I’D FLIP A TABLE IF I HAD HANDS

ONCE UPON A TIME,

— a Void wanted a boy. She was mad about him — wanted him. His heart. His liver. All the squishy foam parts of his little grey brain. Him. She would listen to everything. Even all the not-so-nice thoughts he sometimes had about himself. The Void would listen and nod her invisible little head along, look him in his eyes — his real eyes, and tell him he was perfect just as he was. It was all him, and it was all brilliant.

She would twirl her hair. Blow big bubblegum bubbles. Not sneeze. Couldn’t sneeze, actually. 

But he was always so dreadfully busy, gallivanting across London, always so far away. But this trip to New York was different, you see—it all started with that peculiar cabinet. Pesky thing, that was. 

It had seemed like an ordinary dresser, but no. She had tricked him. Once he had shut himself inside — HE’LL LET YOU KNOW IN A MOMENT. NOSY, NOSY, NOSY!

All it took was a click.

But that’s a story for another day, isn’t it?

The boy had visited Manhattan before, but it had been for business, and my—he had looked so lovely in that pinstripe suit! 

This time — supposedly — was for pleasure. His cute little thoughts floated up to her. That’s what they said. The Void wouldn’t make anything up. She was very honest all the time. 

And there he was — so handsome as he sat. Nice trousers. Hair slicked back. On the Q, he had heard the American boys in front of him talk about something odd, the backrooms, was it? He hadn’t a clue what they were. They had shown each other these spaces that looked otherworldly, thin and yellowed out carpeted rooms filled with endless hallways — serene pools that lead to odd deaths. The Void wouldn’t give him an odd death — she was quite kind. Mindful, even. No one ever disappeared into nothing.

The boy had looked over their shoulders, curious and greedy. She thought back to how her heart had thudded as he stepped into that cabinet—she could belong to him.

But this wasn’t the cabinet, nor was this anywhere on the Isle of Manhattan. It was a dark place that she had flung him into. Dark and… his nose scrunched. Perhaps it smelled of iron?

Perhaps it could have been some part of the backrooms—that horrid space the train boys had talked about. Whatever that American thing was — a trend. Nothing there was ever the same, and it was always somehow dangerous. He wasn’t floating. Okay, maybe he was—she was a void, after all, and the hair he had so perfectly coiffed this morning was spiraling away from him. If she had hands — real ones, that is — she would whisk it away from his pointy little face.

The space was almost a void. That’s what he was thinking. She was the Void. Black and endless, there were little blips of somethings that lined the space around him, little flickering in and out of existence, he thought — or were they more like winks? 

The space winked at him again. He frowned.

“Don’t flirt with me,” he snapped as he started to float sideways, glaring at the shimmer-y shimmers. He crossed his arms. “I’m taken.”

The Void radiated light as a soft chuckle floated through the nothingness. “Taken?” it gasped, “By whom? Your hand?”

He frowned. “I’ll have you know I’m a very desirable man. I’ve taken exactly five girls out this month alone.” His legs kicked, arms swooped as he tried to see if a butterfly kick would get him anywhere away from—this thing. Whatever it was. He was a great swimmer on Earth.

But he was a shit swimmer in cold, black nothingness world. The Void hummed—almost laughed as the boy started to feel his body tickle
‍ ‍

“Are you touching me?” he asked. “This isn’t very consensual.”

“Oh, silly,” the Void cooed, “I am you —w hat are you, made of carbon?”
“That doesn’t seem right,” he drawled, now floating upside down, “You sound too much like a lady.”

“Err — well, I,” the voice started.
“And even if you say we’re all stardust, I mean, what does that really mean?”

There was a stutter in the air, and once what had been shimmers looked more and more like great big pustules of red.

The boy flipped and floated on his back — frowning as he crossed his arms behind his head. He was floating. Floating — he could almost imagine he was in his pool back in Nine Elms. It was a cute little one on a high-rise rooftop — there were always spare floaties, in fact, the boy’s favorite was a cute pink flamingo that was wearing sunglasses. He closed his eyes.

Yes, that was it. He was just back in London — hadn’t even tried to go to America to see his girlfriend. Didn’t visit the Hamilton Grange in Manhattan. Hadn’t been spooked into hiding in a dresser.

It was all alright. He peeped his right eye open. The Void was still voiding. The red blips had deepened into a shade of maroon, and they started to bleed into the nothing.

“Are you — are you avoiding me?” The Void cried out, “I’ve been trying so hard and, and, and —” The soft voice was choking back its sobs as the bleeding red crept closer to him, “And I’ve been trying to put myself out there and, it’s so hard being an interdimensional force — do you know how hard it is for someone to love you when you’re bigger than anything else that exists? Do you?”

The boy’s ears perked. It was the beginning of a woman scorned, one inch away from wails and body convulsions from the look of the red. He felt the tickles come back.

Maybe he was dead.

Hands held out, he looked — wherever, he didn’t really know. “Woah, woah now, I love how communicative you are with your feelings, but I am really taken by a girl who I love very much.”

A deep wail rolled out into space. 

The boy’s eyes widened. Maybe he’d never understand women.

“I mean,” he stuttered, “I’m sure you’re a very nice void, and I’m sure we could be very happy together, but I can’t just jump ship and sail away with you, you know? That’s not fair to her.”

In the end, there was a sniffle. Her resignation being that no matter the distance, the space, the matter — the cute little pink lungs that she longed to be a part of — no one would ever love her like a Sun. She was too big— too formless — too nothing.

And no one can ever love a nothing.

The air was still as she thought about it — fluttered her eyelashes, and oh goodness, she needed to get a lash fill, there was a gap — and she tried to fill her heart with all of the whatever she thought love must feel like. She knew that she could send him home to where he could be happy — to whomever he loved more.

She thought and thought and thought while he floated.

Away and away and away, he started to disappear, flickering in and out. Her heart skipped a beat. “I… love you!” She cried out as she felt the air wheeze out of his little jelly lungs. He was going back to 2025, a time filled with love, sunlight, and dirty-water hot dogs — Times Square in the only city in America that truly never slept—trust dear reader, she had looked.

London was boring, anyway.

The Void actually sent him back to 1776.

It was an accident. But she had at least gotten the America part right. Her brain had just thought of it. The Void had meant to send him somewhere safe. She always meant that. But meaning things was easy. Knowing things was harder.

But now, there were rocks. Rocks everywhere. Big, shapely ones. The kind of rough, pokey rocks that you’d lob at chimneys if you hated your neighbors. They were digging into the boy’s rear. The Void could only watch from afar—the horror of her own little human, caught in a fray he had no stakes in.

The battlefield was well — a battlefield. Lots of dead people all over. Men were shouting.

The air was sharp with an acrid haze of gunpowder stinging his nostrils. Large cracks filled the air as his back straightened; it was gunfire. Lots of smoke billowing everywhere. Not something he really wanted in his life.

He felt a sting in his ear — hot and wet. So, they missed his face. Figures — this was America. Maybe he could lie down and pretend to bleed out.

The Earth felt spongy, his body iron.

He could die a dramatic baby.

As the boy felt the cool Earth against his fingertips, he missed the Void, just a little. And if she could send him into the wrong time, she could send him to some distant, far-off future, where there may be a new ear in it for him. He’d even give her a hug for it.

Somehow, somewhere far off in the vast black of space, the Void sensed this. She kicked her feet.

The boy’s breath caught as he saw a fair-haired man in the distance, creeping up to him. His hand twitched. Might have also rolled his eyes. Well, that was it. Dramatic baby-ass death, it was time.

But the man didn’t kill him. The boy decided that this was a pity—he coughed at the gunpowder battlefield, which kept filling his lungs. Part of him did want to bleed out via his earlobe. Instead, he grabbed the boy’s arm as he swung his body over his shoulder, as if the boy’s 6’5 and 17 stone were a toothpick.

Twirling her hair, the Void giggled this time. She sensed a grand adventure could be starting — they only needed to make it happen. 

The boy coughed as his body flopped against the man’s back as they ran to the far side of the battlefield, finding shelter from the gunfire against a tree. The man’s eyes were a piercing blue.

If this were a story, the boy started to feel that this one might not be all about him anymore. And if there was a hero in this story, he was rather a sidekick.
He had thought the Void loved him.

The man pushed the boy’s shoulder against the tree. “You popped out of nowhere,” he said, voice thick with a highland accent. “Out of thin air.”
“Uuuuhh,” the boy said.

“You’re a traveler,” the man said, eyes squinting, “But you’re not from this time, are you?”
“Time?” the boy said.

The Void was thinking.

The man squinted his eyes again as the older man eyed the blood dripping down the boy’s neck. It wasn’t a good answer. He wasn’t dead, though.
“I’ll take you to my wife. She’s a healer.”

The blood continued trickling down his neck as he sat on the stump. Knees knocked together, he stared at the ground. He was definitely a sidekick.

But perhaps the Void — she would still save him. Could save him, for that matter.

The Void was watching — always was. She was a clever girl when she wasn’t sad. The Void kicked her feet, watching the fair-haired man tend to the campfire. Because pointy? Pointy faces were out. Broad shoulders were in.

Sure, the man on the other side of the cosmos was older, but what hero doesn’t need a few years to find their footing? As her eyes swept across the lines of his brow, she felt that it wouldn’t even matter that she was out there, all by herself in the vastness of space.

She bit her lip. Chewed on her hair this time.

But then she saw how the boy was looking at the man. That disgusting, hateful look. Pulled out her glitter pens and got her notebook. She had found out, through the ages, that humans were so much better when they just became stories. 

“Now,” she said as she drew a big heart on the page with pink sparkly gel, “If this were a story, you’d be my dynamic duo.”

A flash of letters appeared before the boy—terrifying little letters. He heard clacks, saw them rolling out across the screen. The Void was there — she was the clacking. His throat tightened. Maybe she loved him best when he was still just long enough to be described. The boy stay seated on the log.

Somewhere between the letters and spaces, between the little dots and bright lights of the screen, the boy felt that he wasn’t all that himself anymore. The letters moved faster than he could think.

Each clack brought a new possibility — a future that he hadn’t thought and —

The boy gasped.