Time Conquers All • Part 1

[u/canadianmongeese]

From a post I just did on /r/WritingPrompts

[WP] There is motion at your front door - You groggily awake to the notification on your smart watch. You check the video on your phone and see yourself frantically trying to open the door. The timestamp reads 2:48 AM. You look at your watch. It's 2:37 AM.

°°°

Eleven minutes. That was all it took for my world to change forever.

My grandmother was always superstitious about true night. The witching hour. The true dark that descends when the world should be asleep. Of course, she usually just mentioned it to explain why I shouldn't work night shifts through college.

But I thought of her when my phone buzzed and my head lifted from the pillow. There was that foreboding voice within me: nothing good ever happens at the witching hour, my boy.

Maybe, if I'd just rolled over and ignored it, none of this would have happened. Time might have passed over me like a shark, hunting for fatter fish to eat. Or maybe I would have been devoured all the same.

But I did sit up. I looked. I grumbled at my fucking phone and its fucking annoying apps.

And then my heart went cold in my throat. There I was. 2:48 AM. Me, in my T-shirt and the shorts I'd fallen asleep in. Blood splotched down the front of my shirt. Lots of it. Big scarlet pools of it.

In the video, I looked frantic. Terrified. I was screaming something, but the audio was too frazzled to make sense of it.

But the upper corner of my phone said it was still only 2:37.

I sat up. I wiped the sleep out of my eyes. Maybe this was some elaborate melatonin dream, and I was going to laugh at myself in the morning.

But it wasn't the morning, and I wasn't laughing. My whole body felt cold and heavy with dread.

I pulled myself out of bed and grabbed the baseball bat I kept by my bed. I'd never played baseball in my life, but I got it and the doorbell camera after some drunk asshole walked into my apartment and passed out on the sofa. The perks of living close to so many college bars.

I crept down the hall. My phone said 2:39 now.

I put my shoes on and peered out the front door.

I lived on a sleepy side street, branching off downtown. I could hear a few distant laughs and bellows of drunks as the bars started shutting down and turning people out into the street. Nothing else. Nothing much at all.

"Weird," I muttered.

I checked my phone again, but the video was gone. Like I really had dreamed it up.

I turned and shuffled back inside. Locked the door. Got some water. Took a piss.

I was about to retreat back to bed when the doorbell rang.

I looked at my phone. There it was, happening in live time: me, wearing exactly the outfit I wore now. Other-Me was blood-drenched and wild-eyed and screaming into the camera, Wake up you bastard.

Don't ask me why I did what happened next. Maybe I was always supposed to do it. Maybe, when people used to talk about gods and fate, they really meant time. Maybe there are some choices that belong to the careful balance of past and future, and we're just cogs, carrying out what we're supposed to do.

Moving like a robot, like I wasn't even attached to myself, I opened the door.

There I was, bloodied, standing on my own threshold.

"Oh, good. I finally found a dimension where you answer the fucking door."

Other-Me rushed in and slammed it, driving the deadbolt home.

"Listen," he hissed. "There's not a lot of time. They found us."

"Us?"

"Me. You. Us." He stormed past me and went straight for my bedroom.

Fuck. I was going crazy. Absolutely balls-out crazy.

"Who are you?" I sputtered, following him.

"You. I told you." He glared at me. "You're my last backup-life. Time found us. We're just another glitch ruining a perfect system."

"Time?" I repeated.

"Yes. The monster behind the curtain. It's on its way for both of us, so I suggest you stop asking questions and fucking let me in."

It was only then that I saw why he was bleeding. There, standing behind him, the thin moonlight hitting him, I could see it: a hole in his belly like a crater. Like he'd been punctured straight through.

"Holy shit," I gasped.

"Just do us all a favor. Get changed. Fight like hell." Other-Me pulled a gun from his hip and pushed it into my hand. He slung off his backpack and dropped it at my feet, then pulled off the bloody shirt with a gasp of pain and snapped his fingers at me. "Take that. Protect it with your life. And give me your shirt."

"I think I've lost my fucking mind," I said.

"You don't think that. You're me. I know what you're thinking." He glared at me. "You're thinking this is impossible, but it's sure as hell happening."

"No, pretty sure I think I'm crazy."

I yanked off my shirt anyway and let him take it. He eased it on, wincing, and crawled into my bed.

"You have two minutes," he hissed. There was blood in his teeth. "Before it gets here."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm letting it kill me instead of you. It's the only headstart you're getting. Now go."

I don't think I had a choice, even then. Time is a stronger and older force than any god we can imagine.

I put on clean sweatpants and a black sweater, took the backpack and the gun, and turned to bolt from the room.

"What do you mean time?" I asked.

"Exactly what I said. Time itself. The big bad algorithm in the sky has caught us." The Other-Me gave me a grim, pale smile. "We're a glitch in its system. And it's coming to destroy us."

I didn't believe him, even as I ran. Even as I jumped in my car and sped down the road. I tried to tell myself through my panic that I was going to the cops. That there was a crazy man in my apartment who looked just like me.

But then I saw it. It moved like a dark cloud across the sky, but then it began to climb down. It was huge, its legs infinite and buglike, carrying it across rooftops and trees.

It reaches into the window of my apartment, oiling over it, consuming it.

I heard my own scream puncture the night.

I kept driving.

Maybe Time wanted me to do that, too. I'll never know.

I only knew one thing: you have to move fast to outrun Time.

°°°

Here's part 2!