“What’s in that bubble floating on the wind, Daddy?”
“It contains the entirety of a life within; everything it was, everything it is, and everything it will become.”
The tick of the clock only moves in one direction from our insignificant perspective but that is not proof of times linearity; spacetime just ‘IS’. Everything has already happened, no beginning, no end, no entrance or exit from the trajectory set upon us. Perhaps by God or chance, I won’t postulate on the how or why beyond accepting that everything is relative.
It seems pointless to fret, if the path our lives will follow has already been settled I’m certain none of us know the outcome and in that sense, the risks we take are real, the love and tears and laughter genuine, and the direction we choose to go remains ours to determine.
I was the reasonable one, Dave thought sitting in the lot. The one who ensured contracts were in order and deadlines were met. I quit the tennis club, cycling, stopped seeing friends, giving everything to the job and this company. Peter, my old boss knew I was the glue that held it together before he retired but the new punk was blind. Always with the chide remarks about my gray hair and bathroom breaks. Always nitpicking my work, complaining about how formal I wrote or whining to colleagues about me returning from lunch a couple minutes late. Of course, never to my face or ever once acknowledging that I arrived early and stayed late, other than to suggest that if I wasn’t such a dinosaur I wouldn’t need to be here.
Then there is Bob. How many times do I have to complain about his hygiene? The guy hadn’t seen the inside of a shower in months and the stains on the same pair of pants he’d worn for weeks could have passed as a god-damned biohazard. To compound the matter, Sally was compensating by wearing a bottle of perfume every fucking day and twat-boss was on her case, not the real problem! We all have to work in this shithole, but it was hard when the haze of rose-scented Bobshit was permeating your brain! Something had to change!
Unknown
Sally observed Dave as he exits his car. It wasn’t like him to be late. He was talking to himself as he fretted, appearing agitated as he paced back and forth several times before opening the trunk. She continued to watch as he donned a heavy-looking vest she’d never seen before. He fumbled about in the trunk and with his belt for several minutes, but she couldn’t make out what he was doing.
His intention becoming clearer as he pulled the mask from atop his grey-fringed dome and headed towards the side door. Gasping, her hand instinctually shot to her mouth when she could make out what he was carrying. Realizing a reckoning of sorts was upon them she ducked into the washroom and locked the door. She was careful not to move or even breathe too loudly as she waited for the commotion outside the door to stop.
Serena could feel her heart pounding and muscles tightening in the moments before the sedative took effect. Terrified to find herself in the one situation she had dreaded her entire life, where the lines begin to blurin between actuality and perception.
She struggled to push the harrowing shadow that hovered in the haze above her away but her lifeless limbs lay like dead weights at her sides. Not wholly unconscious but just beyond reality’s grasp, and left retreating into the darkest horrors churning in the recesses of her mind.
As consciousness crept back in and blinding light filtered through her eyelids signalling that she was somewhere else – was this the end?
She flung away warm blankets and struggled to lift herself against the push of the nurse’s thrust, “Everything is ok Serena, you are in recovery and the Doctor will be around to see you later but for the time being you need to rest.”
Caleb’s bloody signature was still sticky on the parchment as bullets ripped down the corridor. Innocent souls falling in the wake of his father’s raven-black London Fog. His essence, seized within these walls, promised in return.
Stumbling backward, searing white-hot pain radiating outward… Satan had reneged on the deal.
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