THIRD PRIZE: Hannah Contois - The Wish Carver

I never woke up. There was no gradual increase in awareness. There were no flickering eyes or twitching fingers. Everything was black, empty and blank, up until the moment it wasn’t. A flash of lightning that lights up the night’s sky, I suddenly existed once more in the inside of bolt of electricity.

I had no concept of time in the white. Hours, days, years. Any amount of time could have passed. I only knew the piercing light and the vast, sucking emptiness of my existence. I only knew the ache of a memory of a warm palm in mine. I only knew the stifling silence without my daughters’ chatter and the pressure in my ears as I tried to listen for them.

“Are you willing to pay the price?” A young man’s voice slipped into the space that I wandered around, the first sound other than my own voice in this shrieking silence.

I whirled and there was a boy. No older than 13 or 14, he rocked back on his heels, hands in jean pockets, watching me. While his face appeared young in the long but soft way of young men’s faces, his eyes were ancient, timeless. Black as night. Black as the darkest part of the ocean. Absorbing without a speck of light in their depths. Shark eyes.

Surprised, I stumbled back and he watched me fall without the slightest sign of reaching out to help me. The smallest hint of a smile played with his lips, pitying and yet self-satisfied. Unruly black curls puffed away from his forehead like dark rainclouds under his hood.

“Tell me,” he said, tone sardonic and cynical, like he already knew what my response would be. “Are you willing to pay the price?”

I swallowed hard, thinking that it should hurt to swallow around the lump in my throat. “Price? What price? Who are you?”

He untucked his hands from his pockets, bowing like a jester. “I’m the Wish Carver. For a price, I will grant you a wish.” He glanced up at me from his bow, eyes glistening from below the edge of this hood.

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t have one. Or if I did, I’ve long since forgotten it in the eons that I have been here serving the souls who cry out for change. For a wish.”

“A wish?” I breathed, my family filling my thoughts; my daughters’ shining blue eyes, my husband’s smile that could fix even the darkest of my days. “Any wish?”

The Carver shrugged lean shoulders. “If you’re willing to pay, there is no end to what you could have.” He swaggered in a circle around me. “Fame. Riches. The list goes on.”

I shook my head. “I want my family. Are they okay? Are they alive?”

He nodded in the impetuous fashion of teenagers, indicating over my shoulder. I turned, fearing the worst. Fearing that my family was here in this void without me. That thought was almost worse than having them live without me. They didn’t stand there but a TV did, conjured out of thin air by the Carver, resting on an old fashion AV cart like the ones from my high school. I held my breath.

Playing on the screen was a video and in a rush, like water from a dam, memories plowed into me, playing in synchronicity with the video.

It had been muggy, typical for a Florida morning. My husband was driving our minivan, his shaggy oil slick hair mussed from the wind. I leaned across the center console and whispered something into his ear and the ghost of the words hung on my lips.

Come on, Mav. Do some of that pilot shit.

Behind his favorite Aviators, I knew his blue eyes had twinkled like blue flames. He’d pulled me in close so that his lips had brushed against the apple of my cheek.

Have you lost that loving feeling?

I remembered his voice with stunning lucidity, like a nightmare that never left. The eerie clarity of the words was carved into my bones. Etched into my soul. The piercing stare and butterfly swarm that his words had induced and the sappy, sweet smile we’d shared. Then his swearing as he had veered across the road, broad hands yanking the wheel. There was a flash of light on the screen, the reflection of the sun off the hood of the oncoming car, and then sparks as our minivan skid on the asphalt. The scream of metal assaulted me in the silence of the void and the ghosts of the sparks hitting my skin popped along my arm and neck.

An image of Michael holding our daughters on our couch flickered across the aged screen and I fell to my knees. This was not part of my memory. This was their reality. They were curled into his chest like sleepy kittens with brows knitted like they were having nightmares. I coughed lightly, choking without knowing it, without feeling it. My husband looked empty, drawn. Not a smile in his eyes or on his face. He looked in so much pain that I crawled on hands and knees towards the TV before I knew what I was doing. The screen snapped at my touch as I traced over his downturned mouth, wishing beyond anything that I could take it away. On the table at his side, tucked into the picture frame that held an image of us laughing at our wedding, was a strip of newspaper. My obituary.

“I’m dead?” My voice was empty, flat. Surprising given the turmoil that blanked my brain.

“Of course,” the Carver snapped, as if my question was the stupidest thing he had ever heard. “How did you think you got here?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled, sounding small and broken. I felt small and broken.

He smiled that cynical, satirical smile at me. “You wanted something so badly that your soul cried out loud enough that I was summoned to offer you a deal.”

“What deal?”

“A second chance for a price.”

“What’s your price?”

Clucking his tongue, the Carver wagged a finger in my face. “I can’t tell you. You have to make the deal without me telling you the cost.”

Again, I spoke rashly. “I need them. They need me. I wish to go back. I’ll pay. I’ll pay whatever it is.”

Shark eyes pinned me in place and I wobbled on my feet. He shook his head. “You souls are always the same. Disappointing and predictable, thinking only of yourselves. I was hoping that you would be different but if that is what you really want, your wish is my command. I’ll send you back to your precious family,” he said, tone impudent and irreverent.

“What is it like?” I asked.

“Just like hitting the reset button.” He snapped his fingers with a shark’s smile and all went dark.

“Have you lost that loving feeling?”

I smiled into Michael’s face and then hiccupped back into my seat. Something was off, an itching sense of wrongness, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. A pain lanced my collarbone, distracting me. I sat forward, reaching to pull the vanity mirror down but movement in the road up ahead caught my eye. A car, careening across the median and into our oncoming traffic.

“Michael!” I screamed, throwing my hand out to catch his arm. He cursed and veered, slamming on the brakes as the front of the car just kissed the nose of the mini-van, and sent us into a spin. The girls screamed behind me, with me, until we finally stopped. In a cloud of burnt rubber and dust, we stopped.

“Everyone okay?” Michael’s normally steady voice, shook. His hands white-knuckled the steering wheel as he glanced in the rearview mirror, at our daughters, and then at me.

“I think we’re okay,” I managed to whisper.

“That was close,” he breathed, arching around the edge of his seat so that he could see the girls. Both their small faces were pale, tears welling. My own eyes burned. We were alive. All of us. I unbuckled from my seat and jumped in the back, wrapped my arms around my children and hugged them close. A broad hand landed on my back, warming my frigid bones.

A tow truck came and hauled away our car, stuffing all four of us into the cab that smelled of cigarette smoke and fear sweat, the latter of which came from me. I had one of the girls in my lap while Michael held the other. Neither of us were letting them go.

Years passed by. I watched my children grow, my husband age like a sunset over mountains; beautifully. My girls went away to college, bold and brave, ready to take on the world. Ready to change the world.

I got the call no parent wants.

My daughters. My beautiful, intelligent young women, were dead. Caught in an accident on the highway.

It was like no pain I had ever experienced. Like jumping into a frozen lake, the shock took the very air from my lungs and left me dry heaving on my living room floor as Michael asked the officers for details. I begged for it not to be true, clutching at Michael’s pant leg and felt only agony. Consuming and choking agony.

Michael carried me from the room while I thrashed and sobbed; ripped apart, decimated, never to be put back together again.

I dreamed that night. Trapped in a white void that hurt my eyes and burned my skin like the sun on a hot summer day. Chest aching, I’d spun in circles trying to place why it felt so familiar.

“I’ve been here before,” I had muttered to myself, spinning in circles.

“You have.”

Startled, I turned and saw a young man with unruly black curls in a hooded sweatshirt and baggy jeans slouched against an unseen wall. “Who are you?”

He had shrugged away from the wall. “I’m the Wish Carver.”

I got a flash of memory; a shark smile and snapping fingers. “How do I know you?”

“You’ve been here before. Years ago.” He walks a small circle around me and I turn to keep sight of him.

“I don’t remember,” I said though bits and pieces were starting to float into my mind.

“Let me help you then.”

He stepped up close and pressed a thumb to the center of my forehead. It was like a jolt of lightning through me, shocking the breath from my lungs. It all came back to me. The car accident. The same white void. The emptiness and sorrow. The wish.

“I made a deal with you,” I breathed. “I made a deal and you sent me back.”

He hummed. “I did.”

“Why did you take them from me?” I had screamed, voice ripping into my throat like the devil’s talons, hard and hot. “Why?”

“I didn’t take them from you. You took them from you!” He had screamed back, face reddening. “Did you think of no one but yourself when you cast your first wish?”

Taken aback, I’d fought back tears of anger. “I thought of my family.”

“Oh, yes,” he sneered. “Your family. But why did you think of them? Because you missed them? Because you needed them? You, you, you, you, you!” He quieted but looked no less angry. “Your children should have grown up to be leaders, strong in remembrance of their mother. In time, your memory would have softened in your husband’s mind and he would have been happy again and changed the life of a woman and her son, who would grow to do great things in his time. But because of your selfishness,” he spat the word, “you created a ripple in time and space that caused the death of your daughters.”

Shocked, I’d choked. “I did this?”

“You did this,” he’d hissed at me. “Because you changed the course of time and lived that day, another car was hit. In that car was a young man. In the first reality, that young man watched a paramedic try to save your life and was so inspired by his efforts, that he grew up to be one. When your daughters got into the car accident, he was the one who saved them. In the altered reality, he died. You killed an innocent boy. You took away someone’s opportunity to make a difference in the world and changed the lives of more than just yourself.”

The weight of his words nearly took me off my feet. “But I said I was willing to pay. Me.”

“And so you did. In turn and in time. But you dropped a stone in a lake of time and caused a wave on the other side. Everything you have ever done has an effect, even if you don’t see it.”

“Fix this!” I’d snapped, tears searing my cheeks like acid. “I didn’t ask for this!”

“You asked me violate your justice,” he boomed in a voice that was stronger and more commanding that his teenage body should be able to produce. “You asked me desecrate the flow of time and space. You asked me to penetrate your very soul. You think you can be free? Think again.” He turned another circle around me and stared me up and down.

“Honestly, why are you fighting against the very thing that you created?” The Carver whispered in my ear, so close I could feel his lips graze the shell and I repressed a shudder. The words were damp and heavy, a summer storm with none of the relief in the aftermath. He pulled back ever so slowly, his young face creeping into my periphery and I’m struck again by the stark difference between his flushed cheeks, youthful and smiling, and the darkness in his eyes. Opal and deep, cynical and jaded. Old eyes. Soulless eyes.

“So,” his Cheshire cat smile appeared once more and I had to bear down on my knees with my fists to keep from clawing at his mocking stare, my anger replacing the cold dread his declaration had doused me in. “What will you do?” Hands stacked on his hips he leaned back, towering over me with that damned smile on his face, daring me to make my choice.

Potentials and consequences were a flock of screaming crows in my mind. Pecking at my conscience.

“Tell me!” He demands, voice going diamond hard and I flinch in my skin, shutting my eyes tight. “What will you do?!”

I shut my eyes, blacking out the view of him and remembered that last hug I gave my children. I remembered the proud smile my husband gave me when they walked out the door for college and the glow in my chest when I knew, without a doubt, that they could change the world for the better.

“I want to reset the clock. One more time.”

He’d hummed, interested. “Are you willing to pay the price?”

The question shook my bones, piercing into my chest where the mark had been burned into my breast. “What is the price?”

“You know that I shouldn’t tell you but this is special case. No one has ever come back to fix what they broke.” His head had turned, a snake staring down a curious mouse before striking. “You would have to become the next Carver, as I did eons ago. Take my place here and I will fix all.”

I’d thought of all the things that I had done, my purpose in the world. I had been a passionate woman who loved deeply and raised my children to be the same, but better. Where I was happy with my small, perfect world, they were the ones that saw the bigger picture. They had goals to perfect the world outside of our small one. They saw the potential and were determined where I was happy to be in my happy bubble.

“Yes.” If it meant that my daughters, my brilliant world-changers, would be alive, there was nothing that I wouldn’t give up.

Something other than irony sharpened his eyes. “That was the right answer.” He stepped up close. “Are you ready?”

I didn’t want to but I hesitated, scared of the unknown. “What is dying like?”

The Carver shrugged. “Like falling asleep. Don’t you remember?” His thumb pressed deep into my forehead as he shoved me and out of the light.

I knew what was coming this time so I left the vanity mirror down so I could stare into my daughters’ happy, brilliant eyes a little longer. This time, when I leaned over to whisper in Michael’s ear I told him that I would love him until time itself ends. He looked at me curiously but told me he loved me, too. Rather than release his hand, I held onto it tight. I held onto it until the very last second. I felt the warmth of his palms in mine until he let go to crank the wheel and steer them into safety and me into the void.

And all was right with the world.

I blinked as movement from the corner of my eye cleared away the memory. A crying, sputtering soul tripped towards me with a red nose dripping snot, and tear chapped cheeks.

He was young and told me his story, declaring injustice. Why did he have to die? He wished with every breath for things to be different. I said nothing until he finally fell into a hiccupping silence and stared at me, all wide swollen eyes and heaving chest. When I moved, it was with the same timeless grace that Carver had when he first slipped through the void into my mind’s eye. I cupped the soul’s shoulders in my hands, stilling him. I leaned in close enough that when I spoke, it was hardly more than a sigh into his ear.

“Are you willing to pay the price?”