Martha glanced at the clock on the wall. 8:00 p.m. She sighed, turned off the TV and prepared for bed.
While brushing her teeth, she gazed into the mirror, and not for the first time, she wondered what the hell had happened. In her mind, she was still a nineteen-year-old woman, yet she now had the achy, arthritis-ridden body of seventy-five. She could feel the weight of time pressing down on her, breathing down her neck, stalking her in every unseen shadow. She never failed to be surprised by how ephemeral life seemed in these vulnerable moments, like vapor that was solid to the eye, yet parted and evaporated to the touch.
She spat her toothpaste into the sink, rinsed out her mouth and turned off the light.
Ghosts of the past visited her as she tossed and turned through the night, visions of people and places that had either changed beyond recognition or were no more. The world seemed pliable in that place between dreams and the waking world, a land of impossible geometries and infinite possibilities.
It was in one of these not-quite-dreams that Martha received an unexpected visitor.
“You returned,” she said when she spotted him floating in the window sill.
“I promised, didn’t I?”
“I was fifteen when I last saw you. You promised to come back, but I gave up on you by the time I was thirty-five. Why did you take so long?”
The phantom reached out with insubstantial hands. “You were young. You needed experience that only age could provide.”
“Well, look at me,” she snorted. “You certainly got what you wanted.”
“But don’t you see? You are so much more lovely now.”
She said nothing.
“I have something for you. Open your hands.”
Martha had not seen this particular visitor in decades, yet she trusted him now and did as she was told.
“You saved us. An entire world exists today because once you loved. Now, that world belongs to you.”
Martha looked down at her gift and gasped. She held the universe in the palm of her hand.
“My final gift to you,” said the apparition, and then he smiled and disappeared.
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It’s coming. He wheels around and takes off through the tunnel. He can still hear it as it closes in. He doesn’t dare look back again. Looking back means slowing down, and slowing down means dying.
Click, click.
He hardly registers the fowl miasma that hangs over the dungeon, a putrid sulfuric rot, though it took him aback when he first entered the place.
When was that?
He tries to remember, but whenever he reaches back in time it’s like slamming into an iron curtain. All he knows is that he’s being pursued and he has to get away.
There are brief flashes in the dim surroundings like a strobe, flickers of a life before the dungeon. Colors and lights. Flowers and trees. A family. Kids. But none of these ever resolve into the fully-clothed specters of memory.
CLICK, CLICK.
It’s almost on top of him now. Perhaps thirty yards, maybe twenty. John’s heart jackhammers. He can feel a power blossoming inside, strangely familiar, a latent ability to do…something, an ability that only expresses itself when he’s in danger. That power is important. He knows it as a matter of instinct. There’s something he has to remember, something crucial. He has to—
Claws clamp down into his back, an impossible weight that sends him tumbling to the ground. The foul water that was at his feet splashes into his nostrils, so that he feels for a moment like he’s drowning.
Meanwhile, he can feel the creature on top of him, pushing, tearing, lacerating his upper back, shredding it to blood-soaked ribbons. John screams, the sound bouncing off the walls in an endless cascade of agony.
Every nerve has come alive, high tension wires that send thousands of volts coursing through his body. He can feel the power within, pulsing, waiting for him to take hold. Yet he does not know how, and with each feeble reach it fumbles away from his grasp, bounding off into the dark. And then the creature’s humid maw has opened wide above him, breathing its stink over the back of his neck. John screams again.
More pain. Then darkness.
* * *
John surges into consciousness, crying out as the final drops of world-shattering torment drain out of him.
When it’s over he stops. Rises. Looks around.
He now finds himself in a tiny stone chamber, surrounded by brightly burning candles. Beside him, eyes closed, kneels an old woman, her face obscured by harsh lines and shadows.
“Where am I?”
The woman answers without opening her eyes. “Give it a moment to come back.”
And as if her words were a command, the iron curtain in his head parts.
“Oh no,” he says, and he drops his head into his hands. “I failed again.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” says the old woman. “You still have a ways to go, it’s true, but you’re not a failure.”
“I still couldn’t do it. The power, I felt it inside of me, but I couldn’t figure out how to handle it.”
“Perhaps not,” she agrees, “But you sensed it, and that’s a start. We’ve been through this exercise a thousand times before. Until today, you’d never even realized it was there. Something changed this iteration. You sensed it, waiting, and you knew you had to reach for it. You’ve improved very much.”
“What use is it if I can only sense it?”
“You have to sense it before you can use it.”
John looks up, stares at the old woman beside him. She’s now opened her eyes. “I’m scared.”
“We all are,” she says. “These are dark times. But you’re learning. Sooner or later, you’ll master it. Sooner or later, you’ll reach for it without thinking, and that’s very important, because when the peril is real, when the Chancellor steals your memory in earnest and throws you into his pit to play his game, the power will be your only advantage.”
“I want to go again. Please,” he says, “Let me go again.”
“You need rest.”
“Just one more time.”
She stares into his eyes, and she must see something burning in their gaze, for when she speaks again she gives her reluctant assent.
“Just once more. Then off to bed.”
John nods, relieved. His contest is a month away. If he can survive, if he can beat the Chancellor’s game, perhaps the man will grant him an audience. It would be the first time the Chancellor has allowed it in fifteen hundred years. And then, well, anything is possible.
“Close your eyes,” says the old woman, not unkindly, and he does as he’s told.
Once more, a fog settles over his mind, and the neurons in his head realign. The iron curtain closes. And then he’s in the dungeon, running, trying to get away.
Click, click.
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