Invincible Spring

OK. Maybe this is her chance to get it right. She’s watched enough sci fi to know how time loop episodes work. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 5: the ancient mummy hand Buffy has to fetch for a customer keeps lurching for her throat. Hands do that. Ryan has cried twice since it happened. If he could take any moment in his life back, he swears he’d pick that one.

So this will be easy. Loop 2, she just tells him, “You don’t want to do this.” His grey eyes soften. His favourite thing about her is that she knows him so well. He’s never felt so seen in a friendship. “I love our friendship,” she says, easing into the word like a hot bath. He was the first person in the office she came out to, and sometimes he helps her pick out ties and bomber jackets. When he says they suit her, her body feels alien and powerful, like a velociraptor, but also like home. Later, when the other reporters have gone home and they’re sitting next to each other on the couch in their office, splitting a beer, laughing like schoolboys, he slides his hand under her shirt, searching for her nipple.

Buffy plunges a knife into the mummy hand and it stops twitching. The customer looks at her blankly. “This hand is dead. The power’s gone.” When Cassie goes home, the sidewalk is littered with magnolia petals. She grinds them to paste under her heel. The next morning the flowers are obstinate and brazen, and her sidewalks are empty.

Loop 3, she takes all the alcohol out of their office before he gets to work. There’s a six-pack in her drawer, a bottle of whiskey in his. Why did they keep so much booze in the office? Her dad warned her all reporters eventually become alcoholics. While she’s brainstorming her lede out loud, he comes up behind her and hugs her. His hand glides up her shirt. It’s not even eleven in the morning, but their door is closed. Why did she let the door close?

Buffy hands the customer a shopping bag with a dismembered hand. “Fingers sold separately,” she says. The magnolia leaves fall, then leap back into the air overnight. The bell by the magic shop door rings again. Time is a customer who’s not easily satisfied.

Loop 7, she’s hostile. When he cries, she tries to explain it’s something he hasn’t done yet, but it’s her job to stop it before it wrecks them both. “Do you think I’m a monster?” he says. Of course not. They hug, awkwardly, sitting on the carpet. She moves the couch out of their office every morning now. “I think I’m in love with you,” he says. There’s his hand again, climbing.

Buffy makes it out of the basement with the mummy hand intact, but it lunges for the customer. Cassie considers working from home, quitting her job, but Ryan’s hand has taken on a life of its own. If she removes herself from the story it will just find another nipple to caress.

The bell rings. The bell rings. The bell rings. Buffy yanks it off the door. Cassie borrows a stepladder from her landlady and rips the magnolia flowers off their muscled branches. She hates the way the petals splay apart. They’re open mouths. Just asking for it. After she squeezes them into a pulp, she has another body part she can’t get clean.

Loop 12, she just sits on the floor and cries. She’s so tired of getting it wrong. Time is a jagged splinter, and there’s nowhere else to step. Maybe this hand was coming for her the first time she complimented one of his stories. Maybe she’d have to go back a decade and talk herself out of going to journalism school. Maybe she’d have to go back centuries, millenia, 95 million years, and tear the first magnolia seedling out of the earth.

Buffy breaks the time loop by telling the woman she’ll order her another mummy hand. The customer leaves satisfied; time continues on its merry way. Cassie doesn’t know what lesson she’s supposed to learn from that. “It’s a tale as old as time,” her mom sighs when she calls for advice. All these millenia and no one has figured out how to break the loop.

The magnolia keeps blooming. Maybe there is no loop. Maybe she just can’t move on. Time is a broken record, stuck forever on the same scratch.

Loop 23, just after Ryan hangs up his leather jacket, their editor knocks on their door. “Got a story for you,” he tells Cassie. “Human interest.” He’s gotten about a million calls about a magnolia tree that won’t stop blooming. There’s a pastor who’s convinced it’s a sign of God’s eternal love, a perpetual resurrection. Ryan won’t meet her eyes. She wanted to work with him because he writes stories that change the way you see the world. If he tells you it’s Monday, it must be Monday. “Call an arborist. Or the pastor,” their editor says. “People love this shit. I’ll put it on the front page.”

Time is not the thing that’s breaking. The world is breaking its rules for her. The magnolia tree has been waiting for her, showing off all the things it can do with its loose, indestructible lips. Those petals are an invitation. Take your time, they’ve been saying. We’ll be here until you’re ready to speak. ⏱︎