Twilights breathe was too brisk. Elias Vale observed and even reveled the Ephemerial retiscence of Umbra. He was an introvert, enthralled by obscurity of midnight. In the garage he stood, hands grasped deep within the cars engine, but something in this tranquility pressed against him.
He heard his name, not shouted, not spoked, but murmured almost submerged through a veneer of static. The intonation, the symphonic quality and even the resonance, they all sounded too familiar almost like his own voice was calling out from the bottom of a lucid dream. He quickly regained composure and resumed working on his car; he froze.
Then there came the sobbing, originally it was distant, muffled like rain against glass. But the more he listened the more it bent into something raw, and human. It was the crying that lived in the chest, not throat. His chest had locked for the sound was unbearable, surrounded by a cacophony of trepidation he dropped his tools and ran inside.
Then he saw it; the hole. Perfectly circular, a hole that had not existed before, cut, no materialzied on top of the floor. The circles where so symmetrical the human brain and even geometry almost failed to render them. It was not wood, not a shadow not even absence. Elias Wren being philosopher new what he saw couldn't exist. He knew that null/emptiness is invitation not complete absence. What he saw was not describable because what he saw was absolute separation; like oil and water in a jar.
He had no idea of how deep it ran or even if deep was the correct terminology. Without hesitation he dropped a water bottle and waited. Nothing happened. Suddenly he heard a faint click behind him. He saw a bottle laying behind him.
He anayzled the hole trying to get a grasp of what happened, he inittaily got two suppositions he thought might be valid. His original theory was that the hole was the opposite of existence and the bottle was existence. He thought that placing the bottle onto nothingness caused a reaction of separation e.g positive negative, matter, antimatter; he believed that maybe this reaction was so potent that it got launched at speeds higher than light thus sending the bottle into an earlier state of time.
He dropped a coin inside the hole, surely, seconds later the coin reappeared next to him again. To test he dropped 4 coins in, to his suprised they all appeared, but the original one faded. He eventually heard knocking at the windows, originally quite but then urgent. There was the voice, the same voice as earlier, and something told him the voice wasn't there just to call, but rather to inform; to urgently get attention. There where Fogged handprints bloomed across the surface of the glass. Out of annoyance he oppenned the window and looked out, he could feel nothing but a cold breeze.
After shutting the window he let curiosity get the best of him; he wanted to be the first to discover and validate time traveling. It was ironic, the voice was almost like the universe, no his future self was warning him not to do what he will do next. Without hesitation Elias jumped in the hole… There was no fall, no impact, just the abrupt shift of waking.
To the Elias, surprise and even the narratives surprise he was outside again, the only sound he could hear was the brisk breath of twilight. To his suprise he saw an entity bent over the car, after closer anaylasis he found that it looked himself.
He then staggered forward, reaching for the etnities shoulder; it slipped straight through. Elias screamed his own name, then the entity froze. The entities head snapped up in confusions, eyes full with the same startled look he remember wearing minutes before.
Then he finally knew it. The voice had been his. Elias began sobbing, a heartfelt cry straight from the chest, that reveberated throughout the niehgboorhood. He watched as his past self ran into the house. With pure urgency he chased after the entity.
He pressed his face to the window, punding with the sole of his fists until his skin ached raw. He left the same handprints and the same fog that unsettled him earlier. Inside his earlier self crouched at the hole testing with bottles coins and tools.
He screamed over and over again until eventually the entity opened the window. Elias tried putting his hand on the cheek of his past self but it sipped straight throguh, like a midst. Ellias watched hopelessly as his past self shut the window.
Eventually that version of himself that he was spectating and supposedly guiding, jumped into the circle. He watched as that version saw another version of himself replyaing the cycle. Then fear crept into his very essence; he remembered what happened when he dropped 4 coins into the circle; how the 4th one faded originally. Questions cut throguh silence he asked," what becomes of me when I'm left behind, what story will write me when I am both author and subject?
The world surrounding him studdered, reality flickering like a dying screen and shadows bled into eachother like blood on white cloth. Streetlights snapped off and on and long stretches of darkness stretched in impossible directions; every breath had felt borrowed and every heartbeat was a metronome, a beromator of warning and danger. He closed his eyes trying to brace the inevitbalbe. He cursed himself realizing one small move would've broken the chain.
As he opponed them the street was gone, the only thing that remained was darkness, thick and swallowing, a room with muddy dark gray walls, an overall liminal space. As he looked up he saw it, a face. It was White, impossible and unshaped, just a smile that seemed to know him, all of him, better than he new himself.
Time gave up, space gave up, and even thought seemed optional know. The entity smiled, eternal and patient, he finally understood the end was not outside, but it was inside of him. The hole was never a passage, it was a reckoning.
As the darkness pressed closer, reality dissolved like old code, a voice whispered through him, like the credits of an ending movie.
we are echos of echoes, folded into space we never touch, our shadows do not fall they wait, wait in the static between breath and thought every fall fractures and the hand we reach for is always already gone.
Beginnings bleed into endings-endings fold onto themselves, even fractured the wolrd whispers remnants of what is, could be or might remain.
Every shadow trembles, yet light lingers in the space we barely touch.
Even in echoes of ourselves we leave traces small sparks against the dark. we are the glitch that learned to see the face in the white the voice we feared not an end, but a threshold and in crossing we find that even the shadows leave a trace and even the lost shapes of ourselves can reflect a light, that was never truly gone.