloe's unconditional love fill the void instead of the usual anguish or guilt, for as long as it could last, anyway. She knew she would eventually screw up again, losing Chloe all over, and like every other time, it would hurt like a bitch.
But not now, she determined, and she also intended to make the fun last for as long as she could. Entering the house, she left the digital camera on the porch, forgotten.
I'm not a native speaker, so any mistakes you can spot, I would greatly appreciate to go back and correct. Currently, I'm working on two works at a time, so updates might not roll as frequently. Please bear with me =)
