by Liam Hogan
I force myself to meet the cleaning staff’s bemused gaze. “If I were you,” I say, “I’d go home, climb into bed, and not emerge for a week.”
I don’t tell them the banknotes I’ve handed out will have no value come dawn.
Picking up a half empty bottle from a confetti strewn table, I totter from the Ballroom, Mia following in my wake.
In the empty corridor, Mia wraps her arms around me as I shudder and quake, buffeted by memories of what is about to happen.
“Why do you stay with me?” I ask, “Why not try and change your fate?”
She kisses my forehead. “You are my fate,” she says. “You’ve convinced me of that much.” She glances towards the Ballroom, the scene of such recent joy, celebrations of a New Year. “Do you—does your advice—save any of them?”
Stale air claws at my throat. “I don’t know. After… there are no records, no traces.”
“Yet still you try,” she nods. “Where to now?”
I wish I could share her serenity, wish I didn’t know her future. “To Parliament Hill,” I say, “We watch it burn, you and I.”
“Come then.” She plucks the warm bottle from my grasp, takes a sip and grimaces. “But let’s leave this behind.”
Liam is a London based writer and host of the award winning monthly literary event, Liars’ League.
He was a finalist in Sci-Fest LA’s Roswell Award 2015 and has had work published at DailyScienceFiction and in Sci-Phi Journal. More via http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk/.