Forever

When I no longer loved her, I broke time. I meant it when I said, “I will love you forever.” Time didn’t break the way I expected. I thought I was freezing time, crystallizing it across space the way ice-nine froze all the world’s water. My love’s ending would end the universe, outward from Earth at the speed of light.

There’s more to time than I understood then. There is a grain to it, or a current, because my seed crystal of frozen time spread unpredictably. It missed me completely; I, time’s first murderer and its intended first victim. She, at least, is forever unaware that I failed to end the universe along with our love. Small mercies.

Instead, time fractured. Most of the western hemisphere is no-man’s land. Anything that goes in bleeds time until it freezes. Interstellar patches of frozen time block out the sun at irregular intervals. It is only our good fortune, or bad, that I didn’t shear the sun in two. And gravity somehow ignores the change, or it would have ripped Earth apart.

It might have been better if I had. I miss her. I think I still love her after all.

The Monster Man

The monster was shaped like a man. Its chitinous skin turned knives, deflected bullets. Its terrible strength hurled people against walls with bone-breaking force, ripped limbs from sockets, sheared its human teeth through muscle and bone and swallowed. It killed and ate indiscriminately. The terror brought martial law down on the city. The city protested, and the government fought its people more than its declared enemy.

#

In an abandoned train tunnel, a man lay naked in a pool of sweat. He vomited something pinkish red. Sick, moaning, he picked the splintered bone of a human finger from his emesis. Struggling to his feet, he threw the bone and screamed, and slipped to the wet concrete. Disjointed memories struck him: breaking a soldier’s leg bare-handed; stomping a woman’s head against pavement; biting through a child’s hand and swallowing.

Tears mixed with the bloody vomit. Tucking his knees to his chest, he sobbed without rest. Finally drained of tears, he lifted his dispenser: half empty. He lifted his arm to hurl it, shatter it, but couldn’t. Weeping again, he took his dose and waited for his skin to harden, his muscles to tighten, and for the monster to rescue him.

Regrets

“Your parents didn’t die of natural causes.” That would be scary even if the man speaking hadn’t been somehow waiting for Janet in her house and bleeding. Except that her parents were living in Florida. If you can call that living.

“What?” she said.

“If my parents had been taken from me, I’d want to know how they died. I’d want to know why.”

“Well, yeah,” said Janet. “That sounds reasonable, I guess.”

“I’d want to know it wasn’t an accidental gas leak.”

Janet’s mom hadn’t shut up about their solar heating in five years and hated gas stoves. “Look,” she said, “Are you going somewhere with this?”

“I rigged the gas,” he said. “I’m sorry. It was about money, but I wasn’t in control. I--.” Janet got out her phone. “Wait, don’t call--”

“Wait a sec.” Janet made a call. “Hi, yeah. No, don’t, just. Listen, there’s someone here who wants to talk to you.” She tossed the phone over. “It’s my mother.”

He caught the phone, paused, then hung up. “Adopted?”

“I have his nose and her boobs.”

“Is this... 1272 21st Street?

“East or west 21st?” asked Janet.

He was gone before her mom could call back.

It Matters Anyway

The glob of spit arced into the coffin. Kate almost couldn’t believe she’d just seen that. She looked around. Mom was looking down into her lap. Brother Ted was across the room talking to a cousin. And this chubby forty-something had just spit on Kate’s father and was walking away. She smoothed out her black skirt and followed him outside. Kate caught up with him halfway across the parking lot. Her tap on the shoulder turned him, and then her fist in the gut bent him over. She pushed him back against a minivan.

“What the fuck was that about?” she said.

“Gak,” he said. He regained his breath just in time for her to hit him again.

“What makes you think you can walk into my dad’s funeral and spit on him? Fucking spit on him!”

“Jesus,” he croaked, “Stop hitting me.”

Kate stared hate at him.

“Your dad,” he said, “abused me as a kid. I hope he’s in hell.”

Pieces fit together in Kate’s mind. Volunteer activities. Time spent mentoring. Time spent alone.

She hit him again, then slammed his head against the car. “You’re a fucking liar. Get out of here before I hurt you.”

Three-Sentence Story

Chuck Wendig occasionally posts flash fiction challenges. And by occasionally, I mean every Friday. Sometimes I participate. This week's is a three-sentence story:  

In a rage he hit her, and she gave her consent. She wanted to repeat it; he wanted to repent. He could only see the damage, and not see what it meant.

Rubber Band Man

I was enjoying my morning coffee in my morning coffeeshop. “Mind if I join you?” He gestured at an empty seat, and before I could say yes, I mind, he sat. Completely unremarkable, except for a razor-bright smile of ruler-straight white teeth.

“Have you ever rolled rubber bands,” he asked.

I should have said nothing. I said, “What?”

“You roll a rubber band between your fingers,” he said. He produced a rubber band and demonstrated. “Halfway, and it’s inside out. A full roll, and it’s exactly the same as it was before. The rubber band’s own infinity.”

“Uh,” I said.

He leaned forward. “It’s not just rubber bands,” he whispered. “Everything has its own infinity, and its own half roll, where it’s something different.” He leaned back. “What would you do if you saw that was true?”

“Probably,” I said, standing to leave, “Walk the other way.”

#

The next day, I was enjoying my morning coffee in my morning coffeeshop when I saw her. Completely unremarkable except for a too-bright smile of too-straight teeth.

And I did. I got up and left, and never saw that smile again. But I never stopped looking, just in case.

Like Stars

She never looked at the missiles anymore. They hung over the city like stars, frozen in place. Not that she saw stars anymore. Over the last few months - as she counted time - she’d started looking at people instead of the missiles. She found him in Central Park. He was too young for her, but she couldn’t make herself care. His knowing smile as he held his middle finger up to the missiles made her love him.

After that, she ate her lunch sitting next to him, watching him defy his doom. She thought of him often. His smile occupied her while she cannibalized the city for gear; his amused anger haunted her while she jury-rigged that gear into the machines keeping time frozen for another day.

More than once she almost brought him into her time frame. If he were cowering, wishing not to die, she could give him that. But she refused to rob him of his satisfied defiance, or to lose the person she imagined.

One morning - morning to her - she sat beside him, and waited. Soon, the machines would fail, and she could live again. Not long enough to see the stars again, but long enough.