The End of Everything

By Edward Sand

It hardly qualified as a graveyard. Nineteen graves in a single row, no fence, no road, no flowers. The foliage grew unchecked. Raw boulders from the nearby stream served as tombstones. They didn’t need markings, for each grave contained the same person.

Me.

A sheen of fresh rain coated every mossy branch and shrub. Fog hung low against the leaf-strewn earth. The whispers of the stream drew me past the boulders, down the path.

Ellie and I had walked this way many times in our younger years. It led to a secret pool that only we knew about. Or at least that’s what we told each other. Even then we were too old for such silliness, but too young to care. A bridge crossed the stream a few miles away, but still we looked deep into each other’s eyes and said nobody would ever know about this place.

That was forty-five years ago. Forty-five years since the rift had plucked me from my time and marooned me here. Forty-five years in the distant, uninhabited future, waiting for its return.

My joints ached as I clambered down the bank. Tree roots draped the stream in twisted knots. A bed of boulders crested the water’s surface. The swirling pool yearned for a sunset, but the thick fog smothered it.

I fussed with the tangles in my beard. Was I nervous? I would be nothing but an old man to her. A stranger. Perhaps it had been so long since I’d seen a human that the sight of her would strike me as alien, an assemblage of untamed limbs and fingers as soulless as the painted rocks next to my bed.

With a crack of thunder, a shimmering orb appeared before me. Inside this orb, an evening glow replaced the fog. The stream was deeper, the leaves thicker. Expanding rapidly, it swallowed me and stretched for more, painting its brighter version of reality as it went.

There she stood.

Shrouded in angelic backlight—her big brown eyes, her dark hair, her thick lips coiled in an off-kilter smile. Every muscle in my body melted. I was a frost-weary flower opening at the first rays of the morning sun. The endless years of pain, hunger, and silence… it was all worth it. A sob wracked my chest, but my eyes yielded no tears.

I would do it all over again.

She couldn’t see me yet; the rift hadn’t opened on her side. She turned her back to me and beckoned to someone. His hair was combed, but not neatly. His buttoned shirt had come untucked. His face was smooth. Was that really me at twenty? He looked more like fourteen.

This younger me kicked through the shallows, dousing her in a glittering spray. His eyes roved for a skipping stone. Not a care in the world. He had no concept of how precious his time was.

A deep thump set my ears ringing. A shockwave pulsed the area, sending ripples over the water. Our times overlapped each other, fragments of both eras fighting for precedence in a nauseating dance.

Then, at once, the world calmed. Our times had merged, for the moment.

She placed a hand over her heart. “What… was that?”

Her voice sent a soft hum through my skull. I wished she would keep talking. Water chilled my ankles. My legs wouldn’t move.

With trembling fingers, I reached forward. My hand grazed a lock of her hair, and I froze.

This was real. She was real.

She whirled around, caught sight of me, and screamed. A long, reverberating scream that sucked the warmth from my soul. It was enough to shock me from my reverie. The time had come to save her life.

I steeled myself, grasped her around the waist, and plowed forward. “I’m sorry,” I croaked. If I’d had more time, I could have explained.

She struggled against my grasp. “Roger!” She kicked and flailed. “Help!”

The slippery rocks skated beneath my haphazard steps. I dragged her up onto a boulder and, with a shove, sent her sprawling into the pool. My feet swept out from under me, and my forehead smashed against a rock.

Dizziness swarmed my vision. A pair of hands yanked me by my shirt and threw me aside. But he was too late. With a final peal of thunder, our times divorced. The orb remained, but it was for viewing only.

“Are you okay?” he said to Ellie. He reached down to help, but his hand passed through her.

She pulled herself out, sopping wet. “Roger?”

“I’m right here.” He stared at his fingers.

“She can’t hear you…” Blood covered my right eye.

“What’s going on?” He looked around wildly. The poor, poor young man. I knew too well the gnawing loneliness that awaited him. The decades wandering an empty land. The nights of self-loathing. One’s a crowd, as he would come to say.

“I had to get her clear of the time rift.” I could feel myself slipping away.

“Time rift?”

The orb was shrinking. She looked so lost and confused. I didn’t want that to be my last memory of her. I pulled a tin from my pocket and pressed it against Roger’s chest. It contained all the information he would need.

“The rift took you both the first time,” I said. “She didn’t live long… Remember that, in your hardest moments.”

I wanted to feel like a hero. But looking at him now, so wide-eyed and untarnished, I felt like an accomplice. He had to be taken by the rift. If he wasn’t, the rift’s next return would erase any rescue from having ever happened. We must be here, every time, serving as a shield between the rift and our girl until the end of everything.

The orb drifted closed. The light dissipated, and fog once again wreathed the pool.

Our pool.

“There’s a graveyard not far from here. Please bury me.” Numbness trickled through my body. “I did, when I was you.”

Can you guess which song inspired this story? (This month it could be any time period, any genre.) Share in the comments!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edward Sand‘s body lives among the mountains of north Idaho, where he was born and raised. His mind occupies a higher elevation, wandering the clouds in search of tales worthy to be typed. Currently, he is working on a sci-fi suspense novel titled The Mortal Witness.

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