The Carvers

Who decides reality? Do historians determine the past from the eyes of the present? Are all of our lives determined by the will of those who dare to write them in their own words, imprinting their dispositions on us?

“They’re coming, we have to finish quickly,” a man in a dark brown hood quietly relayed to another, similarly dressed being. The incoming party’s footsteps echoed across the cobblestone walkway as their whispers grew louder. The flickering of their flashlights grew closer and made their whispers all the more fractional.

“We don’t have time, it won’t be finished properly,” he whispered back with a hissing tone. His piercing yellow eyes split by a dark pupil. After a brief pause to reply, his human hands sliced the wooden slab with both disturbing quickness and precision.

“The vision is fading; we have to finish it. His will must be imprinted in reality. It’s the only way it will come true,” The first being whispered back as he observed the second.

The incoming party grew closer as their whispers led to shouts.

“There they are, I can hear the carving tool striking the wood! Hurry!” One member of the party replied as they ran closer.

“We are out of time,” the man with the yellow split eyes said, “You have to run. You have to carve the next.”

“I’ll see you. Best of luck on the return, I hope you make it,” he said as he walked off quickly down the cobblestone hallway. His steps, contrary to the incoming party, were completely hidden by the fabric of his brown shoes. Each step further into the darkness was taken confidently, with the exception of a glance back at his colleague where his piercing, illuminated, light blue eyes took a last look.

The being with the piercing yellow eyes made eye contact with a woman in the incoming party as he finished the carving. In the moment where he recognized that she saw his form underneath the hood, he quickly jumped and crawled up the wall into the darkness. Seemingly, going straight through the darkness of the ceiling.

“Jonathan, did you see that? One of them climbed through the ceiling as he saw that I saw him! What are these things? People? Hybrids?” Sofia asked one of the members of the party as they slowed their pace to a walk.

“I was too far behind to see it directly, but I caught a glimpse of something on the ceiling,” he replied.

“Look, there it is,” Ryan, the last member of their party, replied as they approached the mahogany carving.

The slab of wood was very pristine and polished, and there were no wood shavings left behind. The carving marks were obviously fresh, but smooth as if they had been aged into the wood with time.

“Is this one what I think it is?” Sofia asked the group, her eyes fixed on the carving in front of her.

“The next prophecy is right before our eyes. It looks like it’s in three parts and says something like: the panther stalks within the city streets and follows its prey into the jungle only to drape its half-eaten body over the statue in the city center,” Jonathan replied with a methodical look on his face.

“How are we supposed to use that? It’s too vague. That could be anybody. We can’t even tell who the prey is. Some kind of human, I guess?” Ryan replied, annoyed and disappointed.

“Wait, those patterns along the sides of the carving, could those add detail?” Jonathan asked.

“They have to add specifics, but it’s in a different one of their languages every time and takes forever to decrypt. That’s what happens when they have so many different species involved,” Ryan replied.

“It seems like everyone gets one carving, and then they are either succeeded, retired, murdered, or something like that,” Sofia said.

“Maybe they retire to management, a growing party of elders that guides the next carving. A growing party that defines either the future or the past,” Jonathan replied.

“It really does make it more difficult that, at least it seems, they can change the past. Some events we’ve traced have split memories like the Mandela effect except it seems like they actually have happened both ways in one timeline, but someone performed surgery on that timeline to stitch their will into it. The linearity still exists, but all of past, present, and future are altered,” Ryan replied.

“I wonder how it works in our brain. I always thought that messing with time would replace memories, not add new ones. But, since at least some of the changes happen during our lifetimes and we are aware of them, we must have access to both. It becomes increasingly more important to understand how those changes affect the future and the ignorant, since people wouldn’t have both memories if they weren’t aware of both states,” Sofia replied as she opened a worn, dog eared and tagged, leather black booklet. Some of the pages were yellowed and worn while others looked brand new. The cover of the booklet read ‘The Timekeepers Log’.

“Good, you’re starting to copy it,” Ryan said as he noticed Sofia’s actions.

“This book itself is the only way to understand the true history of the world so that we can understand how to counteract these changes. To bend our timeline back in the favor of humanity,” Sofia replied, “I know we all know that, but it’s important to remind myself. It helps keep me focused, and the strokes of the pen precise.”

The party met back in the city in their studio loft on the 73 floors of one of the biggest residential towers. This place was a fortress disguised as a building full of homes. A towering, gleaming, dark grey building that shrank in width as it got taller.

The inside of the studio was floored with pristine grey granite stained with white streaks. Everything inside had a dark décor and the second floor, where the work got done, was lit primarily with fluorescent lights to bring out the fullest colors in their drawings. Three desks sat on each wall of the loft, but none of them faced the downstairs portion of the room.

The only other notable features that stood out of the otherwise bland apartment was the spiral staircase leading from the first floor to the loft and the glass wall that cut off the loft from the rest of the apartment. Sure, it made it slightly more difficult to go from floor to floor, but the tightly wound steps and metallic texture acted as an alarm system.

“Have you finished coloring it in yet?” Jonathan asked Ryan.

“Almost done, I’m triple checking the key before adding any color. It’s clear the colors mean something, so I need to make sure I’m doing the least interpretation as possible. They need to be exact,” he replied.

“Sofia, have you cracked the riddle yet?” Jonathan yelled to her as she started walking down the spiral staircase.

Each of her steps clicked on the metallic surface – clink, clink, clink – before stopping altogether.

“Guys, there’s something on the coffee table,” Sofia said to the others as her heart started to beat out of her chest.

After the trio were all in the living room, Ryan replied, “How could this have gotten in here? We picked the most security tight building in the city. I mean, we’re on the 73rd floor. You could only get in here if you knew us. Targeting, random or not, would be next to impossible with all the guards on the floor and in the elevator plus all the other security measures.”

“The wooden statue, it’s of a panther. Could the prophecy be about us? Are they trying to get rid of our meddling,” Sofia replied, voice breaking, “I always figured there were more of us, and our impacts were so minimal that we would be safe.”

“It seems they don’t want anyone gaming their system,” Jonathan said with a flat voice.

The room suddenly felt cold, and Sofia got a cold shiver. The clouds outside didn’t help with the ambiance, leading the sky to look closer to night than day, and the fluorescent lights from the loft as the main source of light. The mix of shivers down the spine and the sterility of the environment made it feel more like a scientific facility at night rather than a custom luxury apartment.

“Sofia, you’ve always had a sixth sense for these things, any idea what’s going on?” Jonathan asked.

“Where’s Ryan?” Sofia asked in reply as her eyes widened and all the features on her face dropped.

“The prey. The colors must have been a distraction. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this,” Jonathan replied, “You said you saw them! They wouldn’t have done that on accident. They created a moment. They created a blip in time to force our equal exchange of existence. The moment that says, ‘I see you’ as they lay their trap.”

Both Jonathan and Sofia heard a clink, clink, clink as one of their ballpoint pens dropped from their desk to the stairs in a cascading manner.

Looking up, they saw a figure in a brown hood staring at them with piercing blue eyes. The backlight fluorescent lights showed the outline of the figure, but no frontal details were illuminated for them to see due to the otherwise dark interior.

After a moment of recognition, the being slowly raised his hand with the black booklet gripped by his fingertips. Then, in a moment, he dropped through the floor and disappeared.

Sofia and Jonathan shared a quick glance before running up the spiral staircase. As they reached the top in quick succession, they saw a second statue. This one was of Jonathan’s home outside the city.

“Should we go?” Sofia asked.

“If we leave, we likely become the prey. If we don’t, Ryan might die,” Jonathan replied, “Although, he might already be dead. But it’s not like I’ll never go back home. I have to go at some point.”

“Maybe we wait a day or two and sleep here in the office. Technically this is supposed to be an apartment. That’s why the downstairs is so normal, in case anyone gets a glimpse inside as we walk in,” Sofia replied.

“We can’t go. Ryan, I’m sorry, but we would be falling directly into the prophecy,” Jonathan said with a matter-of-fact tone, “I’ll go with your plan Sofia. We disrupt their timelines like we always do. Let’s finish our work and then try to get some sleep.”

Sofia slightly opened her eyes to glance at the clock. It read 2:37 a.m. Opening them slightly more, she looked at the other couch to see if Jonathan was still asleep. An inconsistent snoring pattern and a limp sleeping posture led her to believe that he was.

Quietly as a mouse, Sofia tip toed to the door and grabbed her pre-packed bag with Jonathan’s house key inside. Luckily, the hallway’s lights were dimmed as she opened the door, so there wasn’t enough light to wake Jonathan.

She made her way down the elevator and onto the city’s public transit right outside. Her watch read 2:42 a.m. The train, ride uneventful, took her outside the city close to the lot where she left her car.

Continuing on this path, she stayed as concealed as possible in the darkness. Flinching at the intermittent animal noises or sounds of glass bottles rolling in the slight breeze.

Arriving at her car gave her a last moment of peace as she turned her key in the ignition. Then, as soon as she blinked, she was at Jonathan’s house.

A dim light was on in the second floor, and the neighborhood was dead silent apart from the creaking of her car’s engine.

Finding the keys in her pocket, her trembling hands took them one by one until she got to his house key.

I am the carcass. But this way, I write myself into the prophecy. To be one with The Carver’s and The Timekeepers. A moment to unify our clans. Sofia thought to herself, a reminder to steady her nerves and accept the fate that was written for her.

She inserted the key into the lock and turned it to the right, feeling the tumble and click of the lock.

Gripping the handle and understanding that any moment from here could be her last, she took a sobering breath and opened the door. The inside of the house was still and dark, but the dim light from upstairs shined onto the stairway.

With each step her heart beat faster and harder, seemingly the only noise in the house besides a slight creak of the floorboards.

Climbing the stairs, hands feeling the mahogany wood of the banister, she made it to the room with the light.

From the outside, the room appeared empty except for a carved statue of a carcass on the statue in the city center.

To die for the cause. To become a part of the most important history. The real history. She said as she stepped into the room.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, she turned to the right and saw Ryan raise an axe over his head.

“I’m sorry. This was the only way,” Ryan said as he swung the axe downward connecting with Sofia’s skull.

He stared at her for a moment with tears in his eyes before muttering, “It’s done.”

Then, the light blue eyed being came in and started devouring her, cutting and ripping into her flesh with its bare hands. Ryan watched in horror as blood pooled out of her displaced organs and splattered on the being and the room around him. Then, as his catatonic state passed and he realized what was going on, he fainted.

“Sofia?” Jonathan said as he awoke around 6:53 a.m. Glancing over to the couch, he noticed that she was gone and his heart sank.

“No! Why would she do that! It didn’t have to be this way!” He yelled to himself in the apartment, voice breaking.

He grabbed the remote and flipped to the local news channel where it read: Gruesome scheme unfolding at the city center as massacred dead body lain atop the statue of our former mayor.

Then, he felt the room go cold and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

In a deep and dark voice, he heard, “You cannot change our will. Accept this as your final warning Jonathan.”

As Jonathan went to turn around, the room became warm again and there was no one there.