Chronos

Not much happens in the town I'm from.

People get up, go to work, have a drink and a burger at Hamil's when they're done then they head home.

From an outsider's perspective, we must seem like your ordinary small town with little to nothing around it, and that might seem almost picturesque, but we don't get any outsiders here. You see, my town, the place I call home, is cursed.

No one can leave, no one can come in, and we're all stuck here. Stuck in more ways than one.

Eight years ago, on this very day, we were hosting a rally. It's an annual tradition we have around here, something that's been happening for decades. The Elders gather round the younger tribe, to celebrate the youth and the aged—the generational gap and what it has taught us. And after everyone stuffs their faces with wine and cake and light the fireworks, the oldest and youngest members of the town go to ring the bell of the clock tower.

A simple tradition, one we've had since before my great grandfather was born. But on that simple, quite, mundane night, all our lives changed.

When my little cousin, the youngest of our tribe walked up the stairs with Gabrielle, a 90-year-old woman with a cane—the clock tower was struck by lightning. And no, it wasn't like that time-travel movie.

The clock shattered, and out of it poured a strange orange substance—moved as if it was fumes but touched every single one of us as if it was a waterfall. Alarmed and panicked, we all made our way to the hospital.

Our doctors announced we were all in good health and seemed unaffected by the sustenance.

The effects didn't show until months later, when we all nearly forgot about the incident. The substance, we realised, had halted our bodies from ageing.

Our first clue, was how ineffective our clocks became. They stopped moving! Not from fault, as we switched batteries and models many times...

Time had stopped existing in these parts.

Everyone was changed that day by the clock tower, and our town has been suspended in this limbo ever since. A timeless state, with no way of knowing how long it's been and if we'll ever find time again.

Martha, my lovely neighbour, has been raising a toddler for eight years without ever celebrating a birthday. My older brother, Casey, has been suspended between adolescence, the incident happening only one week before his eighteenth birthday.

And me? Well, here's the thing. The people of my town believe I'm the only one who has the ability to save them. You see.... I do age.

I was never big on rules, being named the town rebel since I was fourteen and proudly nicknaming myself 'Chaos', but this ageing nonsense certainly wasn't something I had planned.

However, it was a blessing in disguise, as I was immune to many other things. In one attempt to reverse the effects of the explosion, the Elders released a similar substance to the one from the clock tower, replicating it as best they could. This did not have the desired effect, to say the least, as it caused a town-wide sickness to spread.

That's when we learned that time wasn't the only thing stolen from us.

All those in immediate contact to the substance died, those who inhaled it too much were sick for weeks.

Once, a runway car got out of control and hit three people, none recovered from their wounds.

Those who aren't touched by time are easily reached by death.

From this too, I am exempt. And luckily so, as I would hate to have to give up my less attractive habits, such as smoking and enjoying the occasional beer, and of course—my beloved motorcycle.

So, as you can probably tell, I'm basically a god to these people. A messiah, dressed in head-to-toe black and leather, much to the Elders dismay. They urge me to "dress the part" and "rise up to play the role I've been given" when I've been trying to convince them for years that the only thing I've been given is the ability to fashion myself some wrinkles and grey hairs.

Oh, don't worry, the grey hairs aren't showing yet, I'm only twenty-four. But I remain the youngest member of our town to sit in the Elder tribe meetings. And I can guarantee no one can beat that title away from me.

Well, anyway, I was telling you about how boring it is in Chorons. Nothing ever happens here, and I mean it. We still have a running school, but no one graduates. The classes stay the same, seniors stuck in an endless loop of teachers telling them there future is about to begin. Funny, isn't it? How meaningless life seems when there's no future to look forward to—no holiday traditions, no birthday cards, no anniversaries.

The only thing we have around here are funerals, and I've been watching my people die for too long.

Our doctors left about five years ago, when they gave up on their profession. They claimed that since they didn't manage to save anyone, and since no infants were being born, they should just leave and when their pickup truck crossed the border line in the middle of the woods, they vanished.

It should be November around now, Casey's birthday. He would've been twenty-six, finally settled on a career path, he would've probably joined my dad at the car shop by now, helping automobiles out of their sicknesses. Maybe he would've found a wife, maybe even have his first kid by now.

But Casey is stuck at seventeen and eleven months, poisoned by the mindset he is too young to make choices. I've been urging him, since the second year of our timeless environment to make those choices anyway. To live his life for himself, not a faded timeline we all need to follow.

"Easy for you to say," he'd snicker at me whenever I opened my mouth near the subject, "you have a life."

He thinks that because I'm the only one that can leave this town I have a life, that because I've seen what's beyond our borders I have more to live for than he does.

I try to explain to him, growing old while everyone else is frozen is no life. I've outgrown my older brother, I've been progressing in life when everyone around me has stayed still.

Is progress by yourself considered progress?

I'm reminded of the age old question: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I chuckle to myself, my favourite subject in school used to be philosophy, before they forced me to graduate while the rest of my class is stuck in their second year of high school.

I ponder on more philosophical questions, my thoughts the only thing to keep me company as I sit alone at Hamil's, the "sun out" curfew already in place.

The Theseus paradox; if you replace every part of your ship is it still your ship? Questions about paradoxes and time-travel and philosophical crap I can allow myself to think about because nothing really matters in this town. We're like.... Schrödinger's cat, dead and alive at the same time, suspended between two of life's greatest illusions.

Time, and achievement.

Without time, no one is scared of how slow their life is moving, or how many days go by unseized. Teens aren't walking around with shirts that say 'life is too short, live a little', because although all of us can die at any moment—they don't have that creeping fear I do.

They don't wake up in the morning, look at themselves in the mirror and wonder what the hell they've been wasting their time on the past six weeks. Why haven't they called the girl already or why haven't they went to see that show and why oh why have they been spending their days unloading dishwashers when they should be jumping off cliffs and running barefoot in the woods.

And of course, achievement can't be measured without milestones.

No one cares if they're the youngest ever to... or if they buy a house by the age of... or if their mothers gets to be a grandparents before she's...

And so, no one tries. No one has motivation, or fear to drive them towards their goals. Hell, no one even has goals. This town is a trap, a place we're all stuck in forever, with no purpose or meaning to our life—with nothing to believe in. This place is no home.

I strike the table hard and get up, grab my leather jacket with me. I lock up Hamil's as even he isn't brave enough to stay out late after darkfall and walk over to my house.

"Casey! Dad! Mom! We're leaving."

"Where to, son?" My dad says, rubbing his eyes as he stumbled out of bed.

"Away. I'm taking all of you out of this town."

"We can't leave, honey, you remember what happened to Rebecca Lahey." My mom painfully reminds me of my last girlfriend, Rebecca, the only person who was brave enough to join me on one of my errands out of town.

We were successful in leaving, to both our surprises, but when we came back in, she fell off my motorcycle and vanished, just like the doctors.

I never told anyone she disappeared only when we re entered, a lie I thought would protect Chorons from disappearing completely if we all left, and most importantly, a lie that would prevent me from being the only person who could come back home.

"Mom, we can leave, I know we can." They disagreed. But Casey didn't.

He looked at me with determination and nodded his head, coming back downstairs with a bag filled with his belongings.

"Let's go, big brother." He said, his eyes hardened with purpose.

"Soon I'll be your little brother again." I said, a proud smile on my face.

His seventeen year old self joined me on the back of my bike as we made the drive towards the woods. Just by the edge of them, where you could see mountain tops and a river in the distance was the only way out of our little town. We were almost there, but Casey was getting scared now.

"Slow down," he asks me, "we can't leave mom and dad."

"I gave them directions to the gateway, they'll come join us in the morning I'm sure of it."

This calms him, and he urges me to keep driving. The small path in the woods is familiar to me, now, after all this time I barely take it in anymore, but Casey has never been this far out before, and he seems in awe of it. The trees a dark green, one given to us by the Northern location of our town. It was nearing autumn, when the curse came, and the seasons froze to us as well—but at this part of the town, the trees developed an orange hue, the fall managed to touch them slightly.

I twist the handle of my bike, knowing if we didn't go past the gate fast Casey might lose his nerve. He takes in a deep breath, I can hear him mumbling a prayer, as my bike passes the gates.

"Stop!" He yells, and I bring our vehicle to a halt. "Chaos! We're through. We have to go back for Mom and Dad."

"No!" I grab him, scared I might see what happened to Rebecca happen to him, "you can't go back."

I explain to him why, and he looks at me funny, like it's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard me say.

"We have to go get them." He starts walking towards the border, and before I can reach for him he's already through to the other side.

"See, nothing happened to me." He turns around with a smile, but it fades almost instantly.

"Chaos?" He calls to me. I answer, but he calls my name again. "Chaos!"

"Casey, I'm right here."

"Chaos, where did you go?" Thinking it must be one of his silly pranks I walk over to him.

My body freezes. I can't get past the border.

"Casey!" I cry, as I punch my fist against an invisible wall. "Casey!"

My whole body shakes and I get back on my motorcycle. I hit the border in full speed, but I ricochet back, falling off my bike painfully. He's crying now, looking frantically for signs of my whereabouts. Why can't he hear me, why can't I get through?

I hear a strange ticking noise, one that grew foreign in my mind for the last couple of years. I look down at my arm, and my watch—one I've been wearing for vanity—is moving. It's ticking!

"Casey! My watch is moving! Casey!"

But he doesn't hear me. He's on the ground now, crying as he rocks back and forth on his knees. The ticking noise grows frantic, the black dials on my watch making full circles in a matter of seconds. I look around me, everything stays the same, but my hands are changing. I have... wrinkles. My knees give way, and I fall to the ground, but not before I try to call for my brother one last time. I feel my body almost disintegrating, my voice now frail as I try to tell Casey what's happening to me.

I'm aging, but in milliseconds, my whole life flashing by quite literally as my body falls to the earth.

I turn over, desperate to understand what happened, why I wasn't able to reenter my town, desperate to ease the pain I feel inside my body. I've been leaving and coming back for years, and never once did I imagine the possibility I might not be able to return.

I lie on my back and look up at the sky, a mural of trees with yellow and orange leaves painting the landscape. I feel the stones beneath my body and the dirt on my skin, it's almost like I've become part of them now. My breath is pained, my stomach sticking to my back as my vision blurs in front of me.

I think back to Schrödinger's cat, and the article I read that only when you call something by its name does it become real. I think back to the Elders, and how content they were knowing only I could leave this town. The rebel with a home, is what they always called me. I think back to my mother, and how she was convinced I'd always come back to her, no matter what it was I'd find out there.

When you stop believing in something, does it cease to exists?