The Moment Thief
Matthew Ryan Fischer
Bruce remembered things one way; Natalie the other. It wasn’t so
much that they had different memories of how they met; it was just that they
had totally different memories of how they met. Different standards of what
constituted a first meeting, different order of events, different focuses on
different bits of minutia.
Bruce remembered seeing her across the open courtyard of their
college dorm. Natalie knew for a fact that they had met three weeks earlier at
a party where a mutual friend had invited them both. Bruce didn’t remember her
at all that night. It wasn’t the alcohol or that she didn’t make much of an
impression. He just didn’t remember their conversation at all. At all. Natalie
never let him forget that.
But that was years ago and a million memories ago and time had
moved them together then apart the together again and once again apart. They
were friends and then they weren’t. They were lovers and then they weren’t. They
had many many moments between them and many many memories that had been shared.
That made for a good friendship. They knew each other well. They
remembered things. There was still a love and bond between them, even when
there wasn’t. The pain, the pleasures, the sacrifices together. All of it added
up to become a larger whole. They trusted each other. Even when they weren’t walking
and hadn’t talked for years. It was an easy thing to fall back into – a belief
that the core of the person was consistent all these years later. That the
other person was still essentially the same as the person they had each fallen
in love with. Trust had always been the foundation of their relationship. Trust
was what kept them together in this current form of a relationship.
Someone, that someone being the woman sitting across from him, had
taught him the meaning of love a long long time ago. And love making. Two not too
different and yet totally separate things. Trust, respect and admiration were
three words that had been used to define their relationship. They had decided
that was the rational approach to love. But that didn’t cover everything. It
didn’t take into account the lust or the heat of desire. It didn’t take into
account the chemicals that were released or the psychological scars or
impressions that were left behind. It didn’t take into account desire and
wishing something meant something instead of it all just being some calculated
risk management list of taking stock and balancing between positives and
negatives. It didn’t take into account that part of a person that when the
brain shut down, the body still wanted something. It didn’t take into account
the moments, the pauses, the delicate little dance between smiles and innuendo.
Trying to make such a strict definition didn’t take into account moments like
these.
Every year or so they got together and picked at old scabs and
tried to see what they could find. Sometimes it was nostalgic. Better times it
was passion. More often than not it was pain and a little bit of regret. Once
or twice it was boredom. That might have hurt most of all.
They had been talking for just the right amount of time. They had
passed the boring chit-chat phase, passed the catch up and the recaps and broad
strokes of generalizing life. Now they were into the deep and meaningful phase.
This was the dangerous phase. This was the phase with the intrigue. They were
familiar, but enough time has come and gone that there were new and fresh
experiences to explore. They had their old routine and they could slip into it
easily, but there was just enough mystery, just enough unknown to keep things
moving.
Then she yawned.
He had seen that yawn before. It was an honest yawn. Not
dismissive, just honest. She was tired. And there were no butterflies in her
stomach to counteract that. Not adrenaline pumping, not secret desires. No
passion. She was tired and it was getting late and that was that. They were too
old to power through for just a little lust.
The moment was there, and then it was gone. Like a memory
forgotten. A moment stolen. Whisked away in the middle of the night. He saw the
past. He saw the future. He saw what could have been. But this moment, this
very moment past, that had been taken from him. That had been lost. He hated
that he could see everything except for the moment as it was happening in front
of him. He lived the moment, but he wasn’t ever in the moment. There was no
such thing as now. There was always what had just happened and what could
happen next. He had no appreciation for the here and now. And maybe because he
had no appreciation for it, he didn’t deserve it at all.
Where had it gone? Who had taken it? The moment had been stolen.
He imagined a Moment Thief, lurking in the shadows, ready to steal
his joy, his happiness, his bliss. The Moment Thief had come and stolen this
precious one, ruined it. One second of the space-time gone. Lost to him forever.
What would the Moment Thief do with it? Relive it? Feel his joy, over and over.
Feel his pain. Laugh at it. Revel in it. Live a better life. How many moments
had been stolen like that? Gone from him, gone from his memory. Taken by
someone else to make some other dream with them. Time would forget. Memory
wouldn’t miss it. Memory blurs and blends and makes things up as it goes along.
Perhaps that was why he couldn’t remember all the details of how he first met
Natalie. They had been stolen away from him.
A stolen moment would be a great and powerful thing. If he could
figure that out, he could become a master of space and time. It would be a chance
to claim everything and rebuild and reuse it somewhere else. Take the little
parts away, and put into a new vat, mix them up, and watch them grow. He could
build something better. Build a world full of other people’s moments. All the
best parts. All the beautiful and wonderful moments. It would be a world of
perfection.
Bruce snapped out of it and looked back into her eyes, a hint of
sadness reflected back at him. He could see it, that the moment has passed. He
had her and then he lost her. Maybe she had wanted something to happen. Maybe
he had failed her. Or maybe the moment had. He could have leaned closer, could
have gently placed his hand on her arm, could have said the right thing, told
the right joke… could have done any number of a million and one other things
than what he had actually done.
Maybe she was just too old for this and was lamenting the loss of
that part of their relationship. Or maybe he didn’t know how to interpret her
inner thoughts as he once had. It made him a little bit sad, and sad that there
was no way to steal back those moments past. No thief, nothing to be reclaimed,
just lost and slowly faded away, back into the fog of memories long gone.
The moment was there, but now it was the past.
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