Yuri POV

Unknown, 2030

 

Delving into things like fate and death, while y because of their mystique, isn’t something I ever did.

 

That was Jessica’s thing, not mine.

 

I have always been rational, logical, matter of fact.

 

She was the spiritual one between us.

 

Jessica concerned herself with a higher purpose, while I focused on the mundane.

 

It was why we worked so well together.

 

She lifted and I anchored.

 

We were two people creating life through the counter points of reality and fantasy.

 

But I tried to pay attention to it.

 

Even when it was oppressive and seemingly out of place, I tried to listen.

 

Her words somehow prepared me for what greets me when I open my eyes to a vortex of swirling darkness, and the memories come.

 

They solidify out of the void around me, clouds firming into the interior of a car.

 

 

 

 

“They look like paths,” she says quietly from the passenger’s seat as we glide past snow swept fields and barren trees.

 

“What does?” I glance to the pensive look on her face.

 

Reflecting against the gray, twilight brushed world beyond the window, Jessica’s eyes are almost black.

 

“The trees.”

 

I slow the car a little, looking for the access road that leads to our vacation house in upstate New York.

 

I really wish we would have gotten out of the city sooner and missed the snowfall.

 

It’s more appealing to imagine being at our cabin building a fire and watching the trickle of powder cover the car than trying to find a 4 foot wide road in the middle of this weather.

 

For good measure I turn up the wiper blades.

 

“Yul?”

 

“Hmm?” I focus harder on the road.

 

“It’s close now. I can feel it coming up on the right.”

 

I nod.

 

She’s always had a connection to the world, one I couldn’t understand or fathom.

 

When we were younger, I mocked her for it.

 

That was when she stopped talking about it, when it made her even more of a social pariah.

 

Her silence was so deep regarding it that for many years I forgot about it altogether.

 

I still do on occasion, because I can’t rationalize it and it scares me.

 

It is yet another nuance in her plethora of gifts.

 

I remember back to another drive like this, not to our cabin, but just the normal routine of coming home from the store.

 

We had been passing through our neighborhood when Jessica turned to me with a hollow look in her eyes, whispering that our neighbor had died.

 

When I think back on that look it bothers me.

 

Not just because of how empty and dark her normally bright eyes were, but because she had been right.

 

Jessica’s intuition comes to the forefront of my mind again as I study her.

 

We drive in silence and the wiper blades keep time with an eerie gate.

 

The swish is all I hear as I look away and concentrate on the right hand side of the road.

 

“Yul?”

 

I narrow my eyes at the expanse of snow and rock and fallen branches. “Yeah?”

 

“Do you ever think about death?”

 

I arch my eyebrow without letting my eyes leave the windshield. “A little morbid to talk about now don’t you think? I mean, we are supposed to be enjoying each other’s company and our small vacation.”

 

I see her nod out of the corner of my eye. “Yeah, I guess.” She twists her wedding rings nervously. “I just... sometimes I think about it. It gets me worked up. I suppose because it is just so out of my control.”

 

“You mean because it’s so final?” I clarify, slowing enough to make a sharp turn onto the access road.

 

“No, not final, I know there is something beyond this. It’s just...I think about things like my father, how he died. How everyone I love except for you and our future children will beat me to this unstoppable future.”

 

After we pass the last turn, I can focus more on what she was saying.

 

“Sica, you can’t avoid death. I’ve seen it enough to know it will come when it comes, and you should just enjoy the time you have.” I , “And, who the hell says you’re beating me to this end anyway?”

 

She doesn’t laugh like I want her to. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I guess I just don’t like having stuff out of my control.”

 

It’s true, she doesn’t.

 

And though death to me is a familiar face I watch stalk the hallways and rooms of hospitals, I also know not everyone feels that way. “Well, the best thing is not to focus on the inevitable. If we all get to that place, why worry?”

 

She is quiet after that, pensive. “Slow down, I have a bad feeling.” she says after a time, and I do.

 

The snow comes down harder then, as if summoned to block us from moving forward.

 

I shake my head to clear my thoughts. “You totally have me freaked out now.”

 

I lean to turn the heater up and fight the chill in my bones.

 

That is when the fallen tree shoots into my headlights.

 

I slam on my breaks and for a heart stopping moment, I’m not sure if I am going to keep from crashing.

 

But we do, the car rocking in place from the sudden stop.

 

The tree has been down for some time.

 

Wet sticky snow covering it and painting it in glitter before my headlights.

 

I ease a breath. “Wow, that was close. You okay?”

 

“Yes, you?” Jessica swallows audibly.

 

I can’t help but realize if she hadn’t told me to slow down, we would have hit it.

 

That, more than anything, makes my hands shake.

 

I check my rearview mirror and throw the car in reverse, backing up a little. “Can you see if there is clearance around this thing on your side?”

 

“I don’t think so.”

 

I sigh heavily. “I guess we could park off to the side and call the police in the morning to have the tree cleared.”

 

Jessica nods. “Yeah, I don’t think it’s far, a few hundred yards maybe.”

 

Just the thought of walking through snow in this cold with my knee makes my eyes roll.

 

A few hundred yards might as well be miles.

 

I push the thought away and remind myself that we do have a hot tub I can relax in as reward.

 

I reach into my coat pocket and don my gloves. “Might as well go then. I’m not really up for the 4 hour drive back.”

 

The snow is coming down in heavy clumps and sticks to us as we exit the vehicle.

 

I grab our bags and then hand hers over when she sweeps up beside me.

 

After a breath I lock the car and its headlights flash blindingly in the dimness.

 

With a sliver of moon between the clouds, my eyes adjust to the dark and we start forward.

 

We walk together, side by side.

 

10 steps in and already I can feel cold induced pain in the joint of my knee.

 

I distract myself by looking at the dead tree beside us.

 

Lying on its side, the branches looked like huge splitting pathways that skitter away from one another.

 

It looks amazing and in my mind’s eye could be an interesting addition to our garden. “Would you ever want brick work like this at our house?” I pat the tree’s side and litter gathered snow beside us. “You know, the paths you were talking about. We could do moss work between them too, where the little slivers are close to one another.”

 

My wife bumps her shoulder against mine.

 

In the sparse light she is cast in ebony.

 

Just the flash of her smile and the metal fasteners of her coat let me know where she is.

 

I listen to her breathe as she huffs and trudges along in thought. “Sounds beautiful, but no, every time I looked at it I would think about life and death and fate.”

 

“Oh.” I frown.

 

Well, as beautiful as I imagine it would be, I really don’t want her contemplating life’s unanswered questions every time she goes outside.

 

“Yeah.” She takes a heavier breath. “I have always believed that life is a series of paths, we come to a fork and we make a decision. We can’t go back, only forward, and slowly we eliminate all other pathways until the end.”

 

I think about it, busy myself with the idea of it. “So, like right now, the choice to either go forward to the cabin or drive home? That was a fork in the path?”

 

Jessica nods.

 

I think she nods.

 

I can’t see it, but her coat rustles.

 

“Right, and the choice we made has eliminated the other paths. Had we driven back, we would have lost these moments.”

 

I challenge her then as I always do. “But what if I stop right here and double back to the car? Then I will be on that path again, right?”

 

“No. You will be on a different path altogether. 5 minutes behind where you should be. There is a reason we make the choices we make.”

 

“What if I speed to catch up to myself?”

 

She is silent then and I feel bad for poking holes in her theory.

 

I believe in the scientific method though, hypotheses need to be rigorously tested.

 

“Maybe the paths interconnect again. Let’s assume we choose to walk to the cabin, that this choice is the right path.”

 

“We have chosen...wisely,” I quote Indiana Jones under my breath.

 

“I’m being serious, Yul.” Jessica sighs and I reach into the darkness to give what I think is her arm, a squeeze.

 

“We choose to walk,” she starts again, “but if we had chosen to drive back, maybe we were supposed to get into an accident. Maybe our path was supposed to end. Speeding up the car, putting ourselves in danger to make up for that time, could in theory make the paths interconnect. Thus, we realign and go boom.”

 

She has a fair point and when it comes to those things, those metaphysical conversations, Jessica’s fair points always give me the chills.

 

I shiver. “So you believe everything is already laid out? Fate has divined the whole treelike pathways of our life and our only free will is to choose which path to take?”

 

“Yeah, exactly. And some paths, just like some branches, end before others.”

 

“I really don’t like that idea. I like thinking I can make my own fate.” I mean it.

 

I really don’t like her idea of how life and fate work.

 

“You can, I mean...Yul, if when you broke your knee you started doing drugs rather than pressing forward, I’m sure that path would have been a whole hell of a lot shorter.”

 

“So, what if I decided to forcibly go to another path?” I try to think of something to illustrate it. “Okay, so I know that driving in the car will get me killed, so I drive slower, and stop before getting to the place where I would be hit. Then what?”

 

 

“I don’t know,” Jessica whispers. “ Maybe you change your fate and create a new path? Or maybe the universe reboots you and forces you back onto the right path?”

 

“So, how am I supposed to game the system if I can be rebooted?”

 

“How are you ever supposed to know when and where you die, silly?” Jessica laughs lightly. “You don’t game life, you said it yourself, death comes when it comes. I suppose at that point, that’s where faith takes over. You have faith that someone or something will steer you in the right direction.”

 

She always brings up the faith part.

 

I struggle with it.

 

I had once been very into my Christian heritage, but time and science and misery have taught me that faith is misplaced.

 

That my faith is misplaced.

 

God and I have a lot of serious talking to do at some point before I will feel satisfied to put my hopes in Him again.

 

“Yul?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“You should believe in something, something that can comfort you when you’re afraid. Science and religion can exist at the same time, just ask Einstein. He believed you could have both in tandem, not opposition.”

 

I dust the snow out of Jessica’s hair and bump against her playfully.

 

I do anything I can think of to redirect her from this conversation.

 

I don’t have to see her face, to know she worries about my lack of faith, my lack of hope that goodness and rightness will prevail.

 

“I believe in you angel, and right now that’s all I need.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

And though I believe she is with me and will somehow save me, I can’t fathom what I’m seeing.

 

I’m trying to, but it seems impossible as I descend into this hellish world between worlds.

 

Hazy tendrils of smoke wrap around me and I fan them away when it feels like they are reaching out, trapping me.

 

I turn in circles, or at least I think I do.

 

I can’t see myself.

 

Everywhere I look there are orange and burnt brown swirling patches.

 

Thick walls of acrid plumes billow past me.

 

Before me a vortex swirls, blacker than any color I have ever seen.

 

I feel like it’s drawing me in, pulling bits and pieces of me into it.

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