Please forgive Zaedah for presenting a less-than-chipper tale...
Birth of a Mantra
He wonders, because traffic jams are vacuums of breeding thought, why they never did. It's nonproductive, like the road rage that likely triggered the accident ahead. Though clocks hands are freely manipulated, the reality of minutes stubbornly stick to schedule. He can't go back to observe, question, hint.
Warn.
Time presses forward even after their time stops.
Sappy romantic, his wife labels him. The realist said "I do" in an extravagant princess gown without ever subscribing to the theory of fate. Maybe if she'd have met them, she would have recognized the knotted strands of destiny that played them for marionettes. They'd spent years swinging with erratic momentum on fickle strings, the turn of the globe sweeping them close when the axis saw fit and then pulling them apart because even magnets know how to repel what they can easily attract. The constant motion tangled the essentials. He'd found something to envy in such inevitability, but upon inspection, dazzling promise is often tarnished beyond shining.
It's only behind the wheel that he thinks about it.
Beside him lie the unnumbered pages of a manuscript. It's taken three years, an ill-advised marriage and breaks between diaper duty to complete. The literary duo that had made him bankable has been shelved to make way for a new series. One that hurts less. A nerd who hacks his way into the improbable world of time travel, the pure fantasy is considered childish by his bride and profitable by his agent.
There were only two possible ends for Tommy and Lisa; the final mirroring of their fleshly counterparts or a fabrication based on wishful thinking. Financial gain by either method sends bile sprinting into his mouth. So they are laid to rest with unfinished lives to fill the grave of blank paper.
They were killed on a Tuesday.
He'd worn a new suit that day, eager to show his fashion conscious mentor that he could pull off Italian designers too. The fit hadn't been quite right, a little loose in the shoulders. A few days later those shoulders would heft one corner of the weight of a casket. There was only one that day, though two would be mourned. She'd been packaged in some way and sent home, dust returning to dust. He would have protested being commended to a plot of earth so far from her.
There was much to protest in the days to come.
It was his government's protection of the suspect on the basis of valuable testimony that convinced the eternal probie to hand in his badge. Once his intended found an opening on another continent, he'd packed up his typewriter, sworn to a life of the written word, faced three years of blocks and finally twisted himself into a character. The idea had come in a dream, as did the wisdom.
Never end a story in tragedy. That's what life is for.