Day 230 - Time was a flood

 Time was a flood

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

“Brace yourself…” they instructed, as if such a thing were even possible. Time flow was a river that overflowed and spread in a million directions and carried you with any current it wanted. When a wave hit you, there was no preparation that would matter, no brace that would hold. There was no telling if things were on the rise, cresting or dissipating. The flow would take you. You could fight it, perhaps find your own way through, but the currents were overwhelming to most and most weren’t going to navigate a damn second of it.

Some people never grew accustomed. Justin felt like he had a grip. Some worried about before or after or the arrow of time. Justin decided none of that mattered. He had lived a million years ago and a million years from tomorrow. The waves dictated and he didn’t worry about trying to find a pattern or cause or reason. Where ever he was going or whenever he had been were just that, somewhere and some time. But when the waves came, you ended up wherever and whenever, so Justin had just gotten used to that. Not everyone did. Some went crazy. Some were swept away and ended somewhere but never to be seen again.

Justin’s mother had somehow managed to live in one place and one time long enough to give birth. Justin didn’t know how that was even possible. The longest he could remember staying anywhere was two years. The world was forest and he never saw another human while he was there. The air was crisp and fresh and clean and he could breathe in a way he had never before. The water was the best he had ever tasted. Thankfully sometime in the future someone had taught a younger him how to hunt. Justin didn’t know if he had been in the past before civilization or a million years after the fall of man. He never went back.

After each wave he had to learn where and when he was, and if anyone he knew was with him. If so, he had to determine if they were from before or after and if they had even met him yet.

He wished he saw his mother more often. Any version of her.

“Brace yourself!”

The wave was coming. There was no fighting it. Justin looked to his best friend Mitch. The wave was nearly there. He could already feel the time slip starting. He was seeing double visions and the sounds were distorted too fast or too slow.

“Mitch!” he called.

Mitch was slow to turn. Or maybe time was bent.

“If I don’t see you, I’ll miss—”

Justin slipped away into the flow of time, the moment lost in his past or someone else’s future.