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Ouroboros: 1

He awoke in a familiar sweat. The same dream again. Though there was something new that he couldn’t grasp in the fog of his early morning mind. “Oh well. It will come to me or it won’t,” he thought. A go with the flow attitude that he had adopted in most aspects of his life.

Ben didn’t believe in free will. His philosophy was that even if he made a conscious decision, it was the decision that he was always destined to make. Not that there was an explicit plan for his or any one’s life, but that all of his actions were governed by cause and effect. All of the thoughts in his brain were simply a larger overview of billions of atoms bouncing around like billiard balls in some universal game of pool. And like the elements of his imagined game, he and everyone and everything in the universe had a predetermined course and destination, reliant on simple causality.

When the dreams started, Ben thought right away that his unconscious mind was trying to tell him something. He had shared his experience in his repetitive nightmare with doctors and friends and family, but everyone had a different idea of what they meant. “Maybe it will come to me today,” he thought.

He arrived at the train station that morning just as he had done so many times before. He even wore the same suit. It was the only one he owned. He looked up at signs as if looking for direction, though he knew exactly where to go. This day was so familiar to him, because he had taken this trip on the same day every year since his father died.

When his father passed, Ben had moved away from the countryside and into the big city. His mother sent him to be raised by his aunt and uncle, because the loss of her husband was devastating to the effect of great depression. She was fearful of the things she might do to her son as insanity slowly took hold of her. Everyone thought she was taking it too far, sending Ben away like that, but a few weeks later she died in a fatal car accident. The accident was later determined to be no fault, but nobody in the family questioned her motives again.

Today was the day Ben had set aside for honoring his mother and father. Every year on his birthday he had taken the train back to the place he grew up; the place that his parents were buried. This day was like every other day that he had made the same trip, but Ben was skeptical nonetheless. “Something is different,” he thought to himself, looking around as if expecting it to notice him and introduce itself.

Reliving the moment again, in the train station, suddenly reminded him of the dream he relived every night since his parents’ deaths. Ben had always woken up with adrenaline pumping and sweat pouring from his body. The doctors couldn’t diagnose it and no medications seemed to help. Though he became used to the dream, he had never gotten used to the fear he felt in the dream. “There was something different about it this last time,” he thought. There was something that frightened him more than usual.

In his nightmare, Ben walks in complete brightness. The ground is so white that nothing describes that there is a ground at all, other than the apparent support under his feet. He hears a voice say “Please, help me.” The voice is calm and clear as day, yet he cannot place its source. Slowly the light dims and Ben can see that he is in a field surrounded by trees.

He only notices the hole in the ground in front of him as he looks down at the sound of grass rustling under his feet. At first he is shocked at his brush with death; had he not noticed it and taken a step forward… As his eyes adjust to the darkness before him he sees a boy extending one hand from the top of what is now clearly a well with huge, gray stones making up its rim. The boy’s face is deformed and blank. He looks up, and as he whispers his eerie plea again from a lonely mouth on a barren face — “Please, help me.” — Ben suddenly wakes up.

Ben shuddered at the glancing thought that perhaps the boy in the well is himself. He looked around at the real world to drive the thought from his mind. His fear and confusion grew as he realized that everyone in the station had stopped. The sound of bustling feet and random chatter had simply ceased. For a moment, he feared they were all staring at him, but his shame dissipated as he became more confident that all of the people were just frozen in place. It was as if someone had hit the pause button.

He let out a desperate laugh after a moment, but regretted it immediately. His laughter echoed back at him as if the entire room was empty. He might have thought he was dreaming if he hadn’t had the same dream every night of his life.

The sudden feeling of being watched spun Ben around in an effort to catch a glimpse of his audience. When his eyes focused instead on the clock, he noticed that it too had stopped. And not a moment later he noticed that all of the patrons had vanished and he was indeed alone in the great, empty, main room  of the train station. Only when the other man said “Hello” did he notice him.

The man was adorned in a seamless black suit. No fasteners of any kind could be seen. He wore black gloves and a black mask over his entire face. Ben couldn’t make out a single patch of skin. The man seemed to give off a dark glow, as if his body were consuming the scenery around it. Ben might normally have convinced himself that this was merely a trick of the light, but his disbelieving nature was quickly retreating as these strange events took place.

“Hey! You there!” Ben called out.

“Yes?” the stranger replied in an inviting tone, as if to say “I’m open for business and awaiting your inquiry.”

“Who are you? What’s happened here? What have you got to do with all of this? Where did everyone go?” Ben’s thoughts all came out at once as a barrage of interrogating questions. He was surprised at himself for being so sharp with his new acquaintance.

“The travelers have gone nowhere. It is you who have gone. I have brought you here. You are to take a great journey. Who I am will be revealed in time.”

“Am I… dead? Are you God?”

“An interesting question. No… no I don’t suppose I am God and you are most certainly not dead.”

“Well, what is this all about then?” He had begun to feel a bit more at ease with the stranger and his questions had at least begun to come out one at a time now.

The shadowy stranger looked at the clock. Its hands were perfectly still, and yet he looked at it as if time was running short and he was late for an appointment.

“I’m afraid that is all the questions I can answer for you,” he said apologetically. “You have to go now. You won’t want to be late. Your family is waiting for you.”

Ben looked up at the clock. He tried to see what the other man saw there, but saw only what seemed like a broken clock. His eyes darted back when the stranger was no longer in his peripheral vision, but the stranger had gone. For a moment, he thought that the people of the station had returned. He thought that they were all staring at him, but the thought was snatched away as he awoke in that familiar sweat.

Read the next part of the story, Ouroboros: 2.

Tags: sci fi, series, short story, time travel

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 4:32 pm and is filed under Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.