Past Mistake

"Only Time by Enya was the sweet voice begging the fear to fade away. There would be no more tomorrows. There are no yesterdays. There are only fragments, pieces of who I was, who I should've been, and the world was nothing now than a broken mirror with deep footholds. But home was nowhere. Family, friends… They were all gone. All that was left was me."

What was left of this house after the nuclear war was my only shelter to bare. Food was scarce, and if I strayed too long from this foothold, I would surely disappear. There was no telling when I would go, but I would never come back. It was always night, never day, and I was freezing as if living in space. What fires I could make were pieces of this house, but I was trying to survive. I don't know why. Everyone was gone. The world was gone.

We cheered the day we created the first robot, our slaves. We applauded the clones of man, those to provide us with a second chance, if we needed an organ or limb. We smiled when we made the first bit of dark matter to explore. We were a success finally when we broke the time barrier, and we broke the time barrier, splintering this world into a playground of era's and erasing our own. We were gone in a blink of an eye because we had to play God, and we cheered, we applauded, and we smiled like idiots. And now, those brilliant minds are distant stars in a galaxy far, far away.

Nobody knew what happened. We were so bent on 2012, thinking the world was going to end. Mother Nature was truly kicking our ass, and we tried to battle her, never thinking that the true enemy lived deep within. Once that time came and went, we crawled back to our simple lives, thinking the end was now a new beginning, but we were wrong. And I awoke one morning to find the sun refusing to rise, my bed was empty, and my family was gone.

The worst thing in this world, in this life is to wake up somewhere you don't belong. The street that I used to drive around, that would always take me home was now a large, gaping abyss. It was a nuclear war, some said, but then they too were gone, leaving me alone, leaving me to madness. I wandered still, finding pieces of a world shattered like a broken mirror, and then with horror, I watched the survivors stumble into the black holes, disappearing forever. When did they go, I'll never know, but who knows if they survived or if they are now dead? And what about me?

I'm circling the drain as I write this letter to you. I don't know when you will find it or if you will find it. I don't know if it's too late to erase what was done, but I want you to be prepared. This end might come, and you might awake in your darkest nightmare. This is what we get for taking the world in our hands and taking chances, chances better left alone. Maybe, in my final act, my life will matter. Something will change. That's all we need for something to change, for you to find me.

A knock came on the door two weeks later. A police officer handed the teenager a crumbled, frayed letter. He merely cleared his throat as the boy took it and slowly opened it. He checked his watch to see that it was getting late, but something told him to stay, something told him that it would be important. So, he waited like he had all the time left in the world.

"Where did you get this," he slowly asked.

"Off a dead body. What's the letter say, boy?" Tears shined in his eyes. "Give it here, lad." He slowly pulled the strange paper from his hands. "Your name and address was on this letter, and…" He started to read it, and as he did, his hands began to shake.

"It can't be true." The teenager watched the police officer fold the letter up and stick it in his shirt pocket. "What are you doing?"

"Nobody is to know about this." He slowly backed away. "Nobody."

"But what if it's true!"

"Then, we know when, and that's all that matters." He scratched his chin. Fear touched his heart. Somewhere in the distance, he heard that song by Enya, Only Time, and he cringed. "We know, and that may change something. All we can hope, boy is to change something." With that said, he walked away, leaving the teenager with only the ghost of himself.