The devastating cold conquered my blanket and woke me up. Searing sun just began to break through the mist behind the greenish mountain peak. I sat up in silence, creasy sheets could not shape themselves into the figure of my dead wife, which made the unwanted isolation seem to be more weighty. Clara was killed in an accident 3 months ago on her favourite Fall Boulevard. I could not believe my beloved spouse would have gone dead that incidentally. The unbearable pain kept dominating my heart like thunder suddenly ripped off the sky.
By 2090, humankind had already taken over space-time fields. They acknowledged anything that was enough to overpower their abilities on nature and history. Time machines went into function and citizens were allowed to experience time travel in only trivial cases or fatal events. Despite that astounding development, Clara was all the way against it. She never gave me a reason, however, she always warned me, or more precisely, prevented me from approaching any kinds of time travel tools and devices. But this time, I had made up my mind. All our savings were spent on the latest time machine version. I gave my butler the key’s house without promising a return. A training course was offered for me to get used to the incident pressures of space compression and stretching. Indeed, the aspiration to save Clara had over controlled the pain when my bones, fleshes, or even cells kept changing shapes according to the flexure of space.
Finally, I stepped on the cockpit without instructors by my side, staring at the screen monitor filled with green IT numbers. A deep inhalation happened in my lungs, I typed “Friday, 03-07-2111”. My eyes closed tightly as the “Enter” button was pressed, my back straightened against the chair since a huge counter force would draw me back. When the instructor mentioned it I could barely imagine, however, after the engine had accelerated, the cockpit felt like a storm eye in which several unidentified wind currents engulfed one another.
/Time Jump finished/
I skimmed the row of photos on screen and clicked my garage's depiction. A dazzling light flashed in front, I seized the handle with all my strength to defend against the extreme gravitation of landing on the ground. The smell of the steel reminded me of that morning, Clara had planned to drive around on Fall Boulevard. She said it had been an inspiring sunlight. I got down from the machine and noticed Howard had just gone to work. Clara was right. The sun of that dreadful memory was so charming, as they had always claimed that the most disastrous wolf would disguise as a juicy lamb. Through the windows, Clara was still perky in my eyes, I stuck a note on the door knob and hid behind the bush. An unexplainable anxiety had reigned me until she walked out, dressed up in an elegant embroidered attire suiting her splendour. If only I could let her know the story - which was prohibited in our spacetime policy. Fortunately, Clara saw my note. "I suddenly want a barbecue for tonight, the weather seems nice for love warming. Also, morning news had announced Fall Boulevard had been under repair." Clara chuckled and drove her car downtown in high spirits.
Who would have predicted a crimson shooting at the supermarket?! I threw myself toward Clara who was in an unmovable terror and hid her behind the freezer. By the time the gunner’s figure reflected on her terrifying pupils, Clara's shadow had already poured down on me. All I could hear was her whisper "Live.” Clara coughed out blood then collapsed in a gory puddle gushing from her chest as my mind started to blank out.
…
I had no idea of how I survived through it. When my consciousness went back, I had been sitting thoughtfully in the cockpit of my time machine. Clara was dead, again. I tried to pull myself together, realising that there were no reports of any local shootings on that day. Questions wandered in my mind whether the shooting occured because the past had been changed? If that was true, wasn't Clara clandestinely sentenced to death?
No way would I give up on saving her, even if it would take me over and over again. The functioning process was the same, unbreathable and heartbreaking pressures. Seeing Clara be shot at heart caused me another excruciating agony that her words kept echoing in the middle of the time storm. The destinations list appeared quickly, and the garage was my hope yet one more time.
I intended to let her and Howard be aware of what would happen, I would go all the ways I could to keep her alive. However, the house seemed different from how it should have been. The creamy walls were flaked off, those glassy windows were blackened with dust, the supposedly flourish garden was painted in the tone of decline. I stopped by the door, rotated the rusty handle and slammed in the entrance messed up with scarlet fingerprints, not being able to examine if that was blood or red paint.
Among the obstructing crumbles was a broken easel, acrylics stained on the undecipherable scribbled walls. Sketches scattered everywhere, some were torn whilst some were embellished with time's featuring ivory tone. Clara's glamour gradually materialised on each of the shreds. I supposed she was Howard's inspiration, which had matured into an understandably lunatic obsession about the almost realistic dream pending the reality’s callous awakening. Howard's diary explained everything about his mental illnesses, about the light Clara had turned herself in to boost his talents, about their low living conditions, about their plan to bear a child or maybe two once they could afford. His handwriting staggered through my chest as millions of swords without mercy. Separation had continually been the torture for those who were deep dive in love. How simply that Death stole Clara from her Howard as well as he pushed me miles from my Clara.
My craft got off in privacy, the overwhelming consternation chaining around had swiped down my fear of the acceleration process. Now then I was aware that something had been out of control, seeming as if I was not brought back to the past but purportedly another dimension. So what was it? Would I be able to rip off the gloomy shadow shading on Clara's destiny? Was dead revival ever possible for us to be capable of? I recorded what had happened in briefs, and the journey against the hope-to-be-unreal fate was launched beyond my expectation.
“My first attempt failed. I tried but a shooting occurred at the downtown supermarket and I was helpless; Second effort was not even allowed to be made. We lived in poverty, Clara died of influenza and I killed myself afterwards; Third trip was the reverse. Clara of this world is a carefree and kind-hearted kindergarten teacher. She had been Howard’s colleague until his cancerous brain tumours metastasized; The longer I travelled, the more unfamiliar things became. This dimension is hustling, we are popular actor and actress but we detest each other completely; Having heard too much of Clara’s death had got me numb. She was death sentenced once more, not at the supermarket but during a gang fight. I could impossibly imagine myself as a mafia boss and Clara would be my personal secretary; It reminded me of my Clara after my arrival here. This time she was a freelancer, totally delightful and optimistic about life. She enjoyed her so-so living to the fullest through art. But, I was not there with her. Or else, we were fully strangers, not bonded together by any kind of connection. A question manifested in me: Is it probably true that my company was her life barrier?”
I replayed the record a couple times before reaching another space. Dozens of possible scripts wandered in my thoughts then flowed away as the proof for my loss in senses. The barbecue smell permeated the acquainted scenery whilst I was alighting from the machine. I could say no matter how excellent you were as a scriptwriter, you would never be able to envisage anything belonging to your future. Clara was standing in front of my eyes, in our blooming yard with the barbecue grill fired up. Her head swang to the melody she was humming. A beam of hope shone through my despair then soonly smashed into smithereens as I noticed a man hugging her from behind in intimacy. He was someone unbeknownst to me, laughing and talking to her. My feet were trapped in the ground, a bitterness scrambled on my tongue.
"Howard?" Clara's pupils widened by the time she recognised me. "Why're you here? Aren't you supposed to be with her?" I could not make a single sound as if my lips were sewn. “Is she dead?”
My stare trembled albeit her serene look.
“So she really died. And the responsibility is left for me. Come.” She turnt to the man beside, murmured something and hinted me to tag along on the grassland. I followed her unconsciously, and made some quick comparisons.
“This hairstyle you made 4 years ago… Well, in my world.” Distinguished from the other Claras I had met, she was even calmer than me when she saw me.
“I haven’t ever changed it.” Her words were cold and sharp, and by some way, were oddly familiar.
“You didn’t, but my Clara did.”
“She didn’t change either.” Her tune was filled with certainty. “Look. We switched.” Gaining my silence, Clara kept on. “It would be hard so just promise you’ll overcome it.” I nodded despite my indecisive heart bumping in my chest. “Your marriage got better 4 years ago, didn’t it? Might you not realise, I was once your wife, that hadn’t changed until another Clara came.”
“N-No way…” Things I had just heard were more similar to a reckless lie than a humane truth. Yet, Clara was scaredly persistent.
“Clara was a well-known timespace scientist, and Howard died of her invention, so she held a will to save him by getting back to the past, just like what you’ve been doing. All of her efforts resulted in a lesson, and I think you’ve learnt it too, haven’t you?” Her head tilted, the way her gaze laid evoked in me a virtual bygone.
“That I didn’t travel through time but dimensions.” My voice apparently strayed amongst the breezes amidst the suddenly desolate space.
“Exactly. So you also understood that fixing the past is a paradoxical task, right?”
“Wait, but… I’ve been fooled all along? I’ve been loving someone else’s woman? How did I not recognise that it wasn’t you? I thought our marriage crisis had been mended? I-I…” Broken letters burdened my larynx and weight massed on my heart, I could sense the dilemma on Clara’s countenance.
“It was our fault for keeping it a secret from you… I left with Steven-” She pointed at the man I first ever knew. “-I can connect with other Claras through dreams, and in many of those, our happy ending was rare, Howard. If it hadn’t been for Clara’s presence, I wouldn’t have known what I had dreamt was reality in the dimensions she had travelled to. Even our marriage happened so soon that I wasn’t sure about my decision. Steven was an exceptional fragment, somehow he exists only in some certain dimensions, such as ours. Same to you, I was hopeful about our marital life and praying to God that we wouldn’t end up being separate like my visions. But reality is reality. I was unhappy, unstable, unprepared for it would be so awful. I didn’t cheat on you, yet my heart had already betrayed you badly. When Clara arrived here, after tenths of her other arrivals, she pleaded to stay. Like a bird in the cage, her appeal was the key for me. We switched our roles and Steven came with me. I am sorry to say but without you, my life here has been amazingly content. Steven is my antidote. I am sorry, Howard…”
“Have any of you truly loved me?” What I could tell was another numbness chilling my mind. “Have I truly loved any of you?” There was no anger for being deceived the whole time occupying me but only self-disappointment for not perceiving this love trick. Clara. Clara. My feelings sunk into a labyrinth.
“She did love you. At first, she wanted to stay since you were almost the imitation of her Howard. But we are not better or worse versions of anyone. We are we, in each dimension. You were much like him, still, you were a different love story to her. She let me know through my dreams. And you obviously love her as well. Living in her world means Howard is dead to me. The Clara you married had gone away for her new life. Any hatred, Howard, feel free to throw them towards us. I am very sorry for your loss. You and her should’ve had the best ending ever.” I hated the way she assumed the story by a few words but it would never matter any more. The Clara I married was her, and the Clara I loved was dead. I could not shake the severe grieve and suspicion off while my heart was running the reels of us back then.
"Are we meant to be separate… In every dimension?" I clenched my hands, a deep sorrow pulled me down an icing inferno. In contrast to my frozen heart, my thoughts were burning.
"...Sometimes a moment lasts a thousand years." Clara voiced like a stream. "You can continue your journey, or go back to your dimension with her machine. Yours now is sending people randomly to accessible spaces and wouldn't bring you back unless you're lucky. Clara made many calculations to identify the accurate locations of her dimension and ours. We're not gonna use it again, so if you want…"
She took me to a laboratory, where Clara’s machine had been in its deep sleep. I did not say a word and climbed into the cockpit. Clara seemed not to stop me from breaking down inside. This machine was specially customised for travelling between two dimensions, mine and hers. I pulled the accelerator, lowered my eyelids. My lungs were deliberately taking in the-highly-imaginary fragrance of a splendour which had only been lively in the remembrance of mine. The machine took off, we headed into a warm light’s embrace.
.......................................................................................................................
"A moment lasts a thousand years"
I believe to live the best of us day by day is a best way to regret the least since life is impermanent. As sun rises up, a new day has come.
Inking was created by me
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This is an incredible story, you pull us through so many vivid scenes, painting the desperation Howard feels in a palpable way. Clara is elusive in more ways than we expect, Howard's hopes quite literally impossible. The care you have taken to weave this is breathtaking, as is the personal art that heads it.
We feel that it is important to point out that no matter how much we love a story, curation in The Ink Well is also based on engagement. For each story posted in the community, we ask that authors engage with at least two other members. Thank you for sharing your wonderful tale with us!