Presiding over the darkness there was a figure, a male shape, with an entirely unmanageable aura, containing such things as beauty, terror, love, filth, and above all power. Alive? no, he was dead before the gunshot reached his ears. It was a violence to the still of the April morning - a noise that heralded death and destruction. It broke the air in stark contrast to the voice of the birds that rang out and the oblivious nature that surrounded him as he fell lifeless. With eyelids open, his milky blue eyes stared into the frozen sky while the mouth hung open: Now I am dead, is this the end?



Time now passed untrackably, for it was given over to struggle. It started with a blink, a firm draw and the warm plume of steam that once left his mouth now returned with a kiss. He knew the name of it. That is true, he called it the kiss of life.


It was something... the way his life picked up speed and remarkably improved once the bullet, impossible to slow or turn aside, left his chest and rushed back to whatever weapon it belonged. It was all strange, how the trailing droplets of blood formed on the dry grass, the reddish moisture rose upward through the air as if powered by the jolts of his wound. It bathed his exposed skin, deliciously, until with his tingling flesh he drew it in. Suddenly, sensation and all its luxuries returned first to his left side and then to his right one with gorgeous stealth. Oh how his body immediately stood back up from the ground without hands or any assistance. There was no rational explanation on how he simply straightened and his hand secured the gun straight down the holster in a second.



Such distress. Why? was it because he recalled the things he could have done better and instead of beating himself up about it. No—something wasn't quite working. Something wasn't quite working: his body won't take orders from this will of his. Look around, he ordered. But his neck ignored him. His eyes have their own agenda.



He saw the every existence of the rising flames in the forest slowly shrinking then quelling to nothingness, it consumed the magnetic heat and sucked toxic clouds of smoke along with it, leaving no trace. Odd as it seem, he witnessed the splintered wood fill the gaps and busted holes in the trees. In every change, beauty replaced ruins and aches in each twig that was scattered or broken on the ground, in every green leaf that was once falling, burnt and torn. Green, alive and beautiful.



On his own legs, one foot behind another. Then repeated. Then repeated. Wait a minute, why was he running backwards into his car? Wait. Was it dusk coming, or is it dawn? What was the sequence of the journey he was on? What are its rules? Why are the birds singing so strangely?

The miracle wasn't that he was trapped. The miracle was that he was living past events in reverse.



He couldn't stop nor quite recognize this world he was in. Everything was familiar but not at all reassuring. Far from it. This was a world of mistakes, of diametrical mistakes.




In the car, he rammed his foot down on the brake and sent the car into a fizzing convulsion of rev and whinny. With a skillful lurch he gave the bent hydrant on the sidewalk a crunchy shouldercheck—and he was off, weaving at speed back up the street. When he drove, he didn't look where he was going. He looked where he came from. There were no accidents, sure, and it all worked out.





These reversal developments all came one after the other. A new home. A career. A routine, in any event, has certainly established itself. It seemed this man was getting the hang of things. He was living on a fierce and magical planet, which sheds or surrenders rain or even flings it off in whipstroke after whipstroke, which fires out bolts of electric gold into the firmament at 186,000 miles per second, which with a single shrug of its tectonic plates can erect a city in half an hour, which the sun rises in the west and sets in east. To tell the truth, it was weird way to carry on. Eating was unattractive, especially when various items get gulped up into his mouth, and after skillful massage with tongue and teeth he transfered them to the plate for additional sculpture with knife and fork and spoon. Reading was a disappointment and it took quite a while to realize that the pitiable chirruping he heard from himself and people was, in fact, human speech. Christ, even the larks and the sparrows sound more dignified. Second, minutes, figures scattered in the wind like leaves, gone after pausing to do that creepy thing— knocking, quietly, on his door as if against time.



3 monthes before his death, Edward Colbert lived in reverse in rather reduced circumstances. Everything was miserable and innocent. All the quiddity, all the power and wonder, had been washed away by time and weather until that glorious day of third february where time rushed like water on river and reality poked his senses.



90 days from now, he will be killed. Dream or not, what was the lesson behind such experince? will he be able to change it? or death was just as inevitable as it seemed? The answer was unknown, he needed to figure the puzzle where comes a point he had to call an end or at least announce a limit to sacrifice. Whether he died again or not, he must expose his killer.