Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
And again.
The time loop continues.
The lies continue.
The deception continues.
Reality shifts.
And she continues to live within it.
She refuses to give up the time loop.
Her mind accepts it.
She believes its real.
She believes the lie.
She clings onto it.
Like it's all she has.
Because it is.
SNAP
The loop resets, and they're back in the 1950's. They continue on with their fake lives.
She opens the door to walk into the diner. Her eyes meet her husband's, and she smiles. She goes to sit down in the booth across from him, but when she looks at him again, she doesn't see her husband.
She sees the strange doctor.
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. She opens her eyes once more, and her husband returns to her gaze.
Reality begins to shift.
Shift out of her control.
She sees his face everywhere.
She hears his voice.
She feels his presence.
And she doesn't like it.
Before she can reset the loop once more, he appears.
" Mage."
Her eyes glow gold and she makes him disappear out of thin air, but he comes back.
She glares at the sorcerer and sighs.
" Get. Out," She sneers.
" Lauren... you need to listen to me."
Her eyes glow once more and a zipper appears over his mouth to close his lips. He removes it with ease and continues.
" Lauren... this isn't real. None of this is real. Steve is dead."
She hears his words, but she does not listen to them.
" Of course he is dead... that's why I'm bringing him back."
" Lauren... you can't bring him back... it's not real."
Her jaw clenches, but she sighs and lifts her head.
" It's real... it's real," She whispers to herself.
Stephen sighs as well. He raises his hands to form the golden eldritch magic. His hands go up towards the sky and pull a part the fabrics of the reality she created. The sky goes from blue to cracks of black and gold. Cracks that form a spider-web pattern.
She looks up at the sky and her eyes glow to repair it as if nothing had happened. She looks to the doctor with her head tilted to the side. Dark clouds roll in as thunder rumbles throughout the sky.
" This is my home... you are not welcome here."
Her words are followed by rumbles of thunder as a fire ball forms in her hand.
Stephen looks in her eyes, but she doesn't see her.
He sees something else entirely.
" I understand you're in pain. I understand you suffered, but you can't continue down this path. It will leave a mark on your soul. An emptiness inside you. A void you will never be able to fill."
With her eyes still glowing, the fireball leaves her hand as she walks towards the doctor.
" What are you saying?"
" If you continue with this lie... you will become a villain. You will become unstoppable. You, Lauren... will destroy the very fabric of reality."
All of a sudden, Lauren's eyes stop glowing. The dark clouds fade away to bring back the sun.
" No... I... I-I just want to be with my husband."
" In doing so you will seek out more power... to bring him back for good. To our reality outside of this one."
Her eyes flicker back and forth between his as if to read him.
" What is this place?" She whispers.
" A pocket dimension," Stephen says, " A reality that exists outside of space and time... one of your creation."
Lauren takes a step back. She looks around at the grass and trees and sky that surrounds them, all fake.
" That's not possible... I-I only messed with time, not... reality."
" You created this reality when you changed the spell," Stephen says, "Break these earthly chains, bend and break the reigns."
As Stephen recites her own spell back to her, she realizes where they are.
Her husband's funeral.
Where, normally, the loop would have been reset.
She looks down at her husband's grave, and feels her heart ache. Tears pool in her eyes as she takes a deep breath.
" I just wanted more time," She whispers.
Stephen walks up to the woman and puts a hand on her shoulder.
" I know," He says, " But this can't continue. His soul deserves to be at peace."
With that, the doctor disappears. He vanishes from her reality.
And that leaves her all by herself.
In her own pocket reality.
Lauren looks down at the grave with her husband's name on it. She feels the pain of his loss, but it's not the first time.
She's stood at his grave stone 103 times.
She looped 103 times.
Lauren kneels before Steve's grave with tears falling down her face. She kisses the stone and rests her forehead on it.
" Till death do us apart."
She stands up from the grave and turns around to walk away. As she walks, the pocket reality begins to fade away. Everything around her shifts.
Until the pocket dimension is no more.
And the only thing that surrounds her is the reality she left. The real one. The one where she lost her husband.
She turns around to look at the tombstone in the distance, and sees dozens of fireflies surrounding the spot where she cast the spell.
Lauren smiles to herself, then keeps walking.
She walks.
And she walks.
And she walks.
No matter the distance.
She walks.
All the way to her home in Buffalo.
Where she packs up her things.
And gets rid of the rest.
She clears the house and puts her boxes into her car.
Lauren gives the house one last glance.
The house she spent years in.
The house she had a life in.
A life with her husband.
But a life that is no longer hers.
She turns on the engine and drives away from the house.
She drives through the state and on the highway.
All the way to Manhattan, New York.