Page 9 of One Impossible Moment
He'd walked out of prison and into this place without meaning to.One moment, he'd been free, and the next, he was caught in a warped world that didn't age right and was trapped in some fucked-up dimension they couldn't escape.
And then a girl wandered in, making him wonder how she could walk back and forth through a tear in reality that he and the others could not penetrate.
Most of the men had already forgotten her visit.But he hadn't.
Behind him, footsteps approached.Without looking, he knew it as Moe.It was always Moe.Every day while Moe took his breaks at the store, he'd come out here and pepper Finn with all his questions.
"You're out here again," Moe said.
The inability to remember one day from another plagued them all.But for some reason, when Kallie visited, he began retaining more information.It was easy to slip back into the routine of doing the same thing day after day, so he forced himself to remember one thing about the day to carry on to the next.
It didn't always work, but he tried.
Finn squinted."Just wandering."
His job was to roam the town, looking for anything that needed work and keeping track of the others.
"You think that girl's coming back?"
"No."
Moe looked in the distance."You sound sure, but none of us know who can enter the rift."
"I do, and it won't be her."
"How do you know?"
Finn finally looked at him."Because she's not like us.Every man in Everstill crossed a line he can't uncross.Not because someone decided we were unredeemable, but because we decided it ourselves long before Everstill found us."
Moe studied him for a long moment, then nodded slowly."Maybe so.But things don't happen here without a reason."
He grunted.Ever since the girl had stepped into this world, something in him had shifted.
It wasn't only a feeling she left behind in him.He'd started dreaming again.Dreams of roads that led somewhere.Dreams of warm sunlight that made him sweat.Dreams of a girl with wide eyes, freckles across her nose, and a brave little chin.
He was afraid to admit to Moe that he now questioned his comfortable existence.
He stared down the road, the one he never rode, the one none of them could escape through.
The road that had let her in.
Most of all, since Kallie visited, Finn wondered if the outside world still existed for him.
Or if she was the only real thing he'd get to see for the rest of his life.
