A WEAVE OF TIME by Alexander Fagerlund (2nd Place, Short July26)

It was a golden autumn morning, and soon their dog would be dead. The sky was summer blue, despite it already being October. The sun shone in through the windows of the veterinary clinic and set everything aflame: the high table in the middle of the room, the computer half asleep in the corner, and the spotless floor were all bathed in warm gold. Molly had ceased whimpering by now. From her place on the table, where her Dachshund body was stretched out to its full length, she watched the morning sky.

Anders was, he thought, not a bad person. Yes, he was the one who had decided that Molly should be euthanised, but it was the humane thing to do. She hardly even had the energy to greet you at the door these days. When she finally rose and stumbled towards you, you just had to look away – it somehow felt inappropriate to watch as she struggled, a bit like staring at someone with a disability. Besides, there was something too sad about a hunting dog too tired and broken to hunt.

The vet wasn’t a bad person either, he thought. She just did her job. Besides, you had to have a certain patience to just stand there and wait, with a jab ready to use, while a fifteen-year-old girl stood hunched over the table, petting her dog over and over and over to postpone everything for just a few seconds more.

Emma had grown pale when he’d told her about euthanising the dog. She had protested, negotiated, tried to make her dad reconsider, because it wasn’t that bad, really it wasn’t. She’d insisted that Molly was barely in pain. She did manage walks sometimes, after all. Emma had even hidden the car keys, so that nobody would be able to drive to the vet behind her back. Anders had had to drag it out of her where she’d hidden them the morning after, promising that he would only use them to go to work.

And so the days had passed, and the dog had whined and shaken and suffered, and even Emma had realised that sometimes, death is a gift.

Yesterday, they’d gone out with the dog. The air had been fresh and earthy, the kind where you can taste the autumn. They’d played together in the piles of colourful leaves Anders had raked together on the lawn. The piles had exploded as Molly had run into them in an unexpected flurry of playfulness, and red, orange and yellow had rained all around them like fireworks. Anders had looked at his daughter as she kicked pile after pile of leaves, made them burst into sprays of colour with the dog dancing around her feet, and for a brief moment he had been happy. Happy in the way where neither past nor future exists, where all the universe is here and now, and everything that means anything is so close that you can reach out your hand and touch it.  Then the dog had collapsed on the grass in exhaustion, and the moment was over.

This morning, Molly had been coughing blood, making it clear that the visit to the vet couldn’t wait another week. When Anders had fetched the leash, he’d seen Emma standing by the door, car keys in hand.

The vet gave Anders a questioning look, and he returned to the present. He glanced at Emma, who was still holding the dog. He looked back, shook his head. No. Not yet.

One day, that will be me, a small voice said, deep within Anders. One day, I’ll be that frail and old and worn out. Some day, I’ll be done with life, and then I hope that someone lets me move on. Can you ever be ready for that? Although… rather that than having dementia like uncle Eric, and not even remember that I’m old, with a body that won’t obey. Being stuck in the flesh prison of my own body, living the life of an old man, which has somehow become mine.

Anders’ hand reached out for the cross he carried around his neck. How can you let this exist? A god who creates dementia is a god with a sick sense of humour.

Emma took a step back from the table, and said that she was ready now.

“Are you certain?” Anders asked.

“Yes, Dad.” He could tell that she tried to steady her voice.

“Really certain?”

“I said yes. I’m fifteen now, in case you missed it. I’m not a little child any more.”

Anders made eye contact with the vet. Nodded. Said that they were ready now.

As the vet gave the injection, Emma stared at every little detail, fixed Molly with her eyes as if trying to remember as much as she possibly could. Her eyes were flickering around the room, imprinting every last detail, everything which made this moment what it was. It reminded Anders of when his mother had passed away. He’d furiously memorised every last detail as she lay dying, embedding the sights and sounds around him in his mind, giving his future self bridges to a time when his mother was still alive.

Anders deliberately chose not to say anything as Emma began to cry. Instead, he put his arm around her, and for once she didn’t push him away. They stood there together. Nothing needed to be said, and all that mattered was that they could stand there and share the silence, as father and daughter. The vet turned around and started fiddling with something by the computer. Anders suddenly felt grateful. Grateful that she understood. Grateful that he could be there for his daughter.

As Emma let go of him, he realised that she somehow looked older. She was slowly becoming an adult, and he never got used to it, but now she’d aged noticeably in a single morning. Every time we see death, he thought, we die a little ourselves.

The cross was heavy around his neck. Right now, Anders didn’t have the energy to believe in omnipotent goodness. It was too tiring to kill off a dog he’d seen grow up, and which part of him still thought of as a puppy, constantly running around and wagging its tail because it had too much joie de vivre to fit inside that tiny body.

From outside, a cold sun shone in over them, and the sky was an indifferent blue.

When they stepped into the parking lot, Anders thought that time was not a straight line, where before was relentlessly followed by after. It was a fog of the everyday, occasionally cleared by the big events of life, where death and birth and sorrow and joy were the only opportunities to be still and see your life, really see it, illuminated by lightning. Time was a ball of yarn, where threads of past and future days had been twisted into a great big tangle. Childhood memories were there, tied to parties and breakups and friends and deaths and Christmases and memories of days which never wanted to end – even if you didn’t always notice that they were there. Entirely different times were wound tightly together, their threads crossing. What seemed remote could be very close.

In the same way, Anders was a blend of every Anders to ever exist, of all the people he had been. He was the embodiment of all their dreams, their goals, their aspirations and shortcomings and failures. All the people he would become were contained within him.

He looked at Emma. She’d dried her tears, but her breathing was still unsteady. He’d make one of her favourites for lunch. Maybe pancakes.

They step into the car: a middle aged man and a teenage girl. In another region of time Emma is born, and somewhere Anders is old and weak while Emma sits by his bed during the last few days. By then, she’s used to death, and when it comes she recognises it as an acquaintance she’s never really become friends with, but has still known for a very long time. The moments of their lives are strewn across time like diamonds. In some, they fight. In others, they get along, and their life-threads are wound tightly together through the weave of time. Somewhere in there, there’s even a moment where a father, his daughter, and their dog play in leaf-piles bursting with colour, and where the leaves fall like the sand in an hourglass.