With the Best of Intentions

I am dying.

It's a strange sensation, to feel the life slowly drain out of you. There is pain, of course—after all, I am not leaving the mortal plane out of natural causes—but it isn't as prevalent or overwhelming as one might think. It's difficult to put into words, but if I had to, I would describe it as an all-around physical and psychological experience that transcends anything and everything that I have experienced before.

Yet what makes my ongoing untimely demise objectively stranger, if one can think about such a matter in these terms, is that it completely defies the natural order of things. See, I will die nearly a decade before I am even born.

I could have used my ability to make myself stupidly rich, insanely famous, or both and more. I could have used it to fix my mistakes and make the right decisions where I have originally made the wrong ones. I could have built a life that everyone can only dream of, but instead, I chose to help others.

I knew I couldn't change the events that had shaped history. Sinking of the Titanic. World wars. 9/11. Personal tragedies, on the other hand, were another thing. One life wasn't going to make a difference in the grand scheme of space and time, so that's where I put my focus. Making sure that the police apprehend the domestic abuser before he goes through with his threats. That the drunk driver doesn't sit down behind the wheel and run over a pregnant mother of two going hundred and forty kilometers an hour.

That parents won't need to live their whole lives not knowing what happened to their three-year-old daughter after she had vanished without a trace from her room on that warm, summer night.

The disappearance of Betty Mason was one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the century. Decades of investigations conducted by local and international authorities and private detectives alike yielded no concrete conclusions, only a plethora of speculations, some more credible than others, but none ultimately confirmed. I couldn't begin to imagine what the girl's parents must have been going through as days turned into weeks, then months and years, and every lead, however promising, turned out to be a dead end, extinguishing their fragile hope over and over again. That's why I decided to intervene.

I expected there to be a perpetrator—the cornerstone of the vast majority of theories was that the toddler had been kidnapped rather than that she had wandered off on her own account. I expected him to be hostile and possibly armed. Yet as a scuffle ensued that eventually spilled over into the bedroom where Betty was sleeping, he still somehow managed to gain the upper hand and mortally wound me. What was worse, he intended to follow through with his original plan, even despite my interference.

I couldn't let that happen.

Each breath feels harder than the last, like someone is stacking bricks on my chest. The pain is an afterthought now, but I have never felt weaker. Darkness is closing in from the edges of my vision and with it the unknown and the unknowable.

I don't regret dying. From the very moment I set out on this path, it was clear to me that sooner or later, I would bite off more than I could chew. I guess it is ironic that as someone with control over time itself, I am unable to make my own fate.

While I am at peace with it, I do wish I could have done better. I repeatedly replay those critical moments in my mind—the kidnapper approaching Betty after leaving me in the pool of my blood, me attempting to get back to my feet and failing, then, desperation clouding my judgment, using my ability for one last time…

I wasn't strong enough at that point to displace myself and another person, and I knew that even if I somehow survived and recovered, there would be no going back. I could change the past, but I always had only one attempt to do so. Whatever granted me the power also prevented me from redoing what I had already redone.

So the solution was obvious—yet I still chose the alternative.

I take some solace in knowing that the man, who promptly fled shortly after Betty disappeared—after I sent her away—will never be able to get to her.

As I drift off into nothingness, my thoughts scattering like ash in the wind, the last thing to leave my mind is hope.

Hope that even though I technically didn't help her parents or stop the perpetrator, it wasn't all for nothing. That despite stranding her in a different world, I at least gave her a chance at life she otherwise wouldn't have.

And that perhaps one day, she will be able to forgive me.

Martin Lochman is a Czech science fiction and speculative fiction author, currently living and working as a University librarian in Malta. His work appeared (or is forthcoming) in a variety of venues, including NewMyths, Kzine, 4 Star Stories, Theme of Absence, XB-1 (a Czech SFFH magazine), and others. His debut collection "All Quiet in the Milky Way: Ray M. Holler’s Adventures vol. 1" was published in 2023. You can find him at: https://martinlochmanauthor.wordpress.com/, Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/people/Martin-Lochman-SF-Author/61552596028127/, or Twitter: @MartinLochman.

Find more by Martin Lochman in the Author Index.

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