Today’s story is brought to life by the following prompt…
This is my submission for Kevin’s No Theme Thursday.
One Sided Twice
The hole aches for everything, yet it wants nothing. It doesn’t desire, imagine, or even fester a thought—it simply is. It sucks in everything around it, devouring endlessly. The skies tear asunder, dragged away into the hole’s gaping maw.
Peter raises his hand to shield his eyes from the fury roaring down from the heavens—his lip curling in trembling trepidation. He turns back to the others and shakes his head, resignation shadowing his face.
“It’s no use. If it was going to work, it would’ve already happened,” he mutters.
“You don’t know,” Sandy replies, her voice tinged with desperation. “There’s still time, it might—”
But Peter shakes his head, this time with cold finality. “I’m sorry, Sandy. There’s no way to stop it now. Whatever chance we had—it’s long gone.”
“What if we went back and did everything differently? Faster, more precise? What if we didn’t waste time like we did this time?”
Peter rolls his eyes and shakes his head disapprovingly. “Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humour,” he slurs, voice dripping with sarcasm.
“I don’t see how a simple question could be misconstrued as a joke,” Sandy replies sharply.
“Because you’re operating on a different wavelength! Can’t you see? In a few short hours, this planet will be pulled off its axis and sucked into the void—along with every other planet in this solar system, probably the next two or three as well. It’s a universe killer, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We definitely can’t go back in time.”
“Why not? We’ve got time to calculate the trajectory and put together a plan. The only thing stopping us is you!”
“NO! The only thing stopping us is the fact that time travel isn’t possible!” Peter spits, venom lacing his words.
“Says you.”
“Says everyone who’s ever lived!”
“Not true. In twenty eighty-eight, Doctor Rashid Vander successfully sent a live mouse three seconds into the future—and three seconds into the past. Documented experiments, proving it can work! Sure, he never scaled it up, but that wasn’t because he couldn’t—it was because he disappeared! Some say the government took his work, twisted it for their own gain. Others claim he…”
“Enough! Just stop! What’s the whole point?” Peter snaps.
Sandy shakes her head—her eyes wide, almost feverish. She rubs her temples—fingers digging in—then clutches her side as a grimace crosses her face. She takes a jagged breath. “My point is… what do we have left to lose when we’re as good as dead already?”
Peter’s eyes narrow, his voice sinking to a whisper. “Our sanity.”
Sandy clenches her jaw, eyes hard. “Can’t you see? The world is falling into the abyss, and the time for the impossible—or improbable—is now! Doctor Vander’s notes show how he builds a small cycle, using curvature, motion, size, and sunlight to achieve the impossible.”
Peter’s expression falters for only a second before settling back into bitter disbelief. “And what happens when it doesn’t work—when you’re staring at that machine, waiting for it to fold time and spit you out somewhere else—only to find it just hums until your bones vibrate? What then?”
Sandy stares at him, a glint in her eye that wasn’t there before, a sliver of something colder than hope. “Then I’m the last thing this universe sees before it swallows itself whole.”
Peter shivers, but he holds his ground, even as the ground itself begins to tremble. The sky above darkens, twisting in on itself, the stars blurring into strange spirals. Sandy turns her gaze upward, her face bathed in a shifting, unnatural light. The air around them thickens—heavy with a quiet hum that builds, resonating deep in their bones—as if reality itself is straining against an unseen edge, ready to unravel at the slightest push.
The world rolls apart and reforms, reality twisting in ways the mind cannot follow. Sandy stands in two places at once, her figure stretched and elongated, her fingers flickering between dimensions like ghostly tendrils. She tries to scream, but the sound shatters, scattered across fragments of time. The machine—a failure—has sent her spiralling across the timeline, scattered like dust through centuries and moments. She knows somewhere deep within that there is no repairing what has been broken beyond recognition. All she can do is watch.
A single tear slips down her cheek, trembling before it too is swept away, dispersed into the chaotic flow. In the space between seconds, she feels herself unraveling, slipping into something unwritten, a part of history that never was and never will be. And then she is gone—sucked back into the void, erased from time itself.
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