Jamais Vu

Chapter 7

"Longest. Day. Ever. Ugh." Nessa dropped her head onto her desk, taking a perverse pleasure in the thick thump it made. After losing Dan in the middle of the street, then being profoundly lost herself for ten minutes, she finally dragged herself to campus and tried to put in a decent day of effort on her thesis.

But the words wouldn't come. None of the new sections were flowing and when she tried to edit earlier work, the sentences began to blend into black and white blurs.

Still, she hung in there, hoping. Besides, there wasn't much else she had to do to keep her busy. If the previous pattern of her mysterious future visits stayed stable, it would be days before she saw Dan again, so there wasn't any point in going for a casual walk in the park or swinging by Mrs. O'Neil's apartment, and going home would just mean being on her own with her thoughts.

Staying at college was better, marginally. She was surrounded by peers here. Sure, none of them really spoke to her, but the sense of academia was a pleasant vortex to keep her heart from aching too much at Dan's absence.

See, we're all colleagues here! Here came Profession Espino again, walking by her desk for the fourth time in an hour. Nessa was used to him lurking; it seemed to take him a few silent interactions before the statistician was comfortable enough for conversation. She waved at him and smiled. "Good afternoon, Professor. Can I help you with anything?"

His dark eyes darted around before he made his way over to her chair. "You should be careful, Ms. Martin."

"Actually, my last name is Marty," she corrected, and not for the first time. "Wait – what do I have to be careful about?"

"There's another missing woman," he said, an odd expression flashing over his face. If Nessa didn't know that Espino didn't have the capacity to smile, she would have sworn it was a half-grin. "I saw you reading the news story about the other one. I thought perhaps you'd be interested that it's happening again."

"Oh no," she whispered. "I hadn't heard." Quickly she tapped on her computer, bringing up the local city website where sure enough, a headline screamed at her. Phases from the article jumped out. Local woman missing. Calista Edwards. Grave fears for her safety. Serial killer.

A serial killer that won't be caught any time soon. Wait, how did she know that? Was that something Dan said? Trying to remember all of the information about her time with him was like trying to hold a handful of sand underwater; every time she moved, something else drained away. Dan was the constant, the brightly burning memory, but anything else was vague and easily forgotten.

Still, she was fairly sure he'd mentioned this killer, which was a horrendous thought that a decade might pass without anyone cracking the case. Her hand flew to her throat, where she clutched the sunflower charm on her necklace, a gift from her mother when she graduated. Rubbing it between her fingers for comfort, she leaned in to read the rest of the story.

"Dangerous times," came the voice from just over her shoulder.

She jumped, spinning back to face the professor who she'd completely forgotten about. "Yes. I suppose they are."

His face twisted again in that strange almost-smile. "Please, Ms. Martin. Look after yourself. Nice young girl like you. Can't be too careful."

As he sidled away, Nessa couldn't decide which she felt more weirded out by; that Espino seemed cheered by the story of the missing woman, or that he'd actually attempted to make conversation with her for the first time in two and a half years.

She took an extended bathroom break in the late afternoon, staring deeply into the mirror and studying for any changes. She didn't look like a woman who'd travelled into the future. Her hazel eyes were the same shade, her eyebrows needed a good plucking, but that wasn't anything to write home about. Maybe there are no physical signs. Perhaps she wasn't even going forward in time in a literal sense. Perhaps it was a projection of herself that travelled forward, and only Dan could see and interact with the materialisation.