An Interesting Love

Evaluate

Word count: 2,528

"200 years have passed," I say, in shock.

"Um, yeah, I- I don't know how."

"Well you must have done something, you controlled the time freeze!"

"I didn't do anything! I swear! I don't know what's happening!"

Henry is frantic and I'm about to scream. 200 years. How is that possible? I believe that he didn't do anything, but something must have let time pass. The clock wasn't supposed to move but now it's flown off the wall. There are so few people here, too. It's Manhattan and there's no one in sight besides construction workers preparing for floods! The street I use to walk to work on has basically disappeared. I barely made it through a month of work before I left with Henry, and now I don't have the chance to return. I may never go back. What happened to the university? All the buildings that were once over there have disappeared. Hell, it looks like all of Long Island disappeared. I may never go back. Can Henry send us back? I don't think he can control time like that.

I have a realization.

"Henry, this is all climate change," I say.

"What?"

"They said that the city would flood if we didn't do anything about the climate. This means people did nothing while we were gone."

"I don't think that's really our problem right now. It's terrible but we need to get out of here."

"Where would we go? This was home," I say.

"I thought we had our home in the park," he says, "that's our home isn't it?"

I stay silent. What does this mean? My friends and family are all dead? I don't call this place home anymore?

"We need to go back there, it's safe there," Henry says.

"No, most definitely not, I need to know what's happened here."

"Why? What's the point? Everything's gone, we should just go back!"

"Not everything's gone, we just have to go further inland! I'm sure things are fine somewhere and we just need to know what happened."

"You just said what happened! Climate change!"

"I don't actually know that! What if there's a war here right now and we can never come back again? We need to know more!"

"We really don't."

"Yes we do, stop being so difficult."

I start walking away from the water and towards higher buildings. Henry follows me after a moment. He's not a very stubborn person, which helps me out a lot. We walk for a long time and begin to see people. This looks like a regular neighborhood with people walking to and from a small market. We need to go in there. I lead Henry by the hand and walk through the automatic doors. It seems like nothing has changed here. This looks like something straight out of 1980. The shelves are stocked in the same patterns and the people wait in line by the cash register. But it's silent. We are standing at the entrance when someone comes in behind us. It's an old man with a beige jacket on. He has beige pants on too. He doesn't look very tidy or clean and smells pretty terrible as he walks past us. Then I take another look around. Everyone in this store is wearing boring clothing. Everyone is older. There are no children in here and no bright colors. It looks like someone put a blue filter over the entire scene. No one is smiling. I see a woman with a bonnet on. She's wearing a plain black t-shirt with a hole in the shoulder. The hole's not meant to be there— it's a tear. The woman in front of her is also wearing a piece of torn clothing. I take a deeper breath and realize the stench of the place. Everything in here smells.