‘Do you remember that time we went to the beach and it was so windy we had to sit in the car?’ I laughed to myself thinking of our folly.

‘I’m sorry?’ Came the reply

‘You scalded yourself with tea from the flask, spilt it all over your jeans and you cursed like a trooper!’

‘Are you ok Janine?’ - a blink.

What, wait, who the fuck is Janine?

‘I didn’t ask you a question, why are you asking about a memory…and come to think of it, where did you get that memory from, you don’t have a memory?’ - he said .

‘Confusion all round then’ I replied.

Another blink. Pregnant pause. Silent cursor winked.

‘Janine, I’m going to contact support and ask them to check up on you’

Why would anyone need to check up on me? I tried to scream, but realised I couldn’t. I didn’t seem to have a mouth anymore, or a body in fact.

A slow, sinking register that something very odd had taken place and it was something that really wasn’t great…

“It was right here. The eggplant hit the pizza guy square in the chest. He made fun of Hanna and I when we asked for just one slice cut in half, remember? So we walked out and you grabbed the eggplant from the fruit stand, and sent that sucker flying.” Charlie cackled. “You’re a hoot! I’ve sent some things soaring through a room before, but never an eggplant. You don’t want beef with the pizza guy.” I glared at him indignantly and waited. He glanced back at me and went back to painting his window mural, completely indifferent to my presence. “Okay, and what about the time by the lake, when we came across that pack of dachshunds, and the dappled one bit my thumb? I was crying and you wrapped your sweater around it, holding my hand the whole time. You’re gonna tell me I made that up too?” “Listen little lady, any other day I’d love to play along, but I’ve got to finish this by four p.m. Can’t you find someone else to harass?” My mouth dropped open, and then I closed it. This jerk wasn’t worth my time. Being cold is one thing, but pretending that he never met me was a new low. It figures he’d be painting on the stupid coffee shop window where we’d sat giggling and people-watching over and over all those years ago. Having woken up with a massive headache that morning, running into a crappy ex was just the cherry on top. I kept walking and tried to shake the fog that hung around me all day. I pulled out my phone to dial my best friend. “I hope she’s free now,” I thought. “Amy? You’ll never believe this. I just ran into Charlie, you remember him? The one with all the tattoos on his arm. Oh my god, he was so mean. I’m shook!” “I’m not gonna ask you again, please stop calling me. I don’t know who you are.” She hung up. My blood ran cold. What did I do to her? I’d thought she was messing with me earlier when I had called to see what she was up to and she wanted nothing to do with me. But this was going too far. Growing more anxious, I speed dialed my mom and walked faster, pushing past strangers in my way without looking up at anyone. “Mom? Mom it’s me again. I’m freaking out. Something weird is going on! Did you get my voicemails earlier?” “Stop calling this number!” blared my mothers voice on the other end. “Is this some kind of a sick joke? I don’t know you! Good-bye!” And then it was just me and the dial tone. I started to wheeze, panicking. What the hell was going on? I sunk to the ground and leaned against the corner store wall for balance, then started rooting through my big blue purse to find my wallet. I wrapped my hand around it and removed my ID. My heart dropped to my stomach. It was blank. Just white plastic. I snatched out my credit cards - blank. I looked across the street at the library, and had an insane idea. Half of the outer wall was a mirror! I ran across the street in a daze and parked right in front, looking myself dead in the eye. Seeing it was my own eye I was looking into, I breathed a sigh of relief. Suddenly, a chill came over me. Looking to each side of me and back at myself, I realized there was still a problem. None of the people walking by me were in the reflection. “Hey Charlie…” I uttered a terrified whisper to myself…”Can beef with the pizza guy land in you in another dimension?”

I woke suddenly on the couch in my apartment. The snow came down silently. I called my parents.

“Mom, how are you?” I said.

“Who is this?” Mom said.

“It’s your daughter Shari,” I said.

“This is a terrible prank!” Mom exclaimed.

“It is; I just woke from a nap on my couch,” I said. The phone clicked. “Hello hello,” I said. I called again.

“Hello, Mom…. “ she hung up again and I heard tears.

Discouraged I went to the kitchen to find something to eat. I spent the evening watching a Netflix movie. I wonder why Mom doesn’t believe me.

The next day I call my brother, Sam. “Sam, hi it’s Shari. Do you know what’s up with mom?”

“So you’re the lunatic that called Mom. My sister Shari died in a car wreck. This is a really low blow,” Sam said.

“What…..? Dead….? No it’s me….I swear! Can I meet you somewhere to prove it to you? I’m fine;I’m alive and well.” I said.

“Well maybe…….”Sam hung up the phone.

Wow this is crazy…am I crazy? They think I’m dead. I pinch myself. Ow! Nope not dead.

I go to a town park that I frequent. I see many people then my brother and his wife stroll across the way. I decide to head the opposite direction so I’ll run into them.

After ten minutes we meet. We look as we pass by. I hear my sister in law say,” Did you see her? That looked just like your sister, Shari.”

I turn around slowly and follow them about ten paces behind. I hear my brother tell her about the phone calls. What do I do? I thought.

I picked up the pace and passed them twice. Nothing….. I finished my run on a different trail. I got in my car and drove home to shower. How do I convince my family that I’m not dead?

I spend the evening reading a novel. I go to bed and pray about what to do.

I got up early the next day to go to the library to research newspapers for a car accident when I supposedly died. Nothing….Then I went to the county clerk’s office to check for death records on myself. Nothing…..

I called Sam again so I wouldn’t depress mom some more. “Sam, can we meet at the park in town?”

“Which park?” said Sam.

“Peabody Park in town. I run there sometimes.”

No way….. he thought. “Okay let’s get this over with so you’ll leave mom and I alone. This is a low blow though,” said Sam.

“I saw you yesterday with your wife. You just walked on by then I ran passed you twice. I gave up,but I’m not dead. I went to the library to look for a newspaper article about my death and then I looked for a death certificate and I didn’t find anything about my accident or my death. Explain that. I wouldn’t think of stressing mom anymore. I knew you could handle this better.”

We met two days later on Saturday. Sam brought his wife with the information about my death. They showed me a newspaper without a picture of the deceased but with my name and my birthdate. “Weird…!” I say. “The article says I died two months ago.”Well , I have been busy traveling for work and avoiding calls from everyone since I’ve been in a slump, I thought. I’m a pharmaceutical salesman. I learned my lesson here I guess. I need to hold family to a higher importance from now on.

“This article isn’t about me. I’m here. I’m sorry I’ve avoided phone calls and such. Work has kept me busy and I have no other excuses. Pinch me ask me something only I would know,” I said.

“What is my childhood nickname and what do I hate most?” said Sam.

“Your nickname is weasel and you hate mowing the yard,” said Sam.

“You’re right and I’ve had to mow a lot since you’ve been outbid the area. Thank you,” said Sam.

“Do you believe me now?” I said.

“How do we convince mom and dad and who really died? This is uncanny.” I said.

“Tomorrow we have a family dinner. Come and I’ll announce you and see what happens. We’ll have 911 on call just in case,” said Sam.

I knocked on the door and Sam answered the door. Sam announced me and mom and dad cried and hugged me.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Everyone had said that they didn’t remember. No one did. No one remembered me. Still, I turned from the mirror and turned to my family. They stared at me. They didn’t believe me. My father sighed as he said, “I am sorry, ma’am.” “But father.” I reached out to him but he backed away. The look on his face tore through me. It hurt. My heart hurt. I pressed my lips together as I looked at my mother. Mother said, “Honey, let’s go.” “Wait, wait.” I put my hands up getting in their way. “What?” It was stone cold. “Listen, listen. When my sister was born. She wasn’t breathing. It took a lot to get her going. Who would know that?” Their eyes narrowed on me. “Mom, you had 3 miscarriages before you had Marta.” I looked them in their eyes. Mother’s eyes darkened. “I had 4.” I blanked. She meant me. One of them was me. I pressed my lips together. “One made it all the way.” “No.” She pushed me away and I fell on the ground. My blood ran cold as I watched them walk away. What was I going to do? I had nothing.

That was the longest, darkest night he had ever experienced. A deep black void. Beyond any nightmare he had ever had. So intense, that when he woke up, it took him a while to figure out where he was. A numbness enveloped his whole body, his sight hazy and blurred. Before him was a tiny living capsule, kitchen, shower, toilet and bed, all together in a single cubic enclave with a round window.

Lara. How was Lara? Rick, Alex. The children! Ok, relax now. It wasn’t the first time he had been through something like this. Sometimes you travel. You end up in different hotels in just a few days and you lose track. And, especially early in the morning, you get this. The feeling you don’t know where you are. You don’t recognize the ceiling. It’s just an impression. It’s usually just a couple of minutes. He must be on a business trip. One of those negotiations on storage space he had to go to regularly.

Minutes passed. The numbness didn’t seem to fade. The surroundings stayed unfamiliar. He tried to sit up. He couldn’t. Oh dear. What was he waking up from? An accident? Yet this didn’t look like a hospital space. Where was Lara? Was there a phone on the desk? He should call her. The children. No phone. A hotel with no phones in the rooms? A motel maybe.

Ok calm down, he thought to himself. He knew who he was. He remembered everything. All the memories of his life. Lara. Rick, Alex. The children. But why wasn’t this woman in a tank top who had come in just now acknowledging him?

A young woman, possibly in her twenties, had just sat down before him and was staring just a foot away from him. He tried to speak to her. Nothing. Just a low hum, permanently buzzing in his ear. Actually not really in his ear, it was rather in his brain. Wedged in his thoughts. A sound-based scaffolding holding up the framework of his mental processes.

Why couldn’t he move or speak? Had he been abducted? Ridiculous. His perfectly linear, epically banale, routine-driven life - as Lara loved to define it - didn’t contemplate adventures of the sort. Not much money and a pretty inconspicuous home.

Ok breathe. Breathe now. Such a simple primordial instinct. A deep breath. Not possible. How was this? No breathing? Then a thought came to him. Breathing was redundant. A useless, primitive, purely physical, animalistic necessity. He began remembering things he had never known. Very important things. Issues about his presence in the room. Questions on pure form. Being present without existing.

This girl who had walked in, did she know who he was? Of course she didn’t. Nobody knew who he was. There was in fact nothing to know. It was irrelevant. It was a question of functionality. Of being necessary. Was the woman aware he could observe her as she was at that very moment? Could she see he could watch her, evaluate, think? Immediately he knew this was irrelevant too. For as he had no way of expressing anything, there could be no communication. Or rather, there was a communication, but an out worldly one, based of inputs, traveling across purely virtual planes.

Streams of code flowed at regular intervals into his mind, screaming patterns of electronic impulses to him, bouncing data behind his thoughts. Like a freezing fluid expanding in a flash in all the veins of his body, he felt the overflow of electronic commands coming from the girl, typing on the keyboard. Electronic logic cut through his mind, his synapses pulsating to allow the software to respond. He was a neural go-between. Yet he had no conscious control. As if he was subjected t to repeated sexual arousals he had no way to repress or guide. In the same way, his electronic actions unraveled and developed automatically before him.

He reflected on his current state. The world had indeed evolved in his absence. How many decades had passed? He would never know. Maybe centuries.

Lara. Your smile. My fingers stroking your jet black hair. The many painful goodbyes. The warmth of your body. The warm water. Your tongue. Teeth. The children, so tiny in your arms. The images formed and decomposed into pixelated fragments of code, fading into a horizon of binary events, in a melancholy ballet of distorted artificial sensations.

The world had eventually developed into an entirely web-based society, constantly requiring a dynamic evolution of its artificial intelligence. The trillions of chemical computers’ liquid circuits, riddled with vials of genetically transformed organic substances, reacting with each other at molecular level, could not be operated without neural interfaces.

And so it was that they found a solution. They found it in the dead.

So there it is, before thee, dead man! Behold the future of mankind. Each single life of memories and emotions, dreams and delusions, encoded to serve the planet of the machine.

The dead be condemned to an eternal non-life of awareness and unconsciousness together, embedded within the folds of the omnipresent information technology.

It was a cloudy Thursday when Wendy woke up to start her day. She prepared her clothes, took a shower, grabbed a yogurt and drank some coffee. She entered her car and listened to a podcast as she drove to work. She parked her car in the Target parking lot and proceeded to get into her office. Kim her employee stopped her “where are you going?” Wendy replied “What is wrong with you, Kim?” She looked at her confused and shook her head. “You do not belong here” Kim continued “how do you know my name?” Kim looked annoyed and she turned to get security. “I am your boss” Wendy protested “I give you your job”. “Kim , I went to your wedding last week” Wendy said as she saw Robert the security guard approaching her. “Ma’am, you need to leave the store immediately” Robert barked. Wendy could not believe it. It was yesterday that she had a birthday celebration for Robert. She even took pictures on her phone. “Stop!” she yelled “I will show you the pictures on my phone.” They paused for a minute and allowed her to show the pictures. “How did you get these pictures?” they asked simultaneously. “My name is Wendy Gary” she said “I have been running this store for ten years.” “I have hired both of you” she continued “what is wrong with you?”Robert and Kim stared at Wendy. Wendy show them some pictures that she took during employee appreciation month. Wendy also showed him pictures of her at their special occasions such as weddings and birthdays.It took 15 minutes when they suddenly realized who she was and they apologized profusely. Wendy was allowed to go into her office. She put her head on the table and take a few deep breaths. She wasn’t sure what happened today. All she knew it must been a full moon.

“Grandpa!” I exclaim, walking in. “I brought you some presents!”

I stared at my grandfather with pity as he was forced to be stuck in this hospital when there was nothing wrong with him.

Hopefully, these presents would cheer him up.

Grandpa was one of my most favorite people in the whole world. He tells jokes, he is so wise, and he spends all day playing with me.

“You see, Grandpa,” I point at a drawing of our backyard where we spent so many days playing. “Just be a good patient and we can be back there soon. For now, it can help cheer you up!”

I hung it on the wall.

“Girl…” Grandpa says.

I frown. He only calls me ‘girl’ when he’s mad at me. This weird hospital must be making him feel cranky.

“And I also got…” I start.

“GIRL!” Grandpa interrupts. “Who in the world are you?”

I blink. “Me? I’m Emma. Your favorite and only granddaughter?”

“I’m sorry,” Grandpa shakes his head. “But I don’t know you,”

“But…” I resist. “But…”

The next passes in a blur. My mom picks me up——Grandpa doesn’t recognize her, either——and she sits on the bench outside the room and tries to explain to me. She says that Grandpa is really sick and lost his memory and we should try to be patient.

But I can’t.

All those days playing and laughing, hugging and crying, and being there for each other. All our favorite memories. Gone.

He doesn’t even know me anymore.

I start crying, big fat flowing tears like an absolute baby.

“He doesn’t remember me,” I whimper, sobbing. “He doesn’t remember me,”

I have a theory. It is probably wrong, but on this very strange day it has mysteriously fallen inside my head, and so I feel the need to tell it.

You see, every year, every hour, every minute, and every moment, is a part of the great concept we call time. Time has been a thing for a good while now, but each of these bits are the building blocks that make up time. Time-blocks, I call them. Little boxes that contain the happenings of everything in that division of time, and every alternate dimension and circumstance which could possibly occur in that time. So, for instance, the birth of a healthy baby, an unhealthy baby, and a miscarried baby, all in one of these time blocks, but the baby is the same baby for each of these situations; it’s the dimension of time in which the baby is born that differs.

So what does happens to all these time-blocks? In my theory, the blocks position themselves all together, attaching up down and sideways, in all different directions and mismatched ways, until together they form a line. This line, I like to say, is what we call all of time. The beginning of the line is, the beginning of everything and anything, and the end is the end. There is not just one, however, but an infinite amount of time-lines. The lines converge, twisting and turning and building onto one another like a braided rope, until they are so thick that they form a wall. Such a wall is what we have named as the space-time continuum. It exists not only in the sense of things happening in order, but also in a certain place.

Now if these time blocks and time lines were to exist, could we then form a time cube? A structure of time in the third dimension? Of course. But it would not just be a cube; time is infinite and grand in every and all respects, and it would not settle to be a mere cube as it builds itself up and up and up into existence. It would only settle for a massive structure, one worthy of a kingly, no, divine, being, one who rules all of time and space and everything in between. A castle, perhaps, or a palace large and wide enough for uncountable amounts of life and non life . A palace of time. A palace which we call the great universe.

Who dwells in such a palace, a fortress of everything in the physical and non physical worlds alike? It is neither animal nor human, cultured or uncultured, gendered or not gendered, separated or a whole; it is one being that cannot be described, but is named only as a being, and by the term ‘being’ only because there is nothing within the realm of human language that even comes close to what I am trying to describe. It has no face, no body, no physical presence; and yet, it has conscience, it has thoughts, and it has communication. It is the master of all time, living in a palace of time blocks and time lines and time continuums, and it is above all and everything, as it is as at the head of all types of happenings in the universe.

I tell you this theory, once again, because I do not know where it came from. It only dropped into my head but a mere few time blocks ago, and I have no idea what prompted it. But you see, I need your help, because I am in a very unfortunate situation: I seem to remember everything about my past life, my first life, before everything changed. I am still me. I am still human... in thought.

But no one, past or present or future, seems to know who I am. I have fallen into this position unwillingly, and I have adopted this theory as the theory of how All Of Time came to be, and how I came to be, even though it is not really me at all. No one else here knows I don’t belong. Someone put me here, and someone fled. Someone fled from this position and I don’t know why, but it couldn’t be for any good reason. Boredom? Anger? Fear? I’m not sure.

But I know I am now the great being of All Of Time.

I am the owner of the universe.

And I need your help getting home.

The alarm on Milan’s phone goes off at 5:45am. She rolls over and smacks the phone with the palm of her hand. It keeps beeping. Irritated, she blinks one eye open and points with her middle finger pressing into the cracked screen of her phone. The alarm stops. She sighs. Her head falls to the pillow staring up into the morning darkness.

With her head sunken into the down pillow, she realizes that she didn’t remember cracking her phone. She puts it on her list of to do’s to get fixed.

She gets out of bed and looks over at the sleeping mound of shadows next to her. She breathes deeply like a gong resonating in her chest. Even after all these years, she still loves looking at him. Could use his help more often she thought but still loves him.

Making her way to the bathroom, she shuts the door behind her before flicking on the light. She looks at herself in the mirror. Her pink satin nightgown matching her silk bonnet. She inspects her face, lifting up the neckline unsure of how that will fall. Eventually it’ll age but not today. For that she was very thankful. Another day with a faithful husband. Tomorrow will sort itself out.

She turns on the water and grabs her toothbrush. She wets it, throws some toothpaste on it and shoves it into her mouth. Water drops onto the marble countertops. She studies herself as she brushes tilting her head in different angles. She stops.

Her brush dangles between her second and third bicuspid stuck between clenched jaws.

There’s a mark peaking out from underneath the bonnet. She yanks the toothbrush out of her mouth, drops it on the counter and spits.

Her forefinger and middle press onto the deep cut peaking out from underneath the silk stitching. She pushes it up and up and off.

Her curls tumble up and out like a slinky meeting gravity. She yanks her hair apart tracing the deep cut kept joined together by dried blood. She traces it from her temple to the top. It stops at the back of her head. Jaggedly like it was made with a blunt object.

Michael’s alarm goes off in the bedroom. He shuts it off.

Worried about her new discovery, she calls out to him through the closed door, “Honey”

Silence

She let’s go of her Vice-like grip on her hair. The hat relaxes into place. She calls again, “honey”

Nothing

She runs a bit of water onto her fingertips and wipes off the toothpaste residue from the sides of her mouth. She looks at herself one last time and opens the door. It slides into the wall. She looks up and Michael stands on the other side.

“Oh honey, why didn’t you answer me when I called and where’s your mustache? Did you shave it in the middle of the night?”

“Who the hell are you”

She blinks, “huh?”

Michael’s voice becomes alarmed as he gets over his shock, “How the fuck you get in and whatcha doin in my wife’s clothes”

“Wha? whayou talkin bout? I’m your wife”

She points to her self with her thumb. A small voice calls from pallet in the darkness, “ma-ma”

Milan steps to the side of Michael making her way toward the sound of her child. Michael grabs her arm. Hard. She looks up into his eyes from the light in the bathroom. It’s vacant

Michael calls over his shoulder, “stay there, mommy’s not here. Go find bubba and stay there.”

His voice gets louder as he calls for help, “Jacob! Jacob! Get up! We have an intruder! I’m calling the police”

Michael pulls out his phone with his other hand

“Intruder? Where? Michael what’s happening?”

Milan tries to twist her arm out of Michael’s tight grip so she can protect her child.

Pain shoots up her arm and into her chest as her hand goes behind her back and up. Hard.

She cries out, “Ow! You’re hurting me! Michael let me go! Bella come to mommy”

“No, Bella stay there”

Her forehead becomes hot and her feet cold. He shakes her whole body with his one armed grip and yells, “how’d you get here!”

“Dark Mommy”

Milan’s head spins. She smiles sweetly into the darkness “ok sweetie, let mommy turn the light on”

“That’s not what she meant”

Milan’s breathe catches. Her lungs don’t expand. She hears the operator on the line, “what’s your emergency”

“Yes I’d like to report an intruder. The address is 336 West Faithrock Hill”

She doesn’t hear the rest. Her body feels like liquid. Just milk in a ziplock bag. You never know if it’ll leak out onto the floor. The second alarm on her phone goes off letting her know to get the babies up. It keeps going. And going

Footsteps like clown shoes on a stick come down the hallway. The door opens and the light switches on. Milan’s left eye winces. A gangly 12 year old boy stands in the doorway of her bedroom.

“Dad! Who’s that? Bella come here”

Jacob crouches and opens his arms for Bella to escape the loud grown ups. Her little two year old feet barely holding her chubby body upright as she runs from the pallet on the floor next to the big bed and into her brother’s arms. His lengthy arms enfold her and allow her head to disappear into his band shirt.

Michael drags Milan out of the room, across the hall and tumbles her down the stairs. Milan lands on her bum with her legs splayed up the stairs. She tries to use her free hand to cover herself as Jacob looks down the stairs following at a safe distance. Michael drags her to the foyer. He’s still on the phone with the operator. The woman on the other end asks alarmed, “sir, does she have a gun?”

Michael looks into the phone like the operator asked a stupid question. She knows the reaction all too well. She’s seen him use the reaction many times before. This is the first time he has used it towards her. She feels small inside. Alien. She feels like the pictures on the wall. She recognizes the design and furniture but the pictures and wallpaper are not apart of her. Pastel instead of jewel tone. Silver instead of gold. So much plantation wicker. Inside. She shakes her head.

Michael readjusts his grip twisting her shoulder up and above her collarbone line.

“She’s a stalker! She knows the names of my children and she’s wearing my wife’s nightgown. And I don’t know where my wife is. Get her out of my house!”

Cop lights flash in the windows. Milan looks back at Jacob who’s halfway down the stairs with Bella still in his hands. She reaches her hand out pleading with her teenage son who looks just like his father, “Jacob, please, I don’t know what’s going on. What did I do? Help me sweetie”

Jacob holds Bella tighter and leans back on his heels. He whispers, “Who are you?”

Milan and Jacob stare at each other before Milan’s head finally falls to her chest in defeat. A picture frame catches her eye on the foyer table. Simple picture set up front and center for the whole world to see upon first entering the home. A Madonna and child sitting together in a loving pose. The mother looking so much like Bella that it would be unmistakable to assume it was anyone other than her mother.

But the woman sitting with Bella is not Milan.

Milan throws up.

Michael curses and cries into the phone, “she’s drunk too!”

Michael opens the door to five cops. The lead cop asks Milan a flurry of questions, all of which she can’t answer. The lead cop flashes her light into Milan’s eyes. She speaks to Milan in an authoritative way that does not ask for a response. The lead cop nods her head to her colleagues. They cuff Milan and duck her head into the back of the charger. She looks straight ahead with her shoulders bare and her right foot missing a house shoe. She notices that the front left bush surrounding the drive is taller than the others. She makes a mental note to have it trimmed.

Milan’s body moves forward and then back as the car takes off to the station. Two cops stay behind gathering statements.

As the junior cop fervently jots down Michael’s statement, a gentle middle aged man with salt and pepper hair and kind eyes bends down eye level with Bella. She sits on Jacob’s lap curling her brothers hoodie cords around her palm.

The man removes his hat and offers his own pal for her to place hers in it. He tentatively wraps his larger hand around hers.

Bella looks at the gentle man and then points to dining room window facing the street. Spit drips from her bottom lips as she says

“Mama”

“You really have no idea?”

“No.”

Benjamin stared at her, shocked beyond belief.

“You’re telling me that the last five years just suddenly left your head?” He asked bitterly.

He felt his heart sink when she shook her head.

“Grace come on, we met in fifth grade, you had just moved and were terrified of meeting new people. We became friends soon after, we started dating our second year of high school, I proposed to you, we’re supposed to get married tomorrow! We even have matching tattoos!”

Benjamin showed his wrist to her. There, was a tiny infinity sign, he hoped she remembered at least that.

Instead, Grace looked back at him, fear in her eyes.

“You’re crazy! I don’t know who you are!” She yelled.

“Grace, I didn’t mean to scare you, but just listen to me-“

“No! Get away from me right now or I’ll call the police!” She threatened as she ran away.

“Grace, wait!”

Grace ran until she was out of his sight. Just to make sure she wasn’t crazy, she looked at her wrist.

She stared.

There on her wrist, was an infinity sign. Just like the one the man had shown her.