Out of Time
Grace’s most important possession was a necklace. Its pendant was a golden heart with a pair of stripes fastened across it like the shoulder strap of a seatbelt—one pink, one white. It was the last thing she removed when showering, the first thing she put on again. Her still-damp hair was pulled into a bun as she made to leave her apartment. She threw on pants and a jacket, both white. A packed, pink backpack, she slung over her shoulder.
She closed and secured her apartment windows and then turned out all the lights. Waning sunlight penetrated the darkened space, falling onto her floors like window-shaped searchlights. But this wasn’t a prison. She could go if she wanted. And so she meant to.
A playing piano stopped her cold, her hand hovering over the doorknob. Her heart quickened, her breath catching as she imagined him sitting there, the piano just around the corner. The song was one she knew.
As a young girl, she had charted her happily ever after. She had even planted flags to measure her progress. She knew what her dress would look like. She knew the city. The church. What guests would attend. What the two of them would ride away in. And where they would go afterwards. And so what if Disney World would get replaced by something a little more exotic? So what if a Barbie Power Wheels was no longer a suitable chariot? That not everyone was still around? That the church had a different pastor, that she had moved to another state, and that a tutu no longer seemed like a good idea? So what?
When this song first played for her, none of it mattered. There was time enough at last to just live in the moment. To let plans see to themselves, all of her planted flags becoming unlit sparklers, the music then alighting them all, their line stretching away from her and curving over the horizon. It was a song that had set her horizon ablaze. And the subsequent fire was why it hurt so much to hear it now. Because it was the same song that scorched. That scoured. The same song, just a different day. A day after a day when nothing could remain the same.
Grace opened the door and then blinked. She had witnessed many odd things in her apartment hallway. A pair of pixies spinning into a halo while chasing one another? It was one of many outcomes. Sometimes, there was magic. Sometimes, strangers acted neighborly or neighbors acted strangely. But today was an all-new level of weird.
A girl stood alongside an umbrella-shaped light, her knuckles poised to knock, her lips curling into a cheesy grin. Her dark hair was drawn back, her athletic shape clad in black leather, like some kind of soldier or hunter. Her forehead was busted, a scar stretched across her cheek, and a stick thingy stuck up from behind her shoulder.
Grace could do weird, but there were limits. She could see that now. As she stood in her doorway wearing her white jacket and pants, this stranger standing opposite and wearing all black, it wasn’t the air of “laughing barroom brawler” rando at her door. It was the simple fact that the umbrella light was a hallway chandelier, which the girl stood alongside as if gravity had been inverted.
The girl’s hanging knuckles morphed into a wave. “Hi,” she said cheerily.
Grace slammed the door. She locked the deadbolt, the knob, then fumbled with the chain.
Bang-bang-bang. “Seriously?” the girl called. “Grace, could you stop being an ass and open the door?”
Grace peered through a peephole. “Why? So you can murder me?”
“Isn’t that a little dramatic? Redundant, even?”
“I saw your stick thingy.”
“My wha... Oh. Wait, are you being serious right now? Geez, what are you, five? Grace, it’s called a sword.”
A dining room chair screeched across kitchen tile in jerking stops, Grace moving it to bar the door.
“Okay,” the girl said. “I can see how sword at one’s doorstep might be cause for alarm. But I was only checking on you. You’re not still going out, are you?”
Grace was retrieving another chair, but hesitated. Has she been watching me? For how long?
“You don’t know what it’s like out there. You planning to be alone when the world ends? What will Daniel thi—”
The chair screeched anew as Grace cracked the door enough to peek through.
“There she is,” the girl said, smiling anew. “So was it ‘end of the world’ or ‘Daniel?’ The password, I mean.”
“What do you know about Daniel?” Grace asked.
“Right. Well, I know he’s worried about you. And that you’re avoiding him. And I’m pretty sure I heard his ringtone a moment ago. Wasn’t he calling?”
“I don’t see how any of that’s your business. If you know so much, then you know we’re engaged. You need to stay away from him.”
“Sheesh, I guess I should be grateful that you’re not the one with the sword.”
“Is that some kind of threat?”
“Damn, girl. Relax. And go see about those panties. They’re not a string, you know? And you’ve got them so far up your ass crack that they’re bisecting your brain. If you want to go, then whatever. Do what you want.”
Grace narrowed her eyes. “So you can follow me? Chase me someplace without prying eyes? Into some kind of dead end?”
“What? No, I’m not a bus.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“A bus. You know, something that picks you up from one bus stop only to deliver you to another bus stop. Actually, never mind.” She sighed. “Grace, I’d rather you not get hurt. And no, that’s not a threat. I’m talking about outside. The anachronism. The Monad.”
Grace pulled the door open and then leaned against the frame, her arms crossed. “It’s a mess out there. I know. But I’m going anyway. I have to. Choice is something others get. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Mess,” she echoed. “That’s not a synonym for ‘end,’ Grace. You can’t imagine what it’s like. How time is arcing. Curving. How it will loop and then collapse, opening a tunnel one minute only to close it the next. You can’t know how many doors I’ve knocked on too late. How many times you were already gone. But I’m here now, and you’re leaving still?”
“So, I go out sometimes. It’s not my fault you have terrible timing.”
“No, Grace, you’re not getting it. But you will.” The girl nodded, shoved her hands in her pockets, and then turned to leave. “Be seeing you, Grace.”
Before Grace could ask, her mouth fell open, the girl sinking into the ceiling as if descending an inverted flight of stairs.
She glanced down her hall. No neighbors were out and about. No one coming or going. No cracked doors where suspicious, judgmental gazes looked past still-fastened chains. The absence of which was today’s first sign of good news. She already had enough chaos in her life. The last thing she needed was gossip, someone witnessing her descent into madness.
Grace locked up and hurried away.
Constraints:
Defining Features:
Genre - Temporal
A character has knowledge they shouldn’t.
Word List:
Loop
Tunnel
Anachronism
String
Sentence Block:
It was one of many outcomes.
There was time enough at last.
Wordcount:
1198/800
There’s an alternate version, which is shorter and meets the wordcount constraint. You can find that here:
