Sometimes, the future hinges on a whisker of a moment, as if time were a wild animal. That weight in the air as seconds prowl past, I smell it on your breath as you curl and uncurl your fists— left, then right, then left again.

The harsh fluorescent light inside the underground carpark forms a halo around your head; outside, the blue-red-green neons blink “HEAVEN’S POOL PARLOUR” on and off, on and off again, throwing colors on your trademark white t-shirt over blue jeans— plain white, so that no one could see your wings.

No one, except for me.

We stand one foot in, one foot out, hovering on the boundary between the silent fuel-guzzlers and the streetlight-polluted night, loitering in that folded dimension between a promise and a lie; an impossible origami. I handle the pool cue I’d swiped from upstairs. It’s smooth, straight; all the things I’m not. But I could be deadly with this— just as you could be lethal with that tiny cube of billiard chalk I saw you slip into your pocket. 

All the same, I doubt you’d make the first move; you’ve always been that angel— steadfast, true, unwavering. Me? I have transgressed once too often, fallen twice too many, my wings long since clipped. Guess I might be adding another line to my ledger of sins.

“I’m sorry.” I try the words, their shapes alien in my mouth, and witness the twist of expression crossing your face, halfway between confusion and concern. Is that a glimmer of grief-love? A sliver of sad-hope?

When you finally speak, your voice comes soft but steeled.

“We had an agreement,” you say. Your eyes no longer look at me, they stare off somewhere behind my left ear, perhaps at the devil that sits on my shoulder, the one that I’d jokingly given a name to— that night when we downed too many G&Ts debating if humans really came from Andromeda, the time you insisted that such an explanation would account for the angels, but not the demons. What did I name him? I can’t remember. Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore, because the moment you step into the portal inside your car and leave me to them, the nocturnal beasts— his deed is done, and I would be done for.

“I know I shouldn’t have …” I try again. 

I shouldn’t have gone off on my own, shouldn’t have taken things into my own hands. Shouldn’t have given up on us, shouldn’t have let our magic wither— but the choice was made for me and I…

Is that a look of disgust? Disdain?

Beyond the neons and the hush of the empty highway behind them, a single line of trees stand stoic under a full moon. Symbolic as a nature strip, but copious cover for lurking creatures, ticking forward in the dark. 

I weigh the pool cue in my right hand. Me and a stick, against the time beasts. 

Alone, I might not survive.

“You let one of them get close.” You relax your shoulders, but your hand is in your pocket. The one with the chalk. “You knew what could happen.”

I can’t bring myself to meet your gaze. “Yes, I made a deal.” 

“To leave me?”

“No!” The voice that bounces against the colorless concrete doesn’t sound like mine. The tip of the pool cue feels soft under my thumb, unlike the solid shaft of the wood. “Would you have forgiven me if I’d just let them take me? When another would have come for you next?”

You stare out at the horizon, at those trees. At those shadows, moving unseen.

“Perhaps,” you say. “Perhaps not.” 

Maybe we should’ve been more afraid of the beasts within us.

Maybe, there might have been a time where you went on without me, or me without you. Or a time where we escaped this trajectory, a time when none of this existed and we wouldn’t have to fight another night to survive. In every version of this world, entropy corrodes; the time beasts always win.

But when your right hand reaches for my left, I no longer know which probability I live in; within so many of them, time has sunk its teeth into my skin, shredding my soul as fodder for the hungry hours. 

There is chalk on your fingers. I grip them tight.

Somehow, I’ve ended up in this improbable one with you. 

Maybe we could do battle again, side by side, just for one more day.