Cover Illustration by Marina Bluthgen
“Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to the endless night.”
- The Doors (End of the Night)
My heart was beating rhythmically, and constantly. Like the ticking of a clock, always there. Butterflies in my stomach, the feeling that everyone gets every now and then, especially when the one they love is on their mind.
I was excited about this. Excited for a long time in fact. But I needed a pick-me-up badly, falling asleep at the wheel. I took the next exit off the highway to catch my bearings.
…
“Just these tonight, sir?” The grocery store cashier looked at me with two parts minimum wage apathy and one-part unnecessary judgement. What was her problem? Twenty-year-olds buy 12 packs of Red Bull for themselves at 10pm on a Sunday night all the time… right?
“Yeah, just these.”
“$23.75. Wait for the blue light on the card reader please.” She turned away to complete the transaction on her monitor. I fumbled for my credit card, my hands clammy and anxious.
<BEEP>
“Thank you” I said quickly and turned away to leave, my fuel in tow.
“Drive safe.”
…
Two cans in and I was back on track. Halfway home already. 6-hour drive? Nothing to it! I turned the music up loud and rolled the windows down for good measure.
As I drove through the forested countryside, rabbits and owls and anyone who dared to live this far away from the rest of civilization could hear the surreal serenades of Robert Smith. I kept my concentration on the road, but I couldn’t help but sway along a little with the lyrics. “It’s so cold, it’s like the cold if you were dead…”
<BRRRRRRRRRTTT>
The light of my phone screen was illuminating on and off with text messages that I couldn’t be bothered with right then. I knew Tony was pissed, but I didn’t have time to sort all that out. It’s not like it mattered anyways. It’s not like I was ever actually going to meet his girlfriend’s “cute and single roommate”, Jillian at the Halloween party. Besides, Tony has no idea what kind of girls I like. His girlfriend, Susan, is one of those preppy sorority rushers, so no doubt her friend would be the same.
And on top of that, in what universe would a Halloween party, the day before Halloween itself, on a Sunday night of all nights, at a mediocre frat house (with shitty beer and a crappy turnout mind you) serve as an ideal “romantic environment”.
I just didn’t see it.
“Dude, I swear to God she’s the love of your life. She’s a physics major, loves books, and can even play bass guitar. Don’t tell Susan, but I’m genuinely a bit jealous of you dude, you just gotta meet her at the party tonight.”
He didn’t even ask if I wanted to go before setting all that up. The whole thing was starting to piss me off.
So much so that it took a pair of blinking high beams, a car horn, and an oncoming driver shouting “jackass” out his window for me to realize that I had drifted over to his side of the road. Realizing how pointless (and life threatening) it was to sulk over this, I took a deep breath, remembering why I was driving in the first place.
The fact of the matter was that I was already perfectly aware of what true love is. In fact, I was about to see her again that very night.
I thought back to the moment I first laid eyes on her, eight years and two days ago.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The trees of that vast forest all loomed over me; limber, grotesque statues of the night. I stopped in place, wondering if they’d start walking around if I didn’t keep a close eye on them. I stood still and turned my flashlight off as I stared at a particularly warped and grotesque tree. “The King of Limbs” I called it. I stood and stared for a while, waiting for it, or one of the other trees nearby, to start walking.
The forest stood eerily still. The only thing I could hear was the ticking of that old wristwatch that I used to wear at the time.
Tick tock tick tock
…
After almost fifteen minutes of waiting, I suddenly heard a rustling to my right. And it was coming right for me. Fast.
THUNK
I was pushed straight back, the wind knocked out of me. For a moment, I could feel myself lose contact with the ground, only making contact again once the surface below had become a hill. I tumbled down, rolling over roots and small rocks in the dirt, landing in shallow water. I couldn’t see much, but I knew these woods like the back of my hand.
The creek.
I lay there for a bit, letting the sound of the water calm me down, and to hide the two or three tears that had trickled down my face.
I found my footing and stood up as I plotted how to get back at Danny for pushing me down here. Tony and I knew he wasn’t a very good friend, and I had no doubt in my mind that it was him who had pushed me. We didn’t even want to invite him to play manhunt with us that night. But after we told him no, he threw a fit and his mom complained to our moms, and they made us bring him along. At the time, my vocabulary was limited to labelling him a “jerk”.
But now, with a much wiser outlook on life, I look back on that night, calling him a blessing in disguise. It was true after all.
I hobbled out of the creek, attempting to make my way back to my friends, when I subconsciously decided to turn my head left for no particular reason at all. What followed was the longest and most important moment of my life, and I’ve since held it ever so close to my heart, every day, of every week, of every year.
It was the moment I saw her.
From what I could see in the darkness without my flashlight, she looked about my age. Her uniform was well kept and tidy: A long, black dress, with a white apron and white headband. Her black hair, kept up in a bun. Facing away from me, she kept her hands behind her back, modest and observant of the world around her.
A housemaid in the woods, in the middle of the night. She seemed effortlessly mysterious and enigmatic. As real as she was unexplainable.
As I recall, she seemed to be looking for something among the trees nearby, putting her gentle hands to each one, and moving on to the next. I had no idea what she was doing or why, but I had suddenly found myself with a particular, longing feeling within me. I wanted to help her find what she was looking for. She seemed so busy, yet so… lonely.
“Stan? Stanley, where’d you go?”
My search party’s flashlights sliced through the trees like swords at the top of the hill. I turned up to see them, almost calling out to them to wait just a minute. But the moment I turned back to see her again…
gone.
…
I ended up going back into those woods again the following few nights, but I didn’t have much luck at all. At one point, I even asked Tony and the guys to help me look, but they weren’t having it, insisting that I saw a ghost or that I just made the whole thing up for attention.
I always loathed how rude and ignorant my “friends” were that night, shining their flashlights around like that without a care in the world. If they hadn’t done that, maybe they’d actually understand my melancholy.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suddenly, my ringtone interrupted the music. The caller ID illuminated the dark car like the lights of a search party. Tony’s name and picture appeared on the screen in that basic and ordinary font that I always found rather nauseating.
I sighed. I knew I couldn’t ignore him for much longer. Reluctantly, I pressed the answer button. “Hey, can you hear m-”
“Dude, what the fuck??? Where have you been, the party’s almost over!”
“I’m… I’m driving home right now.”
“What, why??? Aberdale is a six-hour drive from school, are you high or something?”
“Maybe… high on love, I think.”
“Oh, my fucking god… Don’t tell me you’re going all the way back to the woods just to look for that maid or whatever. And just after I set you up with your EXACT perfect match at our school, you fucking turn around and do this!”
He sounded like he was on the verge of throwing his phone across the room, which at this point, I kind of expected him to. After all, he always had a short temper. I always found that to be a rather foolish weakness of his.
But strangely enough, this time I was wrong. The other end was silent for a bit, until I could hear him take a deep breath. Maybe this was different. Something… important to him maybe?
I’ve always gotten the feeling that deep down he’s been… jealous of me. All along. Of me and her. Of us.
“Stanley, with all due respect, this needs to stop. Jillian and the party aside, all other bullshit aside, this is by far the craziest thing you’ve ever fucking done. And you should know that I’m only saying this because you’ve been my best friend for as long as I can remember.”
He took another deep breath, trying to compose himself. Finally, he was going to admit the truth. Admit that he’s been jealous for all these years.
“Stanley Birch, I think something’s seriously wrong with you. I think you need some professional help.”
I hung up the phone. What was the point of listening to him if he was just going to lie about what’s already obvious to both of us? He tried calling five more times. Of course, I didn’t pick up.
I’ve always known that he could just never understand me. I was finally tired of giving him the benefit of the doubt for so long.
Hmm… jealous of me. Who’d have thought I was right all this time. I couldn’t help but chuckle a little as I put my foot all the way down on the gas, flying through the expanse of grass fields and nothingness on the way to Aberdale.
My heart ached as I looked at the clock, knowing I still had a couple more hours to go until I could see her again. The drive had already felt like an eternity, but it was an eternity that I knew deep down was going to be worth it.
I thought back to the second and last time I saw her as I opened another Red Bull, attempting to ease my mind and keep my eyes on the road.
It was almost four years ago.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like many times before, I had gone out looking for her again in those woods. However, by that point, the thought occurred to me that she might only show up on nights with a new moon, as it had been that first night.
I had followed my usual routes. It was a brisk, November evening with a light layer of snow on the ground, with the melancholy of the new moon high above. My feet crunched under me as I wandered through the winding forest, bright and quiet all at once in that special kind of winter darkness.
I went up to the small clearing at the cliffside, the place where I’d end my search every time. I overlooked this cliff habitually, in an attempt to possibly see her from a bird’s eye view, overlooking the forest down below. From there, a stretch of woods went on for a few miles or so, until the suburban fiasco that the world calls Aberdale, Arkansas would emerge and put an end to where she could wander.
Oh, how I wished my love had more forest to explore, should it make her happier to peruse and wander amongst many more trees. I didn’t care if it would make my search for her longer and more arduous. In fact, I could hardly use such adjectives to describe it now.
If she was happy, I was happy. That’s love after all, isn’t it?
That night, I sat at the cliffside, taking a moment to look up at the stars, longingly, wondering if she was thinking of me as much as I was thinking of her. But at that very moment… a troubling thought, and truly, my deepest regret, surfaced in my mind. What if, just as Tony had told me once, just as I had deeply feared, more than anything at all, deep within my subconscious mind, my one true love didn’t actually exist at all?
What if the girl I saw that first night was only a deception of the trees? After all, I didn’t have my flashlight with me that night. Could I really put that much trust in my eyes? Or maybe I had imagined the whole thing after I tumbled down the hill and hit my head? Or maybe I just wanted it all to be true, and since then I had just been filling in any blanks necessary to believe it all. Who could say for sure?
The thought truly and deeply bothered me… I sat at the cliff, and even clutched my hands to my head at one point. I was afraid, truly afraid that my greatest hope in life had been nothing but a lie all this time. That life could never be what I hoped it would be. That it would only ever be something far less satisfying. So boring and predictable. So lonely. So cruel.
I began to cry. The November chill, freezing my lonely tears. I began to feel exhausted, and I could feel my eyes growing heavy. Desperate and confused, I inched myself away from the cliff, and dozed off, lonely and cold in the damp snow.
…
Worry not my love. We will meet soon enough.
…
Hmmm… something… warm? It felt… nice.
I awoke to find a warm quilt placed delicately over me. It seemed to melt away all of my doubts and sorrows from just moments ago. Who made this? And who gave it to me? I sat up quickly, hoping to find an answer to those questions. And there, just a few steps behind me, there in the trees, she was walking away.
Though she wore the same uniform as before, she looked older now, perhaps even a year older than me. A bit taller than me too. Her hair, now in a long braid reaching down past her waist, swung back and forth like a clock’s pendulum as she walked away. Her gentle steps just barely crunched in the snow.
I wanted to call out to the gentle maid, but the thought occurred to me that I should not blemish the wonderful moment by shouting out at her. I held my tongue, and simply watched her walk back into the forest. I remained there, wrapped in her quilt, feeling warm and comforted in the fact that she not only knew who I was, but cared for my wellbeing. Like never before, I felt… loved. And I wanted her to know that I loved her too.
I took the quilt home that night, and I knew I had to return it to her someday.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aberdale 10 Miles
In the passenger seat, I reached over and felt the quilt’s texture. Washed, folded, and still a tad warm from the dryer.
I drove along, rest assured in the fact that she would absolutely, without a doubt, be there tonight of all nights. After all, with the two encounters I’ve had with her before, like two points on a predictable slope, I was able to narrow her appearances down to an exact science.
From those two previous encounters, it would seem as though she exclusively appeared on nights when there was a new moon, in Scorpio, on a leap year. It didn’t leave me very many opportunities to see her, assuming that I would even be able to find her in the vast forest on that particular night.
But of course, I would roll the dice at every opportunity I could. Even if I attended school six hours away, nothing could stop me from doing everything I could to see her again. To assure her that I loved her as much as she loved me.
…
Welcome to Aberdale
Instead of entering my hometown, I took the sharp left up the hill to Aberdale State Park. About halfway up, at the park gate, I hopped out of the car, picked the lock, and continued along, locking the gate behind me. Just as I had over a hundred times prior. It was like clockwork at that point.
I parked my car in the empty parking lot, where a shallow fog had begun to set in. The fog would make searching for her more difficult, but it didn’t really make much of a difference for me. I had a feeling that night, that she would appear exactly where I predicted she would.
I took one more swig of my fourth Red Bull before tossing the empty can in the back seat. I wrapped myself in the quilt, and rushed back into the forest I called home. My heartbeat, in rhythm with my sprinting steps.
I didn’t need a map or directions to remember where to go. Left at the second trail sign, down the route with blue markers on the trees, take a right at the big rock, and start bushwhacking South. Continue for about two miles until reaching “The King of Limbs”.
It was there, at that grotesque, winding tree that I paused for a moment, just like that first night. I looked down and to my left, where the hill dropped off, descending towards that meager little creek.
Where we first met.
I felt my face burn red from the passionate and romantic nostalgia, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before I’d get to see her again.
I turned away and continued my pace Southwest. Only a short ways out from there, and I’d see my destination. My steps, my heart, and time itself, all seemed to race with me in unison.
Tick tock tick tock tick tock
And there it was… the cliffside clearing. Out across the expanse, just as I had expected to see, was the few miles of forest that I had traversed to get here. And just beyond, there was Aberdale, preparing to celebrate Halloween night in 2016 in its own boring and predictable way. Just as it had last year, and the year before, and the year before that. In truth, the view was blemished in the most minute yet infuriating way.
I wished I could just erase that town. Replace it all with even more forest for my love.
Wrapped tightly in her quilt, I looked around, though she was nowhere to be seen. As I waited, I wondered if she had some necessary obligation to attend to first. Yet still, I wondered if there was something more personal at play here.
The possibility had crossed my mind at least a million times by that point: that maybe she was a shy girl. The thought warmed my heart, knowing that I’d be the one to help her be more confident and comfortable with herself and others. I sat down at the cliffside, waiting ever so patiently for her to arrive.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock
…
Sitting there, I closed my eyes, wondering for the billionth time what her face looked like. I had imagined it the same way every time. Polished, milky white cheeks. Ruby red lips. A smile that could melt even a monster’s heart. And of course, like nothing else, a pair of sapphire blue eyes, deeper than any ocean.
My thoughts and fantasies eventually drifted off to an altar, in a church. I imagined our families on either side of the pews, joyously celebrating our matrimony as I lifted her veil from her face, to see those beautiful blue eyes once more. Excited by the thought, I couldn’t help but say my feelings out loud into the night.
“My love, I’ll hold you close to me for all eternity, forever your safeguard, your knight, and your rock. I want you to feel happy. To feel healthy. To feel warm. To feel loved. For all eternity, forever and ever and ever. Will you… be my wife?”
“Are you… practicing?”
And then, everything stopped. And the night became deathly quiet.
Something felt wrong. Terribly wrong.
In an instant, everything within me, everything that compelled me to come here, suddenly urged me to run away and never return. But a fear I had never felt before kept me cemented to that cliffside. A fear that just one sudden movement could mean an untimely death. This moment somehow felt much, much longer than the car ride I took to get here.
This wasn’t the voice I was expecting to hear, far from it. It was a voice so cold and hollow, like the whisper of a ghost in a house that’s long been abandoned. It was the voice of death itself.
“Hi Stanley.”
I turned to see who the voice belonged to, and suddenly, something very innate and significant within me sank into oblivion, never to be seen or felt again. I realized right then and there just how much my heart had been lying to me for so, so long.
Her hair was long and unkempt, split at the ends, and matted in places. Her maid uniform was torn and disorganized. Her dress, apron, and even a little handbag that I hadn’t noticed before, were all tattered and torn. Even her hairband sat asymmetrically on her head, neglected and damaged. The hue of her skin was a ghastly white, and her cheekbones were very much visible, like potholes. Her lips were lifeless, a deathly tinge of blue.
But something, despite everything, convinced me above all else that this was without a doubt the thing that I had once called my “true love”. Those eyes that I just knew would be colored a deep and comforting blue, that I could sink into, forever and ever… were not there at all.
Just holes. The girl looked at me through holes in her head. No eyes at all.
“I’m so happy to finally meet you. I’ve waited for so long, with these trees of mine. But I knew that I had to wait until just the right moment for this.”
She looked so… inhuman, just standing there with her arms dangling like that. And those holes in her face, with no reason to blink. I’d never felt so afraid before, face to face with death itself.
I wanted to run away, out of this forest. Away from all of this. This isn’t what I expected. This isn’t what I wanted. I felt cheated. Lied to. Take me back! Take me back to where I belong! At a Halloween party with Tony and Sally and that guitar girl, whatever her name was. I don’t belong here. I don’t want to die. I don't want to die I don’t want to die.
“Stanley, what’s wrong?” She tilted her head and began to walk towards me.
I inched a step back, and I could feel the cliff’s edge beneath my heel. “Umm… I uh…” I stammered, trying to make some kind of diversion so I could run away from this monster. “I’m just a little… surprised is all.”
“Surprised?” Her ears seemed to perk, and she tilted her head to the other side.
“Yeah, surprised…”
We stood there in silence for a moment as my brain clamored for a response. Lower her guard? Distract her? Anything to get me the hell out of this place. “I, uh… just realized that I never really understood why you wear your maid uniform. It surprised me to realize that I’ve…” I gulped my pride. “I’ve loved you… for so long, yet I don’t know what it is that you do here exactly.”
“You… want to know what I do here?” She smiled from ear to ear and inched closer to me, her face, mere inches from mine. Afraid, I felt myself leaning back, my center of gravity approaching closer and closer over the cliffside.
“I’d be more than happy to show you, my love.”
She then turned back towards the forest, beckoning me to follow her. “C’mon, silly, don’t just stand there! I can’t show you anything if you don’t come with me.”
I looked up at the trees, now taller and more sinister than they ever had been before. As if they could start walking at any moment now. I could almost hear them. It was the trees, I swear it! The trees, my steps, my heart, all of them, all at once, at the pace of that accursed ticking in my ears.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock
Every step labored as I followed her into the darkness, afraid that if I took one suspicious step, this entire forest would chase me and eat me alive.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
…
Like a puppet on strings, I followed the girl for a while, passing by different trees one by one. She pressed her hands to them as if to check something beyond my capability of sensing. “No, not this one.” None of them seemed to be what she was looking for. “This isn’t it either.”
For about ten minutes, this continued, as I wondered how I could get her distracted for long enough to let me escape. I wondered if she suspected me of wanting to escape. Suspecting me of not caring what it was that she did with these trees exactly. Suspecting me of not loving her as much as she seemed to love me now. I shuddered at the thought, wondering what she might do if she found out.
It was then that I got a very clear sense of what she might do if she found out. My blood went cold. As she walked in front of me, I realized… it was an understatement to say that this girl was armed. In that ratty, disheveled handbag of hers, peaked out the handles of several knives. I could see the metal of one of them, gleaming at me like the eye of a serpent.
“Here it is, here it is!” Eagerly, she took my hand and pulled me along, running towards a nearby tree. “It’s this one here that I wanted to show you.”
It didn’t take me long to realize the irony of the situation. Once more, I stood before “The King of Limbs”. She placed her hands against the dying bark. “Look very carefully, and watch my hands, okay? Ordinarily, this isn’t visible to people, but if you’re here with me, you should be able to get a glimpse of it.”
I half expected to see something grandiose and magical. But instead, what happened was much simpler, though still unexplainable. Like a secret hatch in an abandoned basement, a door on the surface of the tree creaked open. To my surprise, inside the tree was a little compartment, revealing something that made much more sense than I ever wanted it to.
TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.
A clock, entangled in stems and leaves.
Suddenly, her ghastly white composure somehow managed a slightly reddish hue, blushing, “This tree tells me the exact moment… when our first kiss will be. Take a closer look.”
I opened the door just a little bit more, to get a close look at the clock’s unusual face. I counted a whopping twelve hands, all but one of them pointing to the twelve-o clock position. I could feel her cold presence, mere inches from my ear. She giggled, and reaching in, she gently pushed the smallest hand to match the others.
GONG… GONG… GONG…
She took me in her arms slowly and pulled me close. Those cold, dead, blue lips, slowly pressed against the warmth of my own.
I could feel the hollow expanses of her empty eyes, forever unable to close, even in an otherwise intimate moment like this. Just staring at me, unable to do anything else. I closed my eyes, not out of passion, but out of fear. Fear of falling into death forever, never to return. I had craved these woods for so long, but never have I wanted anything more than to get out and never look back. Back to reality. Back to normalcy. Back to Tony. Back to Jillian. Back to Aberdale. Back to anything else. I finally admitted to myself that I had been wrong all these years. That my true love really didn’t exist after all.
I couldn’t take it anymore, and gently pushed the ghost away, holding her shoulders. Suddenly, she seemed to understand something that I didn’t openly say.
“Hmmm… I see. So that’s how it is after all…”
The moment felt awkward and empty. I attempted to break the silence, “I’m so-”
“I’m the maid of time, Stanley.” she said curtly. Her smile was gone.
“Maid of time? What do you mean?”
She sighed, now seeming deeply forlorn, “Thanks to these trees, I know when every single event will happen… to every single person in the world. Even all the little things.”
She didn’t have to spell it out to me. I realized then that she knew. She knew everything I didn’t want her to know. I didn’t need to fear falling into her death forever. There was no point.
I already had.
“I even know when every little thing happens to you, Stanley. Like just a few minutes ago, on the cliffside, when you realized that you didn’t love me anymore. Because I don’t look the way you wanted me to.” Her voice was hollow and no longer with emotion. “Long ago, a sad little tree had told me about that exact moment. I’ve known for so long now that this would happen as it just did. But back then… for the first time ever, I didn’t want to believe what the trees were telling me. I needed to prove them wrong. To prove to myself, that despite everything else saying otherwise, that you were without a doubt, my one true love.”
She had begun to cry, softly. She wiped a tear from her face. I turned, attempting to run away, only to stumble on a root, falling into cold dirt and dead leaves. I turned back to her, my terrified heart beating in and out of my chest. She simply stood there, still, and heartbroken.
“I kept turning the hands on that sad little clock backwards, so the time would never reach. So, you’d never lose your love for me. But I knew, deep down, that I’d only be proving the trees right if I didn’t let the clock proceed with its inevitable countdown. I was just prolonging the inevitable. And I can see now just how much of a fool I was. How the trees were just trying to warn me. To protect me. From a monster like you.”
She took a single step forward as I attempted to regain my footing. Frantic, I scrambled and ran, hoping she wouldn’t chase after me.
She had begun to shout as I gained distance. A horrible, hollow scream, cutting through an otherwise deathly silent night. “And I know exactly when you’ll realize that there’s no escape from me, Stanley! It’s only a matter of time!”
The opportunity for distraction was gone forever. I didn’t care what she said, I needed an escape. I couldn’t let her get in my head. I knew how to get out. I knew these woods like the back of my hand. She had to be wrong. She had to be. But then, as I took a hard left turn and looked out over the landscape from the cliffside, one final time, I realized the full gravity of my situation.
Out beyond the cliffside, beyond those few miles of trees, Aberdale was now nowhere to be seen. Just as I had once delusionally hoped, my hometown was now gone, and there was nowhere to return to. This wasn’t reality anymore. It couldn’t have been. This stopped being reality the moment I went back into the forest with her.
All of the events, all of the people, all of the things that had their own, unique deadline in this world. So many deadlines. So many trees.
At that moment, I could only hope for a place to survive in her forest of deadlines.
…
I ran for nearly thirty minutes before I realized that my body couldn’t handle much more. Still, adrenaline kept going anyway. Running, trotting, stumbling, anything, to get away from the ghost who knew everything that there ever was to know. Through the forest of endlessly ticking trees.
TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.
…
And there it was. After over an hour of trying to gain some distance, I found a spot to hide in. A hole beneath several roots of a tree, as ordinary and as non-suspicious as any other. The space looked big enough to completely conceal myself in. If I tucked myself in well enough, there was no way she could see me in there. I could hide in there until the lights of a search party would slice through these terrible trees and rescue me from this terrible hell. I crawled in and clutched my knees to my chest tightly, holding my breath as much as I could, concealing myself from the monster of these woods.
And that’s when I realized it. For the first time in my life, a genuine blessing in disguise. What was once a horror, was now my saving grace. A sound that would conceal my breathing, or any movements I might need to make. She wouldn’t be able to hear me over that horrible ticking.
TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.
…
After a while, I began to count the seconds.
TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.
…
Thirty minutes.
I was cold, but I couldn’t afford to care.
TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.
…
Three hours.
I was hungry, but I couldn’t afford to care.
TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.
…
Eight hours had gone by.
I wondered if the sun would ever come up, but I couldn’t afford to care.
A dark eternity in this hole.
TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK.
…
The accursed ticking had begun to puncture my skull at every waking moment. I was beyond sanity now, beginning to fall into a deep despair, fearing that no search party would ever come for me after all.
In those moments, for the first time in my life, I thought back and wondered what life would have been like if I had put this crazy delusion aside and lived my life normally, like everyone else. I wondered what it might have been like if I hadn’t fallen in love with death itself. I wondered if a future like that was still possible, somehow.
“Only a matter of time”, I kept telling myself in my mind. As sad as it was to finally understand, nothing, not even true love was forever. Only a matter of time.
GONG… GONG… GONG…
“Only a matter of time,” she said. Like the whisper of a ghost in a house that’s long been abandoned.