[In the motel room, during the evening]

They all wake up at once at exactly 3:36 pm. Their parents haven’t arrived yet. The door is still stuck in the wall. The little girl vanished, and the intestine and eyeball grew green and black spicules over the shiny, slippery, and smooth red. Flies sing their ugly songs around it, while the sun weakens the intestine, causing the slippery pieces of flesh to slip off the surface, like water off a windshield.

Suddenly, an explosion is heard by the siblings. A big, nasty ‘hoo’. That explosion blurs him into a memory that is not his. It was not a flashback, it is as if he was living through the memory as if it were his own.

And the same explosion in the flashback. Only this time, it seems as if he has been thrown back into the year 1939. The people of a town and himself hide in a storm shelter. The voices, so quiet with the fear so loud. Bombs would whistle from the air and drop onto the floor creating a loud ‘hoo’. In the memory, Cody had been counting. Three explosions every minute. After each, the ground would gently shake. That would follow by gentle rattling in the walls and elderly gasps. The air just sat there, seemingly taking shelter too.

But like approaching footsteps, the bombs became louder. Several hours later, the sun began to peep over the horizon. The latch over the shelter squealed open. Like ants, everyone shuffled into a line and started climbing out. Clings, bangs, and taps on the metal ladder followed with every step and grab it got. It’d be louder when an elderly person would climb up it.

A hundred people later - fifteen minutes later, Cody climbed out. In those hours, the city had withered and become a burnt pattern of vines. Burnt, destroyed patches of rubbles that used to be buildings lay next to the unburnt, cracked, withering roads. Bodies on the floor, becoming dust-trays. Some corpses stabbed onto the tops of the black, witch-hat-tipped sharp street light poles. One eye staring at the inside of their eyelids, and the other eye staring through the other eyelid.

He named it ‘sorrow’ street. Eventually, Cody came across another street. The street that took him to what feels like home. The aurora had revealed what happened in one short, yet long night.

On a wooden fence faced towards the sunlight, nine people’s heads as trophies were left for people to see. Three in the front row, and the rest in the back, also faced towards the sun. Their mouths, crookedly wide open, eyelids carefully cut out, revealing the crimson ocean behind them. Their tongues cut off, to be sliced into two and put over the eyebrows. Oddly, it seemed… calming.

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Chirping birds sitting on their heads, bushes rubbing against each other, wind hooling through cracks and holes in the walls of the handicapped houses.

It wasn’t until he crossed over to see their faces, that he noticed one of them was his mother. A pulse of electricity runs up his back, his pupils stop shifting and he topples over to his knees, like a wall slowly leaning over and finally cracking free.

“This is me,” says the Passenger, “What’s gonna be you?”

A tear slithers down his face. As soon as it hits the ground, like paint soaking a tissue, the surroundings change into a black void, with what looks like a slip of old, homemade paper in his eyesight, just fitting into his eyeshot. Every number from 1930 to 2030 was written onto it. A tiny marker moves from 1939 to 2021. Precisely, September 2021. “It must be the timeline.” Wonders Cody.

At that time, a little boy lay there in a hospital bed. A clean room, painted windows, pale blue walls, IV bags on stands, a small cable TV, and a pot of dead flowers. The door of the room was wide open, being held by a doorstop wedged under the door. All the windows were shut, and it was thundering outside, but not raining.

The little boy was connected to many more unlabeled IV bags. To the point that his face was hidden behind the pipes. Cody slowly walks towards him. He gets close enough to just see the tip of his long blonde hair. Suddenly, thunder flashes. And at that instant, the power shuts out too.

A second later, the lights come back. The little boy is still there. But, the visible loch of his hair moved to just cut out of Cody’s sight.

Then, through the hallways, a set of footsteps echo down to the boy’s door. And there stands a doctor, six feet tall at the door. A white coat, blue pants, and messy brown hair.

Suddenly, things freeze and the passenger fades in. “Pay attention to the kid. He’ll say something that you may have to understand.” He says in a serious voice.

While time is frozen, the boy begins thrashing violently. Worried, Cody steps back. Around a foot away from the wall, something grabs his ankles. He doesn’t see anything. The doorstop wedged under the door begins to vibrate. side to side and then a pen from the doctor’s pocket drops. It is faced towards the doctor himself.

He comes back to reality all of a sudden. The reality where his siblings are running out of the motel towards the big nasty ‘hoo’. They all stop at the door, with Cody still at the couch. The two of his siblings, stare at what looks like a still tornado of smoke. “Cody, you have to see this.” Says Michael, next to Janet, as she whispers to herself, “No…” while sobbing and slurping the air.

Rocks begin filling Cody’s lungs. His breath begins to get heavier as he stands. From the edge, he sees his family’s green rental SUV crumpled and on fire. It is crumbled beyond recognition, like a crushed, wet piece of bread. While the car is on fire, their parents’ bodies stare back at them from the car. Eyes molten, skin turned to charcoal and the outline of their bones, appears from under the charred skin, in the form of shadows.

The passenger then asks, “Is this gonna be you?”