The Last Jump
“It has to work. Needs to work,” I said. I stared at the base of the contraption praying, hoping, pleading.
Things were never meant to turn out this way. Immortality… well the downsides were easy enough to anticipate. Crops had become poor in quality, famine and poverty had swept through our lands following the war. The once beautiful and peaceful Castelluccio had been reduced to barren grounds and abandoned homes. I’d lost most of my family, the ones I’d known at least. I still had a few friends alive, but they were not well. And thus the burden of living forever didn’t seem a heavy price to pay.
I looked around the open room. Storms raged outside. This was what I’d been waiting for.
The demon I had tricked had also placed a curse on me though, any doorway I walk through takes me somewhere I did not intend. I first tore down the doors of my home so I could come and go freely. I was cautious, but not paranoid by any means. I remember the first jump, I had woken up in the night for water and in going to refill the tank I stumbled through the main door instead of the usual broken hole in the wall near the back.
The dials spun rapidly, flickering back and forth in a heartbeat. Echoing thunder and whipping winds made it near impossible to hear the normally loud whirring that was emitted.
Once the first threshold had been crossed, that was it. I was in a completely unknown land, the people around me wore different clothes, they spoke a different language and no matter what I said or tried to do, it was lost on the locals. Like a ghost living in the world of the living, I felt hopeless. I felt alone. So I went through another door. If the first jump set the wheel in motion, well then the second jump set the gauge to top speed.
The green lights along the side lit up one by one. The last step was to wait. Even after years, decades probably of optimizing, we needed a little nudge to get it going.
It had taken some experimentation to see what counted as a door. The classic handle or knob that you turn to then pull or push a door open obviously counted. I turned out that so too did sliding doors, revolving doors, and doors that required the push of a button to open. However, if more than roughly a third was removed or it had no frame, it could be considered a gate, or even simply a gap to be traversed and no longer a door. Pathways with streamers hanging down from the top were fair game and so were some larger entrances when kept open for long periods of time. I was never completely sure, but I suspected it had to do with how it was perceived by those around it.
The winds picked up, it was almost time. “You’re sure about this aren’t you, Edith? You bloody well better be, there’s no second chances here.” Thomas shouted. I was ready, it was what I’d been waiting for.
I had wanted to return home, but misguidedly jumped through every door I could. I didn’t care about where I was, when I was, who I was. I jsut wanted to go home. The thing about a “home,” however is that it is tied to who you are. Tied to your own identity. What I didn’t realise was that with each jump, I lost a little bit of that, left it behind. And no this wasn’t part of the curse or anything, it was just my own deterioration. Eventually my fixations warped my motives and I was no longer trying to return home. I didn’t stay long enough to identify my surroundings, just long enough to find the next door. It didn’t matter where I was, the only thing that mattered was another jump, racking up the count like on a scoreboard. I was immortal you see, so while I felt pain, it didn’t slow me and so obsession and pain fused together.
“There’s no way we could know, regardless,” I cried back. “This is the best shot I’ll have, it’s what I’ve been waiting for!”
I still remember the feeling of shock and withdrawl that rippled through me as I tumbled out of a doorway landing on hard ground padded lightly by a layer of grass. I turned around to find a lone, tall wooden barn collapsing from a house fire. It was the only building sight. I tried to go through the burning door anyway, but it was Thomas and his mother that pulled me back. I fought them off, but I was weak. They had to rebuild from skratch, and I had no where else to go. It took many years for me to learn to live again, and even then I never returned to who I once was. Thomas was in his early teens at the time and spoke my mother tongue and realised I could continue on here, no longer needing to jump.
Lightning cracked overhead hitting one of the many rods Thomas and I had installed. The wires glowed a faint orange. The rest of the lights turned yellow, then green as each stage came online.
Thomas’ mother was a woodworker and Thomas himself was a genius child prodigy in science. Together they built a functional door replacement that I could traverse through safely and renovated a house to allow for me to live without risk of accidentally jumping through space. Over time I met the local community, I went to markets and joined in festivities, making sure to steer clear of doors. I made new friends and picked up hobbies. While I never explained my curse to either of them, Thomas and his mother raised me as one of their family. Thomas, the bright and upbeat scientist he was, would teach me the things he studied and learned, and his mother got me to help with woodworking.
Arcs of electricity snaked their way up the walls of the portal, lighting up the chamber ceiling. They reached the top completing the circuit.
I had been happy. And yet, I was still cursed. This time it was immortality that came back to bite me. Thomas’ mother had been getting old and sick. She had held up her spirits right until the end when one morning she didn’t rise. The doctors said it was heart disease and that even if they’d caught it sooner, there wouldn’t have been much to be done. Whatever mourning I felt, I knew it had to have been crushing for Thomas. With his effervescence gone was no longer the same energetic boy that had once pulled me from that burning barn. Nothing could pull his mind from his own grief, his own fixation. I was his slow decent, and reminicent of my own downfall. He mumbled of older, better times. He murmured of days hiking with his mother, of watching her build, and him chiming in with his own design improvements. What I hadn’t expected, was for my own yearning of returning home to reawaken. I didn’t know if it was possible, or if upon reaching Castelluccio it would even be the same place I left… but seeing Thomas like this, well I now knew where I had to go.
I stepped up to the portal. One final system had to activate before it would be ready. I felt cold, shivers resonated within me, tears welled in my eyes, neither were from the chilled air, snapping wind or whipping rain though.
Nikos Kazantzakis once wrote “The only way to save yourself is to endeavor to save others.” When I finally felt it was time, I told Thomas everything. We had been sitting next a warm fire on a clear night as I detailed my journey. Not sure if he was even listening I started getting into the smaller details. I told him of my own parents, and my older brother. All of whom died in a war. I told Thomas of my deal with a demon, of my fears and my submersion into irrationality. I told him of my wish to return home. He waited patiently the whole time, until finally I was done. When all was quiet except the crackling of the fire, he nodded his head. He studied curses and read accounts of spells and magic tombs. I learned everything I could on modern electronics. We spent years building a machine that could that read my cosmic footprint and detect where my home was and create a portal there for my return. I will not try to say I did this to save Thomas from himself, because I did not. I wanted to return to my homeland, but as a side effect, it gave Thomas the purpose he needed.
Everything was ready. It was time. It was what I’d been waiting for. I turned back to Thomas. I stared him in the eyes through vision blurred by tears. “I’ll never forget you, Thomas. Truly,” I said. He knew exactly what I meant and I felt the last dozen years of his life flood through me. “You as well Edith. You saved me. Now do what you have to do.” I gave Thomas one final hug and turned, stepping through the portal without looking back.
I emerged in the late evening, to a town both familiar and distant. Everywhere I looked it was exactly as I remembered it, but somehow as a whole it was much smaller than I remembered. I returned not only to the place I had left behind, but also the time I had left behind. The fields and grass were still barren. The community was a resigned shadow of what it had once been. I sat down and cried. This was what I had been waiting for… but was it what I wanted? I thought this was the right thing to do, and maybe it was, but not for me. I was no longer the person I was when I left. I didn’t belong back with Thomas, I needed to return, but I didn’t belong here either. I realised then, that the path I took, the journey of returning to Castelluccio was what mattered. I thought once more of Nikos Kazantzakis “The only way to save yourself is to endeavor to save others.”
“It has to work. Needs to work,” I said. I stared at the base of the contraption praying, hoping, pleading.
Things were never meant to turn out this way. Immortality… well the downsides were easy enough to anticipate. Crops had become poor in quality, famine and poverty had swept through our lands following the war. The once beautiful and peaceful Castelluccio had been reduced to barren grounds and abandoned homes. I’d lost most of my family, the ones I’d known at least. I still had a few friends alive, but they were not well. And thus the burden of living forever didn’t seem a heavy price to pay.
I looked around the open room. Storms raged outside. This was what I’d been waiting for.
The demon I had tricked had also placed a curse on me though, any doorway I walk through takes me somewhere I did not intend. I first tore down the doors of my home so I could come and go freely. I was cautious, but not paranoid by any means. I remember the first jump, I had woken up in the night for water and in going to refill the tank I stumbled through the main door instead of the usual broken hole in the wall near the back.
The dials spun rapidly, flickering back and forth in a heartbeat. Echoing thunder and whipping winds made it near impossible to hear the normally loud whirring that was emitted.
Once the first threshold had been crossed, that was it. I was in a completely unknown land, the people around me wore different clothes, they spoke a different language and no matter what I said or tried to do, it was lost on the locals. Like a ghost living in the world of the living, I felt hopeless. I felt alone. So I went through another door. If the first jump set the wheel in motion, well then the second jump set the gauge to top speed.
The green lights along the side lit up one by one. The last step was to wait. Even after years, decades probably of optimizing, we needed a little nudge to get it going.
It had taken some experimentation to see what counted as a door. The classic handle or knob that you turn to then pull or push a door open obviously counted. I turned out that so too did sliding doors, revolving doors, and doors that required the push of a button to open. However, if more than roughly a third was removed or it had no frame, it could be considered a gate, or even simply a gap to be traversed and no longer a door. Pathways with streamers hanging down from the top were fair game and so were some larger entrances when kept open for long periods of time. I was never completely sure, but I suspected it had to do with how it was perceived by those around it.
The winds picked up, it was almost time. “You’re sure about this aren’t you, Edith? You bloody well better be, there’s no second chances here.” Thomas shouted. I was ready, it was what I’d been waiting for.
I had wanted to return home, but misguidedly jumped through every door I could. I didn’t care about where I was, when I was, who I was. I just wanted to go home. The thing about a “home,” however is that it is tied to who you are. Tied to your own identity. What I didn’t realize was that with each jump, I lost a little bit of that, left it behind. And no this wasn’t part of the curse or anything, it was just my own deterioration. Eventually my fixations warped my motives and I was no longer trying to return home. I didn’t stay long enough to identify my surroundings, just long enough to find the next door. It didn’t matter where I was, the only thing that mattered was another jump, racking up the count like on a scoreboard. I was immortal you see, so while I felt pain, it didn’t slow me and so obsession and pain fused together.
“There’s no way we could know, regardless,” I cried back. “This is the best shot I’ll have, it’s what I’ve been waiting for!”
I still remember the feeling of shock and withdrawal that rippled through me as I tumbled out of a doorway landing on hard ground padded lightly by a layer of grass. I turned around to find a lone, tall wooden barn collapsing from a house fire. It was the only building sight. I tried to go through the burning door anyway, but it was Thomas and his mother that pulled me back. I fought them off, but I was weak. They had to rebuild from scratch, and I had no where else to go. It took many years for me to learn to live again, and even then I never returned to who I once was. Thomas was in his early teens at the time and spoke my mother tongue and realized I could continue on here, no longer needing to jump.
Lightning cracked overhead hitting one of the many rods Thomas and I had installed. The wires glowed a faint orange. The rest of the lights turned yellow, then green as each stage came online.
Thomas’ mother was a woodworker and Thomas himself was a genius child prodigy in science. Together they built a functional door replacement that I could traverse through safely and renovated a house to allow for me to live without risk of accidentally jumping through space. Over time I met the local community, I went to markets and joined in festivities, making sure to steer clear of doors. I made new friends and picked up hobbies. While I never explained my curse to either of them, Thomas and his mother raised me as one of their family. Thomas, the bright and upbeat scientist he was, would teach me the things he studied and learned, and his mother got me to help with woodworking.
Arcs of electricity snaked their way up the walls of the portal, lighting up the chamber ceiling. They reached the top completing the circuit.
I had been happy. And yet, I was still cursed. This time it was immortality that came back to bite me. Thomas’ mother had been getting old and sick. She had held up her spirits right until the end when one morning she didn’t rise. The doctors said it was heart disease and that even if they’d caught it sooner, there wouldn’t have been much to be done. Whatever mourning I felt, I knew it had to have been crushing for Thomas. With his effervescence gone was no longer the same energetic boy that had once pulled me from that burning barn. Nothing could pull his mind from his own grief, his own fixation. I was his slow decent, and reminiscent of my own downfall. He mumbled of older, better times. He murmured of days hiking with his mother, of watching her build, and him chiming in with his own design improvements. What I hadn’t expected, was for my own yearning of returning home to reawaken. I didn’t know if it was possible, or if upon reaching Castelluccio it would even be the same place I left… but seeing Thomas like this, well I now knew where I had to go.
I stepped up to the portal. One final system had to activate before it would be ready. I felt cold, shivers resonated within me, tears welled in my eyes, neither were from the chilled air, snapping wind or whipping rain though.
Nikos Kazantzakis once wrote “The only way to save yourself is to endeavor to save others.” When I finally felt it was time, I told Thomas everything. We had been sitting next a warm fire on a clear night as I detailed my journey. Not sure if he was even listening I started getting into the smaller details. I told him of my own parents, and my older brother. All of whom died in a war. I told Thomas of my deal with a demon, of my fears and my submersion into irrationality. I told him of my wish to return home. He waited patiently the whole time, until finally I was done. When all was quiet except the crackling of the fire, he nodded his head. He studied curses and read accounts of spells and magic tombs. I learned everything I could on modern electronics. We spent years building a machine that could that read my cosmic footprint and detect where my home was and create a portal there for my return. I will not try to say I did this to save Thomas from himself, because I did not. I wanted to return to my homeland, but as a side effect, it gave Thomas the purpose he needed.
Everything was ready. It was time. It was what I’d been waiting for. I turned back to Thomas. I stared him in the eyes through vision blurred by tears. “I’ll never forget you, Thomas. Truly,” I said. He knew exactly what I meant and I felt the last dozen years of his life flood through me. “You as well Edith. You saved me. Now do what you have to do.” I gave Thomas one final hug and turned, stepping through the portal without looking back.
I emerged in the late evening, to a town both familiar and distant. Everywhere I looked it was exactly as I remembered it, but somehow as a whole it was much smaller than I remembered. I returned not only to the place I had left behind, but also the time I had left behind. The fields and grass were still barren. The community was a resigned shadow of what it had once been. I sat down and cried. This was what I had been waiting for… but was it what I wanted? I thought this was the right thing to do, and maybe it was, but not for me. I was no longer the person I was when I left. I didn’t belong back with Thomas, I needed to return, but I didn’t belong here either. I realized then, that the path I took, the journey of returning to Castelluccio was what mattered. I thought once more of Nikos Kazantzakis “The only way to save yourself is to endeavor to save others.”
3494 words
May 21, 2023
all-stories