Time of the Forbidden

He looks through the door’s peephole after hearing a ticking noise, there is nobody outside. His curiosity peeking as he can still hear the ticking. The door opens he steps outside. Jude tries to identify where the sound is coming from, he turns in all directions but cannot spot anything awkward in the corridor. The ticking gets faster, then Jude remembers the old clock that he once saw in the broken elevator shaft.

The elevator was never functional, it has always been broken since the day Jude rented his place. He remembers well asking about it, the landlord told him: “You should be grateful that no one was able to fix it, that elevator has been that way since it was built, and the rental is cheap because of that.”

Jude gently opens the elevator door and the ticking got faster, he looks at the clock and sees it counter rotating until it stops and starts ticking normally. He checks his watch, they were both in synchronicity. Then a humming was heard, the humming got louder, Jude could not stop himself from stepping back from the elevator door in a frightened posture as if he got kicked in the chest. The elevator arrives, slows down, everything was quiet but he could see a young woman stepping outside of the box. Her face looked familiar, she politely salutes Jude and goes her way. For Jude it felt as if she has been using the elevator regularly.

The curiosity that Jude had, made him a successful archaeology student in the past, he always liked to study the effect of events on the human life. He always thought analysis could lead to correct results and he liked analyzing situations from debris or after effects of an event. As someone who trusts his guts and intuition Jude succeeded in his career as an archaeologist, but soon things started to feel repetitive and dull to him. He thought many times, maybe he should have better chosen to be a detective, he was attracted to vice and wanted to understand what makes humans commit crimes. Even he dragged himself many times in the dark streets of the city wandering and walking searching for the thrill.

- “May I ask you which floor are you coming from? Your face looks familiar.” Intercepts Jude the young lady.

- “That elevator has really proved to be handy to me, I have been coming from far, maybe 3 floors up.”

- “But I live on the last floor” replies Jude.

- “Well, don’t tell anyone but this elevator works upwards and not downwards”

The young woman goes down the stairs while Jude follows her with his eyes until the very ground floor.

Jude remembered an archaeology trip to Egypt, it was popular among students to travel to old world countries, specially around Europe and the Middle East for a summer class. The weather was very hot at the Egyptian Sahara back that day, and he remembers well the moment when an old woman invited him to her souvenir shop. He was offered water and he brought his wrist watch. Since then, he liked wearing that souvenir analogue watch with the hour handle in shape of the head of the Sphinx.

He moves back to the elevator door, he opens it calmly, the elevator was gone and the clock was frozen showing 11:00 sharp. No more ticking, no more elevator box. He puts his head inside the shaft and looks upward, just a wall, nothing looked suspicious, it was just a normal shaft with a missing elevator box. Then with a sudden move, he looks at his hand watch, it was pointing to the same time.

Jude had always issues with his watch that would freeze from time to time, and ticking would resume the next 12 hours around the same time. During that time, Jude felt he was stuck in a limbo for the next 12 hours until the watch ticks again. One day he took it to a well know watchmaker to fix it, he remembers well the man telling him that he has never seen anything like it, and that his watch had just a quartz but no battery inside; “maybe it is energetically connected to your pulse”, that’s the only explanation the repairer gave him.

Jude steps back into his room, he jumps to his study table and starts writing down all the facts he has gathered since that awkward ticking event. After some time, he opens one of his esoteric books about an old ancient secret doctrine and reads:

“The working of the human memory is conceptually connected to the past, what a person remembers is connected to the similar stimulation of one or more of the senses in one of the events that are imprinted in the memory.”

At a young age Jude lost both his parents in a car accident, he remembers well the people’s faces, he wasn’t sad that day. He was thinking about the weird looking coffins his parents were buried in, and he remembers well the cries of the people, but doesn’t remember crying himself. He always thought that life is continuous and that his parents transitioned while the cycle of their life would go on.

Jude reads his notes again out loud, this has always helped him in his studies. When he does that, he feels being in 3rd perspective, he dissociates from the situation to associate analytically. He can feel it, a last hint is missing. Then he decides to remove the watch from his wrist, he will be waiting for 12 hours to see his connection to his watch, to that elevator clock and to time itself.

That face looked so familiar, and exited from the elevator with a purpose, without hesitation, as if it was prepared for their encounter. He never had issues with faces in the past he thought to himself, but that face looked so familiar yet foreign! Might she come back to take the elevator?

And while thinking, Jude fells asleep. He sees himself in a first person perspective, he have been wandering in the same streets of the city looking for a hint, for the person that killed him. Then he lucidly realizes that he has never been dead, he turns his face around the shops vitrines and he perceives a different face…

Jude wakes up, his throat dried, he lifts himself to his study table and writes down one word, a word that reads in a different language, maybe in ancient Egypt “Neheh”.