“I’m dying.”

She looked at me, her face once so full of laughter just a moment before. Slowly began to fade. Before it perked back up. “That isn’t a very funny joke. Don’t say things like that.” She punched my arm. I stood up, the sun shining through the window at my back.
“Jackie. Look at me.” She made eye contact with those beautiful brown eyes and opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. “I’m dying.” I gulped, my mouth was so dry. Saying it aloud made it seem all too real. That it was really something happening to me, instead of someone else. That I was really dying. 

She still sat there on the couch, the one we had bought together. Finally she said “You're scaring me. You're taking this joke too far. Please knock it off.” She looked like she was close to tears. And it broke my heart, somehow this was worse. How was telling her worse? How was telling her that I was dying worse than actually learning I was. I couldn’t keep looking at her, I turned away and looked

*

Out of the window of the doctor's office. I was standing, not sitting, I had too much energy for that. I looked away from the window and resumed pacing back and forth. I had already been here for three hours, nurses coming and going, taking more blood and doing more tests. This was my third visit in just as many weeks. But maybe they would finally figure out why I kept coughing up blood. Why some days I felt so incredibly nauseous, so many whys, all I wanted was answers. My head snapped towards the door as I heard it opening. 

Dr. Reed stepped in, he was a kind man, one who always wore round glasses. “Hell Christopher.” He looked somber as he closed the door behind him.  

“So Dr, do we know what is wrong with me?” I crossed my arms.
“Chris. Do you have any family you would like to be here with, any friends.” I felt my heart sink, it felt like the floor disappeared underneath me. In an instant it felt like Dr Reed was so incredibly far away. But I remained standing. I had seen movies before, I watched TV. I knew what that meant. It was bad, really bad. 

I spoke, but my brain didn’t really process the words I said. “Any news that would upset me Doctor would upset anyone I would want to be here with me much more than it is going to upset me. I would be comforting them, they wouldn’t help me. So just tell me.”

“You might want to sit down.” He looked almost pleading as he said so. 

“Tell me, it straight.” I remained on my feet, I’m not sure I could have moved them even if I had wanted to. 

He looked me in the eyes as he stepped forward to rest a hand on my shoulder. “Its stage 4-

*

She was crying now, she was scared. I didn’t feel fear, I wasn’t afraid, not yet. “I’m not messing with you Jackie. I would never do that to you. I am not that cruel. And to be honest I would never lie to you.” I paused, I wanted to explain, to make her understand. “Do you a few weeks ago when you caught me coughing up blood into the sink? And I told you it was just a bloody nose.”

“I do.” She looked scared. So much more scared than I felt.
“I lied. That has been happening most days, at least for the last few months. The tiredness, the getting sick. All of those times I thought I was just sick, I wasn’t, I never had a cold.” The tears had stopped, leaving the two of us just standing there. The sun quickly setting, the light in the room quickly fading. 

“What is it?” She was trying to pull herself together for me. She was making a great effort to do so. 

“Lung cancer.” It sounded so matter of fact. My voice sounded so cold, so disattached even to myself. The two words that would define the rest of my life. The two words that defined that I would only have a little time left.
“How! You don’t even smoke, you're not even twenty one yet!” 

“The house fire. Or at least that’s what the doctors think. I mean it makes sense. You remember me telling you about that house fire, the one that happened when I was a kid. The reason I can’t escape the smell of smoke.

She nodded slowly, her eyes wide. “I do.”

“I don’t know how long I was there inhaling smoke Jackie, but it was a long time, and I was all alone. There was so much smoke” I looked away from her and down

*

The smoky hallway. I stood in my doorway as I coughed, there was so much smoke, I felt the heat scorching my face. It came rushing down the hallway like a thunderstorm, like an evil melavant beast. I couldn’t see, my eyes were blinded and watering, stinging with pain. Here I was, I knew mentally that I was standing in the hallway outside my bedroom, a hallway I had walked countless times. But now it was just yellow and black smoke pouring up from the stairwell. 

I turned back and slammed the door to my room. It was hazy there to now, the smell of burning over powering everything else. I coughed, but coughing just caused me to inhale more and more smoke. There was no way out of here. I was going to die here in my own bedroom. The whole house felt like it was moving and shaking. Fear overpowered everything, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe. The flames roared as the sound of 

*

Jackie's voice brought me back, I had been staring at her but not seeing her.  “When do you start treatment?” Jackie was crying now, she was slumped on the floor, crying and looking up at me. There was so much hurt in her eyes, so much pain. Pain that I couldn’t take away, it was something that I could help. I was dying and that was hurting her deeply. 

I felt the first tear come to my eyes. Not for myself, no, death was something I had already seen. It was not something that I was scared off. I was ready to die. No, I was crying for her, for the pain I was about to put her through. “I don’t. I won’t ever be starting treatment. It won’t help me, it would just make what little time I have left, much more painful.”
She looked at me, with anger in her eyes. “SO YOUR JUST GOING TO GIVE UP!? You're just going to stand there and make me watch you die while you don’t even try and save yourself? What is wrong with you, I love you, I can’t lose you.” She dissolved into sobs as all I did was 

*

Stand there. But I couldn’t stay there, every moment I waited the more hot the floor under my bare feet became, the more that smoke poured in through the cracks in the door. I looked around, desperately trying to remember everything schools had ever told me about fires, about how to survive. “Get low” was the only thought that kept coming to mind. 

I sank to my knees, burying my face into the floor. For a moment it felt like I could take a full breath. For a moment I felt a clarity of mind. So I stayed there, right there for a very long time as I tried to think. Finally a single thought came to me: ‘the window.’ I needed to make it to the window. I jumped to my feet and ran across my hazy room and grabbed the window. I wrenched at it again and again, but it didn’t move. My breath was coming heavily now. I started pounding on the glass as hard as I could. Nothing happened. Why wouldn’t the window open? 

I looked back towards the door and the smoke pouring up from the cracks had gotten larger. That was the only way out, it was the only direction I could go. I turned back to the door, I pulled my shirt up over my mouth and stepped out into the hallway. Immediately the heat hit me like a wave. Stinging my hands. I could see a single thing, so I just started running towards where I knew the stairs were. 

One moment my feet were on solid ground, the next they vanished into the smoke as I must have reached the stairs, my hand slammed painfully into the wall as I grabbed at its smooth surface to keep myself from falling head first. My shirt slipped away from my face as I stumbled and slipped. My hand is scrabbling to find any leverage on the stairs. 

I started coughing and hacking as the smoke filled my lungs. But I couldn’t stop here. I had to keep moving. I reached the bottom of the stairs. The tongues of flame shot out of what had once been the kitchen. The place I had called home looked unrecognizable. It was just smoke and the flickering light from the red flames. 

I saw the open door. I kept moving, that door was safety, it was salvation. Putting one bare foot in front of the other. Running towards the darkness, away from the light that tore apart and burned the home I had grown up in. I reached my hand out, as if I was grasping for the blessed darkness. The only chance I would make it out. I opened up my hand as I slipped out into the cold night air and felt as someone grabbed my hand. 

*

Jackie looked up at me, her hand clinging to mine. As if just by sheer force of will, she alone could make me live. She looked at me with such a pleading look. “I can’t lose you.” She repeated. 

“I think I should go.”
“Please don’t go. Please don’t give up.” I pulled my hand away from her. 

I looked out towards the window. The sky was crimson with the setting sun. “I haven’t given up on anything. I don’t want to die. But I have accepted what is my reality. I think we should break up with Jackie.”
“WHAT?!” She yelled with mixture of fear and anger. 

“I can’t ask you to stay, I can’t ask you to watch me die. Because I know if I asked you to stay, you would, and I don’t want to do that to you. I want you to live your life. I want you to be more than a young man's window. Because you are so much more, you can be so much and I don’t want to drag you down with me. You are. . . You were my whole world, I love you. I will love you for the rest of my life. Which is why I think I should leave.”
She wiped her nose as she spoke, resolving filling her voice. “This is my choice. I choose what I want to do.”

“Then I will stay, I will stay for you. But I don’t want you to give up your life just because I am losing mine. I want you to live Jackie, I want to see you happy.” 

“Then you need to survive. I am not ready to give up on you even if you are willing to. I think you need to go

*

“To the hospital.” My Mom looked over at me, she didn’t realize I was still awake in the bed. “I think we need to take him to the hospital.” She repeated again, this time with more force behind it.  I was holding in another cough. The same cough that had plagued me since the fire. Since we had lost our home. Since the insurance companies had given Dad and Mom so much stress. Insurance companies, it was something that they had spent so much time talking about in the last few weeks.

“We don’t have the money.” Money, that was another word they had both spent so much time talking about. Apparently money ruled the world. “It seems fine. It’s just a cough.” My dad said. “I wish we could, I want to take him to. But that kind of money that we would need for a hospital bill right now is the difference between paying for this motel room and being homeless.”

“We can find the money. I don’t like the sound of that cough. It’s been three weeks since the fire.” Mom sounded concerned.
“Maybe it is just dry here? This motel is a mess. Maybe we could just buy a humidifier?” 

“Maybe. . .” Both of them looked at me. I couldn’t see their faces, but I could feel their eyes on me. I couldn’t hold back the cough any longer and started gagging. My body shaking with each and every gasp. 

*

I cleared my throat and sat down as she continued to cry. I took her into her arms as she cried. At some point the tears came and we were sitting there on the floor crying together as the last rays of sunshine faded away. Time just seemed to slip away as we sat there. Hour after away. Moment after moment. Each just as precious as the last, each one just as likely to be my last. 

Eventually she fell asleep, I couldn’t, I didn’t know how many times I would get to do this. I didn’t know how much time I had left, how much space I had before everything came to an end. So for at least one more night, I would sit here with her, I would sit here in my thoughts. Because time was so precious, every moment at least for now it was a gift, I would sit here in silence. 

They walked forward, the gravel hard underfoot “So I guess this it?”

He nodded. “I guess so.”

The two of them continued to walk in silence. 

He stopped, she stopped too. “Any idea how we can both get over this?” She looked at him, he looked back at her. 

She shrugged, neither of them knew what to say, both of them knew what needed to be done. “Time?”

He nodded, she nodded too, and just like that, it was over. The two of them turned in opposite directions and walked away. 

I don't remember when it all started. I truly don't. I do remember the night I fell in love. I knew that day that someday this was going to hurt me like hell. I had never fallen in love that hard before. We were both sitting there out on the grass. Watching as the light from the sun slowly faded away. We watched together as the stars came out. 

"I can't protect you if you go out there."

She turned to face him, fire in her eyes. "I don't need you to." She slung the rifle onto her back and slid on the gas mask. Hopping onto the bike as the doors to the Kingdom slide open. 

"Daughter! Wait!" The man stepped forward as his daughter kicked the bike into gear. 

She turned back to face her father. "Dad. I know what I'm doing. Bye." The bike roared as she dusted out of the Kingdom. As soon as she was out of the gate the door slammed shut behind her. 

Marcus sunk to the ground looking at the closed door. Then he looked up at the glass dome that covered the Kingdom. His daughter was driving out into the Waste's. A toxic hell hole that was the rest of the world. 

Jane raced down the tunnel, the lights flicking by. The second security door opened a half mile in front of her. The moment she went racing through the door slammed shut behind her. The final door began opening on the ceiling as the tunnel road sloped upwards. The bike jumped as it exited the slant. 

She stopped the bike and got off. She removed the portable oxygen tank and disconnected it from the bike's o2 scrubber. As she stepped away she hooked into the tank and slung it on her back. Looking around. "Damn." As far as the eye could see was a gray ashen plan. 

She looked back at the mountains and could see just nestled in the front the glass dome she had just left. Stepping further away from the bike out the electrochemical sensor. It started beeping as it jumped into the red. The air was still toxic enough to kill a man in minute's

Jane looked up at the gray black sky and took the deepest breath she could through the gas mask. Then she walked back to the bike. Turning it back on she started across the gray dusty landscape.

Jane kept driving, the mountains fading behind her as she drove across the ashen wastes. Within the next couple of miles she would reach the edge of what the people of Green Mountain Kingdom knew. After hundreds of years, the Earth's atmosphere had finally removed enough not to kill a person. 

Driving across the vast, flat expanse of the Ashen Wastes, a seemingly infinite endless plane of gray ash. The sun began to set and Jane turned on the lights. The bike had its own o2 scrubber, theatrically she had infinite oxygen as long as the fusion core that powered the bike didn’t go out.

Jane thought ‘driving isn’t hard. There isn’t a single thing I could run into.’ The Ashen Wastes had been made by time and the explosion of a volcano. Time had flattened the landscape that was now dozens of feet deep in ash. The only thing you could drive over was the dunes. 

The bike drove on as it’s rider watched the horizon line. Waiting for what she knew she would see eventually. The horizon started fading from the gray black into a lighter shade of gray. Jane also noticed the terrain was becoming more rocky as she drove on. 

In the distance Jane could see it now. From here it looked almost like the rock formations that used to be in the Utah desert. Massive jagged mountains and spirals. But as you got closer, you could begin to make out what it was. 

Jane starred as she drew closer to the bluff that marked the end of the Ashen Waste. The mountains that the Kingdom sat in were surrounded by hundreds of miles of the Ashen Waste. WIth the air being so thick, and unbreathable. Flight from the Ashen Waste was out of the question. 

However there was one place the Ashen Waste did not stretch hundreds of miles, and that was the path Jane was going. She was heading to the closest way out. Through the concrete jungle.

Jane looked at the jagged concrete jungle. She stopped her bike. The last pair to leave the Kingdom had decided to turn back here after calling the concrete jungle impassable. Jane was not a coward like them. 

She looked behind her. A massive black dust cloud was coming. That cloud was the dust and sulfur kicked up from the ground.

"Dammit." She quickly checked the air quality levels. They were dropping fast. Jane decided she would set up camp here.

She got off and opened the side compartment on the motorcycle. She pulled out the tent and started setting it up. After that was finished she grabbed an oxygen tank, other supplies and the air scrubber. 

With one last look at the concrete jungle Jane went into the darkness of the tent. Carefully she attached the hoses to the air scrubber and then led them out of the tent. She then sealed it off and turned on the scrubber. It started making it’s whirring sound as Jane got out her own sleeping roll. 

Then pulling out the sensor, she stared at it. Waiting as the dial ticked down from red, to yellow, into green. And finally settling in the mid range of the green. Jane removed her mask, and then the hood. 

She took off the thick overcoat she had been wearing all day. And changed into the clothes she would be wearing the next day. Jane finally laid down. Looking up at the ceiling of the tent. Listening to the ever howling wind and to the sound of the purifier. 

Jane woke up suddenly. It wasn’t a strange sound that had woken her up. She sat and looked at the air scrubber. It was the lack of a familiar one. As she sat up Jane realized how heavy her lungs felt and she started coughing. As she grabbed her small tool kit and looked at the scrubber. 

A fuse on the machine was blown. She looked over at it and realized the parts to fix it were on the bike. She grabbed her oxygen mask and connected it to the tank, then she stepped out into the elements. Her lungs started to feel lighter as she took deep breaths in through the mask.

She walked to the bike's saddle bags and pulled out her tool bag. Then she walked back to the tent, before she entered she looked up at the horizon, it was almost day. She wouldn’t get much more sleep today. 

She fixed the small scrubber, then got fully dressed and took down the tent. She packed it all back into the bike then started towards the concrete jungle as the weak light of the sun rose.

The descent down the hill towards the concrete jungle was done quickly. The ground slowly went from ash to dark gray stone. Until it was just entirely uneven stone, the small formations that rose from the ground were jagged.

The jagged formations began to grow taller and bigger. The bike is now struggling to continue driving over it. But Jane kept pushing it, following alone a narrow path, but something that was definitely a path. The pillars of stone were now far over Jane’s head and blocking out the sun.

Still Jane was not in the heart of the concrete jungle. No for in the heart of the forest were concrete pillars hundreds of feet tall. 

Jane stopped the bike. Something was wrong, but she didn't know what. She wiped away the dust on her visor and looked around. She heard it again. The sound she had probably only heard on the edge of her hearing over the sound of the bike.

It was the sound of breathing and small footsteps. Not a small animal, no, it was too large for that. Jane flicked up her visor, scanning around her. There It was again, it was a yelp. 

Then she heard them, the footsteps, followed by many others. A girl bolted just ten feet in front of Jane’s bike. Coming from in between two crumbling pieces of stone. Then a monster followed right behind her. Neither seemed to notice Jane. 

Jane ripped her long rifle off the back of the bike. Then she jumped off. The emergency latch disengaged and the oxygen tub disconnected. As Jane ran, she connected the tub to her emergency tank. And she took off after the two of them. 

They cut between the large pillars of stone. Jane was burning through her oxygen but she didn't notice. She could hear the beast just ahead. But she couldn't hear the girl. Then she heard a scream. Jane sprinted into an area where the pillars cut off and created a dead end. 

The girl was holding a rock and swinging it towards the three beasts that were slowly approaching her. Jane lifted the gun to her shoulder and pulled the trigger. She had to be careful to not aim near the girl. 

The electrified rail gun cut straight through the beast and into the wall. In the rapid section Jane killed the other two beasts. The girl dropped the rock and ducked, crawling into the corner. 

Jane flipped the rifle to her back and ran over to the girl. “Hey.” Jane knelt down, the girl cowered away from her, covering her face. 

“Don’t karba she! Damon!” The girl yelled. She hit Jane’s mask with a well placed blow, then covering her face she crawled away. 

“Look kid! I will back up.” Jane stood up, backing away and pulling out the electrochemical sensor. Turning it on, the thing did not start beeping. The air here was clean. But that shouldn’t have been possible. 

She started walking a little ways and the sensor needle didn’t move. Jane stopped, and stared in disbelief. The sensor was in the green zone. Jane looked back at the child cowering in the corner. 

The kid jumped back to her feet and threw a rock at Jane. Jane raised her hands. “I’m human!” 

“DAMON!”

“Look!” Then Jane pulled down the hood and holding her breath she pulled off the oxygen mask. The kid stopped crying and looked at her. And asked “I hahmen, and yo hahmen? Yo no cabull?” She pointed at the body of the six legged beast. 

Jane took her first breath. The air tasted, like, nothing. It didn’t taste like the purified indoor or tank air. It was nothing. Jane started breathing. The kid got to her feet. And asked, “yo sav ma?” She pointed from Jane, to the dead body of the beast, and finally to herself. 

“I think so. My name is Jane.” Said Jane, who looked back at the kid. Now that Jane was able to get a good look at the kid, she could tell that she was young. Like maybe 6 years old at most, closer to 5 or 4. 

"Jana?" 

"Yes, Jane. Your Parents. Do you have parents?”

“parnants?” 

“Yes, parents.”

The kid shook her head. I reached out my hand. The girl took it. “COME!” She began dragging Jane by the hand back down through the pillars. They reached the intersection where her motorcycle sat and she finally dug Her heels in. Jane's mind is finally catching up to what just happened.  

“Wait!”

“What?”

“Where are you taking me?” She tilted her head, looking at me. “Me. You. Go. Where?”

“Ma, pa.” She glared at me and pointed downwards. “Strangers are bad. No strangers go back to hom.” Then she looked back at me. “You're not a stranger?”

“No. . . Where are your parents?” The kid looked sad. 

“Brother gone. Parents at home. You take me home?”

“Yes. I will take you home. But we won’t be walking there.” I pointed towards my motorcycle. “That drives. We drive to your home. It will be faster.” 

The girl looked towards the cycle and then at me. It took a few minutes to get the girl to approach the bike. She seemed to be scared of it. She was especially scared of it when Jane turned on the cycle. 

But after an additional 10 minutes of Jane getting on the bike. And trying to communicate with her to join her. As soon as Jane got her on the bike, she wrapped a strap around her, then herself. To make sure she didn’t fall off. Then they took off.

Jane pulled back up her goggles as they drove. The girl screamed behind in what seemed like both a mixture of fear and excitement. They drove through the concrete jungle. The girl started tapping her on the shoulder when they reached an ever increasing tangle of tunnels and corners. Jane killed the bike. The girl yelled “THERE, THEN THERE!” She pointed to the right, then to the left. “NOR ATH!”

Jane looked towards the right tunnel, it headed almost directly north, the far more open looking route was heading east. She decided to trust the girl and followed the right path. Then, all of a sudden, the bike exploded out onto a wind swept plane, hitting the brown dirt and tearing up moss under its tread. 

Both screamed as Jane nearly lost control of the bike as it slid in the moss and dirt. The girl clenched tighter to Jane's waist as she slammed the brakes. They came to halt and Jane killed the power. 

Jane unhooked the girl and jumped off the bike. Jane looked behind her and saw the towering stone pillars. Then she looked backed back

The plain was large, covered not in grass but in moss. The moss was already torn apart in the trail. Distantly, you could hear a river, the rapids rushing over many stones. It looked like the trail of torn up ground led to the river. 

Jane pointed to the trail. "Was that you?"

The girl nodded. “Run.” She ran from the monsters, from the river, from the  raft that had shattered on the rapids. A raft that had been brought miles away from its original location when the girl's brother had lost control of it. Jane knew none of it, but she guessed most of it. She started the bike and began to slowly follow the trail. 

Soon they reached the river. There was no evidence of what had happened there. Other than the torn apart bank of plants and moss. "So where next" 

"Up river. Homa. Go go."

Jane turned the bike and the two of them started following along the edge of the river. As they continued following the winding river the concrete city began to disappear. Replaced with the massive black walls of the plateau.

"Jana!" 

Jane slowed and stopped the bike, twisting around and looking at the girl. The girl was pointing towards the distant bluff. A massive black cloud was rolling down off the bluffs from the Ashen Wastes. 

The girl started screaming, she untied herself and jumped to the ground. She immediately started digging into the earth. A breeze started rushing through Jane's hair as she pulled out her electrochemical sensor. The air quality was green. But it was quickly lowering. 

As the girl continued digging Jane set up the tent and connected the O2 scrubber. The cloud of sulfur and ash was coming closer. Jane grabbed the girl's arm and yanked her into the tent. Then I closed it. 

The girl looked around, panicked. "Dig! Ground we go under. DIG!" she leaped for the entrance. Jane pulled her back. Then everything went dark as they were sucked into the toxic dust cloud

The wind and the dust battered the tent. But the girl and the women were safe inside. So after several long hours of darkness, first from the storm and then the night. The two stepped back out into the mossy plain.

The two of them packed up the tent and started following the river as it turned west. The mountains and the ashen wastes directly behind them. Every moment they drew further and further away from the only home Jane had ever known. 

As they followed the river the terrain became less flat, until hills rose from the landscape. 

The ground became more rocky. But also filled with more life. The moss was replaced with grass and wildflowers. Jane could barely pay attention to driving as she was too busy looking at all the life that surrounded her. 

Jane finally stopped the bike at the top of a hill. A Half mile or so in front of them was about a 40 foot cliff, at the top of the cliff was a forest. A real forest. A waterfall poured off the edge and into a small pond that quickly turned into the river. Jane looked in either direction. This massive shelf stretched as far as they could see. It did in fact stretch for miles. A place that had once been the shore of a great lake. That the women and the girl now stood in. 

Both of them got off the bike. The ground here was very Rocky, with large holes in the ground in-between boulders. 

The girl excitedly pointed up the cliff."Homa! Homa!"

Jane grabbed all of the rope and climbing gear she had thought to bring with her. She had expected to be climbing over the Concrete jungle. So she had quite a bit of gear. 

They walked towards the cliff. Jane made the girl a harness and was just attaching the crampons to the wall when the girls froze. 

"Jana." She pointed back towards the bike, back towards the open plains. A pack was racing it's way towards them.

Part of the very same pack that Jane had shot three of its members. Here on the edge of the Ashen Wastes meat was scarce. So the beasts were forced into eating plants or eating each other. But fresh meat was rare. 

Over so many years these beasts had evolved to smell fresh meat for miles. Fresh meat that had just cornered itself on the side of a cliff. Jane saw the two dozen beasts rushing forward, rushing to kill the two of them

Jane sprinted back towards the bike, she could hear the screaming in the distance. Her hands shaking, she grabbed the small comms tower and set it up on the bike. She checked the screen and the little symbol telling her she had a connection flipped on. 

“YES!”

The screams were very close now. Jane was almost out of time. Hurriedly she grabbed the receiver and started speaking into it.

“This is Jane of the Kingdom. SOS. I repeat, SOS, once you leave the Waste’s the air is clear, there is life. I require assistance. The air is clear, I need help. God Damn it! Out of time! Send help!” Jane dropped the receiver and ripped open the panel on the bike towards the fusion core. 

Home, back through the route she had come was well over 100 miles. A distance she would never be able to make on foot. Especially over the Ashen Wastes. But without a second thought she yanked out her knife and slashed wires inside. She also swapped several others, but finally she removed the cooling tube. 

The screams were coming up the hill now, she could feel their thundering feet. Jane turned and started running towards the other side of the hill. Jane ran, she ran because her life depended on it, she knew they would try and follow her. But if they were dead? Maybe they wouldn’t

The fusion core immediately after Jane left it started shaking, heat started radiating off the box. The wires that connected it melted, and then the bike itself started melting. The six legged beasts ran around it in their pursuit of Jane. The monsters tear through the dirt, moss and rocks, chasing her. the final safety system on the core failed.

And with that, it exploded. The explosion shattered the hill. A wave of energy shot out in a bubble around the core. Jane jumped into a deep ditch and covered her head. The ground shook, she felt the heat cross her back then rocks and dirt thundering down on top of her. 

The girl sat hiding behind a rock next to the rope. She too had known that the screams would follow Jane. She also knew Jane had just saved her life. The girl watched in horror as Jane ran at the beasts. Then in even more shock as the machine Jane rode exploded. But not only did it explode, it took the hill, the screams, and Jane with it. 

The girl climbed down and began to run towards the hill. She climbed up into the crater, and kept running. Jane was nowhere to be seen, and the girl started to fear the worst. As she climbed, stumbling up to the rim. She looked around, then heard it. 

A coughing sound, the girl ran towards it. The girl saw a single hand sticking up from the debris and she started digging. She grabbed Jane and with all the strength in her small body pulled her free. Jane coughed up dirt and then stood up to her feet. 

The girl hugged her, “ya alive alive!”

Jane patted the girl's head. “I am. Now, let's get back to your home?”

The girl nodded, “home.” The girl grabbed Jane’s hand, and the two of them climbed slowly up the cliff into the forest. Jane set down the climbing gear. And the two of them started back towards the girl’s home. Towards the forests, the rivers, the green. Towards life.

Jane looked up, then back. Back towards the Kingdom. Back towards the Ashen Waste. Then she looked away, smiling at herself and the girl walked onwards. Towards a new home, towards life. 

Hundreds of miles away, past the river, through the concrete jungle, and across the Ashen Waste sat the Kingdom. Marcus ran through the tunnels, and waited impatiently up the elevators. He finally stumbled out into a communications room that was filled with important people. 

They all listened to Jane’s message. Marcus only caught the tall end. “The air is clear, I need help. God Damn it out of time! Send help!” Then there was a thunking sound and static, slowly they could hear a screaming sound coming over the speakers. And finally a very loud thunk like an explosion and the recording ended. 

The room was silent as Marcus sank to the floor himself silently weeping. He heard someone say. “Play it again.” They played the recording again and Marcus finally shook himself and stood up.

“We have to go after her?! We have to go save my daughter!”

Silence again, and then another man stepped towards him. “She’s dead.”

“No she’s alive, we can leave, past the Waste’s the air is clear! Didn’t you hear her!?”

The man shook his head no. “One of the signs of air poisoning is hallucinations, I doubt the air was clear. More likely her air scrubber failed.”

Marcus wanted to grab the man and shake him. “Then what was the screaming sound! It sounded like animals to me! If there's animals then life is possible. We need to go find her!”

There was murmuring of agreement throughout the room. The man rolled his eyes. “It was just the wind whistling in the receiver.

“No it wasn’t. We need to find my daughter!”|

The man now looked annoyed as other people in the room agreed with Marcus. “LOOK! Marcus, I am being patient with you because you have just suffered an immense and terrible loss. But we just can’t risk losing more people on a pointless mission.”

Marcus grabbed the man now and shook him. “It’s not pointless if it is for my daughter!” Guards grabbed Marcus and pulled him off. Marcus starts cussing the man out. Hurling insults towards him. The guards dragged Marcus towards the elevator, the group of people starred on in silence. 

The man yelled louder. “IF WE LEAVE WE DIE! WE STAY HERE, IN THE WASTE’S!”

The clock was ticking. The station was spinning, and Marie was exhausted. The 501st and first expeditionary force had been the farthest, and gone the longest a space crew ever had. 

That wasn’t saying too much. The first expeditionary force had launched from the only Martian colony on the planet, that colnony had a total 342 people living there. On their six year journey from mars to the Kuiper Belt, the edge of the Earth's solar system, the Gaviton was discovered. By the time they made it back to Mars the planet had just passed a population of 100,000 as space travel out of the atmosphere became just as difficult to do as building a high speed train. 

However they were not the worst example of an expeditionary force. The 51 first took that trophy. They had set out on a mission without the intention of ever returning. 1000 brave souls embarked on a journey towards Proxima Centauri. It had been a generation ship, those thousand souls thought only their great grandchildren would see the alien star. 

They had made fifteen years into their journey when a human ship traveling faster than the speed of light had finally found them.

   Less than two years after the 51st had left earth the jump driver, or what you know as the jumper was invented. Just five years after that invention (ten years before the 51st was found) the 52 expedition touched down on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. Beating their previous counterparts there by some two hundred years. 

So it had taken 8 long years of searching space for the 51st, but they were finally found and brought back to Earth. Many of them were very pissed off. But they were all offered places on the 53 expeditionary force back to Proxima Centauri. Many jumped at the chance and went, others stayed back on Earth. 

Marie was thinking of the 51st this particular day and wondering if they would get back to Earth just to find that something had drastically changed or improved, making their mission meaningless. Marie was just 18 when she joined the 501st expeditionary force. They had set out 101 souls on board the Star Hopper towards the furthest reaches of the galaxy to gather as much information as possible. 

Marie walked back out of the door on her way towards her position and job on the bridge. There were now 118 souls on board the Star Hopper. Of them only 88 were original crew members. Marie had just been just a ‘naive 18 year old,’ when she had joined, now she had just turned 39.

The youngest bridge officer had found Marie on her way to work that day and called out “HEY!”

Marie turned around and sighed. It was Ax. He had been the first baby born on board the Star Hopper, he was 18 himself a

And about to be 19. His mother had promised to name her baby after the closest star to the ship when he was born. Unfortunately the closest star at the time had been a very long number sequence starting with 6. And so his name had become Six Alberton. Which had lead to him given the simple and less dumb name in Marie’s opinion of Ax. 

Ax was young, but also the oldest of the 30 other kids born on the ship along its twenty year journey. He had two obsessions, Earth, and future technologies. 

Of course most of his predictions were wrong. Most people are. In the 21 first century people were worried about AI taking over. It turned out Artificial Intelligences were impossible, humans only ever achieved very smart computers. They had dreamed of immortality, even now humanity had only extended the health span to 150 years, and at most life span to around 200. After that, as the leading doctor on this issue had said herself, ‘there is no evidence for souls, other than the fact that around a human's 200th year it leaves and we humans die’ There were so many other lies, aliens weren’t real, and really to many others. 

“Hey Marie, how far away are we?” Ax asked. 

As Ax asked the question Marie seriously considered putting her head through the ship's wall. Or her fist through Ax’s head. She deduced to not do either of these things as it would be a bad idea. 

“Ax. Do you remember when you asked me yesterday and I said five months and twenty three days. Then when you asked me the day before that I said twenty four days, and before that twenty five days. It counts down every day!” Marie turned her back to Ax and started towards the bridge. 

Marie muttered silent curses under her breath. The captain had asked her yesterday to look at the Star Hoppers route and re-estimate time to earth. Now the first officer had just messaged her again this morning to do that. So as the ship's chief navigation officer she was obliged to. 

Unfortunately to Marie, and to the delight of Ax he was her apprictence. Which made him asking her everyday how long till they reached Earth even more irritating to Marie. They reached the bridge of the ship and Marie sat down at her computer as Ax stepped into the three dimensional intergalactic map zooming in on their position. 

As Marie began typing out the document she wrote on the day of the journey. Then I froze. She looked up towards Ax.“Hey what day is it?”

“Year nineteen, month five, day seven of the voyage.” Ax answered instantly. 

Marie almost slapped him upside the head. “No dumb wit. On Earth, what day is it on Earth?” 

“April 25th. Why do you ask?”

Marie sat back from her document. “It was my mother's birthday yesterday.” Marie had not heard from her mother in almost twenty years. The ships traveled faster than light and thus had no radio waves, unfortunately the fastest forms of wireless communication in all but the local system. In most cases it was faster simply to fly a ship millions of miles across space to have a human deliver the message in a matter of hours. Instead of waiting the years it would take a radio or light message to reach. 

This meant none of the crew aboard the Star Hopper had heard from their families in 19 and a half years. Nor had any of them been able to reach their families back home. 

Marie continued, “she got her last message yesterday. I recorded dozens of messages for her before I left. 20 for every one of her birthdays I would be missing. The very last one was the one wishing her a happy fifty first birthday and if I remember, that was the last. I think I figured we would be home soon after.”

Ax stepped out of the map. “I am sorry. I didn’t know.”

“And there was no you could have.” Marie snapped. She wondered what home would be like. Every planet had been colonized by the time she had left. She wondered if there would be more, or less countries in the galaxy? If her friends back home even remembered her name. “Ax, take the day off. Go tell your mother you love her.”

“Ms Marie, can I keep working?” Ax said. 

“Please go. Tell those you care about that you care about them.”

Ax left the outer bridge and started back towards his room. The ship had been designed to be very forward thinking. The Star hopper was a massive ship, the general shape was a sphere split in half with a pole holding the two parts together and separate. It had been described as looking like a very large dumbbell. Ax and his mother lived near the top of the right half sphere.

Because of the graviton the ship was built very much like a building on planet Earth, with a top floor and ground floor. The difference of course being that the ground floor wasn’t on any type of real ground. 

Ax got into the elevator wondering what he was going to tell his mother when he got back home early. The bridge of the ship was in the center pole in between the two spheres. All of the passenger quarters were above the bridge and all of the cargo bays, biospheres, and most other technical systems were below it. 

Ax reached the fourteenth floor of 15. He walked down the hallway and opened the door into his and his mothers cabin. The first thing he saw was the same thing he saw every time when he entered the door. He paid it no mind, there were few days he did anymore. 

The picture was of one James Alberton. He went onto the ship with his then girlfriend Rachel. Rachel was Six’s mother. They were married before the close of year one as Rachel was pregnant. They thought the next twenty years of their life would be the best of their lives. They were wrong. 

Before Ax was even 6 months old the Star Hopper stopped to send a few crew down to a possibly habitable planet as was the 501st mission prerogative. James exited the ship, he stretched in the constructing suit. 

He laughed, this was the first planet he had been allowed to go on to. He was a biologist by trade. The reason why the Star Hopper was here on planet 3652 of system 1574 was because they had possibly detected life. There were false positives all the time. Of the previous 500 missions not a single one had found alien life. Not even so much as bacteria. 

That was except for one time when the 331st had found bacteria in a planet's ocean. It was groundbreaking, they were worshiped as hero’s, until it was discovered that. The bacteria was from Earth, and B. 184 years earlier a probe had crashed into the ocean of that same planet. 

This planet that James Alberton had landed on was to be just as disappointing. From space the planet was grey and blue with poles on either end. It looked almost like Earth. When the crew landed they were even more excited because the planet felt like Earth at just 105 percent of Earth's gravity. 

But as soon as they stepped outside they were immediately disappointed. A rocky green landscape stretched out before them. The stone itself that covered the planet's surface was jade green. They had landed just a mile away from what they knew was a liquid ocean. The atmosphere was not breathable so the crew of seven that had landed on the planet were wearing suits. 

So they started walking towards the ocean. When they finally reached it, they were even more disappointed. The ocean was smoky, a toxious gas rising up in a bluish color from the toxic liquid. 

James walked up an outcropping overhanging the toxic ocean. Before anyone had even time to react there was a cracking, rending sound. The entire ledge crumbled beneath him and James tumbled down. They were never able to recover the body. 

Ax only remembered his father as photographs. Photos that he barely paid any heed to any more.

 “Hello! MOM!?” Ax called as Rachel looked up from the couch. She had been reading. 

“O! Hello Six. What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be on the bridge?”

“I was.” Ax sighed, “Marie sent me home early.”

“O, that sucks.” Rachel paused for a moment. “But what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything mom. Marie got to the bridge, started writing and asked what day it was back on Earth. Then she just freaked out when I told her.” 

Rachel sighed, then opened up the calendar on her tablet. “I think it might have been Marie’s mom’s birthday. She was very close to her mom and always seems to get sad whenever it’s her birthday. I should go see her today.”

 Ax started walking back towards his room and as he opened the door he slowed and looked back. “Hey Mom.”

“Yes hunny?”

“Thank you Mom. And  I love you.” He took a step towards his room. 

Rachel smiled. “What is bringing this on?”

Ax shrugged and walked into his room. As the door closed an announcement rang out throughout the ship and this is what it said. “Hello. This is your captain speaking. I am calling all crew members to the port side cargo bay in 1 hour. Again I am calling all crew members to the port side cargo bay. This is not an emergency, please do not be alarmed.” 

The captain leaned back from her microphone and straightened her perfectly done uniform. For the last 19 and half she had always been perfectly dressed. The captain's partner Jesse was the unsung hero of the ship according to the Captain. 

Jesse has been supporting the Captain for the last 60 years through thick and thin. She has held the captain and the crew together on every voyage the two of them had been on together. 

By mid afternoon the captain had gathered all 118 people who lived aboard the Star Hopper into the largest, and emptiest room aboard the ship. The port cargo hold. The captain was a tall woman, who was about to be turning 85, however she had long blonde hair and looked like she was only about to be turning 40. So by this universe's standards she was middle aged. 

Ax was just as terrified of her as he was reverent. Her and her partner had participated in expedition 495, then 499, and now the 501st. Which was the longest one they had ever done. The longest journey any crew had ever taken. She was still wearing an official uniform today, the same she had been everyday for the last nineteen years. The 118 passengers, who by this point in the journey were friends if not family, went silent as the captain started talking. 

“Pretty soon you are going to be leaving this ship. For twenty years you have been dealing with the same people. Enemies, anger, even dislike, it is something that this group of people have gotten rid of. I don’t think there has been a  major argument or falling out of anyone in the last fifteen years. And that is why I keep going on these missions.”

She sighed, and turned towards the cargo doors, then towards one of the large windows as she watched the streaks of light passing by that were distant stars. She looked back at her people. She continued speaking.  “When people spend so much time, so close together, you can’t hate each other, you can’t judge. If you do, we all die. We need each other, and we all know it. And so that hate dies. But now we are returning back to our solar system. When we left billions of people living on Earth, billions on Mars, even Venus had begun to be terraformed in earnest, there might be hundreds of millions living there when we got home. 

“There are going to be so many more people it is going to blow your mind. Even more so for our thirty members, the only planets they have ever stepped on are lifeless and empty ones. When we reach Earth we only have  one month, we will be kept together back on Earth to quarantine, reactlamate, and transfer information. Then you're all free. These 130 souls will most likely never see each other again.”

She laughed, “once upon a time you could have hoped for some kind of class reunion. But now, some of you are going to go home to Mars, the Moon, Europa, Earth, or even leave on another expedition. After we land you will never be alone with this group of people ever again. So say goodbye, make sure nothing is left unsaid. These months are your final chance and I need all of you to be mentally prepared for that. Thank you, you are all dismissed.” The captain stepped off her makeshift podium and walked away.

The crew split back to their stations and cabins. A tension began to go throughout the ship as the months passed by. But finally they received their first message welcoming them back. The Star Hopper was almost back to Earth. Two weeks after that message the ship entered the Earth's atmosphere and slowly descended down before coming to rest in the dock that had been built for it. The Star Hopper landed to a cheering crowd of watchers, fans, friends, and family.

Thankfully for the 501st, in the twenty years they were gone no massively better transportation technology was invented. But the ship was still considered slow by the new modern standards. Unfortunately well they were gone, still not a single trace of alien life had been found. 

The governments of the world had not shifted much either which was a great relief to the crew. Some had lost family and they were gone. Most had not. Parents got to meet their grandchildren for the first time. The crew spent it's month disembarking and then broke apart.

The Star Hopper was dismantled and it's parts stripped. The captain and her partner waited just two years before boarding the 506 Expondation force bound on another ten year mission. Marie went and found a planet outside of the Earth's solar system that had trees, a sandy beach, and a warm climate. She is still there to this day. 

As for Rachel, she still mourns her husband and is now said she is retired for at least now. The world was too big for Ax. He traveled around the Earth and Mars for over five years before the scale of the universe finally overwhelmed him; he signed up to join the 507th. Which departs from the outer ring of the Kuiper belt in two weeks. 

This has been the story of some of the brave individuals aboard the Star Hopper, carrying the 501st expeditionary force to distant stars. Thank you for reading this. It has been An article by the NMPA, the Northern Martin Pole Writers Association.

“Hey!”

“Yes?” 

“This was fun.” She smiled, and  turned back to face him fully. She had just been walking away from him. “Hey Ren?”

“What is it Jay?” Wendy asked. For some reason he always called her Ren. She had never figured out the reason why. 

He walked back to her. They had been going on a hike. Upon reaching the parking lot, Jay had said goodbye and was walking back to his car and Wendy’s to hers. But now he stood in front of her. 

“I wanted to say goodbye.” Jay said.

Wendy laughed, “you just did.”

Jay shook his head, his eyes were sad. No one noticed because they were normally that way. They had a way of seeing beyond that which was real, and seeing more than most could ever dream. He took a deep breath. Breathing in the spring flowers and listening to the breeze push through the trees as Wendy stared at him wondering what was going on. 

Dingo, Wendy’s dog, also looked up towards the trees following the humans line of sight. Jay looked back at her. “No. This is the final goodbye.”

“What is that supposed to mean? You still don’t leave for another month right?” 

Jay closed his eyes, thinking of what to say. He had taken a summer job up north and then was coming back home to finish his degree. “So I am going to be gone for the summer. And by the time I get back, you will have moved.”

Wendy rolled her eyes. She was moving east, out to New York. “Yes, but it’s not like we will never see each other again. You have my phone number, Instagram, and other stuff right?”

“I do. But it’s not like we have the closest of friendships.”

“Maybe. But I still think of you as a good friend.” Wendy smiled at him. 

“I don’t forget.” Jay said, not able to meet her eyes. 

Wendy frowned, unsure of what he meant. So she asked him that. “What do you mean?”

Jay shuffled his feet and picked at a leaf on a tree. Rolling it in between his fingers. “I don’t forget. Look, my memories are not perfect, I can’t remember directions for crap, or remember every step in recip. But I don’t forget people. Friends I had ten years ago that have long since started a new life without me, I still try to talk to. When you leave, you’re going to get busy and you are going to forget me, everyone always does. I won’t forget you, but I can’t keep doing that. I can’t keep holding onto people that stop caring about me.”

Wendy took a step forward, not sure whether she should give him a hug or not. “Don’t worry Jay, I won’t forget you.” 

He seemed calmer all of a sudden. “Yes you will, and I should forget you too. Which is why this is the last goodbye. But there were a few things I wanted to say before you were gone. May I?”

Wendy put her hands on hip as Dingo sat down. “This isn’t the ‘last goodbye.’ And you are being very rude. But go ahead.”

“I’m sorry I never asked you out. I’ve been meaning to for the last two years.”

Wendy was shocked.

Jay continued. “I am leaving, then you're leaving. This is it. There won’t be any awkwardness, you don’t have to shoot me down. And tell me that you don’t think of me that way. Because there won’t be another interaction between us ever again. I know you don’t feel the same. Or maybe you do, I could never tell, I let fear persuade me into never even trying.”

“I don’t, know, what to say.” Wendy Replied. 

Jay shook his head. “You don’t have to say anything. I just needed to get that off my chest. I knew if I didn’t say something now. That I would regret it for the rest of my life. And this is my last chance.” 

“Jay, it's not like either of us are dying. This isn’t the end. You still have my number.”

“It’s not the same and you know it. I need to let go because this would never work out, especially not now. I am so happy for you that you get to start over somewhere else and live your life to the fullest. I might be speaking just for myself, but neither of us can keep looking back.” Jay looked very earnest and Wendy closed her eyes as she thought. 

“Why do you always have to be right. I keep trying to think of how we can stay in touch. But it’s not the same, is it? I am leaving, and I don’t plan on coming back. I want to see the world. And I am glad you got that off your chest. I am really not sure what else to say. I don’t know how to feel.”

“I’m sorry. I guess it’s just who I am Ren. Goodbye.” Jay turned around and started walking towards his car. 

“Hey wait!” 

Jay turned back around. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to say those words. And it sucks that it wasn’t until the end that I got to hear them.”

Wendy awkwardly patted Dingo’s head. “You never did tell me why you call me Ren. No one else ever has, where did that come from?” 

“A memory.”

Wendy raised her eyebrows, the breeze blowing her hair back. “What?” 

Jay laughed, “I sound like a madman. But I think it will make sense to you one day. There was a girl I have a memory of.” Jay looked up, towards the blue skies. “A girl that I have never met, from a place I have never been. From long before I met you. It was a grassy plain backed by mountains, a river flowing at the mountain's base. And there she was. It wasn’t my imagination. But memory, I know it was. You remind me of her.”

Wendy giggled. “You’re right. You do sound like a madman. But honestly, I would expect nothing less from you. And for what it's worth. I am sorry we didn’t have more time.” She walked up to him and gave him a hug. He hugged her back. The two stepped away from each other. 

Jay gave a weak smile. “Goodbye. It was an honor getting to know you.”

“Yeah, same. Goodluck.” And she almost said ‘see you soon.’ But bite it back. She had come to realize he was right. This was the last goodbye. The last time either of them would have a real conversion. 

Both turned away from each other, and went to their own cars. Both returning to their homes. And both soon left. But both did think of that final goodbye often for awhile. Jay did as he promised. He let go, after years of failed intentions and regrets of ‘what could have been’ he let go. It took Wendy a little longer as she had never thought of what could have been. But in time, as things are. She let go and moved on. 

But both, even only for a couple of minutes, every couple of years. Thought of that final conversation. And finally, decades later, Wendy realized what Jay meant by a memory of something that had never been. 

Because that’s what it felt like, that what if’s. The maybe’s turned into memories, memories of things that could never be. For those few minutes every couple years both Wendy and Jay would look at their phones and think about calling. But it never did happen, and the two of them never spoke again. For that day had been their final goodbye.

I walked down the sidewalk, the street was long but I was almost there. I was almost home? The word didn’t feel right. “Home?” I said it aloud. The word still did not sound right, was it even home anymore? I hadn’t lived there for years now, I had even so much sent a postcard. But nevertheless it was still the place I had grown up. 

It was supposed to be spring but the snowflakes biting into my face seemed to disagree with the weather stations. I stopped nearly at the end of the dead end block. I had reached the correct gate. I pushed it open and walked up to the front door. I stopped at the bottom step of the door.

I don’t know why I hesitated. I mean, I had been invited after all. But still, to be back at this place. This place I had been thrown out of so long ago. I had chosen my new family, I had chosen my daughter. I would never have made a different choice, but a small part of me still regretted what I had lost. 

I took a deep breath, walked up the few steps, and knocked. As I waited I pulled my coat closer around myself, mentally I was ready for the interaction that was about to come. Close to ten years I had been waiting to face my father. Right now it would finally happen. 

The door burst open.

“JACK!?” Jesse stood in the doorway. My shoulders slumped a little, I was a little relieved that the confrontation soon to come had been put off just a little longer. Jesse was dressed very casually today, sweater, leggings, and hair falling around her shoulders. 

“Hello Jesse.”

She took a step out of the door and closed it behind her. “What are you doing here?!”

“I wouldn’t miss your wedding for the world.” 

“But you two haven’t spoken in years. What are you going to do?” I had no idea what I was going to say. But I wasn’t about to tell her that, she would try and get me to write a whole speech. 

I cocked my eyebrow. “We talked two days ago. Remember, when you asked if I was going to be here?” 

She rolled her eyes and swore under her breath. “You know what I mean. You haven’t spoken to Dad.” I hadn’t, I hadn’t in years, but today would be the day we tried to fix that. That I finally took that first step across that massive gap between the two of us. 

“I don’t know. I guess I was about to find out.”

“Well, you weren’t supposed to be here for another three days. You can’t avoid Dad till’ the wedding, you know that right? Anyway where is Lily?” She looked past me as if expecting to see Lily behind me. She was not.

“She’ll be coming in three days. Her mother has her right now. Are you going to let me inside?” Lily, the girl who had started it all. The girl who had ruined my old life before she had even been born. Lily, the girl who was responsible for all of the best days of my life over the last ten years. 

Jesse grimaced and opened the door. I followed her inside and removed my shoes. This entryway had changed, not surprising since it had been a decade since I had been there. The paint was different, the floors different, but redone so long ago they already looked worn. As I followed Jesse into the kitchen I asked. “Where is Dad?”

“Out.”

“How helpful.” She hopped up onto the counter and I leaned on the opposite cabinets. “So then where is Grant? I expected the groom to be here as well.”

“He’s at work right now, even though he has the time off. Lily is now in high school isn't she? And how is San Diego?”

I looked around the kitchen. All the crosses and statues of the Virgin Mary were still in their same places. A stained glass window was still in place of a regular kitchen window just over the sink. If the entryway had changed, then the kitchen stood in defiance. It was exactly the same as it had been. 

“Warmer than Vermont, and thankfully not yet . . . God, this place hasn’t changed at all. I wonder if Dad has?” I hoped he had, I prayed he had. 

“You have.” I had, being a parent, working, having to take care of yourself, and your child did that to a person. 

“I would hope so. Speaking of, are you ever gonna get out of this place?” Jesse had always lived here. She had moved out to go to college, then back into this house for a few months. She had then moved out a few years ago and less than three miles away with her then boyfriend and now fiancé. 

“I don’t think so, and just because you hated living here, doesn’t mean we all did.”

“I didn’t say I hated it. I was just never invited back.” I retorted back. 

She jumped off the counter, angry now. “Damn it Jack! I missed you, your friends did too. Grandpa and Grandma do as well. You weren’t alone.” I seemed to remember the past very differently, because I felt very alone. 

I was angry now too. “Dad disowned me! Why the hell do you think I thought anyone else would be different?”

Jesse took a step forward, the anger in her voice ebbed. “No one expected you to go to college and get some girl in California pregnant and then never come back. My opinion of you never changed when you became a dad. I still loved you, I still do.”

“I’m sorry alright! But having your only parent call you a sinner and say he would never speak to again is not something you forgot easily. But it is something I am willing to forgive.”

“Does that mean you’re coming home?” She had a hopefulness in her voice that threatened to break me. 

“I don’t know. But I know I am willing to move on.”

At that moment, I heard the door open and a man called out. “Jesse’ who's here?!” Fear welled up inside me, the voice was older then I remembered it. But there was no doubt, that was my father's voice. 

I heard the cattlering as he came down the hall yelling again “Jesse you here?” Jesse looked at me and mouthed ‘what do I do?’

I looked over at her and shook my head. “Nothing.” I said. 

The old man walked in, he had a long beard, a shaved head, and cleanly dressed. He stopped in the doorway holding two grocery bags. He walked past us, put one in the fridge and the other on the counter. Then he walked over to Jesse, kissed her on the check, “hello dear.” Then he looked at me, his face unreadable. “Hello Jack.” And then he left heading towards the living room. 

Jesse let out a sigh of relief. I turned to her just a tad annoyed. “Why were you so neverious?” I demanded. 

She crossed her arms again, “well, if I am being honest I expected a lot more yelling.”

I lowered my head then looked out the stained glass window. “Ten years.” I pondered as I tried to think about it for a moment. Well that really had not lasted nearly as long as I had expected. “Hey Jesse do you want to get out of here?”

She shrugged, “where do you have in mind?”

“A bar preferably. Or we could always just go back to my hotel.”

She nodded, “I am just going to go grab my wallet and coat. How are we getting wherever we are going?” 

“Well I left my rental car at the hotel, so I hoped you would drive.”

“Okay, keys to.”

She turned around and left the kitchen going up stairs. I walked out of the kitchen back into the entryway. I heard the radio buzzing. I paused before continuing into the living room. My father sat there looking up at the ceiling. 

“Hello dad.”

He looked at me, “hello Jack. I didn’t realize you were going to be getting in so early.”

“Yeah. . .” I trailed off. He was acting like nothing had happened, like I had just come home from college. Like it had only been a few weeks since we had last spoken. 

“How is Lily?” He asked, as he leaned forward to turn down the radio. 

“She’s good. She’s doing well in school. Her Stephane has some family in Boston so she is flying in with Lily on Thursday then driving down there.”

Dad nodded, “very nice.”

Jesse came running down the stairs, she stopped and waved to dad. “Well dad we are heading out, see you tonight!” Then she looked at me and the two of us walked outside to her car. The two of us left and went to get dinner and catch up. 

The next day which was a Tuesday I went with Grant to go get his tux. I liked Grant, he was a good guy. He was a doctor, it was where he and Jesse had met. The day before he had been called back to the hospital because one of his patients wasn’t doing too well. 

Wednesday I hung around my hotel room answering the many emails I had been ignoring. I also walked through the town, which was almost exactly as I had remembered it, it was like stepping back in time. I walked down Main Street and stopped in some of the businesses along the way. 

No one recognized me until I reached the ‘family hardware store.’ I pushed open the door letting the memories wash over me, I inhaled that smell of freshly cut wood and metal. My friend Derek’s father had owned the store when I was kid. He still had when I had left. I walked up and down the isles. Although the products had changed, the layout of the store had not. 

I stopped when I heard someone call, “it can’t be?” 

I turned around to see an unfamiliar man with long hippy hair, and a thick curly beard wearing a blue apron. “Yes?” I asked. 

The man's eyes bulged, “it is! Don’t tell you don’t remember me Jack?”

“Derek?”

“WHO ELSE!” He walked forward and gave my hand a very strong shake. 

I laughed, “I never would have thought to see you here. You hated this place.”

He let go of my hand and stepped back looking me up and down, “I do. But it turned out this old store was a lot like women. Ya might hate em and wonder why the adults like me so much. But then grow up and learn why.”

“I guess so. So how is your dad doing?” I walked with Derek up to the front of the store where the cash register was. 

Derek shrugged, “he’s doing fine. Finally let me take over the business though. Boy I can’t wait till I own this place.”

“That’s fantastic!” I didn’t know what else to say as our conversation lapsed. 

“So I am assuming Jesse’s wedding brings you back to town?” He asked. 

“Yep.” I answered. 

“So are you talking to your Dad again?”

“I don’t know. Words are being exchanged but I don't think we are talking if you know what I mean.”

Derek nodded. “I do. Me and my old man could be like that sometimes. But I gotta know. Did the two of you really not talk for the entire time you’ve been gone?”

I nodded, “yep. Ten years. Not until yesterday had he said a single word to me.”

Derek sighed. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. . .” He trailed off. 

“What is it?” I asked, as I looked out of the window. The snow from yesterday had stuck for now. Although it was supposed to warm up tomorrow and reach the 60s by the wedding on Saturday. 

“I’m sorry.”

I snorted and leaned against the counter, it creaked and I felt the rough wood on my hands as I spoke. “For what? You didn’t do anything.”

“I did though. I always meant to reach out. I even got your new phone number from Jesse once. But by the time I finally ran out of excuses not to call, you had changed your number. I’m sorry. I know it can’t have been easy being in California all alone with a kid.”

“It wasn’t. And thank you. That means a lot.” Derek nodded as we both awakedly stood there. He clapped me on the shoulder. 

“Well, me and the guys are grabbing drinks from Boxers tonight at 7. You should swing by. We’ve all missed ya here. Tell us small towners about the big life in California.” I smiled and agreed then left to head back to the hotel.

At 6:48 I left the hotel and went to Boxers to go drink with my old friends. We laughed and remembered the old times. Most of them had their own families now. Jesse had been right, not that I would ever tell her that, my friends hadn’t forgotten me. They didn’t hate and after I explained why I did what I did and they even were a little shocked by what my father had done. 

I didn’t drink too much as I had a long drive tomorrow and had to get back to the hotel tonight. Most of my friends wives, and so they had been invited to Jesse’s wedding. So I said goodbye for now and returned to my hotel. 

I woke up, it was now Thursday, for the first half of the day it felt like waiting for paint to dry. But as the after noon reached that point at which it started to cross over into evening. I went to the house to pick up Jesse in my rental car, I didn’t talk to my father as he was out at the church. Then the two of us started the nearly hour long journey to the airport. 

We reached the airport in good time. Me and Jesse laughed as we waited for baggage claim and our passengers to arrive. Stephane came walking down holding Lily’s hand. I picked up and hugged Lily and then hugged her mother too.

We hadn’t ended things on bad terms, and at heart both of us just wanted what was best for Lily. Lily said goodbye to her mother as Stephane gave her one last kiss and went to go find her rental car. To my great delight, Lily had always been a daddy’s girl so she was sad to see her mom walk away, but not devastated. 

In the car ride back Jesse had always used the most effective tactic when getting someone to like you. Bribery. On the trips Jesse had taken to California she had always been a model aunt and had always made sure to bring presents with her. Today was no different. 

We made it back to town just as it was starting to get dark, and after one after a stop at the local 50s themed diner to get milkshakes. I dropped Jesse back off at home and me and Lily went to the hotel. After the long day she had, she fell instantly to sleep. I stayed up a little longer looking out the window wondering what I should do. But finally I went to sleep. 

Friday I walked around the town with Lily during the day. I told her about the place I went to school. But that evening was the final rehearsal dinner. Despite the fact neither me nor Lily were in the wedding proper. Both of us had been invited. 

The dinner was awkward as we were seated right next to my father. He attempted to talk to Lily. But it was very clear neither of them knew what to say to the other. And God bless her heart. Lily, despite the fact I had tried to hide my relationship with my father from her, hated him. She told me herself back at the hotel what a bad man he was. 

I was equal parts amused, proud, and deeply sad. No grandchild should ever feel that way about their grandparents. I tried to explain to her that things were different. He wasn’t a bad person. Maybe he had been a tad misguided. But I could reach her, and after the previous three days. My heart wasn’t it. We went to bed early as the wedding was tomorrow. 

The day of the wedding had arrived, I got up early and put on my suit. Then waited patiently for Lily to get up. The wedding wasn’t until 2:30, but Jesse had said to come by dad's house whenever we wanted. 

Lily finally got up, we went to eat breakfast before returning to the room. As it neared 11 I got Lily into her dress and did her hair. A feat that I had gotten very good at after hundreds of hours YouTube tutorials and years of trial and error. Five years ago I would have called Lily cute, or adorable. But as she reminded me constantly, she was almost ten now.

We headed off to the house. Cars lined the street and before I entered I knew it was going to be chaos. I was right the morning was a raucous affair with people running around the house. Finally at 12:30 I was asked to bring supplies to the church. I loaded the supplies and spent the next ten minutes looking for Lily. I finally found her and we went to the church. 

Because of the chaos of the morning. I didn’t realize until I had a box in my hands and someone was opening the door for me. That this was the first time I was entering this church building in ten years. 

I walked in, Lily holding another box and trailing behind. The sound of people walking, and talking, the smell of the candles, the carpet slipping under my feet. It brings back memories. The last time I had been here was when the church elders told me what an awful person I was, and how I needed to marry the mother of the child immediately. My ears filled with a rushing sound as all of sudden I felt light headed.

“Dad?”

The world returned, Lily was standing at my side. The world was as it should. I lifted my head high. “These boxes were for the back of the chairs.” I said with confidence as I entered the sanctuary. 

The wedding was a gorgeous affair. Jesse was stunning in her white dress. Although when the pastor, the same one I had always suspected talking my dad into disowning me officiated the wedding, my breath coat as my body grew warm. The ceremony ended and the new husband and wife took off in a limousine towards the reception hall.

It was at a park, surrounded by a nature preserve. Although this didn’t tell the whole story. The building for the banquet was beautiful with large sweeping wooden roofs and lights, the smell of pine and food filled the interior even through the thick wooden walls of the building. The wedding progressed as all weddings seemed to. The dinner, toasts, dancing, everyone getting drunker, more dancing. 

I had a mixed set of feelings as the father daughter dance took place. Dad had started talking to me, and had even made conversation this morning. But he really was just acting like the last ten years never happened. After the dance I hadn’t seen him at all. I sat at a table alone. Lily was off somewhere having fun on the dance floor. The room was getting warm, and between the food, the people, the pine, it was all a little overwhelming after awhile. 

I took off my jacket and made my way to the closest door. I stepped outside and took a deep breath of the fresh, cold air. I looked around as I leaned against the wall. Up on the small hill was a single massive oak tree. I started walking up the hill and towards the tree. The breeze was light tonight and blowing towards the park on the other side of the hill to the reception hall. 

I was almost at the tree when I saw the small red glow and could smell the cigarette on the opposite side, along with the cigarette was the shape of a man. “Who’s there?” The man asked, but the voice, that was once again my fathers voice.

I walked around the tree and stopped a few feet away from my father. He was looking up towards the branches of the trees and the stars poking out. “You don’t smoke.” I said?

“Maybe I have changed my mind son.” 

I blinked, my mind went blank as it tried to process what he just said. I tried to say something, anything, instead all that came out of my mouth was “huh?” 

He took another drag on the cigarette and blew out the smoke, the smell almost seemed overwhelming. And suddenly I was aware of just how cold the evening was. “Beautiful night tonight. Isn’t it?”

I finally regained my senses. “I’m sorry, what the hell?”

He sighed and put out the cigarette. It hissed as the hot tip made contact with the damp earth. “I acted rashly, and I kept acting that way for way too long. It is nice to have you here again and to finally see my granddaughter.” I stayed silent, waiting for him to continue speaking, to say sorry, but he didn't, he just kept looking up at the sky. 

“That's it?” I asked, “ten years of not speaking to me. Of making your granddaughter feel like a mistake. You weren't there when I had to explain to her that her grandfather would never see her because he believed she shouldn’t exist! You bastard, ten Goddamn years and all you have to say for yourself is ‘I acted rashly’ that's it?!” 

“What else do you want me to say?” He pulled out another cigarette and lit it. Throwing the burnt out match into the grass. 

“Try, I'm sorry? Or how about I screwed up? Or I regret what I did.”

He puffed on the cigarette. “I’m sorry. I don’t regret what I did. The only thing I regret is that I let this nonsense carry on too long. Your right, Lily didn’t deserve to be punished for your mistakes.”

“MY MISTAKES!” I roared. My lungs felt empty and my heart was pounding. “I came here to try and fix things with you. I should have known you haven’t changed. Do you remember that lie you told yourself?” He looked me in the eyes for the first time, searching. “Every night telling us our mother was going to be okay?” I saw pain cross his face and I enjoyed it, I wanted him to hurt. “Even as our mother crumpled, becoming weaker by the day. Even when the doctors told us she had weeks left.”

He looked away. “Please stop.”

“Like how you just stopped talking to your only son?! Do you remember as my mother was lying in a hospital bed dying. You kept lying to us right up until the end. She wasn’t okay. You couldn’t accept that she wasn’t going to make it. And now you can’t accept that you're WRONG!”

He finally stood to his feet, “you broke God’s law! What else was I supposed to do?!” He stepped towards me

I shoved him back and he stumbled as I yelled. “WHERE!? That book, the God you say to worship, preaches love. The church threw me out, you threw me out! The one place that was supposed to be safe, that was supposed to lack judgement tossed me out like garbage. But do you know what Daniel, I have never felt so close to God as the day when I left and decided to never come back. So you know what, both you, and every single one of those people at that mockery you call a church can go to hell!”

His face had turned bright red. He was fuming. “You will not speak to your father that way or about the church you ungrateful brat!”

Suddenly, all at once. I felt that peace took over. The anger washed away from me like a wave on the ocean. “You're not my father, and that place is not a church. Do you know how I know? Because a church, a father, puts love first, even when it’s hard. They put love first, because both forgive like made men, to the point that others call them crazy. They keep care even when others have given up. You gave up on me the first chance you got.”

He seemed shaken by my words, but he still didn’t look any less angry. “NO I DIDN’T! You had a child out of wedlock, not only that you didn’t even marry the woman. My hands were tied.” 

I shook my head. “No they weren’t Daniel. You are no longer my responsibility. As God as my witness. Fixing our relationship is your problem dad, you're the one who broke it. I tried to fix it and you won’t let me. Goodbye.”

I turned around and walked back down the hill. I felt that peace spread across my whole body. I had been holding onto so much regret, anger, disappointment, and I let go of it all.

“Don’t you walk away from me!” He screamed after me. 

I stopped and looked back. “You hold no power over me Daniel. I will not apologize for saying the things I have been thinking for the last ten years. But I need you to know, I forgive you.”

“You forgive me? I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“Yes you have. Someday I hope you realize it too. When you do, I am ready to move forward, I am waiting for you. If you want to know about your granddaughter, and your son. Then just call me, you have my number. Goodbye Daniel.”

He started screaming after me as I went back down the hill and opened the door into the reception hall. I looked around and saw a few of my old friends, they smiled and waved, other people I didn’t know as well, laughing and having fun, and I saw Jesse dancing with Lily. I looked around and felt calm. I smiled as I walked towards my family as I finally let go of the past.

It was strange being here again. Returning to the place I had left so long ago. I walked under an aqueduct, as the soldiers with their broad red shields marched past me. There was excitement in the city, apparently there was to be some type of entertainment in the colosseum today.

The last time I had been here, here in the city called Rome, it had just been seven empty hills. Now it seemed like it had become the center world.

I had heard rumors of this place even as far east as the mouth of the Yangtze. I had expected the empire to have fallen by the time I finished my walk across the continent. But it had not, if anything the empire had grown larger. But it would fall, and I would live on, it had happened before, and it would happen again.

I slowed as I reached the latest place I would call home. The officials had attempted to say I couldn’t own property, and that I wasn’t a citizen. I had changed their minds, you learn a few tricks after so much time. I opened the large door and brought in the single horse that carried everything that had been worth bringing with me on my 7,000 mile and eight year long walk.

As I stepped inside the courtroom a servant came sprinting down the stairs. “Hello mistress.” He bowed deeply, “I am the head of the household. How may I assist you?”

I looked him up and down. “Do you have a wife, or children?”

He nodded, “yes of course. They will serve you as well madam.”

Out of the front of one of the saddle bags I pulled out a stack of parchment, the servant’s had come with the house when I had acquired it. Then removing the seal I kept on my person I sealed the papers and handed it to the servant. “Take your freedom, and your families. This house, it’s yours more than it is mine, I only need a room and nothing more. If you wish to stay, then stay and I will pay you for your work. If not, go. Tell all of the others who worked in this house that it is the same for them.”

The man looked absolutely dumbfounded as I took my horse and my few positions, to my newest room. All of the other servants left, expect for the head of the household and his family. He had five children and a wife, two of the children did not make it past childhood. The last three when they became adults left to go seek their own glory. The head of the household and his wife stayed on. They both grew old, the wife died first, and not two weeks later the man was on his deathbed.

I opened the door to his room, he coughed and looked at me. “How is it possible?”

“What?”

“It’s been thirty winters since you walked in through that door, and you haven’t aged a day.”

“I don’t know.”

“Promise me you’ll look after my children.”

“It's a big world, I can’t promise I can or will do much for them. But if I run into your children, grandchildren, and great children. I will make sure they are alright.”

The man nodded and smiled, “thank you. But I have one final question?”

“Anything.”

“Do you even know my name?”

“I may not be like most humans, but I am just a human. You Zachariah, you’ve known me for most of your lifetime. I’ve known you for barely a moment of mine . When you're gone, it will be like a stranger you bump into in the street, their name remembered for a moment and gone the next. . . Farwell.” As I spoke my final word he died.

The body was removed, and my life continued on.

I sat up in bed, then slowly got up. Picking up the katana that had been given to me by a blade-smith for saving his granddaughter. I had watched that girl grow up, fall in love, and die, then her children, and eventually her great children where the family name ended after the village had been burned.

I laughed as I looked out the window, that’s why I was thinking of burning. An army was marching on Rome. The Republic, was it’s end. I wondered what happened next? Would this vast nation finally break apart, I guessed it would. I got dressed, and then packed up the very few things I wanted to keep and slung it on my back. Including the sword. I left the house and started my slow walk towards the pier.

The army invaded, brushing past me. Day turned to night, and night into day, and day after day I wandered towards my destination. Listening and asking, the emperor didn’t fall, and instead had expanded. With a new ruler. By the time I made it to the docks, this ruler had already been killed, stabbed to death by his own senators. I hired an entire ship, and as I stepped aboard the captain stopped me.

“Is it just you madam?”

“O yes.”

“Well, you don’t have a chartered course.”

“Is there any empire that is grand?”

The captain thought long and hard about it. “Persia or Egypt I guess.”

“Persia, I was there not too long ago when Cyrus ruled, but it’s been a very long time since I have seen Egypt, we go there. I wonder where their story will end? Sooner than mine I would guess.”

I went to the cabin and the ship set sail within the hour, or maybe it had been a week. It didn’t matter much. It’s not like I was running short on time. Time to everyone else was so precious; to me it was like dirt, I threw it away, if I knew how, I would give it away. Because just like dirt, for me it was unending.

The train rumbled as it drove at high speeds through the towering city. A woman sat coughing on the train, no one noticed her. She was on her way to see her son in the hospital, the boy was young. Now to make matters worse, she was developing a cold from going to and from the hospital so much. She had gone home to grab one of Ethan’s stuffed animals. The first time she had gone back to Leah’s mothers apartment in days, they had no other place to stay other than her mothers. 

A man sat down next to her, he had a short beard, wild hair, and kind face, he wore nothing more than sandals, jeans, and a plaid shirt. “Hello Leah.” He smiled at her. 

She turned and faced him, “do I know you?” She looked the man up and down again. No, he might have been one of her clients, but he looked like too much of a good person to be coming for her services. No, she had never seen this man before. 

He smiled, his eyes, they were what was most strang, most disturbing. “No, not as well as I would like you to. But that wrong question child.”

This man was differently strange. And Leah knew she would probably move away from him, or even run. But something about the man, she knew this man would never harm her, and at the same time it repulsed Leah. 

“I’m not interested, and I don’t do that kind of work right now.” She turned away. 

“But I can give the one thing you always wanted.” Leah couldn’t help but turn and look back at the man as the train rumbled on. 

“What would that be?” She asked sarcastically.

“Forgiveness.”

She didn’t know whether to start laughing in dersion, or burst into tears as his simple word cut through years of pain. She chose the middle and choked. The train rolled to a stop and said to her station. She jumped up and almost ran for the still closed doors. She heard the man behind her. “Tell Ethan, that everything will be alright.” 

Even though the floor inside the train was flat, Leah tripped as the doors slid open. She turned around. The man was gone. She left the train and walked towards the children's hospital. The man had said less than thirty words to her, and yet, she didn’t understand the yet. 

She made her way into the hospital and spoke to some of the regular doctors and nurses. Then went into Ethan’s room. He was fast asleep. The chemo had taken every ounce of his strength. After a few hours when he did stir, he just looked at her.

She stroked his hair as he tried to speak, and failed. “It’s okay, it’s okay, save your strength.”

Leah heard a knock on the door. She turned around, Dr Voss stood in the doorway. “Hello you two!” He always had a broad smile on his, but she knew it was fake, well practiced. She had seen the dead eyed way he read scans and other documents. 

“How is he doing?” Leah asked. 

Voss looked out the window, then back at them. “We are fighting the good fight. We haven’t given up yet. Leah, can I show you something in the other room?”

Fear coursed through Leah, she had heard and seen other parents in this same halfway get a very similar speech. She followed Voss out of the room and into the hallway, Voss closed the door behind her. 

“What is it doctor?”

Voss took a step closer, “he doesn’t have much time left, weeks at best, but I fear the timeline is more like days. The cancer has spread farther and faster than we could ever believe.” 

The floor seemed to slip out from beneath Leah as she physically began to drop. Voss caught her before she fell. No tears came to Leah’s eyes. Ethan was the only good thing that had ever happened in her life. 

“I need to be with him.”

“Of course. I will be back to check on him in an hour.”

She opened back up the door and went into the hospital room, sinking down into one of the two chairs by the bedside. Ethan reached out a feeble hand and she took it, still no tears came to her eyes. Sometimes, there is just pain too deep for tears. 

Leah stayed there in that chair waiting, waiting for the worst. She stared at the clock, the only other thing besides the monitors that was moving. Fifty minutes passed before there was a knock on the door. Dully she thought that it was strange, doctor Voss had always been one of the most punctual people she had ever met. 

A doctor in a long white coat sat down across from her. She didn’t bother looking at him or talking to him, although she realized that it wasn’t doctor Voss. The man didn’t speak either, they just sat there in silence. 

Finally after more time had passed, she looked at the doctor. She jumped up out of her seat, the doctor was the man from the train. 

“Who are you?” But it wasn’t Leah who asked the question she wanted to know the answer to. No instead it was Doctor Voss standing in the doorway. He walked inside and looked at the man, who Leah realized he was still wearing his sandals. “These aren’t your patients. And I've never seen you before a day in my life, do you even work here?” Voss asked the man. 

The man answered in a calm tone. “You know who I am Liam Voss, these are my patients, and yes, you have seen before. But you left me behind a long time ago. As for the question ‘do I work here’ I work where I am needed, and right now I am needed right here.”

Leah didn’t say a word, as she looked towards Voss, Ethan opened his eyes and turned towards the man. Voss grew angry, “take off that coat and leave at once otherwise I am calling security.” The man continued to stare at Voss. 

Then the man spoke. “Leah.”

“Yes?” 

“It is not for your son that I have come. His day has not arrived. Leah, I have come to you. You will know where to find me when you look. Before the sunset on the 7th day, your son will leave this place on his own feet. Have peace.” The man stood up, removed the coat, and disappeared out the door. 

Voss looked around, “damn crazies, I’m calling security.” He walked over to the phone and spoke into it for a while before setting it back down. He then talked to her about Ethan for a while, and left when a security guard arrived. 

He came back a little later looking very confused. 

“Leah, can you come with me.” Leah nodded, the man's words still resting heavily on her heart. She followed Voss down the hallway and to the nurse’s station where a security guard was looking at the security footage. 

The security guard had a name tag that said Brent. Brent looked at Leah and asked, “how long was the man in your room?” 

“He came in almost exactly ten minutes before Doctor Voss did. I really need to be with my son, what is this about.” 

Voss nodded at the guard, “show her what you showed me.” 

“Here, take my seat ma.” She took the security guard's seat and he started the footage about five minutes before the man from the train, and fake doctor entered. The footage was slightly fast forwarded, she watched as the hospital room door stayed closed. No one went in, until Voss opened the door and went inside. Then a couple minutes passed and Voss came back out and spoke to the security officer. 

“Where’s the man?”

The security guard shook his head, “Dr Voss said a suspicious fake doctor went in, but madam, sir. The only people that have been in or out of that room in the last three hours have been the two of you. He doesn’t exist, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

The next day things got worse for Ethan. 

The day after he seemed to recover just a little. 

But it was just the calm before the storm, the third and fourth days he didn’t even open his eyes. 

On the fifth day they took Ethan off of his medication, it couldn’t help him anymore. 

On the sixth day, he was put on a ventilator. 

Leah dozed off, listening to the sound of the ventilator work, keeping her son alive, but barley. She felt a tapping on her shoulder, she tried to shrug it off. She hadn’t slept in a week, not since the man had visited them. 

Leah jumped up to write when she heard a scream, and the shatter of something as it struck the floor. She looked towards the doorway and saw a food tray laying on the ground as the nurse ran out. 

“Mom?”

Leah turned around, not believing her ears. She looked at her son, standing right next to her chair. His hair was still missing, and he still looked a little sick. But his checks were filled, and his eyes were bright. Leah embarrassed her son as Doctor voss and nurses came rushing into the room. 

Then ran test after test on the boy. The cancer was gone, his condition continued to improve rapidly. Leah asked at lunch the next day if they could go home. Voss sat there stunned, and shook his head, “we have no reason to keep him. I can’t stop you, I would like to run more tests, but I can’t in good conscience recommend it.”

The sun was setting as they finished the paperwork, Leah’s mother Marry was there to pick the two of them up and head back to her apartment. They got home, and over the next several days Ethan slept a lot, but the person who seemed to be doing the worse physically was Leah. She paced back and forth and stayed up late staring out the window. 

Ethan hair came back quickly and as the new school year came Ethan started school for the first time in years. Leah tried and failed to get an honest job. Instead the energy built up. One night some weeks after they had left the hospital when the pent energy was too much Leah grabbed a coat and headed towards the door. As she reached it the light turned on in the living room. 

“So are you finally going to go back to being a prostitute? You always do, your father was right about you.” It was Marry. 

“Mom, Ethan!” 

She waved a hand glaring at her daughter, “he’s going to ask where and how you met his daddy someday. Anyway, he’s fast asleep. So where are you going?”

“I need to go for a walk.”

“Where?”

“I need to find someone?”

Even more annoyed Marry replied “who? Does he give good tips or something?”

“It’s not like that. I don’t, I don't know?!” Leah turned around 

She wandered through the city, considering going to her old haunts, but clients would probably try and get her to come home with them. So she avoided them. Instead she wondered until she paid for the subway fair and stepped onto the train. 

As she stepped aboard, she realized that this is the place she had been looking for. She blinked, “you made it, I knew you would.” She looked around, the man was sitting in the same place she had first met him. She could have sworn the train car was empty when she stepped in. She walked over to the man and stopped in front of him, he didn’t rise.

“You healed my son.” Leah stated. 

“My father did.”

“The day we met, you said ‘you're asking the wrong question’ when I asked ‘do I know you?’ What is the right question?”

“You already know, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

She gulped before asking the question she had been thinking about again, and again. “Do you know me?” 

“I know everything about you.”

Leah had known he would say that. “Your him aren’t you?” Leah asked.

“Yes.”

Tears begin welling in her eyes, “what do you want with me? I hate me, I don’t have a job. My son's own father doesn’t even know he exists, let alone has cancer. My mother hates, my friends don’t even want to talk to me, the last thing my father said to me before he died was that I was disappointed in me. I am not worthy.” 

“Worthy. It was never about worthy. You can’t be, you frankly don’t deserve it. But you are loved all the same. I am yours, if you are mine.”

She sank to her knees. “You don’t know what I’ve done?” Leah wept “why my child? There are so many others just like me? You said it was not his time, and this was about me. Why? I am nothing. ” 

“You may not understand it, most won’t. But there isn’t a plan. I know all, I see all that could be, and all that will ever be, the past, the present, the future. I control all, and I have no control. I hold every opposite equally. You cannot apply your rules of logic to me, so don’t try. I cannot save a world that doesn’t want me to. It has been said to death, but no one ever truly dies, they embrace who they are, and go to be a better place, they come home. It wasn’t time for your son to come home, to be loved more than you could know. You aren’t supposed to understand, it. Just have faith.”

“I have faith lord.” 

“Leah, I know everything you have done. You are not nothing, you are everything.” He sat down on the floor and embraced her. Then lifted her to her knees as he stood. “Your faith has given you forgiveness. You are forgiven” The world disappeared off of Leah’s shoulders as she gasped. “Now go forth, and be a new being. You are loved.”

The tears streamed down her face and Leah looked up, and he was gone, Christ was gone, as if he had never been there. But the feeling in her heart, her soul told her that he had been there, that he was still here. She stood up, and returned home.

----------------------------------

SWK here, happy Easter, I shouldn't be the first person to say this to, but if I am. I will let you know you are loved, no matter what you’ve done, no matter who you love, Christ like means judgement free. I have nothing but love to offer you. Happy Easter, I hope you have a good weekend.

I walked down the way, the street was long but I was almost there. I was almost, home? The word didn’t feel right, “home?” I said it aloud and it still did not sound right. It was supposed to be spring but the snowflakes biting into my face seemed to disagree with the weather stations. I reached the gate and walked up to the front door. I took a deep breath and knocked. 

I pulled the coat closer around myself waiting, ready for the interaction that was about to come. The door burst open.

“JACK!?”

“Hello Jesse.”

She took a step out of the door and closed it behind her. “What are you doing here?!”

“I wouldn’t miss your wedding for the world.”

“But you haven’t spoken in years, what are you going to do?”

I cocked my eyebrow. “We talked two days ago when you asked if I was going to be here.”

She rolled her eyes and swore under her breath. “You know what I mean, you haven’t spoken to dad.” 

“I don’t know. I guess I was about to find out.”

“Well you weren’t supposed to be here for another three days. You can’t avoid dad till the wedding now, you know that right? ? ? Where is Lily?” She looked past me as if expecting to see them behind me. 

“She’ll be coming in three days, her mother has her right now. Are you going to let me inside?”

She grimaced and opened up the door, I followed her in and removed my shoes, it had been a decade since I had stepped into this house. As I followed her to the kitchen I asked, “where is dad?”

“Out.”

“How helpful.” She hopped up onto the counter and I leaned on the opposite cabinets. “So then where is Jeremy, I expected the groom to be here as well?”

“He’s at work right now, even though he has the time off. Lily is now in high school isn't she? And how is San Diego?”

I looked around the kitchen, all of the crosses and statues of Mary were still in their same place. A church's stained glass window was still in place of the kitchen window over the sink. 

“Warmer than Vermont, and thankfully not yet. . . God, this place hasn’t changed at all. I wonder if dad has?” 

“You have.” 

“I would hope so. Speaking of, are you ever gonna get out of this place?”

“I don’t think so, and just because you hated doesn’t mean we all did.” 

“I didn’t say I hated it, I was just never invited back.”

She jumped off the counter. “Damn it Jack, I missed you, your friends did too, grandpa and grandma do as well.”

“Dad disowned me! Why the hell do you think I thought anyone else would be different?” 

“No one expected you to go to college and get some girl in California pregnant then never come back. My opinion of you never changed when you became a dad. I still loved you, I still do.” 

“I’m sorry alright! But having your only parent call you a sinner and that he would never speak to again is not something you forgot easily. But it is something I am willing to forgive.” 

“Does that mean your coming home brother?” 

“I don’t know. But I know I am willing to move on.” 

At that moment I heard the door open and a man called out. “Jesse who's here?!” Fear welled up inside me, then peace as I let go of the past. 

“Now boys don't cha go running off back into Green Plack. They’re choppin' the whole forest down to make way for some ‘trains.’ Blasted contraptions, who even knows what they are?! It’s ruining our home.” She had a look of sadness for a moment, “just stay away from them!” 

Conner and Daniel both agreed to their Mothers demands, then went running out the door, she waved after them as they left. From the hillside where the small cottage sat you could see everything. In the east the emerald-green countryside, to the south and some miles away, was the small village of Feakle, to the west were more farm fields and larger hills. However, just to the north less than a mile away, was the old woods. 

Conner and Daniel immediately did the exact thing that their Mother had told them not to do. The two kids went running through the trees which were all tall and old filled with memories, eventually reaching the place that was the very reason they had been told to stay out of the woods. A massive swath of the trees had been cut down and the ground leveled. The kids stepped out into the area of missing trees. 

“What happened here?” Daniel asked. 

“Maybe a beast?” Conner replied as he started following the trail. The woods seemed to have gone silent as if they were now empty. Conner had made it only about a dozen meters when he heard Daniel’s call. 

“Come look at this!” 

Conner hurried over; it was the trunk of a once large tree. Conner thought ‘That hole in da the middle there, it’s big enough for someone to tumble into?’ It was right when Conner thought this, that Daniel tripped and fell into the hole. 

Being the brother he was, Conner went in after him. He tumbled down the dirty and root-filled hole landing right behind Daniel in an earthy cavern with a single large rock in the center. Daniel seemed to be alright as he was already pushing at the rock. Conner did the same, what else were they to do? 

They pushed the rock aside and at once water along, with a tall slender woman popped up out of the ground. She stretched her wings and smiled. “Thank ya lads. As a favor for freeing me, I will grant the two of you one wish.” 

“So does that mean you’re a genie?” Daniel asked. 

“No ya thick lads! I’m a fairy, I don’t just go giving out wishes all the time. This is a one-time favor to the two of you. Then it’s over and I will be off! So ya could wish for anything boys, what will it be? I don’t got all day now.” 

The two boys looked at each other and grinned.  

----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

The two kids came running up out of the woods and burst through the door of the cottage. They both started talking at once filling the cottage with noise. Their Mother lifted her hands and waved them down. “Slow down children. One at a time now.” 

Switching back and forth the two boys filled her in on the whole story. She gently smiled not saying a word until they finally reached the end of their tale, then their Mother crouched down. “So, tell me lads what did cha wish for?” 

“That the woods would last forever!” The boys said in unison. 

The woods did indeed stand the test of time, and those very same woods of Green Plack stand there to this very day. The green leaves, the tall elegant branches, and even a deep hole, where at the bottom a fountain gushes out water. 

The sun was about to explode. But the residence of Messier 52.3 or as the residence of this particular southern Millay Way solar system called it Messer Bright, ere not aware of their impending doom. Of course they and the Central Four Planet Government, the people who ran the four planets and their societies orbiting star 16172481.1232 the solar system's sun. Had been told about the impending explosion by a scientist named Alferdidnot Postance. But of course he was laughed off the stage by both the government officials and his colleagues. They laughed at him saying, “the sun has never exploded before! Why would it explode now you nincompoop!?”

Alferdidnot Postance fled the four main planets and died in disgrace on an asteroid in the outer rim of the Messer Bright solar system. After his death everyone joked about the crazy man, then his prediction was immediately forgotten. Everyone moved on with their lives for many years.

Daryl was a Zapzap farmer on planet 2; Named so because it was the second planet from the sun. The Zapzap fruit was the pride of the Messer Bright settlers. Because as the Settlers said, “them dar fruit don not grow no place else in the whole wide universe.” This was a lie, it grew naturally in other places but was indeed most common on the four Messer Bright planets.

The taste and texture of the fruit is most accurately described as “compressed wheat flour mixed with the iron powder, liquid bleach added for flavor, and cough medicine for the smell and aftertaste. All added to make a fruit that was a sickly orange green color both inside and out. The fruit was the pride and joy of the entire system.

Daryl spit out his chewing tobacco. Yes, even in this modern world, when ships can cross galaxies in minutes. The average human lifespan is 225 years. The human empires have conquered, explored, and terraformed nearly every planet in the Milky Way. Some habits like tobacco still exist much to the dismay of the public health officials back on Earth.

Daryl began his slow trudge up and down the Zapzap growths, well looking up and grumbling at the strangely bright sun. The fruit had been growing unusually well this year. They thrived on sunlight and heat.

The farmer grumbled in enjoyment. He was getting on in his years. Again he looked up towards the sun. It was too bright, and too hot. “I hate this weather!” He called his wife who was sitting on the porch.

“Don’t complain! It’s good for fruit!" She yelled at him.

Daryl shook his head, “she don’t know noth’in.” He looked up again now thoroughly annoyed.

“CARALIN! THE SUN IS TOO DAMN BRIGHT!!” He screamed.

Moments after these words were spoken the surface, then the core, then the opposite side of planet 2 was turned into superheated plasma. The president of the Central Four Planet Government was sitting in his dining room reading the news on his tablet. The final words he read of his tablet were, ‘interstellar weather looks like it might be hot today. But overall an excellent time to enjoy the sun no matter what planet you're on.”

The entire solar system was reduced down to super heated plasma in a matter of minutes. Thankfully not a single resident of the entire system died being scared. Because all of them knew that the sun could never explode and thus they would be fine.

The final message ever to be sent from the Messer Bright system was found when the Earth authorities were trying to figure out how something this obvious had been missed. The very last message ever sent was from the MBS Flamma Consumpsit. A space ship that was just about to be leaving the Messer Bright system. The message read “what a sunny day today.”

I stood staring at the setting light, a light that would never set over the horizon line of the water. Because there was no horizon. The water just dragged on infinitely, covering the entirety of all of reality.

I dug in my heels turning on the sand. My feet stood upon a small sand shoal that couldn’t be more than four square feet. I looked towards the setting grey light. Neither was the sun or the moon, perpetually setting or rising. But they were not objects of substance nor gas. But simply light.

I closed my eyes and opened them again. The train was rumbling, I brushed my hand against the back of a seat as I walked down the isles of the train. I looked out the window to see the countryside flying past. 

The carriage rocked slightly, I stopped and looked at a child and his mother. The child would have turned nine tomorrow, they were on their way to his father. For when his parents had divorced the father had stayed in the family home in the country. The mother had moved to the city looking for work.

The woman had found work, and secretly, both her and her ex husband were disappointed that their marriage had ended. I closed my eyes again, and sent myself reeling down the hundred of thousands and millions of possibilities of where these two would end up. Nearly all of them were the same.

I pulled back to the present. The further forward you got the more dark the future became, as each individual decision a human could make, splintered time more. But individuality they tangled together, here, all to make one line. I was not capable of seeing every time line, for even reaching just years into the future there were trillions. It would break me. I was not it.

I walked through the train. No one saw me, they couldn’t not anymore, they had forgotten how to look. None of them knew what was coming, and there was nothing I could to stop it without risking too many more.

I walked to the drivers compartment and slid open the door. The driver turned around, but to him the door was still closed. He rubbed his chest, then looked back at the tracks. There was a steep curve up ahead and he would need to drastically slow the train. 

The time lines were collapsing and I knew what was going to happen. He turned around. “Mis, how did you get in here” He went to stand up then collapsed, clasping his chest. He was gasping, I knelt down. “Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. Go with peace. I'll be here.” And the man left, traveling home. I stood up away from the body.

The turn was coming up. The train would derail. A hundred different factors had led to this moment and if any of them had been different this would not have happened. All I would need to do was pull a lever and all of these people would not die. 

But that would mean war, war that would not just kill those I tried to save, but everyone. It was not yet time. I turned my back to the window as I felt the train rocking, and I closed my eyes.

The winds whistled over the flat expense of the desert, from the rocky mountain topsides all looked small. In the distance, driving across the only road a car. Inside the passengers of the car looked out upon the deserts' yellow sands. The sands gently kick up blowing into dust devils. The car crosses over then a bridge, leaving the desert, they would continue on.

On to a city, where. If time followed the most likely path, as it too often did. One of them would die. One would become something that all who had known him feared and the last would do something great. But what none of them knew was this was the last time any of them would see each other in person.

A face, one that I did not recognize flashed before my eyes and memory. I turned around and walked through space, trusting that I would be where I need to be. I stepped forward onto a bustling street in London. I needed to find her, and help her. I did not know why, but it was not my place to know why. 

I started walking down the road, the people just slid around me. No one is looking to see me. I slowed as I reached a house. The lock clicked and I opened the door, a man and woman stood in their home arguing. “You have to go to school.”

“Dad you don’t know how bad they are.” 

The man looked down at his watch, “toughen up, I can't have this conversion with you again. I’m already late for work. I’ll see you when I get home. I love you." He ran to the door, unlocked it, then closed it behind him as he left. 

The daughter plopped to the ground and started crying. I let myself wonder through time looking back and forward.  The two of them had moved here after her mother had died. The daughter had spent the last year down playing how bad the bullying was. 

If the father actually knew he would want to kill a couple of people and she would no longer be in that school. I sat down on the couch, then clasped my hands together, closing my eyes, I felt every-thing pass between my hands. I breathed in feeling, I opened my eyes. 

The entire universe had come to a halt on this moment. I waved my hand and the girl joined me in that strange place outside of everything, and within everything. Yet we were still just physically sitting in her living room. 

She wiped her cheek and stood up turning to go upstairs and grab her bag. She yelped when she saw me, then screamed, stumbling back. 

She turned and ran, screaming “help!” She threw open the door and ran outside.

I uncrossed my feet, stood up and went outside too. The streets were frozen, people stopped in their tracks, the cars were all sitting still.

“Come with me daughter.”

She turned around and as she did the wind struck up, it wiped the hair in her eyes. I willed it to be, and we were standing on a mountain side. She gasped, stumbling back. 

“What’s happening!” She yelled. 

I looked out at the valley, I had seen this place before. But it had been many years ago, before humans of Europe had ever seen it. It was not as beautiful as it had been all those years ago.

The girl stepped up to my shoulder, amazement replacing her terror. “I know this place. It was the last trip I went on with my mother. She took me and some of my friends here. Who are you, how did we get here?!”

“Why here is up to you. You’re the one who took us here. Something important that you must remember.”

She looked out again. “I?” She had remembered, the good times, the friends, the pain of a loss. 

“Take me hand.”

She looked at me suspiciously, but trusted and took my hand.

I ran to the edge of the cliff and jumped and holding her hand, she screamed. Me closing my eyes, we fell back through time. Traveling through memory and existence back to time in which all was set. Simply walking back along the rope of time.

Our feet hit gently against the beach. The water lapped to the shore. “Where are we?” She asked. I sat down in the sand, it moved and did not move. This was nothing more than a memory of time. One that could change yet for a moment. As if I was nothing more then a single drop of water in a still lake. Causing ripples, but always it would return to what it had been. 

“Where, the coast of South America. When 1582, march 7th.” She sat down with me, also looking towards the ocean and setting sun. 

“Who, what are you?”

I laughed. “That doesn’t matter.”

She looked back to the sun, “Am I dead? Why did you bring me here? It's pretty, but I’ve seen sunsets on the ocean before.”

I smiled, “no not dead, so you can't understand what this is yet. And this not just another sunset. It is the most beautiful sunset this world has yet known. And this is the best place to watch it.”

“What makes this one special?”

“O, just wait.” 

The sun started setting into the ocean, the war, air hitting the chilling ocean causing a mist to go flaring up. Slowly the stars started coming out as well as the southern lights. A solar flare hitting the earth was letting the lights be seen this far north in their full color and beauty. 

And we watched the sun disappear. I stood to my feet, “do you understand?”

“Wow, I don’t think I do.”

“Love is a brief thing, trust is a strong thing, and you are never alone, beauty is found in all things. Have a strong child.”

As I said the last words time faded back to the present and we were back in her living room. “You are more child, you are loved. Farewell, I will always be here if you need me.” 

Time came back into motion with a gentle pop. The memory of me quickly fading from her mind. The memory, but not the feeling. She whipped the tears from her cheek and stood up, walking right passed me. 

I looked forward to her future. It was brighter, I smiled. 

I turned and walked out the door. My feet hit the bare grass. I started walking up the dirt lane towards the house. The house was home to a man that I had visited often. The porch light was on and a sleeping man was rocking back and forth. 

He would not sleep much longer. He was old, he had seen much, and done much, he had up slipped and he failed often. But he had helped many people, but it was his time. 

The man stirred as I sat down in the chair next to him. He opened his eyes and looked at me. Truly looked at me, understanding at least partially, what I was, who I was. 

The man had grey hair, a wrinkled face. Kind eyes, eyes that had looked upon hundreds with the gaze. His knurled hands clenched the arms of the chair.

“So is it time?”

“Almost.”

“Can I sit with you and talk for a little while?

“Of course.”

“Do you, people come and collect, every soul.”

“It depends.”

The man nodded as if this made sense to him, and maybe it did. “I remember now.” He said. “Talking to you before, I think I always remembered, but just forgot.” He laughed. “I thought I wanted to be an EMT. You handed a bible and said ‘you can help so many more.’”

I remembered as well. The expression on his face as he blinked back into reality, forgetting, and saw the Bible laying on the nightstand. “All those years. Did I help more?” The old man asked. 

“See for yourself.”

I waved my hand and time split, millions of hours rushed by in the two timelines, one long gone possibility, and the other the truth. As a medic dozens of lives helped, then spreading out into hundreds.

As the man who he was spreading out into hundreds and hundreds of thousands. People he would never meet, families he would never know. All somehow, helped directly by what he had done.

I blinked, and the time faded away, and we were still sitting on the chairs. He smiled. “Who could have known?” He looked at me, “I am I to guess my religion was right since you're here?”

I laughed, “it certainly wasn’t wrong.”

“What does that mean.”

“The reality upon which I exist and known is far more than any human, or book, or people, or society could understand.”

“I still don't think I understand?”

“You are a single bacterium on the back of an ant. You cannot claim to understand the entirety of the ant. That ant is right now, this moment, every human on earth right now. The colony is all of humanity, and it’s time. It is my privilege to be as a human in this particular example, a human whose only purpose and joy is in the thriving of the colony. But even so, as a human, I cannot claim to understand the whole of the universe. That is the scale upon which you are entering. From bacteria to star.”

“Is the beyond really that grand?”

“You live in the ‘beyond’ right now, just in part you cannot understand. You are like an unborn child that is to the entire world. So it is time you come to began to understand that there is much more than you could possibly know now.”

“So why do you tell me this, and not others?” 

“Because you want me to.”

“Are you not a prisoner to the will of,” he waved, “the above, the universe? Me?” 

“Do you believe your kindergarten teacher lives at the school?

“No.”

“As so, they can leave, they can quit, they have entire lives far more than children that they teach and care for can know. I can leave, I can go. But why leave something that I love.”

“I think I understand, more.” He said cautiously.

“That’s why I've always been fond of you. More so than other humans you expect to know nothing, and yet somehow you almost always know more.”

“Thank you. I think I’m ready to go.” 

The man stood up, his face lean, long black hair slicked back. He looked back at the now still body slumped in the still rocking chair. He took a deep breath. “Now what?”

I shrugged, and gestured back down the path, “you walk.”

He turned and started walking down the gravel road into the night. He faded away into that night and as soon as he had disappeared from my sight, I felt that he was no longer here. He had gone. I stood up and closed my eyes. 

I stood on a sandy island, surrounded by an infinite ocean. One where the moon would never set, and neither would the sun. The waves were rising, sucking back the water from my island and exposing more sand. 

Then they crashed back down to where they had been. The breeze washed over, a breeze that smelled of spring, of life. I lifted my hands, and the ocean stilled, the breeze slowed into a whisper. 

The sand moved under my feet. This place was not real, or it was a since it was just in my mind. But that made real, even if it never truly existed. There was so much pain, the images flashed across the waters of so many hurting.

So much that I wanted to do, that I couldn't prevent. But there were many more that I could help. My eyes focused on one face. I closed my eyes, dug in my feels and spun. Turning through space, through time, through reality.

Going to the place that I needed to be, when I needed to be. And when I stopped, I knew I was where I needed to be. 

Leo walked to the edge of the pier and on his way down he pulled a note book from his back pocket. As he sat down, legs dangle over the edge, the dog sat down at his side. He pulled out the pen and started writing.

Journal 52. It has been two years. Two long, shocking silently, and terrifying years. Two years ago, even by my standards I had been horrifically boring. 

I had been the general manager of smallish fast food chain with a dozen locations in a couple of cities. I was unremarkable in every way. I had lived alone in a decent sized apartment above a deli. And there was absolutely nothing special about me.

Expect two things, the first was obvious, I was the only one left. Second, I didn't know, I just assumed the second was the reason for the first. 

The evening that it had started I had been watching Netflix, then I went to bed. When I got up I checked my social media. Nobody had posted that morning, which was odd. But completely normal.

Then I got dressed and readied myself for the day. I exited my apartment and the city was silent. The cars parked in the middle of the road as if all of them had just died at once. 

The entire city was empty. I had thought I was having a nightmare. Until I passed out on a bench in the police station. And I had woken up, and the city was still empty.

It wasn't like the rapture, peoples clothes weren't just lying around. Cars hadn't crashed, but airplanes had. All of the trains had stopped on there tracks, and a few days later a cruise ship had plowed full steam into the city shore.

It was almost like everyone in the entire world had been given a few minutes warning that it was time to go. And they had went. All of them. In those two years, I have taught myself to fly, to navigate, to shoot a gun, to navigate, and above all, to be alone. 

I loved animals, but when the dogs, all of them still trapped inside and starving without anyone to feed them got out, they attacked viscously. Expect a few. As I'm writing this, I think these juronals are the only things that are keeping me sane. 

But back to the dogs, a kind one, one that I have named Cubeo. I was walking into a grocery store, and getting food when this husky walked up to me, I pulled my gun, and the dog dropped a cubed dog toy at my feet.

I tossed it and he chased after, then I drove away. Later that night, I was sitting on my balcony and I saw that dog jaunting down the street with a cube dog toy in its mouth. He has not left my side since.

All over the entire world we have went. I taught myself to fuel and fly jet planes. How to hook up and create power, where to find gasoline, everything needed to keep me alive, and searching. 

And that's where I lived now. Out of a mobile home in a smallish cargo plane, in that plane I have a Ferrari and jeep and my home. There really wasn't much space beyond that. I have now run out of things to say, expect this, Shanghai, even without power is still beautiful.

Leo closed the journal, that had after all been the last page. He tucked it into a back pocket. Then he got to his feet. Cubeo stood to his feet as well. "We should be getting back home, eh boy."

Leo turned around and paused, he slung off his backpack and pulled out a book, the cover of the book read, "every city in the world with population over 100,000."

He flipped through the pages, passing hundreds of blacked out names until he got to the 'S' section. And then he crossed out Shanghai. He closed the book, put it away, and turned around. 

He got back into his bright red convertible and gunned it down the road. The roads here, just as they were everywhere else were empty. And if not empty, then all the cars had been pulled off to the side. 

And Leo drove, he drove through the empty city. The windows, all dark. Driving around the potholes and avoiding the flooding streets. Nature was reclaiming the city into the marsh land it had once been.

He drove through the open gate straight onto the airport tarmac. Past the Jeep, into the plane and pulling slowly past his house until he reached the back of the plane. Leo got out and started strapping the car down. Cubeo jumped out of the car and walked into the house.

Using the Ferrari was becoming less and less practical. Even landing the plane would soon become impossible.

The world was quickly forgetting that which had once ruled it, nature beginning to, and already had started retaking many a road and landing strip. Leo finished with the car then repeated the same with the Jeep. Walking to just in front of his home was a box built into the plane. 

This was by far Leo's proudest achievement. He had modified the planes electrical system to accept power from a gas powdered motor. Then he had created an exhaust tube from the motor to the outside of the plane. Then he had built a sound proof box and stuck the motor inside. Lastly he had jury rigged a fuel and second electrical system.

So just by flipping the switch right by what he called "the maintenance door." Into the engine box, the motor started and the mobile home came alive. Then he flipped a second switch allowing the power to go to the plane.

He closed the main door into the plane, then killed that switch. After he opened the door and went into his home. The house was unbelievable fancy, and if there had been anyone left to buy it, the contents of this mobile home was probably somewhere in the millions. 

Leo had reframed from stealing anything and even left money in the cash registers of the grocery stores for about the first six months. But as time went by, and he had seen no one, he took what he needed. And eventually, what he wanted.

Leo made himself a dinner of almost entirely fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat he had gotten himself. He tossed a slab of the stake onto a plate, and set it on the floor. Cubeo started eating at it slowly. He was in no hurry.

Leo poked at the fresh food. He was actually eating healthier then he ever had before. Finding food wasn't a matter of if, but where. The grains, fruits, trees, even animals, humans had once used for food were all now free. Free to multiply and takeover vast swaths of entire regions.

"Cubeo, I want a hot pocket. Or deep fried anything, even food, even if it was terrible, that I didn't make for myself." The dog didn't deem this statement worth responding to, or maybe, he was just a dog.

Leo got up, cleaned up after himself and went into the bathroom, hooking the trailers plumbing to the planes plumbing had been quite a feet. Then after he had finished he picked back up his bag and went into the spare bedroom room.

The spare bedroom which had been turned into Leo's office. Before He sat down at his desk, he walked to the corner of the room. And opened a box. He pulled out a record and set it in the record player. Then placed journal 52 in bookcase with the other 51, then he listened to the last hum of civilization. Cubeo came in and crawled in his blanket by the desk.

Leo looked at the bookcase, "two weeks, always two weeks to fill the journals Cubeo. Tomorrow will be two years, two long quite years Cubeo."

Journal 72 I have always, kept these journals. I never used to write in the much, and after it happened I still didn't, not until I was a few weeks in. I think this is the only thing that keeps me sane. The only reason I haven't gone crazy.

That, and the hope, I haven't given up hope of finding someone else. Expect once. The time that I might have written about often, but I do not remember if I have or not.

It took me nearly a year and half to leave my home city on this plane. I drove out of the city yes, I even left for weeks at a time, but I always came back home.

I think maybe this plane itself might have saved my life, and if not my life, then certainly my mind. Which I find more wondering every day. But learning to fly, then rebuilding this plane give me purpose. Purpose that I needed. I started writing this journals the first night that I slept in the airport, I slept there so I didn't have to drive back home again.

Again I have rambled. So I was flying to California. Stopping at every major town worth stopping at. At this point you must know all the power had gone out everywhere. And it had just been me, and Cubeo in a dark world for almost a year.

We were coming into Los Vegas late in the evening. We had more then enough fuel, but I refuse to fly at night. And we could see the lights, the city was still alive. 

I remember actually shouting with joy at the sight, I wasn't alone. Apparently everyone had just come to Vegas. Why, why didn't matter.

But when I landed on the sand filled runway, and drove through the sandy town. It was empty. It was all empty, the lights were just the solar panels. To this day, that is the only time I gave up hope. I will never give up home again.

Leo closed the book and stood up, the Taj Mahal stood as if now one had even dared to disturb it. It had been a rough ride to get here, but it had been well worth it.

Journal 124 We just landed in Paris. I don't why I hadn't come here before. The landing was a little rough. But nothing I can't handle.

I haven't seen the Eiffel tower yet, it is currently 3 am local time. I'm really glad I rigged the LEDs to the outside of the plane. It just keeps making me more and more grateful each time I land or fly in the dark.

I'm looking forward to exploring the city tomorrow and maybe, just maybe I will stay more than a day. Cubeo seems hopeful about our chances tomorrow. I am to, heck, if I thought I was the only human left, why not come to paris. Anyway it is getting late and I need to sleep.

Leo closed the book, and turned off his light. He rolled over fluffing his pillow and he fell asleep alone, in the empty house with nothing but a dog, that was in an empty plane, sitting in an empty city. 

Journal 249 they don't call the beaches of Hawaii parade for nothing, for once I am not reflecting on something I have done but speaking of something I am doing. Cubeo today dragged up a puppy from, honestly I don't know where, but he is very defensive of her.

I have named her Squares, it only seemed fitting. I think I will keep her, she's the first thing that I've seen make Cubeo happy in a while.

As for the island, I will stay awhile, as long as I am close to the coast. The mosquitos aren't to bad. 

Journal 252. I flew past the Himalayas again tonight. Squares did not enjoy her first flight. I'm very concerned about Cubeo, I don't know how old he was when I found him but he is not well.

 I've been reading a lot of veterinary books, and what is concerning me the most of all is that the symptoms he keeps displaying are simply, that of old age.

Journal 273 Cubeo is dead. 

I flew home, and when I landed I realized it had been eight  years since I had been back. I walked back to wear my apartment should have been and I only found a pile of rubble with a tree growing on top. I buried Cubeo there, Squares watched me do it, she wouldn't stop whining.

I have seen every single wonder of the world. All of them, the natural and the human. Cubeo was there through all of it. And through all of it we never found anyone else.

Leo slammed the book shut and hurled it from the rubble that had been his house. He leaned against the tree looking down at Cubeos grave. He started weeping. 

"I'm the only one left." Squares came and curriled in his lap. Ten years of searching. Nothing.

Journal 493 that was the last one left. Its empty, it's all empty.

Leo closed the journal. Then crossed out one last name in his book of "every city with population over 100,000" it had been a city on some Mediterranean island. Leo chucked the book of the mountain upon which he stood.

An now fully grown and old Squares barked at it as it fell. Leo turned screamed at the sky, "I'm the last one last one left! But why, why God damn it WHY!?"

Leo did not sink to his knees, but it felt like he had run a marathon. "why?" He whispered. And his small whisper carried, it could have carried miles, miles over an empty city, to an empty sea, then over empty continents. And with only the breathing of his dog and the whisper of the wind to keep him company Leo started back down the mountain.

Journal 752  I’m old. I have been rereading my old journals and I do not understand them. The first ones I understand, they are filled with hope.

Hope that I never gave up, I simply stopped looking for. And one day that I didn't even realize, it was gone.

I can't find the strength in myself to die. So I live, I live. I spent most of my youth avoiding asking the question why, then much of my later life demanding to know why.

Then trying to figure out why, why me. Why me, why am I the only one left. But now, I'm to tried.

Leo closed the book and left it on the desk. Then he left the plane. Two dogs still following, both the grand children of Squares. 

Leo had begun flying his plane back to the place he had already been. Just see the places he had roamed with such hope as a younger man.

To watch them, much as himself aged. Time and nature beginning truly in earnest now to wipe out humanity. Some cities, of he had not had there exact location he would never had found.

The plane was still technically, barely the same plane Leo had set out on. Nearly every piece or part replaced or retrofitted. It was much like it's master in this way, it contained memories of the entire world and was nearly unrecognizable from what it had been when it set out.

Leo stood looking at what remained of some bygone city. Then he went back into the plane. The engines of plane roared to life soundly sickly.

Leo was not sure if he had landed on the runway, or just a grassy strip, it didn't matter either way. Fue, even the very well stored was finally contaminated and decaying. The plane would soon never be able to fly again.

Journal 1000 I am tried.

Leo closed the book and got up using his cane for support. He did not know it but he had used those words in that journal almost five hundred times. 

Leo walked softly on his cane. Journal under his arm and basket filled with fruit in the other. He walked up into his home. One he had built himself. He passed through the kitchen depositing the basket on the table and he walked through the library and into his study.

Three of the four walls were covered with book shelves. Leo lifted the note book and place it upon one of the shelves. He stepped back, then leaned against the desk.

That was journal 1000. Some had been lost, others destroyed, some unfinished. But it was the thousandths one. But it did not change anything.

Leo walked outside and sat down in his rocking chair. The house sat on top of hill, and across the bay was new York City. Or what and been new York City, and was now a green piles of ruble with rivers running through. 

Leo looked upon the city, and it was empty, he looked upon the bay and the ships that had sat there, the ones that had long since sunk without anyone to care for them.

Out towards the nearby airstrip, which was now just a grass field. The only way one could tell it was an airstrip was the one last plane sitting upon. The only plane that had been cared for. And Leo looked out upon a landscape that had only seen one human in nearly a generation. 

The plane could never fly again, the man who had cared it would never leave again. The stars here were bright, clearer then they probably had been in centuries.

Leo looked out, mouth closed, he had not spoken a word aloud in nearly a decade. He rocked back and forth. Looking out upon the once city, but thinking much further.

He thought of all he had seen, of the beauty, of the grandeur of it all, the mountains, the valley's, the art painted by no brush but that of the earth.

But lastly he thought of the fact that he was the last one left.

He was walking along a road with his parents. He saw another child riding a bike, and he said to himself, if I can have that bike, then I will be happy.

A few weeks later it was his birthday, and he got that exact bike, and he was happy. Until a few days later he saw an older kid riding a bigger, nicer bike without training wheels. And he looked at this other child and said. When I get my training wheels off, then I will be happy.

A few more years went by and he got his training wheels off and he was happy, for a short time. One day he was riding his bike to school and saw a group of other kids walking to school together. And he said to himself, if I can get more friends, then I will be happy.

Low, a few more years passed, and he grew up. He was the most popular person in the entire school, yet, it didn't make him happy all the time. He walked into class one day and saw the smartest kid in the entire school sitting in the back of the room. And he looked at this child then said to himself, if I have great grades, then I will be happy.

His grades rose, and he was happy, for short while. And another year went past. On one occasion he got into a friends parents car. It was the nicest car he had ever seen in his life, much better then his. If he could get a better car, then he would be happy.

More time passed and he was getting into his car that he saved for, fought for, and convinced his grandparents to give him money for. And he was happy, for a little bit. But now he was off to college, and now he knew. If he could get a good degree, then he would be happy.

A few short years later he had finished college, near top of his class, he had more friends then he knew he what to do with, and what most would describe as, "the best college experience possible." But still, he was not happy always. But he told himself. If I can get a good job, then I will be happy.

And with his grades, thr degree, and his personality he got himself, a good job. He was making steady income and had been dating someone he liked for quite sometime, he was living in a better apartment then all of his friends from high school and he believed had it much better off. But it was not enough money, or apartment, or title. If he could get a better job, then he would be happy.

In a couple of years he moved up the ladder, broke up with his girlfriend and was now with someone who he loved. He owned a nicer car, and he had moved into a new house. And it had made him happy, for a little while. But he needed a better house then he would be happy, and to get a better house he needed to make more money. And the place at which he worked was simply too small.

So a year later he quit his job and took a better one as a manger. As he got into the elevator on his first day he was thinking, my fiancé, (for he had proposed to the woman he loved) and I are in tough spot, bit once we are married, then everything will be okay forever.

This train of thought was interrupted by the man, the only other one in the elevator saying, "I wish you the most wonderfuls of days sir, and many more to follow." He beamed at him, then the man excited the elevator.

His wedding day came, it was the best day of his life. He was with the one he loved, and those who loved him surrounding him. His employers were thrilled with him, and everything would be great forever now, and he was happy.

Three weeks later he was in the elevator again, the honeymoon had been expensive, one of the people he managed had unexpected quit, the house bills were piling up, his wife was angry at him and he had no idea why.

Then the man, who he know knew was the mailroom clerk, the only one as a matter of fact. Email had all but taken out his entire department. He smiled at him, and shook his hand. "congratulations sir."  

"Thank you" he replied, not really paying attention. Then tried desperately to remember something the man had said a few weeks back. "How's your son?" He remembered.

"A lot of good days sir. A few bad, nothing I can't handle though."

"That's good, that's good." He replied. Then he excited the elevator, and he continued about his day. 

A few years went by and he climbed the ladder rising to a vice president position and for all intense and purposes, over seeing an entire department. His marriage had been rocking but now they had a child on the way and he KNEW that once that baby was born, everything would be okay, and he would be happy.

He was driving to work. The baby had been born, but babies are expensive, the house was now to small, and his wife had quit her job. As he was driving into the office parking lot, he was driving behind a car that he considered "frankly a miracle that it still ran." 

The car pulled into a spot and as he drove past. The man who was the last mail clerk got out of the car, combed his hair and smiled.

And as he got out of his own car, from his own spot, he could here, although far off, the man signing a merry tune, that one might guess as a gospel song.

He ignored the song, consumed by his own thoughts, once he got through this month, and they got a new house, then he would be happy.

They had finally moved, and his wife had just told him that she was pregnant. So soon after the first, and to add to it all he had been promoted, and was now being asked to travel more.

He was now on late night run to the grocery store to get cookies for his wife. After he had found the desired cookies and was waiting in line he heard the clerk from the isle over. 

"I'm so sorry sir. It says insufficient funds." 

He heard a sigh, then a very familiar voice, "don't worry my dear. Thank you so much for telling me." 

He looked over as the man who was the mailroom clerk laughed, "I need to go on a diet anyway." 

Money was tight, cars to pay for, a new house, a second child on the way. But that didn't matter. He pulled out the hundred dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to the clerk. 

"Use this to pay for it, and then use the change for whoever's next."

The man smiled widened "thank you." 

"Don't mention it, see you Monday." And finishing the transaction with the cookies he took his leave of the store, a spring in his step. Maybe he just needed to give more, then he would always be happy.

A few more years went by, he was making more money then ever before. As the kids grew the house was too small again, and the one they moved to had bad schools, the one after that had to many problems, the next one was to far away, the one they were currently in was alright.

He was now on the board of his company. He had given several figures to charities and all of it had made him happy. For a short time.

He walked into work, to a job he hated, that gave him money for a house, no matter how big they had been that had never made him happy. Cars that most he knew would never be able to afford.

Two children that he adored and a wife that loved him, he had charities that would praise the ground he walked upon. And yet, the bad days still came, he was truly happy so rarely.

He stepped into the elevator and the man who was the mail room clerk hummed a happy tune, that he had not heard since Sunday school.

As the elevator went up, and he could no longer take it’s, he turned to this man and demanded to know how he was happy? He screamed at this man “your poor, working the most miserable job in the world, didn't even have money to pay for food! You have nothing, and yet?!” He was happy was the unfinished sentence.

This man turned and looked at him, and replied "I am not happy, happiness is a short lived feeling that dies away."

He stumbled back, Physically shaken, and said to the man, "so you lie, your a liar? No you're wrong, one can be happy forever?"

The man laughed out right. "No, I have something better. I am joyful. I am joyful for what I have, and joy, unlike happiness, is a choice. You can choose to feel joy. And joy leads to contentment, and contentment most often lends itself's to happiness. One cannot and will never be happy forever. But one can be content, and joyful in what they have no matter how little.

He stood there dumbstruck unable to move, unable to even speak. The man smiled kindly at him and said these words "Choose joy."

I sat up, the cold sweat running down my forehead and back, it had all been so real, it had been real, just to long ago. I had to let go, I had to move on.

I spun putting my feet down the ground. The old floorboards creaked as did the old mattress. I stood up and the moment the blanket fell away I was instantly freezing. Winter had not yet come but the fall was already rapidly dropping the temperature. I squatted down and fumbled for my pants in the darkness. 

I found them and yanked them on. Then touching one hand to the wall I walked slowly, the glow coming from the furnace had gotten low. The warm spring had left me lazy. This was the first time I had started it in nearly six months. 

I opened the metal door and tossed in a piece of wood. Then blew to get the flames going. I wouldn't put more in, the day would be hot, I could already tell. And the sun would be rising soon, so I would not need the light long.

Pacing across the small space to the opposite wall I pulled the lighter that was still in my pocket, because it was always in my pocket out. I sparked it, the small flame danced merrily from the small device. I released the nob and let the flame die.

I looked at the gas burner. All I needed to do was turn on both of those burners and walk away. Then come back and spark. It would all be over. This living nightmare, I closed my eyes, their faces still so clear. 

No, I was the last one left. I had to go on. If not for an individual then for everyone, all of them. I was the only one left. 

I quickly readied the coffee pot and place it on the burner. Every time I turned on the burner I worried it would be the last of the gas. And when I ran out, then what? Minutes latter I was pushing open my door with a fresh cup of coffee into the misty morning.

The lake sat out just a dozen feet from the raised porch. I carefully stepped over the hole in the deck and walked to the railing. 

The mist seemed to steam from the surface of the lake. I looked around and saw the same view as I had everyday for the last year. Trees and water. Beyond the trees was more trees. There was nothing beyond this place right now. 

The silence was deafening here. Nothing, no one. After it had happened I had fled, so much death. Thankfully they couldn't find me here.

As I drained the last of the cup I heard it. An animals scream. It shattered the air and just as quickly as it had come, it was cut off. That had been close. There were wolves and other worse things. But they didn't come close to the cabin. Nothing did. That's why I was here, safe.

I needed to know. I ran back inside the single room cabin. I fumbled on my socks and boots. I reached under the bed and pulled out the rifle. 

I check the magazine loaded. Thankfully granddad had been a prepper type. So bullets were probably never going to be a worry for me.

Using the strap I slung it on my back and stepped back out into the cool morning. I ventured down the steps and started walking the game trail I had so many times before. 

The trail encircled the lake in meandering fashion. And was about a mile, maybe two,  all the way around. 

The lake some how, always seemed to be a projection of my own internal thoughts. When I was happy it was bright and calm. 

I hurried along the path. It was then that it occurred to me, I might never find where the noise had come from. But I at least had to check.

I started down the other side of a small hill. And I looked back towards the lake. It was black. The mist, instead of deceasing with the slowly growing light as I would have thought, almost seemed like it was growing, reaching out for me.  

I looked away and continued scanning the woods. This season, and especially this far north meant that a lot of the underbrush had died off with the first freeze.

There was nothing, the woods were silent. Normally there would be all kinds of animals, all coming to drink from the lake. But today, this morning, there was nothing. 

I came into the pine forest. So, about a third of the way around. I slowed down my walk, there was no need to be any hurry. If it took me the whole day to walk around the lake, that would be okay. There would be no one waiting for me. I was the only left after all.

I kept walking and slowed as I came down the steep part of the trail. I glanced towards the lake, through the trees, directly on the other side was the cabin. 

I heard a sound. I couldn't tell what it was but it made me look back towards the woods. And there, unnoticed by me was a deer.

The deer was lying on it's side, clearly dead. I slung the rifle off of my shoulders and walked towards the dead animal. 

I knelt down. It's entire side had been slashed open. Bear, but bears didn't just leave the prey. I smelt it right before I heard the growl. I looked up. A dozen paces ahead, a grizzly bear.

It roared and before I could even lift my rifle it charged. I saw it's eyes. 

Dad was laughing. Even my Granddad had come over for this. Finally done with college. I had what my mom had called 'a high paying big boy job.' 

But today was a special day. With my first few paychecks I had finally bought my own car. I had been using my parents car until I went to college. For the next five years during college and the year after it had been bus central for me. 

James came out the door to admire my used crossover. Granddad clapped me on the shoulder, "nice to see that law degree is good for something else." 

James hit me on the shoulder, "so when are we gonna go on a drive?" There had always been an age gap between me and my brother, but it had never matter. It had always been the two of us.

"Now I guess." 

"Sound like a plan." Granddad said.

"I would love to." Dad said. He was still beaming, I had  not seen him this proud since when I graduated college. He had worked two jobs to give me and my brother the life we had.

"Alright, its a plan." I got in the drivers set. My dad in the passages seat. My brother got in behind me, and my granddad in back passages side.

I started the engine and we pulled out of the driveway.

I wiped the rifle and cocked it in one breath. I pulled the trigger. The beast roared not even stumbling, it lifted to it's hind legs and swiped, the strap snapped and the gun went flying. 

I dove to the right as the beast roared falling down where my head had been moments before. I tucked and rolled hitting the dirt hard. 

I turned around, no weapon, I can't out run it, can't climb, swim or fight, I was going to die. The bear, easily four times my weight. It growled bearing it's teeth. It started advancing slowly.

I put my foot on the break and the car came to a stop. All four of us had just been laughing at Granddad how had just made a joke that he couldn't understand why it was funny.

James laughed. "Granddad. Please don't try and figure out memes."

I looked up, still waiting for the stoplight to turn. The entire thing was still black. No red light, green light, nothing.

I glanced behind us. There was no one else. I inched forward looking down either road. No one. I glanced to Dad.

"What should I do?"

He shrugged looking in either direction. "Go."

I hit the gas, and looked left, right, a car out of nowhere, plowing down the road. It was going to fast. It was heading right for us. There was no time.

There was no time, the bear charged I jumped. Miraculously there was a branch. I grabbed and swung, the bear swiped up, I felt the bears claws graze the back of my shirt.

I let go of the branch and flew through the air, landing behind the bear. I ran, there was the slight hill, I looked behind the bear had turned around. 

I grabbed the closest, biggest, dead branch and broke it off the. The bear stood to its hind legs and roared.

It dropped down and charged. I swung as hard as I could, the branch hit it in the head and broke. But it did veer it off course.

It turned quicker then I could have believed possible, it raised its paw and hit me squarely in the chest. It lifted me from my feet and flung me through the air.

I felt the impact, then my seat belt caught me as the roof hit the road. Then I was lifted and flung back into my seat. This cycle happened for an entirety. I felt the rocking.

I opened my eyes. We were sitting still, the windshield seemed so clean. We were sitting facing directly at the store that had been just off the road.  

I turned, "dad?" Where dad should have been was what looked an unfinished clay doll covered in red and then given to a toddler.

I unbuckled my seat belt and got out. I shoved my door open. I got out and the world went black. When I put weight on my legs they shook.

Maybe James would know what happened to Dad. I stumbled back and opened the back door. James slumped out, I caught him. He was covered in blood. 

"James!?" I unbuckled his seat belt and dragged him out. "James!?" I could see his mouth gasping. I could hear a dull roar that sounded like sirens.  

He was shaking as I clutched at him. Then he went still. "James!?"

My back slammed into a tree and rolled. Falling to the dirt, looking up at the trees. I couldn't breathe, I was the only who had survived, not a scratch on me. Just a mild concussion. 

But now I was going to die. The grizzly bear stepped over me. Looking me directly in eyes. There was nothing that I could do. 

There was nothing I could have done. It wasn't my fault, and now with that thought. I was going to die. 

The bear breathed out. Then blinked, it turned around and walked away. I sat up. The bear walked over to the deer, the it dragged it away.

I stood up, I was alive. I turned around, the mist in the lake was gone, the sun had risen. And the lake, was glistening golden.

I stumbled back to the cabin alive! And physically unhurt. I couldn't believe it, not only was I alive but the weight, the weight that had been drowning me for almost a year was, gone.

I walked back up the steps and tripped in the hole as I went back inside. I opened up a cabinet drawer and dumped it on the ground. The smart phone dropped onto the top of the pile.

I had not looked at, or touched it in close to six months. I held the power button and waited for it to turn on. It did, although it had not been charged in a year, it hadn't been turned on in a year.

I clicked the phone number I had been avoiding call, the person I couldn’t face, the shame, the guilt. It had all drowned me so much that we had not spoken since just a few days after the funeral. I called.

The phone rang once.

“O my God , where are you?! Are you okay?!”

“Hi mom." 

Tears, tears that I had refused to let myself cry. Finally came. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I I never meant any of it. I didn't want any of it to happen."

"It's not your fault. It was never your fault. Now come home. Tell me where you are so we can get you home."

I sunk to the floor. "I am alright and at granddad's cabin."

"Dad didn't, o yeah. Paranoid wasn't he?" She forced a laugh. 

"Can you forgive me?

"No, I can't. Because I already did. I never blamed you. And I have spent the last year praying you to come home."

"I'm coming home. See you soon."

"I love you." 

"I love you too."

I hung up the phone and got up. I doused the fire, fetched my wallet from the other drawer. Then I walked out the door. There was nothing else to be done.

The cabin which had shielded me, and blinded me to my selfishness, anger, and despair was pointless. I didn't need the shield.

I lifted my head, and closed my eyes taking in the sunlight. Then with nothing on my back and just my phone in my pocket. I started walking. 

A ten miles hike to road. Then another ten to town. Then the bus. Then probably a few dozen more.

Then home. I walked into the woods as the sun started glittering off the lake.

I was walking down the street when a man grabbed me by the arm. The rain continued to sprinkle down around us in the dark street. I immediately yanked away, slapping at the man's hand and wrestling well yelling, “get away!” The man did not let go. The man's grip was neither painful nor soft. 

The man's dress was neither ragged, nor fancy, it was unremarkable. His eyes weren’t warm, but not cold either. They were just sad. He held on, as I continued to push away. He looked at me and asked, “do you know what love is?” 

Disturbed, I shoved away harder and he let go. Water splashed around, I began backing away, not taking my eyes off him. He didn’t move, he just asked, “please tell, please help me, do you know what love is?” 

I ran away, I ran home. Home was quiet. It was just me, I snuck in the back door of the house. I had three other roommates and they were probably sleeping. I got ready for bed and trying to push off the experience of the day. I finally slipped into an unrestful sleep. 

I got up in the morning, and got ready. I didn’t look at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I just brushed my teeth and combed my hair. I got out of the house just as my other roommates were starting to wake up. 

I was about half way to work when I stopped, I froze to face the building. The man, the man from last night stood leaning against the building as if he had been waiting for me. 

I would have shrieked if this had been late at night again. But we were surrounded by people. The man took a step closer to me. I didn’t move, I needed to get rid of this creep. The man looked me slowly up and down. 

Then he shook his head and glanced away. “I’m sorry. I hate myself. I don’t know anything, no one has ever cared.” The man looked less threatening then he had the night before, now he just looked tired. 

“Leave me alone you creep.”

He looked me in the eyes. “I should. But I can't. I need your help. Please help me.” The man looked like he was begging now. I turned around and began hurting away. But I heard him call after me. “I don’t know what it is, how does someone know if anyone loves them?”

I continued on to work, hopping that the man would just leave me alone. Work was another very long day. Problem after problem kept coming up, I had the time to fix them, but not the will. 

By mid afternoon I was sitting at the conference table and just resting my head in my hands. Finally I closed the laptop screen after I had been staring at it for over 15 minutes without tapping a single key. 

I walked down the hallway, and opened the bathroom door. I splashed water into my face and grabbed a paper towel to wipe it away. “You look almost as bad as I feel.”  the

I gasped and turned, the man who had been stalking me was standing in the bathroom. “Who the hell are you!?” The man looked exhausted and gaunt. He wore nicer clothes then he had. 

“Do you even care?” 

I was to scared and confused to even call for help. So instead my mind still spinning, I blurted out, “care about?”

The man titled his head. “Your job, your friends, any of it? I mean, I’ve asked you repeatedly if you can tell, if you can help to know what love is.  So tell me, do you even care?”

“I think so? Why are you following me. Just leave me alone!” 

“I can’t. I can’t do it.” He said. 

The man took a step forward.

“Help!” I yelled and looked around, “Help!” I stumbled back and closed my eyes as the man advanced forward. I heard someone running, as I fell over. The bathroom door burst up, I heard it swing open again. I opened my eyes as someone grabbed my shoulders and asked

“What happened, are you okay?” He helped me to my feet as I looked around. 

“Some guy has been stalking me. He was in this bathroom. I can’t get him to leave alone.” 

“Are you alright? Do you want me to call the cops, or security?”

What I wanted to say was ‘yes, of course. Call the police, help me I'm scared.’ Instead I brushed myself off and said “no, if he shows up again I will call the police. I am fine.” 

“Are you sure? I mean, we should at least report it.”

“No, no we shouldn’t. I will be fine.”

The rest of the day dragged by, but I didn’t see the man. I walked home, constantly looking over my shoulder, but he was nowhere to be seen. I got back home, my roommates greeted me. We ate dinner togather. 

After dinner one drifted off, the other two started watching a movie. I just went to my room. I wanted to be alone. So I got ready for bed and layed down, looking at the ceiling. For the first time I thought about the man's questions. 

“What is love?” 

Well, love was love right? But the more I thought about, the less I wanted to keep thinking about. Me and my roommates were friends, but we weren’t close. We joked and laughed but we never really talked about anything deep. Mostly we tried to stay out of each other's way. 

I was sure my family would say they loved me. But they lived far away. None of them even attended my college graduation. I am not sure either of my parents even knew the name of the company I worked at. Could that be love, could you still call it love even if the person knew nothing about you?

Well surly people who are married are in love right? I assumed so. But I had never been in a long term relationship. Not even so much as highschool girlfriend. I had been working throughout highschool, so the job and studying to keep my grades up had been more important than relationships. Plus not a lot of people really talked to me that much anyway. 

I guess I didn't really know.

I closed my eyes.

“So here we are again.” I sat bolt upright in bed, I didn’t think I had even fallen asleep yet, I had just almost been asleep. I looked around, the man was leaning up against a wall. 

I reached for my phone, my phone so I could call the police. But my phone was on the other side of the room. It was sitting on the dresser right next to the man. “I kill you.”

“No you won’t he answer.” 

“You broke in here, you don’t belong here. I will scream, I will yell,my roommates are close, they’ll hear me and come.”

“They would if you screamed, that might even come if you talked in a raised voice. So then why are you whispering?”

“I am not.” As the words left my mouth, I realized it just wasn’t true. I was whispering. But why, I should yell. But now, part of me, part of was interested to know what he wanted. “What do you want?”

“I’ve told you.” He said. “I want to know, how do you know what love is. How do you know if someone loves you, if they care about you, if you are loved?” 

I thought about, “well, I suppose if they ask about your day and actually mean it. You know how people are, they ask. But then don't actually care."

"When was the last time some asked you and meant it?"

"I don't remember. Why do you care anyway?"

"Is that really your bar for if someone loves you?"

"No, yes."

I stood up, and the man took a step forward. "What else?"

I knew I should bolt. But I didn't.

“Well, I guess if they actually know how and what you're doing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if someone actually cares enough to get to know the real you. Know what your really feeling and what’s really going on in your life. You don’t have to keep to keep secrets from them.

The mans eyes were watering now. “I don’t think I have anyone like that in my life. Does that mean I’m broken? Why do they all hate me? Is there anything else, how else do you know?”

“I think because your weird, I mean it’s creepy to stalk people and break into their homes.”

“You haven’t done either of those things.”

“Yeah I know.”

He interrupted me, “please tell me, is there any other way to know if someone, anyone, parents, friends, is there anyway to tell if they love you?”

“If.” I hesitated, “if they care.”

“How will you know if they care?” He asked.

“You just will.”

“I don’t think anyone cares about me then I don’t know the feeling your talking about. What’s wrong with me. No one cares, no one asks, why do I hate myself? Do they hate me as much as I do, is that why?”

The man shook, tears rolling down his face. For the first time I felt true pity for this man. Even if he had been stalking me, and harassing me, I felt bad for him. I walked over to him. He looked at me, I reached out my hand to put it on his shoulder. But before I did his hand came up to. Just before our hands met, mine hit glass. 

I looked into the man's eyes, he had a shocked expression. My shocked expression. I took a step back, and he took a step back. I sunk to the floor, and my reflection sunk to the floor as well. That night, the reflection in the puddle, then the reflection in buildings windows. The mirror in the bathroom at work, and now the  mirror in my own room.

No one had been stalking me. I had just been asking myself. The thing I had pushed away, I had pushed away so hard I had created a fake stalker came back. The questions the man had been asking, they were the things I wanted to know. 

“Why do they hate me? O God, help me. No one cares, no one cares.” I curled up into a ball, alone in the dark. I asked one last thing into the darkness. “What is love?”