Almost. That is the saddest word in the English language, according to Chloe. Growing up, she had been a big fan of Stephen King, and he maintained that the scariest word in the English language is “alone.” While Chloe can admit that, yes, “alone” is pretty scary, it isn’t the saddest word. It doesn’t rip her heart apart like “almost” does.
She almost had her fairytale. Almost had the family she’d always wanted. But then George got sick, died, and she almost died with him. But Chloe wasn’t sick, not in the medical sense of the word anyway. Heartbreak doesn’t count as a terminal illness, though it should.
When the cancer finally claimed George’s life, Chloe didn’t experience all the stages of grief that the psychologist had tried to prepare her for. There was no denial, anger, bargaining, depression, or acceptance. There was just nothing.
Nothing. Maybe that’s the scariest word. Maybe Stephen King had it wrong.
It had been hard for Chloe to explain the utter emptiness she felt, and when people would ask her how she was doing, she would simply answer, “I’m fine”. But she wasn’t, and she didn’t think that she ever would be. It was the strangest feeling – the complete lack of feeling anything at all. Was she sad? Well, yes, cognitively she did have an understanding of a sadness that lingered somewhere within her mind at the fact that George was gone. But she never cried. Even at his funeral she just sat there, stoic, iced over, emotionless, staring straight ahead. To Chloe, it was as if George left and took all of her with him: the personality that she once had, her joy, her carefree and life-loving demeanour, her little mannerisms, and the fact that she was capable of having a favourite movie and a favourite song. All of that was gone. If anyone suspected, they didn’t say it. Chloe thought that she did a good job of pretending to be as fine as she claimed, faking her way through the day, and hiding the fact that she was completely empty inside. Just a walking void wearing a skinsuit.
She used to love her job at the art gallery. She used to value all of the pieces tremendously and thought of them as friends. She was actually tearful when a piece was sold and she knew she would no longer see it every day. But now she didn’t love her job. She didn’t hate it either. It just was – just something she did during the day.
After work she went home, only it wasn’t home anymore. It was just a building that she slept in. Every night she would fix herself something to eat, often the same thing as the night before. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner consisted of whatever took the least amount of effort to prepare. It wasn’t about taste anymore – everything tasted the same to her.
And because her life was so empty now, she no longer cared to switch on the TV. It had become just another ornament in her living room, gathering dust. She no longer watched the evening news, because why would she care about what was happening in the big world out there when the small world in here had imploded? Therefore, she was completely unaware of the growing political tensions and the threat of an impending nuclear war.
***
Because Chloe had become largely unaware of her surroundings – not even looking at the paintings and sculptures that surrounded her every day, not really talking with her colleagues once considered friends, and not really engaging with her customers in any meaningful way – she didn’t notice him when he entered through the doors. Had she been able to keep some pieces of herself when she lost George, her intuition might have alerted her that there was something odd about this stranger. She might have noticed him the minute he stepped into the gallery. Her fight-or-flight instinct might have urged her to flee. But, as things were, she remained standing in the corner, simply staring at the floor.
When he approached her and said “Hello,” she looked up at him with empty eyes. A stare so empty that not even a stranger would be fooled into thinking that she was ‘fine’.
“Can I help you?” Chloe asked in a flat, monotonous voice.
The stranger shook his head and said, “No, but I think I can help you.”
She responded automatically: “We’re not interested.”
She used to grow annoyed with advertising agents trying to sell her on marketing campaigns for the gallery. The gallery needed no marketing, and its reputation permeated the entire industry. But these marketing and PR professionals were relentless, wanting to have their names attached to one of the most prestigious galleries in the business.
“Don’t speak too soon, Chloe,” the stranger said.
At the mention of her name, Chloe took real notice of him for the first time. Up until that point, he had just been a humanoid blur to her – like most people were after George. But now she noticed his dark hair, eyes that were unnaturally large, and skin that seemed wrong. He had no wrinkles, no stubble on his chin, no freckles or pores, or anything that would have made him look more normal.
Chloe should have felt a spark of fear, should have recoiled at his countenance, but she was beyond such things. She had truly become incapable of feeling normal emotions or displaying normal reactions, so she remained standing in front of the ominous man.
“So how can you help me?” Chloe asked, more because she was a practiced conversationalist than out of genuine curiosity.
The man reached for the inside pocket of his jacket, and Chloe’s first assumption was Gun!
The gallery was being robbed, and it was strange how Chloe didn’t mind. She didn’t care that her so-called life could be in danger, she didn’t care that the lives of the other people currently walking around the gallery could be in danger. She vaguely mused about whether this strange man wanted the art or the cash. However, the pure act of being robbed at gunpoint felt like a separate and unrelated issue to her.
But instead of a gun, the man produced a silver chain from his pocket, from which hung a strange cube-like pendant. He handed it to her.
“What is this?” she asked as she received the delicate necklace in the palm of her hand.
“A gift,” he said simply.
Chloe didn’t understand. She kept staring at the glittering thing. The man made no effort to introduce himself or to explain how he knew her. He only said, “Be careful with that. Use it wisely.”
“Use it? How?” she asked, tearing her eyes away from the necklace to look at the odd man standing uncomfortably close to her.
He smiled an amphibian smile: “This gift will keep on giving as long as you touch it. Anything you desire will be yours as soon as you think the words. But beware – do not get greedy. Every wish will replace a previous one, and whatever you wished for before will cease to be.”
Chloe held up the necklace and looked at the dancing pendant, watching the cube spin lazily, looking completely harmless.
“So you’re like a genie?” she finally asked. If she’d had any sense of humour left, she might have laughed. But like everything else, her humour had died with George. So instead of laughing, she just kept looking at the pendant swinging from her fingers, catching the light of the fading evening sun as it filtered through the gallery windows.
The stranger did utter a laugh, however, and explained, “No, I’m not the genie. I’m just the delivery boy.” And with that, he turned on his heel, strode out of the building, onto the street, and disappeared.
Chloe followed him, tried to catch him to ask more questions, but he was gone.
***
That night, like every other night in her nothing-life, Chloe didn’t care about what was for dinner. She found a can of soup in the pantry, so she proceeded to open it and pour the contents into a bowl. Heating it up wasn’t worth the effort, so she took the bowl and went to sit at the silent dining room table. Three empty chairs stared at her, mocking her solitary existence, reminding her of the husband she once had and the children she never would.
She ignored them. She sat looking at the bowl of cold soup in front of her and took a deep breath. She’d been trying not to think about the gift she’d received from the strange man earlier, and she was sure that it was some novelty thing dreamt up by another marketing company. Pretty soon the phone would ring and an overly friendly voice would say something like, “Now that you have received your free gift, please take a minute to listen to our sales pitch…”
Her mind couldn’t let go of the man that had given her the necklace, and her whirring thoughts settled on the memory of his face. Something about his face set her teeth on edge, and she couldn’t put her finger on what it was about him that bothered her so. It was almost as if he felt… wrong. Almost unnatural. Almost not human. Absentmindedly fiddling with the pendant she now held between her fingers and regarding the bowl of soup in front of her, a fleeting thought crossed her mind: The soup would be better if it were warm. She hardly even acknowledged the thought as it faded into the maelstrom of more pressing thoughts in her head. Besides, warm soup, cold soup, what did it matter anyway? Nothing tasted good anymore. Not when she didn’t have George to share it with.
She picked up her spoon and took a sip of the soup, more because she knew she should eat rather than feeling actual hunger. And as the hot soup ran down her throat and warmed her belly, Chloe almost choked on it. The soup was hot! The soup was hot? The soup was hot…
This was impossible. An incredible feeling of disbelief washed through her, and she was almost as startled by the feeling as she was by the fact that her soup had been magically heated. Blood singing in her ears, hands shaking, she was overwhelmed by the disorientation of being resurrected. Her heart – long since dead – was suddenly beating so frantically that she struggled to catch her breath. Sure, she felt scared, she felt apprehensive, she felt crazy, but most of all, she felt… alive. I am alive. The realization crashed into her and she almost succumbed to a tidal wave of long-forgotten emotion. It was both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. Coming alive meant that she would again be able to feel joy, happiness, excitement, peace… but it would also open her up to feeling sadness, loss, devastation, longing. No. Better to be dead. Better to feel nothing.
She fell back down into her seat and stuffed all of those unwelcome emotions away, sinking back into her coffin of empty, emotionless existence.
When she was fully back to her normal nothing-state, she sipped another spoonful of the warm soup to prove to herself that this was really happening and she hadn’t been imagining it. Her eyes found the pendant that had fallen to the floor and, carefully picking it up, she gingerly held the unassuming charm between her fingers. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
I wish I lived in a mansion. When she opened her eyes, sure as sin, she found herself seated at a large mahogany banquet table, underneath a dangling crystal chandelier. She was awestruck, looking around her opulent new home while taking another sip of the soup. She instantly spat it out. The soup was ice cold.
Her mind spewed forth the stranger’s remembered warning: “…every wish will replace a previous one…”
If she were to believe that this was a magic pendant that could somehow grant wishes, she would only ever be able to wish for one thing at a time, as every new wish would replace the previous one. But how would that work? Would everything else just go back to the way it was before she made the new wish?
She knew she needed to try, needed to test this gift she’d been given. Completely forgetting about her cold soup, she took the pendant in her hand. “I wish I had red hair.”
Instantly her surroundings changed back to her old familiar apartment. She slowly made her way to the bathroom mirror and saw that her usual dark curls had turned bright red. She gasped. So once I make a new wish, everything I had wished for previously returns to the way it was before I made the wish. Chloe thought that she was beginning to understand how the pendant worked, but it would need more testing for her to be completely sure how to use it before she made her ultimate wish. The one wish she could not afford to get wrong: George. But she silenced his name in her mind before she could fully form the thought. She needed to wait before wishing for George back. She needed to be sure how to manifest him. What if she wished for George back and all she got was his dead body lying on the floor at her feet? What if she wished for George, but his personality was completely different? Or he didn’t remember her? She didn’t want to mess up her one chance to get him – and ultimately herself – back.
***
The next morning, Chloe stood on the sidewalk in front of her apartment building. She always walked to the gallery; it was only a block away, and she used to enjoy getting a bit of exercise in before work. But after George, she didn’t care about the exercise and no longer felt the enjoyment of it. She only walked to the gallery out of habit. But this morning was different. This morning had nothing to do with habit. This morning was important. She was going to test her pendant and make sure that she understood exactly how to use it.
So instead of starting the familiar walk down the familiar street, she turned left and made her way to the parking garage on the side of her building. She entered it, making sure there was nobody around.
She closed her fist around the pendant that dangled from the silver chain she had fastened around her neck and shut her eyes. In her mind’s eye, she saw the car her mother used to own when Chloe was little. She remembered the smell, the feel of the leather seats, the colour of the finish, all of it. I wish for that car.
Upon opening her eyes, Chloe saw that the exact car she had pictured had materialized in the parking space in front of her. She reached out and opened the driver’s side door. The keys were in the ignition, complete with the heart-shaped keychain that used to hang from her mother’s car keys. The old picture of her and her sister sat tucked into the sun visor. It was her mother’s car, the exact one she wished for, exactly like she remembered it. She also noticed that when she adjusted the rearview mirror and caught her own reflection, her hair was back to its usual shade, and the bright red colour she’d previously wished for was gone.
Chloe exhaled, letting go of a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She climbed into the car, turned the key, and drove the short way to the gallery. The car made the same sounds she remembered from her childhood, and the seat had the same squeak. This was intoxicating to Chloe, because this meant that if she could picture George exactly as he was, and remember him exactly as he was, she would get her George back. And once that happened, she would destroy the pendant so that no accidental new wish could ever replace him.
She spent her day in a daze, trying to gather every single memory of George in her mind and filing them away to use when she would make her wish. She remembered him the way he was before he got sick: every line of his face, every strand of hair on his head, all his quirks and mannerisms. She wanted to be able to picture every single thing to ensure that she got her George back, exactly as he was before the cancer diagnosis ripped both of their lives apart. She was so preoccupied with this task that she didn’t notice all of her colleagues gathered around the computer screen at the front desk. She didn’t hear the announcement on the CNN broadcast they were watching. She didn’t know that there was an immediate threat of a nuclear missile being launched.
She didn’t bother driving the wish-car home. She knew that it would disappear once she wished for George back, so she left it parked on the street in front of the gallery and walked home as usual. But during this walk, her mind wasn’t blank as it usually was. This time, she kept filling it with memories of George.
She didn’t eat dinner that night, she didn’t shower, and she didn’t have the capacity to think of anything but George. By the time she crawled into bed, her mind was flooded with his image, and she finally fell asleep with the magic pendant in her hand and only one wish on her mind.
***
When Chloe awoke the next morning, something was different. Her cold, lonely bed felt neither cold nor quite so lonely. She opened her tired eyes slowly and blinked once, twice. When she finally opened them the third time and focused them on the pillow next to her, a familiar head of blond hair peeked out from under the covers. Her entire body went into shock; like a lightning strike, recognition jolted through her and made her jump out of the bed.
The blond head lifted from the pillow and turned in her direction. A kind gaze met hers, and the voice that she had shut out of her mind and refused to think about – refused to remember for such a long time – travelled across the small distance between them: “Morning, babe. How’d you sleep?”
Chloe felt something unfamiliar happening to her face. Tracks of warm liquid made their way from her eyes and down her cheeks, dripping from her chin and onto the floor. She was crying. She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried.
All of a sudden, she felt the coffin that she had built around herself shatter, her heart exploding through the mire of her darkness, her senses awakening to this new dawn.
She got her wish. She got her George back.
***
George didn’t understand what was happening with Chloe. The last thing he remembered was the two of them having dinner and then going to bed. Nothing happened that he could recall that would cause Chloe to react like this. She was beside herself, frantic, hyperventilating. She kept touching his face and asking how he felt, asking if he was okay, asking him what he remembered. She was crying uncontrollably. Did something happen last night while he was asleep? He tried to question her, tried to figure out what had her acting this way, but she only kept asking him what he remembered and what today’s date was.
“It’s Wednesday, babe. What’s wrong?” he asked her, more confused than he could ever remember being.
“Wednesday? What month is it?! What year?!” she demanded.
“It’s October 2026. Babe, what is happening right now?” he said, running a hand through his hair and trying to put the pieces of her puzzle together – and failing miserably.
But at the mention of the correct month and year, it was as if she exploded with excitement, hugging him and squealing like a kid at Christmas.
Once her inexplicable display had somewhat subsided, she took his face in her hands and stared at him. Hard. As if she were trying to peer into his very soul.
“When was the last time you remember feeling sick?” she asked earnestly, and the gravity of her question almost pulled him under, though he didn’t know why.
“You know this…” he started, but she cut him off: “I need you to tell me.”
He sighed: “Well, remember how sick I was during the chemo treatment? Yeah, having cancer is not fun. But I got through it. We got through it, babe.”
Her face lost all colour, and she whispered: “We got through it. You got through it. You didn’t die…”
He laughed and took her into his arms: “No, babe, I didn’t die. I beat it, remember? You must have had a bad dream.” And he placed a kiss on the top of her head.
Though this morning had started off really strangely, he shrugged it off and attributed it to Chloe having had a bad flashback of his illness. She had probably had a nightmare about it. George knew that she’d been through a lot of trauma dealing with his cancer diagnosis, as had he, but it had been two years since he’d had the treatment and he was fine now.
It will probably always be on her mind, he thought, and he loved her for caring about him as much as she did.
While Chloe was taking a shower, he prepared their breakfast. Chloe had demanded that they both take the day off, and though he didn’t understand her reasoning, he was happy to comply.
They sat on the living room couch, each with a bowl of cereal in their laps, while Chloe kept staring at him, occasionally touching his arm or his face. He smiled, asking, “What is up with you?” and planted a kiss on her lips.
She smiled: “Nothing. I just love you.”
“I love you too, babe,” he said as he reached for the remote to switch on the TV.
Emergency broadcasts were on every channel: headlines proclaiming an immediate nuclear threat, evacuation procedures underway, and martial law being declared.
“What the…” George uttered as he stood, his bowl of cereal dropping to the floor and spilling milk all over the carpet. Chloe sat, frozen, staring at the screen.
He ran over to the window and pulled open the blinds. The street beneath was in total chaos. People were running and screaming, and the road was jammed with packed cars trying to get out of the city.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no…” he heard Chloe mutter as she sat, shaking her head back and forth. She was wearing a silver necklace that George didn’t recognize, and she was gripping it so hard that her knuckles had turned white.
“Babe, we need to get out of here!” George shouted as he approached her, but it was like she didn’t even hear him. She kept muttering: “…it was a test… not a gift… a challenge to make the right choice… save George or save millions of people…”
“What are you talking about, Chloe?! We need to go!” George shouted, gripping her by the shoulders. She seemed to snap out of her stupor then, and when she looked at him, he could see realization dawn in her eyes. They could hear the sirens now, deafening in their warning. He grabbed Chloe and pulled her along behind him as they climbed through the window and ran down the fire escape. When they reached the sidewalk, they saw military jets passing overhead. They ran around the building to get a better view of where the jets were heading. What George saw made him stop dead in his tracks. Chloe stopped running, too, and turned to look back at him. George’s eyes were fixed on the bright light in the sky, travelling toward them at an incredible speed, its arc through the sky leaving a trail of white smoke in its wake.
“It’s a missile…” he said breathlessly.
“What?!” Chloe screamed, following his gaze. And when she saw what he was seeing, it was as if an eerie calmness washed over her. She took his hand in hers and stood beside him, tearing her eyes away from the missile heading right for their city. She looked up at him and tugged on his hand to make him look at her. Where he was sure his face was the picture of terror, hers was serene as she said: “I lost you once, I won’t lose you again.”
“What are you talk-“ he started, but she silenced him.
She continued: “I know what I should do. I know what the right choice would be. I know I’m supposed to stop the missile and lose you in exchange. It would be the last wish I could ever make. I would save millions of lives, but I will never be able to wish you back again, or the missile will return.”
George was utterly confused. In the midst of everything that was happening all around them, it was crazy how Chloe could turn out to be the most confusing thing right then.
Then she did something even more absurd. She grabbed hold of the necklace she wore around her neck and tugged it off, breaking the clasp. With one last look at it, she threw it to the ground at her feet and swiftly stepped on it, crushing the little box-shaped pendant to dust.
Before he could ask her what was going on or what she was talking about, she placed her hand on the back of his head and pulled his face close to hers. And just before their lips met in their final kiss, she said: “This time, we die together.”
The last thing George knew was the feel of her lips on his. Then there was a blinding white light, a deafening sound, and a silence that fell over the crater where the city used to be. A silence that would last for many generations to come.
