Smoke and Mirrors

Written by Anakin McFly

The flying car was gone.

Marty McFly strained his eyes, unable to believe what they seemed to be telling him. Flying cars do not just disappear. Then again, neither are cars supposed to be able to fly.

But the dark skies were now empty, and the brilliant streaks of fire that had followed in the wake of the phantom car were now dissipating into unremarkable wisps of smoke that soon, too, were gone.

"No," Marty croaked, a coarse, low whisper that rose out of a desperation he did not quite know why he felt. "No... come back. Please."

But the flying car did not reappear.

"Please..."

His feet paced out small frantic circles, unguided by the face that still remained upturned to the empty heavens trying to grasp once again that small moment of magic he had felt at the first sight of the flying car. The car meant something, he knew, something important, something meant for him, its presence seeming to trigger memories he had never had at any point in his miserable life.

"Come back..."

He yearned to touch the flying car and know that it was real, to meet its owners and ask perhaps for a ride, because the car was important, somehow, and something told him that it was the only way out of his life because the flying car would change things and make things different, make things better; that was what magic could do.

A rogue lightning bolt flashed in the sky, and once again he felt a tinge of that same flying car magic. There was adventure in that lightning bolt. And danger, excitement... He didn't know why. Lightning bolts had never had that effect on him before.

The first drops of rain started to fall. He would get wet out here on the road. But it didn't matter. He couldn't leave. The flying car might come back for him, and maybe take him... take him home.

Home. That was why he had run away from boarding school at Switzerland: he'd wanted to go home. The streets of Hill Valley had called his name and for a moment had transformed in his mind into a happy place, one of sunshine and laughter and picnics by the town pond and young legs learning to find their place on a skateboard.

That was a part of Hill Valley that would forever remain pure. It helped sometimes to remember how things could have turned out, to think of the possibilities and promise that the town had once held before the dark shadow of Biff Tannen had rerouted its future.

It was that illusion of home, of paradise, that had sustained him for so many years. Reality offered no comforts, what with its graffitied streets and rampant crime. He'd learnt to kill when he was nine. Sometimes you did what you had to survive; if it was at the price of other's survival, that couldn't be helped.

Once he'd tried to kill Biff. He had been young then, and didn't know that Biff was the only reason they had money and weren't living on the streets. His mother had wrenched the gun from his hands, shouting at him, scolding him, and then suddenly she had cried and hugged him and held him close, taking the blows meant for him, screaming as Biff's hands came forcefully down on them.

He had been young. He had not understood. All he knew then was that he had a gun, he knew how to use it, and that Biff was a bad man who needed to be killed.

"He's your father now," Lorraine had told him through her sobs. "He takes care of us."

But George McFly was the only father he would ever acknowledge, and it had been in his memory that Marty had made the attempt on Biff's life.

Such was his childhood, such was home: trash and dead bodies and stories of loss.

A siren wailed in the distance among sounds of screams and running feet.

The rain grew heavier. There was still no sign of the flying car. Perhaps he had only imagined it – but no. He couldn't have. It had been real. It had been real. He'd seen the gleam of its stainless steel body and heard its three sonic booms as it had broken without a trace into the night. It was real. Its impact on him had been too strong for it to be otherwise. It was real. It was real...

Marty swept wet hair off his forehead with a trembling hand, rainwater mingling and falling with the fresh tears on his face.

"Come back," he begged again, although he knew that none could hear him. "Please... come back..."

Claps of thunder drowned out his words, and the dark clouds unleashed their full force of rain upon the ground.

"Please... Please."

But the flying car was gone.

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