Short Stories

Soulmate

Every child born is given a watch that grows along with them, on it is a large number counting down. It's in years, months, days, hours and minutes. It shows years first, which almost always is after the number 17, the number of months are random, the number of days depends on your birthday and so on. What it's counting down to is the day you meet your soulmate.

A young man by the name of Ryan fully expects to meet his soulmate soon, waiting for the numbers to all reach zero. When he was born, he only had to wait a little longer than 16 years, and it's his 16th birthday. He glanced at his watch, the number only had hours, minutes and seconds still spinning, and he only had about an hour to wait. Ryan was nearly jumping out of his seat, his mother constantly telling him to calm down.

Ever since he figured out what the watch was counting down for, he had started imagining what his soulmate would look like. Was his soulmate pretty? Was she the kind of girl that wore thirty pounds of makeup? Did she dress in fancy clothing? Or was she a gamer? He didn't know, but he didn't care. All he wanted was to finally meet her. As the number dwindled down to minutes, he almost couldn't hold in his excitement.

His mother had told him of stories, stories from her childhood. When her watch had almost reached zero, a friend of hers, her best friend to be exact, came running up to her. Ryan's mother said she was crying, almost too badly to understand. Once she could finally understand what she was saying, she felt terrible. Sometimes the watches stop. Sometimes even minutes before reaching zero. What it means is that your soulmate had died.

Ryan was terrified and excited and nervous all at the same time, he really wanted to meet his soulmate, he didn't know how to react if she showed up and scared him, and he was scared his watch would stop. He glanced at his watch, only two minutes remaining, the watch can't stop now, can it? He looked around, he forgot his mom took him to the mall so it would be easier to find his soulmate. He felt like looking around took forever, so he looked back at his watch again, only thirty seconds had passed since the last time he checked. He then started to look at all the girls he could see, none of them were single it seemed, which means they found their soulmates.

The watch started beeping quietly, he looked down at it with fear. The number had reached zero. He looked around once more, but didn't see anyone that was heading to him. He then turned around, there stood a young man, about the same age as Ryan, but only a few inches taller. The boy smiled and introduced himself as Hunter, Ryan smiled awkwardly and also introduced himself. Hunter then realized that Ryan was confused, so he pointed to his watch and showed Ryan.

"The watch beeped when I got close." Was all Hunter needed to say.

Ryan chuckled in realization, not everyone's soulmate was the opposite gender as themselves, some were the same. Hunter didn't know what to do now that they met, so he gave Ryan a big bear hug. Ryan happily hugged the taller boy back, then remembered his mother was still there. He pushed away from the hug awkwardly and turned to his mother, who was grinning ear to ear. She was grateful that the number on her sons watch didn't stop, she wouldn't know what to do if it did; she couldn't even help her best friend in her worst time.

Ryan then realized that only certain people could have the same gender as a soulmate, which means he's one of the lucky few that did. He started jumping up and down like a small child and saying to Hunter that they were lucky, they were the lucky few. When Hunter asked why, Ryan just simply looked around at the couples around them. Every single one of them was a man and a woman, then he looked at himself and Hunter. He made an "o" with his mouth, then grinned. Hunter grabbed Ryan's hand and tore off to the first store he saw, with Ryan in tow and almost tripping.