The town of Ashcombe had always been quiet, but
since the meteor strike three years prior, the
air hummed with something strange. The sky still
bore the scar of the impact, a jagged black line
across the horizon. People no longer aged the
same way. Some grew younger. Others—like Eleanor—
froze midstep, their bodies suspended between
moments. It was called the Stillness. No one
knew why it happened, only that it did.
Eleanor had left Ashcombe the day after the
strike, her heart still raw from the death of
her exlover, Thomas. He’d been the first to
vanish into the Stillness, his body found hours
later in the same pose, as if he’d never moved
at all. She’d blamed herself. Now, returning for
the first time in years, she found him again—but
not as she remembered.
Thomas stood outside the Woolworths, coat
buttoned against the cold, eyes scanning the
street. He hadn’t changed. Not really. His face
was the same, his stance the same. But Eleanor
noticed the faint silver hair around his temples,
the glint of teeth when he smiled. He looked…
alive.
She approached slowly, her breath visible in the
air. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said,
voice low.
He turned, surprise flickering across his face.
“Eleanor? You came back.”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she reached into her
coat pocket and pulled out a photograph. It was
old, yellowed at the edges. Thomas, younger,
laughing with her on the village green. The date
scrawled in ink: June 19th, 2021.
“You were dead,” she said. “I saw you.”
Thomas’s expression hardened. “That’s not how it
works anymore.”
The Stillness wasn’t just a side effect of the
meteor. It was a choice. A rule. Those who
entered it weren’t dead—they were stuck, waiting
for someone to bring them back. And only certain
people could do that.
Thomas had been one of them.
He had the power to unstick others. But doing so
required a cost. Every person he revived, every
moment he pulled them from the Stillness, took a
piece of him. His memories. His time. His life.
Eleanor had once believed he had used that power
to save her. But now, standing before him, she
wondered if he had used it to keep her from
moving on.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“To stop you,” he said simply.
The town had begun to change. More people were
vanishing, not into the Stillness, but into
something worse. A new kind of silence, deeper
than the Stillness. Those who entered it never
returned. They were erased.
And Thomas had seen it happen.
He had tried to warn her, but she had refused to
listen. Now, with the town teetering on the edge
of collapse, he had no choice but to act.
Eleanor watched as he stepped forward, reaching
for her hand. The air between them crackled. For
a moment, she felt the pull—the weight of the
Stillness, the promise of being whole again.
But she pulled away.
“I don’t want to be saved,” she said. “Not like
this.”
Thomas’s face fell. “Then what do you want?”
She looked at him, truly looked at him, and saw
the man he had become—not the boy she had loved,
but someone else entirely. Someone who had spent
years trying to undo what he couldn’t control.
“I want to know the truth,” she said. “About the
meteor. About the Stillness. About you.”
Thomas hesitated. Then, slowly, he nodded.
The rules of the world had changed, but some
things remained the same. And perhaps, in the
end, that was enough.
