This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Saturdead on 2024-03-09 05:21:52.

[Part 1] - [Part 2] - [Part 3] – [Part 4] – [Part 5] - [Final]

After leaving the set of ‘The End of Eternity’, Seb and I went west. We didn’t stop until every sign pointing us back to Chatter Blinds were far off in the rear-view mirror. The highway was as open as ever, but I couldn’t help but to feel trapped; like some cosmic shackle had bound my life to what’d happened back there. Even if I never saw or heard from any of them again, there was no way I’d ever forget what’d happened.

After an exhausting trip, Seb and I finally parted ways at a roadside diner. He was going back home to his girlfriend, and I was gonna pick up my job working the projector. It wasn’t much, but I needed to get back to something mundane to process it all. To come down.

We had a meal and hugged it out in the parking lot. We didn’t say much. I wished him the best, and he did the same. But as he got back in his car, he asked me a final question.

“If I hear something, do you want me to pass it on?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Sure.”

I didn’t really want it, but I didn’t expect him to hear anything either. It was over. It was done.

 

And for a long time, that was it. Six years.

Six years of pretending to live a normal life. Dating back and forth. Showing movies to the late-night crowds. Getting promoted to general manager and handling the shifts. I ended up in brief but stormy relationship with a Dutch woman that almost had me killed. Long story, but that’s what life’s about. A whole bunch of long stories.

Six years after the filming of the ‘End of Eternity’, I was in a slump. The movie was never shown. Sure, I got the check in the mail, and it was substantial, but money just sort of leaks out of your account over time. It didn’t take long for all that hard work and suffering to be turned into a cheap replacement car, new kitchen floors, a suit, and the various day-to-day minutia that no one really pays attention to.

I was as broken and stuck as ever. My new position afforded me a slightly more flexible schedule, and a place with one more room, but that was pretty much it. It was the same job. The same people. The same movie trends bringing in the same crowds.

Then, I got a call from Seb.

 

Seb Digman was a family man by then. I hadn’t heard much about it, but I got the impression that he had a troubled family life. I knew of his one kid, little John, but I think he had a second or even a third kid with another woman. Either way, he was steering dangerously close to deadbeat-dad-road, and he’d long since taken his hands off the wheel.

But talking to me was different. It was like nothing had ever happened. Just two excited friends, eager to meet. He told me about coming to town in a couple of days to sort out some family stuff, and he thought we could catch up.

“You said you wanted me to let you know if I got something,” he said. “Well, this is it. I got something.”

 

I met up with Seb at an old corner pub, the kind of place that’d been around for generations. I could easily picture the folks behind the counter having been there since the civil war.

Seb was good, all things considered. A little heavier under the eyes, but still as upbeat as ever. The scar on his hand from being nailed to a tree was as obvious as ever though – he wasn’t getting rid of that anytime soon.

We had a couple of beers and talked about our lives. He had a lot more to say than me, but the story about my Dutch ex-girlfriend gave him a couple of laughs. But when it came to the meat of the conversation, the tone took somber turn.

 

“I’ve been keeping my ears open,” he said. “The movie’s out there, but it’s mostly shown at private parties. Small gatherings – people close to Hampton.”

“Like a home movie kind of thing?”

“Yeah, like that,” nodded Seb. “It’s… fucking weird.”

“So what’s the big news?”

“Well, there’s gonna be a showing pretty soon,” Seb sighed. “And, uh… it’s not far. There’s this up-and-coming finance guy who’s expanding into the entertainment industry, and Hampton must’ve gotten whiff of him.”

“Sounds… exclusive,” I added.

“It is,” Seb agreed. “But the guy is like… what, 21? And his mom is, uh… an old acquaintance of ours. We can get a foot in the door.”

“Through his mom?”

“Hear me out on this.”

 

I heard him out. I didn’t like it. He made an argument for it, explained how it was all set and ready to go, and finally just asked me to go – as a friend.

“Can you live your life without knowing what this was all about?” he asked.

And no, I couldn’t. I really couldn’t. Not even then.

 

This man’s mother was none other than Ariel; the ringleader from that group of violent locals back from Chatter Blinds. Turns out after getting severe burns on most parts of her body, a lot of the fire in her burned out. Having turned docile, wheelchair-bound, and lethargic, Ariel had spent years trying to find a way to come to terms with her past. This was a way to do so – to see the source of her pain with her own eyes – and to apologize for her past misgivings.

This had turned into a sort of enemy-of-my-enemy kind of deal. Ariel had long since realized that her problem wasn’t with us, but with the various powers-that-be that pushed that whole film into the realm of the senseless. After a long discussion, she and Seb had agreed to put their differences aside. She would get him a couple of invitations to the screening, and in return, he’d grant her the peace of mind that only forgiveness could bring.

I wasn’t buying it. I’d seen that woman’s eyes, and I couldn’t imagine anything but hate coming from them. But then again, last time I’d seen her, she’d almost been burned alive. That changes people.

 

On the day of the screening, Seb picked me up in his ’68 Frogeye Sprite. We had a couple of Slim Jims as a dinner snack. I could tell Seb was nervous, but it was impossible to say exactly why. Maybe he was excited to leave this chapter of his life behind, once and for all. Or maybe it was something else. Either way, I could tell something was off. He barely said a word on the drive up, keeping his eyes on the road and his breathing steady. But he did say one thing that made me raise an eyebrow.

“There’s a storm on Jupiter,” he said.

“Sorry, what?”

“There’s a storm on Jupiter,” he repeated. “Read it in a magazine once. It’s been around for centuries. Kinda looks like a big eye.”

“Didn’t know that.”

“You can sort of see it from Earth,” he continued. “Like a large, white… disk. And it’s all storm.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“I dunno,” he sighed. “It’s just… some things are like that, you know? Without that storm, without that big eye in the sky, we wouldn’t see it.”

Looking at the road ahead, I could feel the first pitter-patter of rain.

“If it wasn’t for all that storm and noise, we might not even know it was there,” he continued. “Makes me wonder what kinda things are out there, flying under the radar, you know? All the things without storms, that just kinda… stay in the dark.”

He turned to me as he clicked on the wipers.

“I’m not sure we’re seeing the real storm yet,” he sighed. “I just… I don’t think this is it.”

 

We parked about a block from the venue. By now, the rain was coming down hard. Seb had to pull a tarp over his car, costing us a couple of minutes in the downpour. By the time we got to our meet-up, we were both drenched. But our host wasn’t.

We met Ariel outside a café, along with her son – Jonah. I could barely recognize her. Most of her face was burned, and her left eye had sunken in on itself. Looking at it felt like falling into a well. She didn’t even look up at us when we approached, instead holding a cross around her neck with both of her shaking hands.

 

We sat down with her. Jonah went to get us a couple of coffees, leaving us to stir in our own silence. It probably took Seb a solid minute to find the right words.

“This won’t set things right,” he finally said. “But it’s a start.”

Looking up at him with that one dark eye, and the other as bright as ever, Ariel nodded.

“I understand.”

“You tried to have us killed,” I said.

She turned to me, her face barely moving. Not a single wrinkle of expression changed.

“Yes.”

 

There wasn’t much more to say. We had history. We were all on our own paths, for our own reasons. But maybe this was meant to be something else, and maybe for that moment, we all realized it. Either way, we were in this together.

We trudged through the rain, making our way to a rented-out community theatre; our venue for the night. Jonah tried to keep the mood up by talking about his upcoming investment, while Seb and I chimed in with what applicable movie trivia we could conjure up to keep him interested. While I was still a hobbyist, at best, Seb hadn’t slowed down in the least. He could step back into his role at the drop of a hat.

We were among the first to arrive. There was a check-in at the door, where we were written down as guests. The place was buzzing with caterers and security personnel. There were a few othe...

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