The Story of the Once Called Stasis Girl
Part 4 by Patrick
Twenty-four.
Anna was twenty-four when she finally woke, and wished she had not.
The first word she spoke was his name, asking the where and what of him. None around her answered, and after a few more days in bed, she set out to find him.
Anna had found him drunk, by himself, at the park bench by the street clock where they used to sit together. Martin was surprised at first, and then asked her to forgive him — he could not wait for her. She told him it was all right, and moved closer but he shied away and continued apologizing. He asked her to leave him to watch the moon and the stars. She reminded him that they were hers too. She reminded him of the dinners, drinks and dances. He did not dance anymore, he said, and he would not dance with her anymore.
He argued that she left him, and that things whither and break. That hers was an instant compared to his eternity. She asked him if she could sit beside him, and he told her she should not. She asked again. And then twice more.
She walked away as the gust blew summer leaves off the trees, and they fell like rain. She realized that her treasure, her prize and fortune — as she considers it; them — was to meet its end. She was walking away from him. Her mind reeled from the sheer sadness of losing something that was hers for such a short while. She was seven and it was slipping from her tiny fingers. She did not want the lamp to hit the floor. She uselessly thought of him moving farther, and father, and farther still. She remembered September — she could stop the truck, but she could not stop him.
Then silence.
Anna walked back towards the park bench and sat beside Martin, wrapping her arm around his. He did not resist. For where the sky once was, the black and white of static droned. She gazed into Martin’s eyes. They were black and they were beautiful.
She wiped tears from her cheeks relieved that she had not killed the man she loved. She looked upon the summer leaves around them. Blurred cars had frozen streaks for tail lights.
She thought of what she had done and of its consequence.
Anna had done the unthinkable, she had stopped Time.
