A fantasy short story about war and regret by David Tombale: The Timekeeper's Story

The Timekeeper’s Story

The Timekeeper slowly stroked the boy’s blue black hair from his face and felt the slick sweat on his brow. The boy’s face was smudged with white ash, probably from the fires that still burned on.

The Timekeeper withdrew from the body on the table, noting sadly the holes in the boy’s sackcloth shoes and the rags that still covered his small frame. He walked to the window allowing the searing heat of the flames that were consuming the refugees’ newly made huts to scorch his skin. The guard on the tower turned his head to see the old master standing on the balcony, his short white hair blowing in a breeze that did little more than feed the inferno.

The Timekeeper sighed as he looked down on the battle. The trolls they’d grown in their labs so long ago were massed like a huge tidal wave breaking against the fortress’s massive stone walls but it would only be matter of time before they came in. All up and down the wall the human defenders ran barely keeping a hold of their large blasters while the trolls’ tank shells fell between them flinging some onto the cobbles or over the side into the waiting arms of their enemies.

The Timekeeper glanced down at his hands and thought sadly of a time when they’d held the first of the troll children. It had been such a wonderful time then, when humanity had stood at the peak of its powers, creating new life out of the myths of their fathers and now hearing those creatures howling their fury at the walls of the last human city in the world he realized all his work had been for nothing.

Unfortunately he could not stop. The defenders on the wall needed reinforcements and they needed what he could do for them. The Timekeeper turned his back on the war that had been raging on for over seventy years and when the guard on the tower turned his head to watch the old man return inside he could only wonder at how frail he appeared.

The Timekeeper returned to the boy’s side and laid his hands over his body allowing the white energy that still kept his aged heart beating to emerge. Its glow spread over the boy’s arms and legs seeking out his wounds and sealing them closed. Lastly the white energy restarted his heart and refilled the air in his lungs causing his eyes to spring open. The Timekeeper stood back as the boy rolled off the table and cast his eyes over the room. He soon found his blaster and ignoring the Timekeeper walked over to the corner and picked it up as carefully as another man would pick up a child.

There was an eagerness in the boy’s features as he looked over his weapon that pained the Timekeeper greatly but he reflected that it was far too late for regrets. The boy turned around stiffly and stood to attention his blaster on his right shoulder.

‘What are your orders sir?’ the boy asked him.

The Timekeeper glanced at him looking for any sign of recognition in the boy’s eyes but there was nothing in them, nothing at all. The Timekeeper felt all of his one hundred years in that moment but he placed a hand on the table behind him to steady himself and said, ‘Engage the enemy. Push them back from our walls.’

‘Yes sir!’ the boy responded.

He turned on his heel and left the Timekeeper staring after him. The Timekeeper went to the window and watched until he saw the boy run out in the courtyard and over to the stairs that led to the wall. In his lifetime the Timekeeper had raised over three hundred boys from the dead, one bloody battle after another until they couldn’t even remember their own names or the faces of their families and observing now as his own great grandson fired on the trolls that kept trying to rush onto the wall he couldn’t shake the feeling that the trolls might be right, maybe humanity didn’t deserve to exist anymore.

A short story about love and regret by David Tombale: Among the dust

Among the dust

The smell of dust sat around the apartment, filling the little gaps between the furniture and the floors, the picture frames and the vase where a bunch of dead roses sat. Patrick looked around the room and could only see her ghost putting up their olive green curtains or humming a little song to herself while she chopped onions by their kitchen counter.

He was lying on the floor trying to find the strength to get up but without her there seemed no point. In one hand he held a sneaker of hers he’d found at the back of their closet. It still smelled like her. Her letters were arrayed around him a little like a chalk outline around a body. She’d written such beautiful letters; not like other people did, professing love and regurgitating clichés, no she knew how to tell a story, how to capture your imagination with her passion.

Patrick only wished he’d shared her gift, maybe then he might have been able to write what was in his heart. Something like how her kiss had been the one thing he went to sleep dreaming about and was the first thing he wanted to wake up to. God how she’d laughed and fought him off complaining about his morning breath. They’d wrestle playfully until he pinned her down and kissed her all over her face lastly capturing her lips with his. She’d always lean in pressing her body against his and he’d want her all over again.

Somewhere down the hall he could hear the phone ringing. Patrick reluctantly lifted his arm and looked at his watch. It was a quarter to two, twenty minutes until the wedding. Somebody started pounding on the door and he could hear voices shouting his name but all he wanted to do was lie there with the dust. Maybe they’d find his body years from now, with the decayed remains of her letters and the rags of his black suit covering his bones.

He heard the door open and the click of heels on the wooden floors. Someone stopped by his side and sat down. When he looked up he could only see her white dress before she tore her veil from her head. She lay by his side and met his eyes. She still looked exactly the same as she had on the day he left. The same long black hair and the same intelligent blue eyes that he’d loved so much. She laid her hand on Patrick’s cheek and cried.

“Why didn’t you come?” she asked him.

“Why didn’t you wait?” he whispered.

“I did. I waited three long years for you to come back to me,” she said.

“I know. I’m sorry. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted,” Patrick said.

“And have you? Do you know what you want now?” she asked.

He moved closer to her until their foreheads met. “I want world peace, an end to starvation, the Cubs to win the World Series and that you never marry anyone but me.”

She smiled through her tears. “Is that all? So are you proposing?”

Patrick kissed her tasting her tears on her lips and felt his heart swell in his chest. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Rebecca Cousins will you marry me?”

“Hmmm,” she seemed to think about it, “maybe,” she said, kissing him once, twice then grabbing him like she’d never let go and kissing him with all the strength she had.