The Jumping
The jumping through time is the action that makes up most of the action here. Imagery helps to convey the sensation of leaping through time. In this example, it is a recollection of the first time the narrator makes the leap:
“The first time I jumped was about eight months ago, during my first semester of college. I was sitting in the middle of a French poetry class. I nodded off for a few minutes and woke up to a cold breeze and a door slamming me in the face. I was standing in front of my dorm. Before I even had a chance to panic, I was right back in class again. Then I panicked… The familiar sensation of being pulled into two pieces took over. I held my breath and waited for it to stop. It’s never pleasant, but you get used to it.”
Character Description
Metaphorical imagery is often used for the purpose of delineating character. The comparison afforded by similes are especially efficient tools for writers looking to get a personality point across quickly. In this case, the point is the tendency toward sarcasm inherent in one particular character:
“It would have been impossible to insert even one more drop of sarcasm into her voice. And it hit me like a gust of icy air. I ran my fingers through my hair and tried to come up with something decent to say. Or to decide if I should run. Instead, I went for a change in subject… The sarcasm had dropped from her voice, leaving only an exhausted and slightly exasperated tone. She was giving me an easy way out of this argument.”
Bond. James—wait, what?
Take a moment to imagine you are bouncing back and forth between two different years, but dealing with the same people in those years. And not like years that are two decades apart, but close enough that they can seem almost interchangeable except that one has two years of experience and knowledge on the other. How do you keep track of who is who and when is when? The narrator has come up with a kind nifty if compromisingly referential way to handle this tricky quirk of time travel that is used throughout the narrative:
“I wiped her cheeks with my fingertips, remembering the effect her tears had on me in 2009 after our last big fight. I was so used to 009 Holly’s rock-solid composure … seeing 007 Holly fall apart like that … it just felt like the world was out of whack.”
Time Dislocation Weirdness
Some weird things start resulting from the all the leaping about through time near the end of the book. In just one incident covering just a couple of minutes, two very strange events occur. Both depend heavily upon the use of imagery to fully convey the extent of that quality of the bizarre:
“Her eyes were monster-sized, but the dogs suddenly turned their heads and took off in the direction they had came from. I had about half a second to sigh with relief when three men came around the same corner the dogs had emerged from. At least I think they were men. All of them had shaved heads and indistinct features. Their eyes were almost all white and their skin was practically transparent. The blue and pink veins running under their skin were clearly visible, like a few layers were missing.”
