Note: Inspired by this cover for Strange Detractors #2 but not related. (sorry, keeps removing the link to the cover art that inspired this story.)
Rating: G
Setting: Post Peacekeeper Wars.
neon distraction (the hour is getting late)
You can hear the slow winding down of the clock; time, in a basic representation, is dying. Is dead. Buried under the weight of numbers. Possibilities and probabilities have slit its throat and you are bathed in the fluidity of time while it ebbs and flows in the final throes.
The ticking clock is still.
Time is dead. It slips through your fingertips as you try and cling for one second more; to hear one last tick. Too late. So late. Goodbye. You whisper those words and follow the weeping river of time before it evaporates under your feet.
One step and another and you're flying down the throat, watching for the sign that will let you know that you've reached your destination. You are the only thing moving once you've fallen off the road, each time hurts worse than the first time you were born. Without time, there's no lubricant to smooth away the aches and pains.
Stop. Rewind. Fast-forward. You just want to make it end but there isn't a way. You watch her in a moment, a flash, a heartbeat that no longer exists. She's weeping over the child. Yours, hers, his, and once it was ours. There are blisters and heat and raging against the inevitable and everything is laid to waste.
You flip and fly. Please god, no more. You are not you. Time is dead at your hands. It was meant to be. It's death warrant was signed over and over again each time you are born. The moment you stop being human sealed the deal.
You want Einstein to make it stop, to let you end, but he can't. With the last slide of the pendulum, he ceased to exist. There is only you. Your hand. Your heartbeat breathing life back into time.