Let's Circle Back to That

By Hannah Bel Davis

​001
 
r/gctimeloop

You never thought you’d find hope on Reddit, but here you are.
 
The people on the forum say you’ll never forget your first time getting stuck in a timeloop at the Grand Canyon. You have good odds. There are seven timeloop vortexes.

Vortex is a funny word. It feels to you like a medication. Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s all an elaborate role-playing game. Either way, Stevie would have gotten a kick out of your little plan.

Your experience is already off to a rocky start, though. Namely, Stevie isn’t here, so you want to pluck your eyelashes out one by one.

You park. Your cousin points at two crows pecking at a dead mouse.

​“Ew,” she says.

A Grand Canyon security guard waddles your way.

​“You can’t park here,” he yells.

“Why?!” your cousin screeches.

​The guard splays his hands, imploring.

“They’re removing someone from the canyon.”
 
The words seem to be out of the guard’s mouth before he can stop them. He’s out of his depths. He’s revealed too much.

“Like, a body?” your cousin asks.
 
You’re impatient, thrumming your hands on the steering wheel, not listening too much or else you’ll lose your nerve.

Then the paramedics trot by, unnervingly jaunty. They carry a gurney between them.
 
“Shit,” says the security guard, glancing nervously at the dandelion-yellow tape, limp and useless in the wind. POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS.

“Park somewhere else,” he orders.
 
“Oh no,” your cousin gasps. “You know, people freeze down there,” she tells you.

“I know,” you say, and a hand slips out from under the black sheet on the gurney and you want to hold it. You want to hold that hand forever, really, because no one will ever hold it again.

“Woah,” says your cousin.
 
“We just have to park somewhere else,” you say, shaking your head.
 
The new spot is better, anyway. Closer to the visitors’ centre. You feel your cousin squinting at your new buzzcut. You have a sunburn. You don’t feel pretty, but you feel practical. Stevie liked practicality. She liked jackets with many enormous pockets. She liked pocket knives with a thousand gizmos.
​
You march to the visitor’s centre through a sand-toned, manicured pavilion. You wish for unwavering confidence. It will only work if you harbour a faith that borders on ignorance. You spent hours pillaging the online forums, reading everything you could, shocked because— 

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​002
 
r/falconry

You see warnings etched on the ceiling beams of the visitors’ centre, stating that these timeloops are going to trap, not save you. You’ll never find the way out if you’re skeptical, though. Your hat falls right off as you tip your chin higher and higher. BEWARE, BEWARE, BEWARE, you read.

You ask your cousin (who usually wouldn’t agree to a road trip with you but with the funeral and everything of courseeee she would) if she sees the letters too. She rubs your shoulder and asks if you have any change for the penny-crushing machine. You hand her half of what’s in your pocket, including the Q-tip and a pin that says GOPHERTOWN. She pokes the latter through her bucket hat.

“Help me crank this, it’s really stuck,” she says.
 
The penny crusher does its thing. You have made an already flat object a little flatter. Your cousin claps. She should carry her own pennies, you think. She’s as old as you and makes twice as much and she’s a proud digital nomad. She’s really got it better.

“What does the ceiling say?” you ask.
 
The sun, cracking the clouds, blows everything into a white oblivion.
 
“Nothing,” she shrugs. “But look at that,” your cousin points. A fellow carrying a falcon on his padded arm saunters in from a room marked STAFF ONLY.

“The coolest people know how to wrangle birds,” your cousin suggests, searching your face for something. You shrug, desperately concentrating on the demonstration because you think the falcon man might know something about the timeloops.

Your cousin is squeezing your hand. “Earth to Sam?” she’s saying. You blink at her and smile.
 
“You look a little pale,” she says, “even with the sunburn.”

“I’m fine,” you say, “maybe I just need some water.”
​
And you really are fine, until you notice the falcon man’s shadow is a strip of inky black, which was the exact colour of the sound that spilled from your mouth when Stevie’s mother called and broke the news. You know the colour of that sound because, for a long while (it might have been forever), you laid on your bed with it, wishing painfully.

Just like that, it happens. Your knees buckle and you drop with a desolate fwump. From the floor— 

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​003
 
r/birding

​The goddamn granola bar is too goddamn crumbly and the little red birds just keep goddamn coming and coming and coming because— 

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​004
 
r/trailmeals

Some travel blog, you don’t remember which one, said that Hermit’s Point has the best sunsets. It also has a café, where you plan to purchase a hot chocolate with tiny, crispy marshmallows.

Stevie made the best hot chocolate. She put powdered chili in it, and it didn’t even matter that you don’t like spice because the recipe was just that good.

The bus driver tells you, as you near the sign that says HERMIT’S POINT, that he thinks the café where they sell the hot chocolates is closed, which is too bad because they have great tomato soup too. He goes on to say that if you want to make a really good soup, get a French cookbook and learn how to make a mirepoix. “That’s mirepoix with an ‘X’” he says, then he beeps the bus horn at a jackrabbit. You are bludgeoned by the thought that not only would Stevie have loved the jackrabbit, but one would have looked fantastic on her mantle alongside her severed owl foot and her taxidermied mallard duck and the snakeskin preserved in formaldehyde. She was a self-proclaimed naturalist. She also saved teeth; it didn’t matter which kind.

Your cousin pulls you off the bus by your arm, and when you turn to thank her, you think for a moment that her eyes are empty sockets. They aren’t, it’s just her tiny sunglasses playing tricks, but lately you’ve been imagining empty spaces where there is life.

Your cousin hands you half a muffin when you both realize that yes, the café is closed. The wind throws crumbs into your eyes. The muffin greases your fingers. A cloud obscures the sun, which is disappointing, but the sky is hot orange, and that was Stevie’s favourite colour. The fact of this makes you feel nothing for the nature around you, until a chipmunk scrambles up a nearby cliff face and is swiftly blown off by the wind. This fills you with dread.
​
Your cousin crosses her arms. You anticipate that she will complain, so you get defensive, telling her that— 

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​005
 
r/abandonedporn

The sun has almost set. Your cousin eats a hard-boiled egg with salt and pepper. She asks if you want some. You say no, because you’re watching the collapsed mine shaft. It sits crooked on the sloping canyon face, about fifty metres away. You are so stupid to have forgotten your binoculars. Your cousin tells you about mules, and how they are still used to cart supplies and visitors to and from the base of the canyon. You tell her to shut up, because you see something like fingers, something like an arm, stretching outwards from the mouth of the ruin.

You ask if she sees it too, but she doesn’t have her eyes open like you do. She’s lamenting.

“Man, I just wish we had seen some mules,” she says, and wipes her hands on her jeans. “I think it would have been nice for us to see some mules.” She smiles at you compassionately, speaking as if the mules would have solved everything.

But she shouldn’t feel sorry for you, because this thing you’re looking at makes you realize that anything is possible. It proves everything right, all your hunches, all your doubts. It cracks some rusted cabinet wide open in your chest that for a moment spills hope all over your grief.
​
“Why, oh— why are you crying?” your cousin asks.
 
The beautiful creature reveals itself one joint at a time. Its skin takes on the oily sheen of the night. Your cousin tries to see what you see, but of course she can’t. She’s wiping tears from your cheeks. Oh, oh, oh, she’s saying. And come here, come here, sweeping you into a suffocating embrace. Smiling, you watch the creature from over her shoulder. Your cousin thinks you are remembering Stevie, but not quite. The creature clambers over a large boulder and turns its flat, smiling face towards you; a face behind which you feel the essence of Stevie; safe to reveal herself at last because— 

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​006

r/DIY

When an owl screeches, it’s the night’s exclamation mark. Everything turns towards it. You startle. It is telling you to pay attention. Your cousin squints into the dark sky.
 
The guy from Reddit was wearing an owl mask when he told you more about the timeloops. He was intent on meeting anonymously, so you wore masks as you spoke on Zoom. Well, he wore a mask. You cut holes in a piece of red construction paper. You asked if you could just keep your cameras off, and he said, absolutely not. He spoke through a creepy voicechanger he probably got from Spirit Halloween.

“If you get stuck in the right timeloop, the one you need, there’s a way to slip into other timelines,” he told you, spinning a pen over his index finger. “That’s the whole point of this. Better timelines. Ones where, you know, things are different.”
 
“Right, and, like you said, It’s easy to do, if I just keep my eyes open,” you confirmed.

The picture froze then, and unfroze to the bobbing owl head.

“Just keep your eyes open.”
 
Now, you do just that. You have to, it’s so dark. You can see every single star, which you have never been able to do before. Your cousin kicks rocks. You don’t like the sounds they make as they ricochet into the canyon’s thick, reaching shadows. You’re afraid you’re not seeing. You’re not tuning in. Under your skin you feel the giddy thrum of your newly-awakened sixth sense. You wonder what the people on the forum would suggest you do next, now that you’re onto something. But you know your digital connections must remain severed if you want the vortexes to make themselves known to you. This is why your phone is in the glovebox. This is why you asked your cousin to take off her Apple watch.
​
You stop walking and close your eyes, listening for the sign, and there it comes, sure as a train. It’s wonderful, it’s mind-bending, how something so mundane can wallop you like a kick to the skull… If you weren’t already dead-still, the sound would have stopped you in your tracks because— 

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007
 
/

The only way is down. You’re on the right path, except it’s a path better than right, because it’s the only one. Every path ends up going down, you think, because all endings are downward spirals, just on different scales.

The rocks are nothing under your boots. You remember how the Reddit guy in the owl mask told you that if you’re scared, the vortex is probably close. For a moment, it’s all terror. The vortex must be closer than close. It must be inside you, swirling, mixing with your organs like strawberries and cream. You feel its presence thrashing behind your eyeballs. You realize with devastating relief that it doesn’t matter if the funeral was yesterday or tomorrow or last week or one year ago or one year from now. You recognize that time is turning itself inside out for you, separating itself piece by piece and swallowing you into its folds. You’re running now, hopping, leaping, nimble as you’ve ever been. A veil is peeled from your eyes, and you see the world as it has always been. You feel, in the dark, the creature with Stevie’s face peering out, waiting, just a little lower, a little deeper, a little further down. She’s thrumming in the darkness like you’ve both always been there, together. Then something goes wrong. You feel it in your brain, the shattering of tiny bones in your ankle, and you stop moving, because you have to, and the night realigns itself above your head.

You’re alone in the canyon. Did you realize how cold it is? Didn’t they warn you? Didn’t you see that limp, dangling hand?
​
You hear your cousin’s voice, thrashing against the nothingness between you. She’s wailing. But, she’ll understand. I love you. I’m sorry, you said— 

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​Hannah Bel Davis is a writer and illustrator living, writing, and creating on the unceded and unsurrendered land of the Halkomelem-speaking peoples, also known as New Westminster, BC. She has an MA in Creative writing from Concordia University and a BFA in Film & English with Certificate in Creative Writing from Simon Fraser University. Her work has been published in The /t3mz/ Review, People Department Magazine, WordWorks, and Font Magazine. Her personal essay “New Knees” was shortlisted for the 2024 FBCW Contest for Creative Nonfiction. She was the 2025 Wallace Stegner House February Writer-in-Residence.