One for All — Part Three
By Resa Nelson
Terrified, I cling to the safety bar across my lap.
The roller coaster climbs over the crest and begins its plummet.
My safety bar breaks free, and I hurtle into the air.
I land feet-first onto a tenuous wooden surface in the middle of the night. It takes a while for my eyes to adjust to the starlight.
“There’s plenty room for more!” shouts Molly Brown.
I’m standing in the center of a lifeboat drifting on still waters. Women wearing turn-of-the-previous-century finery sit along the edges of the boat, flanked by men in White Star uniforms. Even in the dimness of starlight, I see the fear in their eyes.
Fear of dying.
Fear of risking what they have because they might lose it.
Fear of giving up the guarantee of safety.
Fear that they might see who they really are beneath the finery and uniforms.
In the distance, people scream, bobbing in the ocean as the ship upends and sinks.
“There’s no room!” a White Star man yells. He points an oar at me and jabs me with it.
Molly latches onto my wrist and lifts it up for him to see. She holds her hand next to it. “Look!” she counters. “We’re kin!”
The back of Molly’s hand bears the 4MSKTR tattoo, but that makes no sense. Our family tattoo is something of my era, not hers. Something my husband and daughters and I invented.
The White Star man grips the oar like a baseball bat and draws it behind his shoulders, ready to swing at me. If he swings, the oar will clip the heads of a dozen women seated on the lifeboat. If he swings hard enough, the blow could kill them.
I can’t let that happen, not even in a world where I don’t know if anyone other than me is real.
I dive into the ocean.
The water should be frigid. I should be facing death from hypothermia in minutes.
Instead, the ocean feels like a warm blanket covering my shoulders.
I hear the roller coaster, even though I’m no longer on it.
Click, click, click.
Daylight blinds me. Once my vision readjusts, I see the Titanic, now appearing unharmed and intact as it glides across a different lawn. Looking around, I see nothing but a vast stretch of grass and the ocean liner.
The transparent image of a woman wearing her white hair in a pixie cut shimmers into view between me and the Titanic. Her face is weathered and creased with wrinkles. “Pop quiz,” she says. “What’s the difference between a horror movie and dementia?”
I hear the roller coaster clicking again, even though it’s nowhere in sight.
Click, click, click.
Oh, I know the answer to this one. I remember now. It’s a quiz I invented.
I answer out loud. “A horror movie lasts for about 90 minutes. Dementia lasts on average for five years.”
Click, click, click.
Like the snap of a finger, I know it’s not the roller coaster clicking.
It’s synapses clicking back into place.
Resa Nelson is a member of Science Fiction Writers of America. She is also a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop. She has sold more than 20 short stories to magazines and anthologies, including Clarkesworld, Science Fiction Age, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress XXIII, Women of Darkness II, Future Boston, and 2041. She was the TV/Movie columnist for Realms of Fantasy magazine for 13 years and also wrote articles for SCI FI magazine. She has published 24 novels. Visit her website at resanelson.com.
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