Chronos Effect
Prologue — In My Own words
I have returned to this moment so many times that it no longer feels like time at all. It is a loop, a closed corridor of memory where the air never changes. Each time I step back into it, Amy is there, weightless and heavy at once, lying in my arms like a question I can never answer. Her hair is slick with blood and rain, her lips parted as though she wants to speak but cannot. The sirens always echo at the same pitch, the red lights always flash across my trembling hands.
But this time, I do not fight it. I do not claw at fate. I do not wrestle with grief like an enemy. I simply hold her and let the moment move through me. Perhaps this was always meant to happen. Perhaps destiny does not bend, no matter how hard I lean against it.
That morning had begun with a kind of static in my skull—a premonition disguised as an ordinary day. My shower felt colder than it should have, my coffee bitterer, the toast ash-dry in my mouth. Nothing in the apartment sat quite right. The clock on the wall ticked slightly off rhythm; the faucet dripped at intervals my body did not recognize.
And inside my mind, a reel of images flickered: Amy's car spinning, glass scattering like salt over black asphalt, her name ripping itself from my throat. The vision wasn't a dream. It was sharp, present, like a trance I couldn't shake. In it I had power—my hands on a wheel, my foot on a brake—but in the waking world that power dissolved.
When Amy emerged from the bedroom, bright and deliberate as always, she was dressed for a visit to her parents. She looked like a promise of the future. And yet every detail of her beauty only deepened the dread curling through my ribs.
"Amy," I said, forcing steadiness into my voice, "don't drive today. Please."
She paused with her purse strap halfway over her shoulder. "Why? What's going on?"
I had no explanation I could give her that wouldn't sound unhinged. "I just want you to be safe," I murmured. Even now, those words echo through my nights.
To my surprise she softened, just a little. "Okay. Fine. I'll take the bus."
She smiled at me then—one of those quick, amused smiles that never quite reached her eyes—and disappeared out the door. Only after she called hours later to tell me she had arrived safely at her parents' house did the vise around my chest loosen. Maybe, I told myself, it was only imagination. Brain tricks. A false alarm.
When she returned that evening, the apartment seemed to brighten with her. She carried with her a calmness I hadn't noticed in months. God, I felt it too—the kind of peace that makes you think you've outrun the darkness for good. I hugged her as though she had been gone for weeks, inhaling the scent of her hair until she laughed softly against my shoulder.
"You missed me that much?" she teased, her face a mix of surprise and amusement.
If only she had known. If only I had.
Buoyed by that relief, I suggested we go out—somewhere special, somewhere ours. I told myself it was a celebration, but in truth it was also a test. If I was driving, if I controlled the variables, then nothing could go wrong. Or so I thought.
I chose a restaurant in New Orleans where we had gone on our first date—a small place with brick walls and candles trembling in glass jars. The moment we stepped in, memory flooded me: the scent of lemon and thyme, the low jazz murmuring from the speakers, the table near the window where she had once traced a heart in the condensation.
That night she was radiant. Everything she did was in slow motion for me—the way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the way her smile curved just before a laugh. We spoke of old memories and she seemed to recall them the instant I did, finishing my sentences with gleeful precision. It felt like our minds were in sync, two clocks ticking together at last.
I had never seen her so happy. And I had never been so terrified of losing it.
By the time we left, the sky had turned velvet dark. Streetlights flickered like distant stars. We walked hand in hand to the car, reluctant to let go. I opened the door for her, the way I always used to before routine dulled our rituals. She rested her head on my shoulder as I started the engine, her breath warm through my shirt.
Then she spoke my name. "Damian…"
Her voice was small, almost childlike.
"I lost our baby."
The words detonated quietly between us.
For a moment I didn't understand. Then, like a wave pulling back from shore, the meaning hit. She had been pregnant. She had not told me. And now—lost.
My mind, so recently at peace, spun. "What?" My hands tightened on the wheel. "You were pregnant?"
"I only found out three weeks ago," she said quickly, her eyes shining with tears. "That's why I went to my parents'—I didn't know how to tell you. I needed advice."
Anger surged before grief could settle. Betrayal burned hot in my chest. "You should have told me."
"I was going to," she whispered. "I just—"
And in that instant, while our words collided, a truck's headlights exploded across the windshield. I jerked the wheel. Tires screamed. Metal shrieked.
Impact.
When I opened my eyes, everything was tilted. My forehead throbbed; blood blurred my vision. The smell of gasoline mingled with the acrid sting of deployed airbags.
"Amy!" I gasped.
I twisted in my seat, confusion splintering into horror. She was slumped against the door, unmoving.
I forced my door open and stumbled into the night. Sirens wailed somewhere close, growing louder. My hands shook as I fumbled with her seatbelt, whispering her name again and again. Somehow I pulled her free and laid her on the pavement. Her skin was cold, her breath shallow.
"Please," I said to no one. "Please."
Red and blue lights bathed the scene. Paramedics rushed toward us, their voices urgent but distant. One of them knelt beside me, checking my pupils, asking if I could stand. I didn't answer. All I saw was Amy being lifted onto a stretcher, her body weightless again but in the wrong way.
They urged me to come with them—to get checked for internal injuries, to be safe. But all that mattered in that moment was her. My Amy. My impossible loop.
And now here I am once more, standing at the edge of that night like a diver at the lip of dark water. Every time I think I can change it, time snaps back to this. Amy in my arms. Sirens. A promise I couldn't keep.
I used to believe I could rewrite the story. That visions were warnings meant to be heeded, that choice could unspool destiny. But the more I fought, the tighter the loop drew around me.
Maybe this was always the point—not to change it, but to understand it. Not to wrestle with grief but to hold it until it softens, even if it never does.
Amy once told me that time was like a river, always moving forward no matter how many stones you throw. But rivers also bend, carve canyons, disappear underground and emerge somewhere unexpected. Perhaps she was trying to tell me that destiny is not about control but about currents.
I don't know yet what that means. All I know is that I keep returning to this moment, and each time I hold her closer, whisper her name softer, and let the river take us where it will.