Page 145 of Dragon 7

And Kenji and Reo continued to stand there frozen in the moment somehow unable to see me.

And then. . .I moved, but. . .I didn’t go forward.

I went backwards, falling upward.

Retreating, instead of advancing.

It was as if. . .time had somehow hooked its fingers into my ankles and slowly pulled me inch by inch toward the old version of myself.

Back into the past moments I had already lived. Old seconds unraveled as minutes unwrote themselves and looped back.

I breathed in reverse.

My pulse no longer pushed through my veins.

The blood pulled and returned and then returned again.

My shattered soul regressed, stitching itself.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!

Chapter twenty-three

Reverse

Hiro

Time was rewinding.

Actually fucking rewinding.

Like smoke returning to fire.

Like rain climbing back into gray clouds.

Like echoes returning to the mouths that had spoken them.

I’ve finally lost my mind. . .because. . .this is not reality. . .

I went backwards through the cabin like a man pulled through cold water by a hook in his sternum. I was the moon slipping back into the gravity of a dying planet. Every retreat tightened the invisible pull as I circled the same wound the way dying stars orbited their collapse.

My feet left the floor.

My body traveled the air the way a kite travels wind.

Help!!

The cabin rolled past me in the wrong direction.

Sound went first.

Kenji's voice climbed back into his mouth. Syllable by syllable, they crawled down into his throat and disappeared. His breath ran the wrong way. His chest rose and fell on the back-beat.

Kenji! Reo!

The only thing that was consistent was the baby's giggle. Although she had vanished, her giggling was the only sound. The one true note in a song running in reverse.

Is she doing this? Or at least. . .did she trigger this? Or am I. . .dead?