Speculative Stories for Your Consternation and Delight
Someworld Else
I wasn’t supposed to go on that field trip, but
Mom and Dad were in peak parenting mode!
As their only child, I never stood a chance
against their well-meaning wishes for
occasional social enrichment.
“But you love rocks, Chauncey!” Mother insists.
“Adrian’s Fissure is full of unique minerals . . .
maybe you can add to your collection.”
Chronovariant crystals aren’t exactly ‘collectibles,’ Mom.
“You can’t just stay cooped up at the house
every day after school,” Father chides.
“Our move to Lerena 9 was six months ago—
consider this field trip a great opportunity
to make friends with your classmates
before the semester ends.”
Friends? Lerena Niners don’t “make friends”
with off-worlders so easily . . .
Children of a farming colony, they speak in
antiquated tongues of solar winds impacting
seed stock and harvest cycles,
I’m just a passing gust of
biomatter to them!
Chaff.
No one expects me to stay long.
No one like me does—
Six months later, my parents will complete
their geo-analysis of quantumigneous rock
and temporal quartzite before
the curious mineral strata of
another planet lures them
someworld else . . .
I’m just along for the ride.
Maybe that’s why it’s simply easier
to sigh in surrender and board
the hover bus on the day
of appointed torture—
A compliant passenger in my own life.
Adrian’s Fissure
The jostle and boisterous laughs
of my ninth-year classmates reach
a crescendo as we putter into
the parking zone, a packed lot
of ash-dry dirt.
Promising enrichment already . . . .
A rusty bot minds the entrance gate,
digits rattling as it hands out
real paper scraps—“tickets”
to a ghost town!
Sure. What a tourist scam!
Long before I came here, I was already bored
by the holo-adverts for a mining colony
that triggered a temporal fissure,
trapping the town out of phase
with time a century ago.
Yet as the gate bot ushers us down main street,
I can’t help shivering at the glowing silhouettes
of crude, pre-fabricated housing built
from rocket ships that settled this
planet a hundred years ago,
still flickering with
ancient shine,
yesterday’s
new hope—
Oblivious to our presence, groups of miners
push carts of ore towards the processing mill
while a child chases a ball across the street,
yet I feel nothing as the transparent
red orb rolls through my feet.
Okay, maybe a tingle.
Nice attention to detail!
I scan for holographic emitters, but find none.
The tech’s just well-planted
in the scenery,
that’s all . . .
So why does my neck prickle with
electric warning as our teacher
leads us into an arena of wooden
stadium seats surrounding
the spectral mirage of a well,
stones half-crumbled?
A profusely sweating man wearing
a bulky, vintage space suit clunks
into the center of the arena
to take his station beside
the glimmer of this illusion,
the dent beneath his feet
well-worn from repetition.
“Welcome!” he bellows.
“As the last of the Adrians
who founded this town
a hundred years ago,
it’s my grand duty and displeasure
to introduce you to the doom
of my ancestor, Clarity,
who cast her entire town
into an eternal time trap!
I hold my breath as the silver shade
arrives—
Calamity Clarity
Destruction is just a girl my own age?
Scarlet-braids bouncing against her neck,
Clarity bites her lower lip as she struggles
to balance two buckets on her shoulder-yoke,
each overflowing with the rainbow gleam
of unprocessed ore nuggets.
But as she nears the well,
she stumbles just
the once—
but The Once ends
everything.
I gasp as her shoulder yoke breaks and spills
her right bucket load straight into the well!
As the arena explodes with prism flecks,
my eyes meet Clarity’s for a nanosecond—
not holo gaze, nor ghost-hollow.
She’s real?! And I swear—
She sees me. Or is it saw me?
Her lips part, as if to say . . .
All fades to afterwhite, and I blink
as Mr. Adrian holds up a single
splinter of rainbow crystal.
“Clumsy Clarity hit a hidden vein
of chronovariant crystal in the well,
sparking a time fissure that repeats
the same twenty-six hour cycle forever!”
A lump tightens my throat as I
finally believe her terrible fate,
until Mr. Adrian grants me
the barest sliver of hope—
“But some scientists believe that one day,
the fissure will close, and the townsfolk
may return to their own century!
Or maybe . . . enter our own?
Who’s to say!” the man cackles,
mopping his brow with a tired hand.
“Till then, they wander as ghosts—”
My spine stiffens as his voice lowers
to an ominous note.
“A warning to all those who tread
too carelessly on Serena Nine,
where time twists differently
underfoot!” Mr. Adrian cries
with a theatrical stamp
of his heavy boot.
My heart thumps in my chest
as the show ends and our class
shuffles back to the hover bus.
I can’t help tugging on Ms. Kelsa’s
sleeve as the question burns me
to the quick of now:
“That ‘Clarity’ was never real. The girl we saw—
She’s just a hologram, right?”
Ms. Kelsa spits a shell of carmalized specklecorn
between her teeth, clearly weary of carting
students to the same show each semester.
“Oh, she was real enough. Who knows!
Maybe she will be again one day.”
Best Friends *(Who Never Met)
My parents are thrilled that I made a friend
on the field trip! I just leave out the part
where she’s a ghost from a century past. . .
But my fib sticks, and every day after school,
I take a public hover bus back
to Adrian’s Fissure.
I don’t want to miss the meager slice of minutes
I can see Clarity in the arena and try to catch
her eyes again. Hazel, or soft green?
Hard to say from the stadium seats!
But now I can almost count her
freckles like a faraway
constellation . . .
Clarity, am I just pretending you can see me?
I want to believe you can find your way out,
past the stumble and the spark.
I bristle when people laugh at her wavering silhouette,
the star feature in an invisible show
she never signed up for—
“Clumsy-foot Clarity, crystal-cursed!”
I wish I could defend her
from an audience she
never asked for—
“Look out!” I whisper as her foot glides
inexorably to the gnarled tree root
that will twist her fate. But her ears
are empty shells that catch
no echo across time . . . .
And then my pocket credits empty, too;
I can’t keep coming here, or my parents
might question my sudden dip in allowance
and strange obsession with this ghost town…
But Clarity’s last descendant saves me!
I nearly startle out of my skin when Mr. Adrian
claps a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“I’ve been seein’ you around here a lot, boy.
Lookin’ for temp work? I could use you
in the concession stand as my last server-bot
has gone and broke again,” he grumbles.
“Yes, Sir!” I reply before he can take back
this light-speed shift in my luck.
Now, between buttery cups of specklecorn,
I can see Clarity forever, even if
I can’t save her.
Temporal Disruption
I’m so very careful to be a normative
and unbothersome child at home
for the next two months:
I swap my clothes before dinner
so that my parents won’t catch
the greasy reek of the concession
stand on me, and pretend
I’m meeting my friend “Marcus”
for an after-school club
on rocks and such!
I want them to believe
I’m totally well-adjusted
to Lerena 9—
“Great news, son,” Father announces over dessert.
“Your mother and I have turned in our official
geo-analysis early, so we’ll be moving
to a new site in about two weeks!”
He talks about skipping solar systems
like it’s a stroll down the city.
My pudding cup splatters as I stand up abruptly.
“No!” I sputter. “I don’t want to move!
I . . . like it here.”
Mother squeezes my shoulder gently.
“Chauncey, I know you’ll miss your friends,
but you’ll make new ones, I promise!”
Liar! My only true friend
is Clarity, and I can’t ever
meet her for real.
I storm outside, grabbing my hoverbike
and zooming to Adrian’s Fissure
at maximum allowable velocity.
Time Decay
The town should be dark,
thick with shadows and silence—
Adrian’s Fissure only activates
its time distortion field every
twenty-six hours,
after all . . . .
So why does the silver ghost
of the town drunk stumble
around in the parking zone
under the lunar glow
of the twin moons?
I tag myself through the front gate,
hurrying inside. If my timing is right,
Clarity will be nearing the well
for her fatal fall in just thirty seconds—
I want to be there for her, even time-sundered,
but she’s not alone—Mr. Adrian stands
beside the wavering flicker of the well
with a bucket of his own, spilling it
in sync with Clarity’s disaster!
“Ow!” I wince as a double-bright flash blinds me,
banging my knee against the stadium seating.
“What the—”
I blink the starry haze away only to stare
down the vintage barrel of a laser pistol.
“S-sir?” I squeak.
Mr. Adrian lowers his weapon, his chest puffing
as he pants from having hot-footed it to my side.
“Oh, it’s just you, Chaunce-my-boy. Sorry!
Thought it was—bandits. Bot bandits
after the stadium wiring again . . .”
My hands won’t stop shaking, so I tuck
them in my pockets as I sit down
and dare to ask my worst fear—
“What were you doing at the well, Sir?”
Mr. Adrian gives a long-suffering sigh.
“Guess my secret's out, isn’t it?
Chronovariant crystal isn’t cheap,
ain’t cheap at all! And the veins
in that well are running dry, so
I won’t be able to keep this park
open much longer with the time decay
of the crystals fraying the show . . .
and the Show. Must. Go. On.”
His laugh rings shrill in the night-cold.
“Got to pay my creditors somehow!”
My hands ball into fists with my rising anger.
“But . . . you’re keeping Clar—I mean,
all the settlers trapped outside
of their own time,” I mumble.
I nearly fall from my seat
as Mr. Adrian looms over me
like a very present wraith.
“Those specters?” He scoffs.
“Nothing belongs to them anymore,
those are just shadows whose luck
ran dry a hundred years ago!”
His fingers tap the laser pistol at his belt.
“But do we have a problem
in the here and now, boy?”
“No, Sir,” I lie.
The Chauncey Continuum
Got to put that timenapper’s mind at ease . . .
I show up to my work shifts
pretending nothing’s changed.
Can’t save Clarity if he suspects
I hate him.
How dare Clarity’s own descendant
trap her in the worst day of her life,
looping it without end!
I can wait, too . . .
I pop a hundred greasy cups of specklecorn,
I pack up my bedroom, I smile at dinner
like a well-adjusted child all so I can
pretend I’m throwing a goodbye
party with my dear friend Marcus—
Such a useful, fellow, Marcus.
I’m glad I invented him
so that it’s easier to sneak back
to Adrian’s Fissure
just one night before I’m
supposed to leave
Lerena 9.
I crouch behind the arena seating as I wait
for Mr. Adrian to saunter to the well with his
bucket-load of greed and crystal treachery,
and then, I hit the button of
destiny, undone—
“I fixed the server-bot, so I quit!” I yell,
rushing towards the well as the server bot
whizzes past me on freshly oiled wheels,
shoving the man away just seconds
before Clarity nears her
appointed doom—
“What’ve you done, stupid boy?
You’ll ruin everything!”
Mr. Adrian shrieks, furiously flinging
his bucket towards the well as
the server-bot carries him off.
I race forward and slam the bucket aside,
squinching my eyes shut as stray
crystals pelt me with stinging
sparks of light.
Am I too late?
I open my eyes as the gentle pressure
of the air tickles my skin, gasping
as the veil between Clarity and I
ripples, tears—
I catch the girl as she trips, steadying
her shoulder yoke before
the fated spill.
“Who are you?” she whispers softly,
threading warm fingers
through mine.
“I’m . . .‘Chauncey,’” I reply,
an awkward heat flaming my face.
“Stay!” I plead, but I can already
feel her fingers growing lighter
than moonbeams
in my hold.
She’s snapping back to her own timeline.
I have to break the loop,
forever this time—
“You’ve traveled a hundred years
into my future,” I confess.
“Please, when you return
to your time, remember
that well is DANGER—”
Lightning flashes between our fingers as time
rips Clarity back to her own century,
the searing split of atoms
knocking me out.
Adriansville
I wake up to the bustling city of Adriansville,
and a capped well with a plaque dedicated
to Clarity for discovering the largest vein
of chronovariant crystals
on Lerena 9,
saving her hometown
from disaster!
I smile.
She took my warning back with her . . . .
A price that twists my own life, too—
both my parents took five-year contracts
analyzing the chronovariant deposits.
Somehow, those five years feel like
they’ll be my loneliest ever here.
As for Mr. Adrian? I never meet
the ungrateful descendant again!
Maybe he doesn’t exist
in this timeline?
I shiver at the price of doing and undoing . . . .
I try not to think about that other life
until a boy with Clarity’s eyes
taps me on the shoulder before class.
“You’re ‘Chauncey,’ right?” he asks.
He grins as I nod mutely. “Funnily enough,
my triple-great gran wrote a note
meant to be delivered to a boy
about your age and turn
of the century named
‘Chauncey.’”
I take his curled parchment offering eagerly.
“Thanks, uh . . .?” My eyes widen
with shock as he offers up
two syllables:
“Marcus.”
Maybe, my imaginary friend has taken
on a true life in this reality?
Only time will tell . . . .
I squint as Clarity’s faded scrawl
is near impossible to read:
Dear Chauncey,
I thought you were a spook!
But the nice kind, always
cheering me on from
the corner of my mind.
Still, the more I dreamt of you,
the surer I was going crazy—
I’m so glad you were real
as my own shadow.
Yours across the well stars,
Clarity
Wait, so I was her phantom
just as she was mine?
I laugh.
“What’s so hilarious?” Marcus asks with bated breath.
“I’m dying here! No one in my family
was allowed to read that note
for a hundred years!”
I shrug as I offer him the note.
“Just a private joke between ghosts.”
I wasn’t supposed to go on that field trip, but
Mom and Dad were in peak parenting mode!
As their only child, I never stood a chance
against their well-meaning wishes for
occasional social enrichment.
“But you love rocks, Chauncey!” Mother insists.
“Adrian’s Fissure is full of unique minerals . . .
maybe you can add to your collection.”
Chronovariant crystals aren’t exactly ‘collectibles,’ Mom.
“You can’t just stay cooped up at the house
every day after school,” Father chides.
“Our move to Lerena 9 was six months ago—
consider this field trip a great opportunity
to make friends with your classmates
before the semester ends.”
Friends? Lerena Niners don’t “make friends”
with off-worlders so easily . . .
Children of a farming colony, they speak in
antiquated tongues of solar winds impacting
seed stock and harvest cycles,
I’m just a passing gust of
biomatter to them!
Chaff.
No one expects me to stay long.
No one like me does—
Six months later, my parents will complete
their geo-analysis of quantumigneous rock
and temporal quartzite before
the curious mineral strata of
another planet lures them
someworld else . . .
I’m just along for the ride.
Maybe that’s why it’s simply easier
to sigh in surrender and board
the hover bus on the day
of appointed torture—
A compliant passenger in my own life.
Adrian’s Fissure
The jostle and boisterous laughs
of my ninth-year classmates reach
a crescendo as we putter into
the parking zone, a packed lot
of ash-dry dirt.
Promising enrichment already . . . .
A rusty bot minds the entrance gate,
digits rattling as it hands out
real paper scraps—“tickets”
to a ghost town!
Sure. What a tourist scam!
Long before I came here, I was already bored
by the holo-adverts for a mining colony
that triggered a temporal fissure,
trapping the town out of phase
with time a century ago.
Yet as the gate bot ushers us down main street,
I can’t help shivering at the glowing silhouettes
of crude, pre-fabricated housing built
from rocket ships that settled this
planet a hundred years ago,
still flickering with
ancient shine,
yesterday’s
new hope—
Oblivious to our presence, groups of miners
push carts of ore towards the processing mill
while a child chases a ball across the street,
yet I feel nothing as the transparent
red orb rolls through my feet.
Okay, maybe a tingle.
Nice attention to detail!
I scan for holographic emitters, but find none.
The tech’s just well-planted
in the scenery,
that’s all . . .
So why does my neck prickle with
electric warning as our teacher
leads us into an arena of wooden
stadium seats surrounding
the spectral mirage of a well,
stones half-crumbled?
A profusely sweating man wearing
a bulky, vintage space suit clunks
into the center of the arena
to take his station beside
the glimmer of this illusion,
the dent beneath his feet
well-worn from repetition.
“Welcome!” he bellows.
“As the last of the Adrians
who founded this town
a hundred years ago,
it’s my grand duty and displeasure
to introduce you to the doom
of my ancestor, Clarity,
who cast her entire town
into an eternal time trap!
I hold my breath as the silver shade
arrives—
Calamity Clarity
Destruction is just a girl my own age?
Scarlet-braids bouncing against her neck,
Clarity bites her lower lip as she struggles
to balance two buckets on her shoulder-yoke,
each overflowing with the rainbow gleam
of unprocessed ore nuggets.
But as she nears the well,
she stumbles just
the once—
but The Once ends
everything.
I gasp as her shoulder yoke breaks and spills
her right bucket load straight into the well!
As the arena explodes with prism flecks,
my eyes meet Clarity’s for a nanosecond—
not holo gaze, nor ghost-hollow.
She’s real?! And I swear—
She sees me. Or is it saw me?
Her lips part, as if to say . . .
All fades to afterwhite, and I blink
as Mr. Adrian holds up a single
splinter of rainbow crystal.
“Clumsy Clarity hit a hidden vein
of chronovariant crystal in the well,
sparking a time fissure that repeats
the same twenty-six hour cycle forever!”
A lump tightens my throat as I
finally believe her terrible fate,
until Mr. Adrian grants me
the barest sliver of hope—
“But some scientists believe that one day,
the fissure will close, and the townsfolk
may return to their own century!
Or maybe . . . enter our own?
Who’s to say!” the man cackles,
mopping his brow with a tired hand.
“Till then, they wander as ghosts—”
My spine stiffens as his voice lowers
to an ominous note.
“A warning to all those who tread
too carelessly on Serena Nine,
where time twists differently
underfoot!” Mr. Adrian cries
with a theatrical stamp
of his heavy boot.
My heart thumps in my chest
as the show ends and our class
shuffles back to the hover bus.
I can’t help tugging on Ms. Kelsa’s
sleeve as the question burns me
to the quick of now:
“That ‘Clarity’ was never real. The girl we saw—
She’s just a hologram, right?”
Ms. Kelsa spits a shell of carmalized specklecorn
between her teeth, clearly weary of carting
students to the same show each semester.
“Oh, she was real enough. Who knows!
Maybe she will be again one day.”
Best Friends *(Who Never Met)
My parents are thrilled that I made a friend
on the field trip! I just leave out the part
where she’s a ghost from a century past. . .
But my fib sticks, and every day after school,
I take a public hover bus back
to Adrian’s Fissure.
I don’t want to miss the meager slice of minutes
I can see Clarity in the arena and try to catch
her eyes again. Hazel, or soft green?
Hard to say from the stadium seats!
But now I can almost count her
freckles like a faraway
constellation . . .
Clarity, am I just pretending you can see me?
I want to believe you can find your way out,
past the stumble and the spark.
I bristle when people laugh at her wavering silhouette,
the star feature in an invisible show
she never signed up for—
“Clumsy-foot Clarity, crystal-cursed!”
I wish I could defend her
from an audience she
never asked for—
“Look out!” I whisper as her foot glides
inexorably to the gnarled tree root
that will twist her fate. But her ears
are empty shells that catch
no echo across time . . . .
And then my pocket credits empty, too;
I can’t keep coming here, or my parents
might question my sudden dip in allowance
and strange obsession with this ghost town…
But Clarity’s last descendant saves me!
I nearly startle out of my skin when Mr. Adrian
claps a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“I’ve been seein’ you around here a lot, boy.
Lookin’ for temp work? I could use you
in the concession stand as my last server-bot
has gone and broke again,” he grumbles.
“Yes, Sir!” I reply before he can take back
this light-speed shift in my luck.
Now, between buttery cups of specklecorn,
I can see Clarity forever, even if
I can’t save her.
Temporal Disruption
I’m so very careful to be a normative
and unbothersome child at home
for the next two months:
I swap my clothes before dinner
so that my parents won’t catch
the greasy reek of the concession
stand on me, and pretend
I’m meeting my friend “Marcus”
for an after-school club
on rocks and such!
I want them to believe
I’m totally well-adjusted
to Lerena 9—
“Great news, son,” Father announces over dessert.
“Your mother and I have turned in our official
geo-analysis early, so we’ll be moving
to a new site in about two weeks!”
He talks about skipping solar systems
like it’s a stroll down the city.
My pudding cup splatters as I stand up abruptly.
“No!” I sputter. “I don’t want to move!
I . . . like it here.”
Mother squeezes my shoulder gently.
“Chauncey, I know you’ll miss your friends,
but you’ll make new ones, I promise!”
Liar! My only true friend
is Clarity, and I can’t ever
meet her for real.
I storm outside, grabbing my hoverbike
and zooming to Adrian’s Fissure
at maximum allowable velocity.
Time Decay
The town should be dark,
thick with shadows and silence—
Adrian’s Fissure only activates
its time distortion field every
twenty-six hours,
after all . . . .
So why does the silver ghost
of the town drunk stumble
around in the parking zone
under the lunar glow
of the twin moons?
I tag myself through the front gate,
hurrying inside. If my timing is right,
Clarity will be nearing the well
for her fatal fall in just thirty seconds—
I want to be there for her, even time-sundered,
but she’s not alone—Mr. Adrian stands
beside the wavering flicker of the well
with a bucket of his own, spilling it
in sync with Clarity’s disaster!
“Ow!” I wince as a double-bright flash blinds me,
banging my knee against the stadium seating.
“What the—”
I blink the starry haze away only to stare
down the vintage barrel of a laser pistol.
“S-sir?” I squeak.
Mr. Adrian lowers his weapon, his chest puffing
as he pants from having hot-footed it to my side.
“Oh, it’s just you, Chaunce-my-boy. Sorry!
Thought it was—bandits. Bot bandits
after the stadium wiring again . . .”
My hands won’t stop shaking, so I tuck
them in my pockets as I sit down
and dare to ask my worst fear—
“What were you doing at the well, Sir?”
Mr. Adrian gives a long-suffering sigh.
“Guess my secret's out, isn’t it?
Chronovariant crystal isn’t cheap,
ain’t cheap at all! And the veins
in that well are running dry, so
I won’t be able to keep this park
open much longer with the time decay
of the crystals fraying the show . . .
and the Show. Must. Go. On.”
His laugh rings shrill in the night-cold.
“Got to pay my creditors somehow!”
My hands ball into fists with my rising anger.
“But . . . you’re keeping Clar—I mean,
all the settlers trapped outside
of their own time,” I mumble.
I nearly fall from my seat
as Mr. Adrian looms over me
like a very present wraith.
“Those specters?” He scoffs.
“Nothing belongs to them anymore,
those are just shadows whose luck
ran dry a hundred years ago!”
His fingers tap the laser pistol at his belt.
“But do we have a problem
in the here and now, boy?”
“No, Sir,” I lie.
The Chauncey Continuum
Got to put that timenapper’s mind at ease . . .
I show up to my work shifts
pretending nothing’s changed.
Can’t save Clarity if he suspects
I hate him.
How dare Clarity’s own descendant
trap her in the worst day of her life,
looping it without end!
I can wait, too . . .
I pop a hundred greasy cups of specklecorn,
I pack up my bedroom, I smile at dinner
like a well-adjusted child all so I can
pretend I’m throwing a goodbye
party with my dear friend Marcus—
Such a useful, fellow, Marcus.
I’m glad I invented him
so that it’s easier to sneak back
to Adrian’s Fissure
just one night before I’m
supposed to leave
Lerena 9.
I crouch behind the arena seating as I wait
for Mr. Adrian to saunter to the well with his
bucket-load of greed and crystal treachery,
and then, I hit the button of
destiny, undone—
“I fixed the server-bot, so I quit!” I yell,
rushing towards the well as the server bot
whizzes past me on freshly oiled wheels,
shoving the man away just seconds
before Clarity nears her
appointed doom—
“What’ve you done, stupid boy?
You’ll ruin everything!”
Mr. Adrian shrieks, furiously flinging
his bucket towards the well as
the server-bot carries him off.
I race forward and slam the bucket aside,
squinching my eyes shut as stray
crystals pelt me with stinging
sparks of light.
Am I too late?
I open my eyes as the gentle pressure
of the air tickles my skin, gasping
as the veil between Clarity and I
ripples, tears—
I catch the girl as she trips, steadying
her shoulder yoke before
the fated spill.
“Who are you?” she whispers softly,
threading warm fingers
through mine.
“I’m . . .‘Chauncey,’” I reply,
an awkward heat flaming my face.
“Stay!” I plead, but I can already
feel her fingers growing lighter
than moonbeams
in my hold.
She’s snapping back to her own timeline.
I have to break the loop,
forever this time—
“You’ve traveled a hundred years
into my future,” I confess.
“Please, when you return
to your time, remember
that well is DANGER—”
Lightning flashes between our fingers as time
rips Clarity back to her own century,
the searing split of atoms
knocking me out.
Adriansville
I wake up to the bustling city of Adriansville,
and a capped well with a plaque dedicated
to Clarity for discovering the largest vein
of chronovariant crystals
on Lerena 9,
saving her hometown
from disaster!
I smile.
She took my warning back with her . . . .
A price that twists my own life, too—
both my parents took five-year contracts
analyzing the chronovariant deposits.
Somehow, those five years feel like
they’ll be my loneliest ever here.
As for Mr. Adrian? I never meet
the ungrateful descendant again!
Maybe he doesn’t exist
in this timeline?
I shiver at the price of doing and undoing . . . .
I try not to think about that other life
until a boy with Clarity’s eyes
taps me on the shoulder before class.
“You’re ‘Chauncey,’ right?” he asks.
He grins as I nod mutely. “Funnily enough,
my triple-great gran wrote a note
meant to be delivered to a boy
about your age and turn
of the century named
‘Chauncey.’”
I take his curled parchment offering eagerly.
“Thanks, uh . . .?” My eyes widen
with shock as he offers up
two syllables:
“Marcus.”
Maybe, my imaginary friend has taken
on a true life in this reality?
Only time will tell . . . .
I squint as Clarity’s faded scrawl
is near impossible to read:
Dear Chauncey,
I thought you were a spook!
But the nice kind, always
cheering me on from
the corner of my mind.
Still, the more I dreamt of you,
the surer I was going crazy—
I’m so glad you were real
as my own shadow.
Yours across the well stars,
Clarity
Wait, so I was her phantom
just as she was mine?
I laugh.
“What’s so hilarious?” Marcus asks with bated breath.
“I’m dying here! No one in my family
was allowed to read that note
for a hundred years!”
I shrug as I offer him the note.
“Just a private joke between ghosts.”
Discover more Dragon Crumbs* Tales . . .
~*~
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