When Forever Ends (Part 2: The Place with No Name)

XXVIII

[Part Two: The Place with No Name]

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T w e n t y - E i g h t

I drifted through a strange blackness, feeling as though I were underwater, yet still able to breathe. To my left and right were what looked like long pieces of movie film. They had the same kind of washed-out color, and holes all along the top and bottom, and the frames were showing real enough scenes. But I could tell at once that it was not ordinary film. The scenes in each frame were moving, and the strips emitted a soft glow of light. They were suspended in the blackness, stretching on in both directions like a never-ending hallway, but my movements barely made them quiver. Then I took a closer look at the images.

Each one was the size of the screen I had seen in the theatre at the facility, almost four times as tall as me and perfectly square. The one directly to my right showed my battle with Tarron, our movements slowed down so that it almost looked like a dance. To my left, I saw the Dawn's countdown and our struggle to shut the door. Everything was, again, slowed down, as if time passed slowly in that strange place. Along the hall ahead of me were other slow-moving images. Our arrival at the military base and our capture were both closer to me, while the most distant one I could make out was of our first meeting with Erin in the facility. I realized that they were memories. My memories, to be more exact. All arranged in a timeline starting at the beginning of my life.

Wait, I thought. If the past is in front of me, then... my gaze flickered dangerously close to the images behind me. Did I want to see my future? It might tell me exactly what needs to be done, I reasoned.

But then another voice spoke in my head. You don't want that, it said. Glimpsing what is yet to be would also tell you how you die.

But am I not dead already? I wondered. After all, this place seems very surreal, and I did just get stabbed in the chest by Evil's dagger. But even as I had that thought, there was still a small sliver of irrational hope wiggling in the back of my brain like an itch I couldn't scratch.

Are you? the voice persisted.

I don't know, my mind was blank. Am I?

━━━

I discovered that the easiest way to move was to think what part of the timeline I wanted to go to and a current would spring up and take me more or less where I wanted to go. I had already decided that I would leave the future for later and visit my past instead, so I thought of the beginning. Suddenly, I felt a current of the blackness take hold of me and send me zipping down the hall. Images flashed by so quickly they blurred into one another. My vision stretched out, the closer frames getting closer and the farther frames going farther. And just as suddenly as it had started, it stopped and I drifted a few frames more, then came to a halt.

In the frame nearest me, a younger version of myself sat at a dining room table. On one side of me was my dad, looking only slightly younger than he did nowadays. On the other side was a girl I immediately recognized as Erin. Mainly because of her silver hair and those electric blue eyes. And next to Erin, setting a cake blazing with candles down in front of her was a woman who was tall, like Erin, with short, blond hair pulled up into a ponytail and the same warm smile as Erin. Mom. I reached out to touch her, then remembered that it was only an image.

But as my hand brushed the film, it rippled and shimmered as if I were looking into the surface of a pond. Intrigued, I put my whole hand into the frame. I felt a wrenching sensation, as if someone had yanked me by the arm and I was falling into the picture. The scene rushed up to fill my vision, the colors becoming more vivid and the sounds of a family celebration reaching my ears. Time sped up and suddenly I was there. Standing across the table from my sister's birthday cake.