"No Life 'Til Leather"

The Memory Remains

...

A red star illuminated the room.

From the way he was positioned, Anton couldn't really make out much of anything. There was a string of photographs hung across the nearest wall, I guess. It's not like he could even see their contents, though. Someone had puffed his cheeks up a little too much. They were bloated with purple, constantly teeming with pain. He felt an endless stream of ants crawling all over his own meat.

His own, vulnerable meat.

The nerves.

The sweat of melting fat. Soft juices bursting through his ribcage. Bones, digging through flesh and breathing in the stench of piss and vomit that had long permeated the room. A wide-open valley. The perfect family escape. Long, winding days spent at the office, left in a heartbeat to bask and sunbathe down in Anton's wide-spread bowels. Rays of sunlight felt no obligation to reach down there, actually. The con-man was a master of misleading letter pepperings and lawful loopholes. Years spent studying law, and many other useful (or not) knick knacks in the Kazimierzian intelligence epicenter that was the mobile city of Wrocław, had turned him into quite the moronic scholar. Of course, Anton had employed the true and tested tactic of learning to pass, not learning to remember, so at some point not even a sliver of knowledge had remained to stain his brain. Only the numerous PHDs and dusty doctorates, the useless titles and varying majors. All that – all those years of studying – just so that he could boast about being officially better educated than that gloomy ball of nerves that was Kal'tsit. All that, just so he could watch her frown, as she referred to him as "Doctor Newmaker."

That was the initial plan, yes.

But once he had actually returned from that backwards, neon-licked shithole, she didn't even seem to be mad at the impractical prank. With each master's thesis shoved into her face, a growing sense of warm pride spilled into her eyes, like soft ink to a glass ball of venom. Anton laughed a lot that night, buried in documents and many iterations of a few decades worth of graduation attire. He thought he had won. He thought he had finally one-upped her beyond any and all sensible reason. But did he, really?

All he did was bring a dumbass smile to her face. As her eyes scanned the countless papers, the years of sweat, blood and tears poured into words, Anton sat back and giggled. The giggles kept growing dim. More and more, until there was nothing left. In their private quarters, at a time between the rise and fifteenth fall of Kazdel, at some Victorian noble's country estate, Anton sat in a rocking chair, for once quiet and contemplative, as he understood that the past twenty or so years spent in Wrocław were completely pointless. The more she smiled, the more her eyes softened - the more Anton wanted her to sigh and tell him off for wasting so much time on a stupid prank.

But she didn't.

She kept smiling.

And he's never seen her smile like that.

He's never heard her speak with such gentleness to her words.

Such care to her actions, as they talked the night away.

Such attention to every part of him, when her tongue peppered him with questions about his academic doings.

And it all only lasted one night. The following day, this or that Sarkaz-peasant uprising had shook the nation awake, and the two had to go quell it themselves. Then, they were separated in one way or another, and a century flashed past in the blink of an eye. It felt like hours, however, for the two time-walkers.

Time had a funny, yet bothersome little twang to it. When in good company, it sieved through one's fingers like sand. But when sitting on a chair with one's chest ripped wide open, it dragged itself across the floor at a snail's pace.