This is no life, not living and he’d be damned if he was gonna continue forever, looping around again and again … a continuous band of the same events … a breathing déjà vu. Minute by minute he hated it more and more, seeing his real son, baby T, in the eyes and squeals and laughter of the children around him, hearing voices in the town hall that sounded so fucking familiar. Were they from Stowe? Or was his mind so completely inundated with Mystery that he was slowing smearing the two together? He was scared and he was mad as fucking hell and he couldn’t show any of it! After so many replays of the damn film he’d long ago lost count, he’d come to the point that if something … anything … different didn’t happen soon, he would lose his mind. He’d have no way of keeping sane. He just knew it.

Then again, sometime he hoped so hard for something different he’d think it really happened. Like at the pond on Christmas day, as he laughed with his boys, sitting on the ice and wishing he was as happy as he looked, John glanced up at the people around him.

For a moment he thought he’d explode, he was so stoked! Was it possible? All he wanted to do was leap to his feet and skate to the far side of the pond, shouting the whole way “Luke! Grammpa Luke! Wait up!”

But, of course he couldn’t move, and of course he couldn’t call out, and of course, he was just imagining it. That was confirmed the next time he sat on the same goddamn ice and searched frantically for the old man from Vermont. The old man who was a bear, the old bear who was a man. A now dead shapeshifter from a world John was starting to believe just maybe … didn’t exist. Luke never showed up again. Had he imagined it? Most likely.

And just as John had begun to totally give up, accept defeat and trust that there was no other existence for him, something did happen. Something so undeniable, so unquestionable that it confirmed everything he once knew to be true. He sure as hell didn’t belong in Mystery Alaska.

The boys were sitting around his living room. The same ugly Christmas tree stood in the corner, the same scenes from the Ranger’s game on the TV. The same line, “Maybe we outta fast forward to the hockey part?”

John nodded just like he was supposed to then his eyes slid to the television screen. It all happened in the blink of an eye but nothing as significant ever happened before in his whole life.

The screen had gone all fuzzy then there he was, coming quickly into focus in all his purple suit glory. Everything around John seemed to stop; sound, light, even breath. It was like the men surrounding him were suddenly stone statues and he blinked hard. Was that really SID 6.7?

“Surprise!” giggled the perfect face on the screen. “I don’t have much time Biebe and neither do you. You will die if you stay there and I have only a small suggestion that might help you get out. Trust me, your brothers and … I … have been working diligently to figure out how to get you back, but only my superior mind was ably to put two and two together.”

SID was starting to fade and John strained his eyes and ears to see and listen carefully.

“There’s a door John. You need to locate it and you need to prepare for the leap. Nothing is left to chance and … one more thing …”

The voice was almost gone and John prayed to hear the last few words over his pounding heartbeat.

“If you haven’t learned the lesson … the Portal will not let you come home. Find the door … be ready to take it … and know … the … lesson … because … you need … to bring it back … to … all of us …”

Well hell, cryptic as it was, it was something different and John reveled in it. Fuck, maybe he was finally losing his mind … and if the information didn’t get him home; at least the powerful experience would get him into a nut house and away from Mystery. Wouldn’t it? Probably not. It wasn’t in the script for the kindly sheriff for lose his fucking mind.

He mentally repeated the instructions again and again, replacing his mantra with SID’s voice and words and keeping a keen eye for the door. That wasn’t too hard to figure out. He wasn’t stupid, God sakes. The door was the moment he crossed, the place where he heard Riley cry. It never changed, was always the same. But the kicker was … every time it happened he was surprised, just like the first time. It had somehow become part of the script for him and he needed to keep it differentiated from the rest.

He started by trying to remember it earlier and earlier in the cycle; remember it on the snow bank with Donna, but that didn’t work so good. Crowe must have had a little thing for that actress, Mary McCormack; the actor had put some serious emotion into that fucking kiss. It seemed to never fail, time after time John tried to focus on Riley and ended up once again hoping for the sex that wasn’t about to happen with Donna. There sure was a mindlessness about acting … as well as an intensity that could be totally overpowering. Crowe’s talent and focus could unfortunately condemn John Biebe to Mystery for the rest of his days, which could be forever according to hockey fans the world over. Depression was starting to spread through him and for an entire cycle, he dragged ass through scene after scene, barely getting his lines out and wondering if any of it mattered anyway.

Then as he sat in the locker room, the team all around and watching the report that the Rangers weren’t happy about the scheduled pond hockey game at the North Pole, again the television screen frizzled and this time SID’s face wasn’t smiling.

“Go on, die there, see if I care, Biebe. Hell, we’ll all get along just fine without you.” His face grew to take over the entire screen then the fucker winked. “In fact,” SID giggled like a little girl, “Thorne’s all poised to take over for you. He’s with Riley every minute and if you like it there so much, I can assure you, she’ll be in good hands.”

And while SID 6.7 laughed and the television screen returned to the news, Biebe thought he’d jump out of his skin.

Oh fuck no, he had no time to be depressed or angry, tired or frustrated or even scared. He had to get home, dammit!

His first line of defense was to clarify and release. Since the moment the Portal had torn him from Mystery and dropped him into a new world, he along with all his brothers clung tight to the fact that what they knew before crossing was a real life. That they had memories and pasts, parents and childhood friends, experiences that never occurred in the film. That wasn’t true and now John achingly knew it. He understood completely that he had no life before the Portal. It was nothing but scenes in a movie. The idea of having memories and a past had to have been cleverly, expertly planted by Crowe. They weren’t real. He had to let them go.

That wasn’t hard enough to swallow, there was the other stuff. Accepting that everything he knew to be real simply wasn’t … was major and he had a whole new respect for Nash. Those memories weren’t his; they were manufactured by a brilliant actor. All those emotions (except for the kiss and he’d stake his life on it) were not real, they were perfectly rehearsed facial expressions meant to create the illusion of a rich, full life. The suspension of reality. And John Biebe was nothing more than an element in that ruse. Hard to swallow. Tough on the ego. Disappointing at best. But …

Sitting and watching the Saturday game, playing coach on the sideline and appearing to be concentrating on Stevie Weeks’ unpolished techniques … John was thinking hard about what was real, what parts of his life he really could be proud of. It all started to tick off like a grocery list.

First, his idea of being a sheriff had formed his personality in the new existence. He’d often stepped up and played the leader, or brought forward concepts and solutions others might not have thought of.

Second, he was a good community member and a good husband to Riley … a good father to Terrence Nathan. All that came from Crowe’s planted imaginings, but it was Biebe himself who took it into the real and actually lived it. The ego returned.

And third, John Biebe was in love. He was in love with a real woman someplace just out of reach and he had to face the fact that he wasn’t giving her up. Riley was his. He’d waited for her, he’d fought with her, risked losing her and managed to find his way back into her arms. She was his and as much as he trusted her … he wasn’t leaving her broken heart in Thorne’s hands. Period. Oh, Terry’d take good care of her; probably love her good and forever … but out of duty. It was Thorne’s only flaw. The man always did the honorable and right thing when it came to his heart; he always sacrificed something for the greater good. Always. But Terry’s heart wasn’t John’s fucking concern. Riley’s was. And Riles deserved more. She deserved her husband to get his sorry ass back home.

Now … how the hell to do that? It took four more cycles but finally an idea came to John. He needed to make a change, fight the tide that forced him to always do what the fucking script told him to do. He’d done it once, in that bed when he realized he hadn’t really made love to Donna. All it was was a slight movement, a millimeter of an inch, enough to tell him a mountain of truths but nothing that actually changed the script because no one could have seen it. All he had to do was find another perfect moment.

He sweat and labored over figuring it all out, but the answer came in a flash. After the Ranger’s arrival … after having his heart to heart with Charlie fucking Danner … after he sat at the kitchen table and scratched the words out in the Dear Abby column with a Sharpie, it struck like lightening.

As Donna fussed getting a mug of coffee for herself (Riles would’ve offered him a mug, even if she was pissed at him!), John simply jotted the name ‘Riley’ in the blank area at the bottom of the newspaper and tore it off while he continued streaking black ink across words. Donna sat at the table and John playfully nodded his head thoughtfully … and this time, he really was feeling damn good! He might have really made headway! He slid the newspaper to Donna and bid her read. John stood, and as he moved to stand behind her, his hand with the small, written name of his true love, slowly slid into his pocket.

Yes, the kiss on the snow bank was distracting, and yes he was again slowly waking in the next morning’s light … but this time, his fingers moved and his heart lurched. The tiny shred of paper was beneath his hand, between his palm and his heart and he envisioned the letters R – I – L – E – Y. He envisioned the face of his wife and suddenly heard her cry out.

And his voice bellowed … “I’m coming home to you!”

***

“Are you?”

John blinked. He was standing in the center of what felt like a small cyclone, everything spun and blew around him but not a hair on his head shifted. The voice repeated the question. “Are you?”

And John cleared his throat.

Well fuck, this was sure different. Was he really ready for it all? “Yeah, I’m ready,” he shouted at the top of his lungs.

“What have you learned, Mr. Biebe?”

John’s eyes swung left and right and he slowly turned a full circle. He was buying himself time. Oh, he’d learned lots of lessons, but he needed to make sure he spoke the right one or God only knew how long it would take him to get that far again.

“What have you learned, Mr. Biebe?”

Tears gathered in his eyes. “Fuck, so much. So many of us wanted to go back … wanted to make the shift to what we thought we knew but none of us had a fucking clue what we were asking for! It’s kinda like suicide. No sane man says he never thought about it. We all thought about going back. Even me.”

“What have you learned, Mr. Biebe?”

John squeezed his eyes tight and said a prayed. “It’s not real. There’s nothing to go back to … and it sure as fuck ain’t easy to get back home. Is that it? What I’m supposed to go back and tell them all?”

Thunder and lightening blasted all around him and John covered his head with his arms. He felt his heart crack in two. What if he was wrong? Or worse yet, what if he was right and he was too late? God damn, he wouldn’t put it past his brothers to try to go through the Portal to get him! What if he’d already lost Riley to Thorne and worse yet … years could have fucking passed while he was gone and he’d have no way of knowing! Terror soared through him. He couldn’t go back to Mystery! He just couldn’t!

“It’s not real!” He yelled through tears and anger and complete fear.