The last bit of the Sandman thing.

[odditycollector]

 



Sunday


There’s something shadowed in front of you, and when you force your eyes to focus you recognize your kitchen. You try to sit up, but there’s a wave of nausea and a pounding underneath your skull, and you groan.

“Welcome back,” someone says. You look a little closer into the greyness and see a dark haired girl leaning against the wall, watching you.

“Wha…” You try to swallow. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting,” she says.

You blink a few times and push yourself into something resembling a sitting position. There’s a small puddle of half-dried vomit beside you, and your hair is sticky with it. “Thanks,” you say. “But I’m okay now.”

“Really?” she asks. “That’s not how it looks from here.” She steps away from the wall and crouches down next to you. “From here it kinda looks like you were trying to find me.”

“I don’t even know you,” you tell her.

“No?” She smiles gently and meets your gaze, and you gasp slightly.

“Here.” She offers a hand to help you up, but you hesitate to take it. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m not going to take you very far.”

She helps you stumble you the couch and you collapse into it, biting your tongue to keep from throwing up. You can see the microwave clock from there. 11:54

You have to be up in six hours, for work.

“So why are you here?” you ask her.

She shrugs and sits in the chair across from you. “I thought you might want someone to talk to. You’ve probably had a strange few days.”

You run a hand through your hair, and it gets caught in the chunks. “I’ve had a strange few years,” you say. “When I was fifteen I knew how my life was going to go, and… well… it wasn’t here.” You stare at the strange shadows the night makes of your home. “The apartment was going to be bigger, for one.”

She sighs. “You spoke with my brother, a few days ago. The skinny one with the black hair?” You stare blankly at her, but there’s something like a memory prickling at your mind. “Anyway,” she says, “he gave you some advice, although really you wouldn’t know to hear it.”

She raises an eyebrow and leans towards you. “He’s not exactly what you’d call a people person,” she confides, and you find yourself wondering which part of the description is less accurate.

“What did he say?” you ask.

“That it’s your life,” she tells you. “What he meant is that the only decisions that matter are usually the ones you have to make yourself.”

“Yeah,” you say. “’Cause I’m real good with choices.”

“Well, you have to make them anyway,” she says. “Or you don't, but that's a choice too.”

“Oh. So that’s alright then?”

“Sheesh,” she says, startling you. “Are you trying to make this difficult, or what?” She shakes her head. “Look, it’s not about whether it’s ‘all right then.’ It’s that it could be all right now, if you let it.”

You make a choking noise that’s supposed to be a laugh. “Today is the first day of the rest of my life? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?” you say. “Don’t you think proverbs are a little trite?”

“Maybe. But there’s a wisdom to most of them, if you bother to listen.” She frowns for a moment. “Except maybe for the one about the turnips.”

You’re silent for a while. “I don’t know,” you finally say. “I don’t… The past doesn’t just end.”

“Of course it does,” she says. “There are the little deaths of instants, and the lingering deaths of memories, and the sharp deaths of days. There’d be no room for the future, otherwise.”

She stands up. “And sometimes endings are beginnings too.”

The clock glows green in the darkness. 11:59

“Will I see you again?” you whisper.

She grins at you. “You know it.”

The digital clock flashes, and she reaches a hand into the night, and through the night, and touches a tiny piece of time…

You hear the sound of wings.

The clock settles on 12:00, and you’re alone. You stand up and, ignoring the thunder in your head, move to the window. There’s nothing to see except the back of the next building, and familiar sounds of car alarms and sirens drift through the air, but somehow the beginning of this week feels different than the hundred others before it.

It feels new.