A Thread So Thin
The rain hits the sidewalk, making small explosions all around me. It patters against the bulge under my jacket, where I have placed my history book so that it won't get wet. Tonight's assignment is some reading on The Almost Dark Ages. It was a time in history hundreds of years ago when it appeared that humanity would surely be stuck in some dark hole that would stunt our growth as a race for generations. But we all know it was cleverly avoided by a man called J. H., his full name had been lost with time. I loved reading about him, and his incredible knowledge. Sometimes, it felt like I could be his friend if I ever met him. But I knew that would never happen, he had lived centuries ago.
I was a bit of a history buff, I had to admit. There was something about it that fascinated me, without end. As I wiped my shoes next to the door of my apartment, I thought about James. If he were here, he would have walked right in, shoes tracking in small lakes and mudslides. I neatly set my shoes to the side and placed the history book onto the couch.
A picture of James and I from last summer greets me as I turn on the lights in the kitchen. We aren't looking at the camera, but at each other. It wasn't one of those posed shots, either. We had been hiking, something we both enjoyed immensely, and I had lost my footing. James had caught me from behind. He had pulled me close to him. The picture captured his expression perfectly, he loved me. One of our fellow hikers had taken it, and asked if we wanted a copy. Yes, it was sort of creepy, but when she showed it to me on her digital camera, I just had to write down my address so that she could send it to me. James worried that she was some kind of psychopath out for blood, but I think she just recognized true love when she saw it. When the picture came in the mail, it had taken my breath away. It wasn't because of how James looked, I had remembered his face. It was my own expression that surprised me. In that moment, I remember being afraid, because I had thought I was falling. But in the picture, I look calm, as if James' arms were a fortress and I was protected against everything.
I still feel that way. Without him, I think I would die.
That's not to say we don't have our faults and tiffs. But nothing could ever stop me from loving him. Nothing could ever come between us.
I grab a glass and a bottle of wine and prepare myself for a long night of reading. Then I hear a soft rapping on the door. Perplexed, I pad over to the peephole. But before I reach it, I hear a familiar voice drift through the door.
"Baby, it's me. Let me in," James' low voice says.
I smile, warmth filling every damp bit of me. Without thinking, I reach for the doorknob and turn. He rushes past me without making eye contact. But I know its him, because he hasn't taken of his shoes, so in his wake are small puddles across my floor.
His tall figure stops in the center of the living room. "It's just as I remember it."
I grab for a towel I always keep by the door and begin to wipe up after him. "You were here yesterday, I haven't changed much."
When I look back up, I finally notice he is wearing a coat I do not recognize, and though his hair is wet from the rain, I swear I see gray laced through the black. "Is that a new jacket?" I ask, even though it looks worn and ragged.
"No," he mumbles "I got it years ago."
"I've never seen it," I say as I approach him from behind, finally done cleaning up the floor.
"I know," he says sadly.
When I come around him and look into his face, I feel strange. It is James, most definitely James. But he isn't my James. I hadn't been imagining the gray hair, and the beginner's wrinkles at the edges of his eyes and forehead make me take a step back.
His arms twitch towards me, as if he is ready to catch me should I fall down from shock. That is how I know its James, my fortress.
"You know it's me, but you don't understand how," he says slowly.
"What happened to you?" I ask, dozens of scenarios running through my head. I think of everything from radiation poisoning to stage make up.
He blinks once, twice, his eyes seem to devour me. "Time."
"What do you mean?"
Water drips from his chin and off of his shoulders, outlining a man most likely in his late forties. My James is 26 years old.
"I'm not from now. Your James is finishing up a paper and thinking about calling you."
I'm speechless, and in awe.
"I'm from the future, and I'm so sorry to ruin your evening," he apologizes. I can tell he means it, because there was a hitch in his voice at the end of the word 'ruin'.
"How are you here?"
I can tell from the way his jaw clenches, and how his eyes are on fire that he wants to touch me. A memory of James last spring surfaces. We hadn't seen each other in a week, and the look this James is giving me is the same as then but intensified. It's as if he hasn't seen me in years.
"We should sit down," he motions to the couch.
"Alright," it feels like I float over to the couch. I pick up the history book and shift it to the coffee table.
James' eyes focus on the book, then he glances at me. "May I?"
"Of course," I say as I hand it to him.
He runs his hand over the cover, and then opens it to the chapter I was supposed to read that very evening. He skims for a few moments, then nods his head and gives the book back to me, still opened.
"Third paragraph, second sentence," he says in a determined sort of way.
I read it aloud, even though we both know what it says. "J.H. arrived in England that same year, bringing an end to a worrisome era that could have led humanity into its darkest hour."
I stop and look up at him. "Everyone knows this."
"Just like I am here now, I was there then," he pauses as he waits for me to make the connection, "I am J. H."
I only think he is kidding for a moment, before I realize there would be no reason for him to lie to me like this. Besides, it makes sense; his name is James Holden. The only thing I can't figure, is why he is telling me all of this.
As if he is reading my mind, he says what I am thinking. "You are wondering why I am telling you this."
All I can do is nod, my grip on the book becoming tighter. My nerves are beginning to tell me that something is wrong, and that I don't want him to continue. I should make him stop, make him leave, make him go back to where he came from.
"Before I tell you why, I need to explain how." He runs his tongue over his lips, and I can tell he doesn't want to explain anything, and that his mouth is dry.
"Would you like some water, or something to drink?" I interrupt.
He almost looks relieved. "Yes."
I stand, and his hand reaches out to my arm. I look down at his fingers as they graze my skin, and feel the electricity between us.
He looks completely taken aback, like he has forgotten it is always this way when we touch. "I'm sorry," he says quickly as he stands. "I can get it, I know where it is."
I watch him stride into the kitchen and go directly for the cabinet with the glassware. As he lets the faucet run water into the glass his eyes flicker to my favorite picture of us. "I hate that picture."
"Why?"
He takes one last look and turns off the faucet, heading back to the couch. My question goes unanswered as he sits and slowly sips on the water.
"I'm not going to tell you all the science behind my time travel, it would take too long and you wouldn't understand it." He sets down the glass, never considering to use a coaster.
It seems like he waits for me to protest, but the truth is, I don't want to hear him rattle on about physics and the theoretical, I just want to know why.
"Imagine time is a thread. It is unending and forever with no end and no beginning," he watches me nod my understanding, "Well, I found the thread."
Immediately, an image of James forms in my head. I see him standing in a room that extends as far as the eye can see, and he is staring down at a thin golden thread which floats midair. A small smile forms on his lips, because he realizes he is the first person to discover the thread. He is like a young child with a secret, ready to explode, but afraid to go any further.
He runs his hands over his beat-up jeans. "I figured out that in order to travel between times, you had to make them connect," he watches as I nod my understanding and then continues, "We only exist in the present at a certain place on the thread, so I had to take that place and connect it with the time I wanted to be in."
He touches his fingertips together ever so slowly, concentrating on the dwindling space between them. It's like he doesn't want to continue, as if what he is about to say will shatter whatever confidence he has left.
"So, I had to cut the thread, and then tie my end with the end I wished to be in," his eyes travel to mine as his hands drop into his lap with a thud.
It's obvious that I don't quite understand why he is so upset. My James would never do anything bad, so this couldn't be as terrible as he is making it seem.
His shoulders fold in and he loses eye contact. "When you cut a thread, microscopic fibers fall away and can never be recovered. Portions of the thread are lost forever."
It's still all too much for me to comprehend, even though I feel as if he has laid out something plainly for me. It feels like there is a dark hole in front of me, and James is beckoning me to jump across it, to understand the severity of what he has done. But I don't want to see the other side.
"I think you should stop now, James," I say softly but with enough force to make my point clear.
"That's my point, baby, I can't stop what I have started," his expression becomes steeled, as if he has rehearsed this part a hundred times and has never quite liked how it comes out. "Parts are missing. People are missing, and I can't fix it. The more I try to sow it back together, the worse it all becomes."
A lump has risen to my throat, but I am still able to squeak out a few words. "So stop now."
He shakes his head, and his fingers brush against my cheeks every so softly. "The sick part is, I would do it all over again. I would risk erasing all of history just to have another chance."
My eyebrows thread together with a confused expression. "Another chance at what?"
"To fix you."
First, I feel anger, for there is nothing wrong with me at all. But then I realize I have misinterpreted his meaning and panic starts to churn in my stomach. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, that if I never had to fix you, I would have never found the thread in the first place," his eyes drift away to a place I have never seen, "I wouldn't be here asking this of you."
It is my turn to shake my head. "You haven't asked anything of me."
"In five minutes, James is going to call you. The two of you will have a fight, and break up. I know it seems like an impossibility, but it happens every time," his hand reaches for the glass of water and he sips on it again, "Then after another two minutes, he will call you back."
My mind is reeling, because none of this seems real. It all must be a dream.
"When it happened before, we got back together and I rushed over here to see you."
I can't hear anymore, because it is clear this is all leading to a place I don't ever want to see. "Please, stop this."
It's as if he doesn't hear me, he is reading from an invisible script. "When I got here, you were on the floor, unconscious. I got here in enough time to keep you alive, but I've never made it here with enough time to save you," he pauses as pain fills his eyes "I've gone back a thousand times in a thousand different ways, but I can't save you."
"I don't understand, what happened to me?" I immediately check myself internally, but I feel fine, normal even.
"A stroke, and there is nothing we can do to stop it," there is a beat and then he looks directly at me,
"I've even gone back to the Dark Ages and avoided them so that our civilization could be more advanced in the future so that the doctors could fix you. But they can't, and never will be able to."
I close my eyes, because I can't bear to look at his expression for another moment.
"I've ruined time, history, everything. I will destroy the world if I try again, and I will try again. You need to stop me."
I can't yet understand what he is asking of me, if it is to kill him or something else. "But how can I do that if I'm going to be dead?"
"When James calls you the second time, you will not get back together. You will tell him that you don't love him anymore and never want to see him again," though I am not looking at him I can tell his eyes have dropped to the floor "That way, he won't rush here, and he will never find you. James won't need to find the thread, because there will be no one to fix. You will be gone."
Now I understand. It's not James that wants to die, it is I who must.
So quietly, that I almost miss it, James whispers, "This is murder."
Tears have begun to slip down my face, panic and rage boil in my stomach.
Then a shrill ringing cuts between us. We both look to the phone sitting on the coffee table. I jump for it, knowing that if I hear his voice, this will all be alright.
"James?" I half cry into the phone.
"Hey, babe, are you alright?" he asks.
"I don't know, what are you doing right now. Can you come over?"
There is a pause. "Not just yet, I have to finish some things first."
"Please, James," I plead.
"I'll be there when I can, but I have to get this done. It's not like you're going anywhere, right?" He chuckles at this joke.
But I do not laugh. Rage boils over. I say the only thing I can think of to get him here, I need him, now. "If you don't drop what you are doing and head here right now, I'm going to break up with you."
He doesn't think I'm serious at first, but when he hears me stay silent, he must realize it. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"You are," I say coldly as I stare into the old James' face next to me on the couch.
"Jesus, if that's the way you really feel, then I guess we should break up."
And that wasn't what I was expecting of him. But before I can apologize, he hangs up.
I drop the phone next to me, and feel as if I could shatter.
James leans in towards me. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."
I can't bring myself to say anything to him. He has ruined my life, possibly even stolen it from me.
He looks down at his watch and waits for what seems like one minute. "James will be calling you soon, and you need to be able to say the right thing."
I'm holding back sobs, so I just glare at him.
"When you say these things, you will tell them to me, though you will be speaking to him. Your James doesn't deserve to hear them, but I do."
"What am I going to say?" I spit out.
"That I've disappointed you, that I can't protect you, and that your life would have been better should we have never met." He has taken great care in selecting these words, I can tell.
The phone rings once. Twice. I pick it up.
"Baby," my James starts.
But I interrupt him almost immediately. "No, I don't want to hear it," without missing a beat I look directly at James and start my suicide note. "You have been nothing but a disappointment. I know now that you are not my fortress and you cannot protect me. James, my life would have been so different if we would have never met," I pause as a sharp pain stabs in my chest "it would have been better. I never want to see you again."
Then I hang up, knowing I have broken his heart and that I will never see him again. It feels like I thought it would, as if I was dieing. But then I realize, that I am dieing, just not with the right James at my side. Moments later, I'm on the floor.
I notice how parts of the paint on my ceiling are cracking and peeling. As the pain surges through my body, I search for James.
He is there, hands wrapped around mine, a waterfall of tears descending from his eyes. "I'm here, baby."
My chest is tightening, and I lose vision in my left eye. I can tell that I'm seizing, but I can't control anything. My body is lost to me.
But I see James, and I don't know if I'm hallucinating, but he suddenly looks younger. I wonder if I'm dieing for no reason, if he came over anyways. Yet, I also know that's impossible, he couldn't have gotten here in time, he never had before. Then I see the old James again, and know that it was my imagination trying to help me in my last moments.
I hear him speak, but the words are muffled.
"It's just as I remember it. It wont be much longer, I promise."
And I know he is right.
