On the morning of 9/11, six hours before the first plane would crash into the north tower, my cousin woke up and said to his mother: something terrible will happen to the United States today.
From the moment X came into my life, I knew they had this gift too. Only much stronger. They could move backwards and forwards through time, and return with secrets that would make your spine shiver.
They were just like a UFO. Their smile vibrated with a benevolent energy and their feet never touched the ground. In the past, they experienced something that made time flow differently for them. Like a violin. Or a car crash.
As it would happen, I was looking for someone who could travel through time to help reconcile the different parts of me—so, when I found them, I was gone; taken by their energy.
On the evening we met, the streetlights kept flicking on and off. The police chased themselves round in circles, and the paths were littered with dead birds.
We were three drinks in when they began speaking in tongues. At first, it didn’t make sense, but then it clicked and I understood every word.
I drank fast, and, slowly, with their encouragement, I began to speak in tongues too.
Back at my place, our conversation continued like this. They asked me to undress, and I asked them to undress, and we lay next to each other in our physical forms.
It felt right, but at the same time, not right, and I knew then it wasn’t going to last. In retrospect, they must have known this already.
I don’t remember the sex but I remember the morning after. The sun woke us up, spilling into the room like a confession. I loved that bedroom—the white wooden floors, the bed that pinned itself into the corner, the window.
The sunshine followed us into the shower, and we were joined there by the sounds and smells of cars and bbqs from Chatsworth Road. We washed together, got out, and felt fresh and childlike, born again, revitalized.
The next thing I knew we were out in the street, and all the colours had gone weird. The trees were dancing with intensity. The sky tripped like a kaleidoscope.
Everything was too much, but I wanted to let it all in. I rubbed my arms with my legs. I could feel my heart beating out my chest. And X just floated by, gliding down the street.
And so I followed them. All the way along Chatsworth Road, then up into the sky, down into the centre of the earth, way into the past, and deep into the future.
I saw myself die, and I saw them die, and I saw the whole world die, until it was just me and them left, pure energy, and the whole universe had turned into dust.
And we sat in the darkness and listened to the sound of absolutely nothing dancing around us, and thought about all the stars that had collapsed in on themselves.
And they put out their hand, and I put my hand in theirs, and I thought about what it means. To hold someone’s hand. In this life, and beyond.
Then after forever, they opened a door, and we stepped through it together.
I loved living with X but things were far from perfect. I enjoyed the quiet moments. Sleeping with each other every night. Feeling their body wound up in mine. Lying womb-like late into the morning. Inviting a cat to join us. Feeling day after day pass, looking out the window and watching the seasons change, and seeing the garden change with them, and feeling myself change too, slowly, living and growing and shedding and budding again, in synchronicity with the seasons.
In moments like these, life felt warm and comfortable, and I felt I could happily live and die like this.
But whatever twisted relationship I had with death, X’s was more intense. We would stay up late taking cocaine, and X would whisper to him, courting conspiratorially, and I would feel stab after stab of razor-sharp jealousy. I hated when they mentioned his name. I hated the way he made them feel. I hated the smile he put on their face. But I didn’t say anything. I just sat there, lost for words.
After X and death had finished talking, I would drag X to bed and we would sleep together in fits, with the windows open and the sounds of the world pouring in. We’d hold each other to stop ourselves from jumping in our sleep, then, in the evening, watch television, and try not to talk about anything.
Sitting on the bus in the mornings, I’d dream about another existence. Trading secrets in a bedroom. Swallowing bombs of MDMA. Feeling the first raindrops of the monsoon falling against my face, after days of intense heat. The smell of sex. A taste of something else. Love—glimmering, endless, oceanic. Life was whispering to me.
Once, X left and almost never came back.
It was morning. They’d been up all night. I was sitting silently across the room from them. They were deep in conversation with death, talking at a manic pace. They had been travelling through time, journeying into the past, and secrets were streaming out their mouth.
Frozen, I watched as their eyes turned from their eyes into the eyes of someone I didn’t recognise. I called out their name, trying to make my words travel across time. But I couldn’t get through to them.
The look on their face made me scared, so I suggested we go to the hospital. This was a bad idea. They stared at me like a cornered animal. The room felt still and purgatorial.
X made towards the kitchen.
Sometimes an event is so radical, so significant, so life-altering, it entangles itself across time, and is felt before it has happened—like two towers collapsing, or a person hurting a child.
I knew what I would see in that kitchen before I saw it, and I knew that life would never be the same again.
I knew X would be standing by the sink, about to hurt themselves, and I knew I would have to stop it. I had already seen myself try and wrestle the knife free, had already seen the blood rain down, like rubies spilling out of my fist.
As X and I fell to the floor, wrestling together, I felt myself detach from my physical body. I stood up and surveyed the scene with a calm togetherness, then stepped away, closed my eyes and went down into the Earth, descending until I reached the planet’s core. And this is where I found X, with their knees hugged against their chest.
I sat down next to them and put my arms around them, and told them they had got lost. They asked me how long they had been there. I don’t know, I said. But we have to hurry back. I took their hand in mine, and squeezed as hard as I could.
I remember returning to the room. I remember reentering my body. I remember time speeding right up. And I remember trying to pry the knife free, as they bit and scratched, and a thought screaming: this is life or death.
At last, I remember the sound of sirens wailing.
X and I were separated. The police walked blood all over the place. They put the knife in a plastic bag, and collected my details. The sun streamed through the front door. Neighbours looked out their windows. It’d been over half an hour.
In the ambulance, a paramedic took our heart rates and asked X questions. How long have you been awake? How much have you taken? Has this happened before?
They were handcuffed on the bed. I sat behind them, stroking their hair, silently crying.
As soon as we were at Whipps Cross and I was alone, I broke down. My noises were animal. Gargles and wails, guttural moans coming out my throat. I cried with the pain of a thousand miscarriages.
After a while, a doctor took me into a room, cleaned my finger, and injected it with anaesthetic. The doctor stuck a needle in one side, and then pulled it out the other. He did this again, and again, until it was stitched together.
When X was let go, they appeared tired and thin, but relieved. The psychotic energy that had possessed their body was gone. They looked at me and I saw X in their eyes.
We left the hospital and waited for a cab. It was March, a week or so from the first lockdown. The air was riddled with anxiety. But we survived. I held them close to me the whole ride.
A few months later, X told me they were leaving. I tried to get them to stay, but they didn’t listen. They had already seen the future, and knew our time had come.
A few months after that, X and I are living separately, and I find myself having another panic attack. I feel out of control, can hear people sending me messages through the radio. I have to lie down and keep my muscles still, because if I don’t, I worry I might kill myself.
Sometimes, I have intrusive thoughts about hurting others, even though I am not violent, even though I don’t want to hurt anybody. These thoughts terrify me. And whenever I think about that night, my finger throbs as if it were still open.
Another few months later, and I can feel life returning. I am in a new place, with old friends. My panic attacks have made it impossible to hide. I am learning to trust others.
Each night, I cook slowly and savour every bite. I drive in the car and listen to music at full blast, singing at the top of my lungs. I take photos in the mirror. I dance around the kitchen. I think about life and death, creation and decimation, circles and cycles we are all part of, and accept multiple truths can coexist.
One weekend, I get drunk with my housemates. They are dancing in front of me. Every so often I catch Corinne’s eye, and every so often I catch Jack’s, and then I spin around and close both my eyes and feel my body sway like a wave as the music plays on. And then I open my eyes and both of them are gone. And then I close my eyes and am surrounded by thousands of people, our bodies moving and swaying together, like a murmuration. Then I open my eyes again and Jack and Corinne are back, and I close my eyes and I’m alone—but this time, it’s OK, it’s OK to be alone, like—this is how I was born, this is how I’ll die, moving, swaying, alone—still a human, still part of something, with a heart that beats, blood pumping through my veins.
I feel mountains shift within me. I feel tides turning in my eyes. I am travelling through time at the speed of light. I see X in black and white and then in bright technicolour and I see all the lives we lived together. Happy ones, sad ones, ones where we get married, ones where we kill each other. And I see us embryonic, primordial, before it all, then post-life, after the end, and we are looking at each other with a smile that says: I forgive you. I take their hands in mine and place them on my cheeks and feel them wipe away my tears.
I love you. I’m sorry it ended like this.
Allie Mica Oliver is a transexual. Also, she writes. She’s been published in lots of places, you probably wouldn’t have heard of them. Her writing is focused on the world around her, inaccurately. She’s working on herself.