Ace of Spades

I gazed over the landscape, my heart collapsing as the destruction all around me smothered it.

Why was I the only survivor? The only spot of life amid this plain of smoke and ash and dying fires? I knew the answer to my question.

I was a coward.

It was as simple as that.

I knelt to the ground and scooped a handful of pale gray ashes into my hand, the same ashes that blanketed the ground four inches deep. My knuckles scraped against rough earth beneath the dust. There was no sign that a flourishing city had been here, full of life and business and joy and sorrow.

As I lifted the ash to my face, I saw that the hole I had created in the layer of ash immediately collapsed and filled in.

“Death dust.” I said, my damaged throat cracking my voice. “Curse you, death dust.”

My hand went limp to my side, spilling the ash back onto the ground, and I bowed my head. A painful, prickling sensation burned the corners of my eyes. I should have faced the gunfire. I should have sacrificed myself. This world was not worth living in, especially not alone. I could have helped it to be worth living in for others who survived. I should have saved it.

I felt something brush my arm, under my long left sleeve. When I lifted my arm, a single playing card fluttered out and landed in the ashes.

It was an ace of spades. A representation of my cowardice.

With sudden vehemence, I grabbed the card with both hands and pulled on each end, preparing to tear it. Just as fast, I lost the strength to do it and let my arms drop down, cradling the card in one hand. A tear ran down my face. By the time it dripped to the ground, it was opaque with dirt.

Men don’t cry. I told myself. But I couldn’t be considered a man. I was a coward, completely alone in this desolation of a city. If I had taken that gunshot…

But I hadn’t made that sacrifice. How much longer would I stay alive in this forsaken world? When would I die? In three days? Four? I didn’t think that there was any clean water left for several miles around me. The ashes covered everything.

“Five days.” I mumbled, fingering the playing card. Within five days, I would definitely cash in my chips. I would be dead. The gun would have been a cleaner way to go. Oh, why hadn’t I let the gun take me?

“Five days.” I repeated. I hoped I would die sooner. The emptiness that hollowed me hurt worse than death.

The pip on the ace of spades started to glow, startlingly bright in the smoky landscape.

I stared at the card. I had not meant to trigger it when I had said those words. Should I use it to avoid waiting for death? It would be a welcome relief to avoid the pain of slowly dying.

“No.” I said, denying myself the relief that quick death would bring. I didn’t deserve that.

After I spoke, the pip faded back to its usual black.

I thought for a moment, staring at the card. Was there a way to undo my mistake with that ace?

What if I made a mistake that made things worse? I couldn’t imagine anything worse, but I had made so many mistakes with my deck of cards in the past. Every attempt to avoid bad things brought worse things, and my latest one had brought the destruction of the entire city. Oh, why had I tried to escape my fate with magic? A cursed king of diamonds had brought me into this situation. I was not sure that my final ace would get me out of it.

As I stared at the card, my vision became blurry with tears. I remembered the first time that I had used one of my cards—I had gotten into a major argument with my wife. After we parted ways, I had gone to a magic show—a date that we had scheduled—alone, wanting to escape the house. While I was there, an ancient little woman hidden in a corner of the dark room had given me my deck of cards, claiming that if I was wise, I could use it to rewrite my mistakes.

Unsure if she had been telling the truth, I tested the effects of the cards with the three of hearts, and found myself three hours in the past, half an hour before my argument and an hour before the magic show. Thrilled by my second chance, I managed to avoid the argument with my wife. We went to the magic show together. It was wonderful, even though I was seeing all of the tricks a second time.

Tragedy struck as we drove home. A reckless driver T-boned us. I managed to escape mostly unscathed, but my wife became paralyzed from the waist down.

I blamed the incident on my cowardice. If I had stayed home and waited until my wife was ready to hear my apology, we wouldn’t have gone to the magic show, and she wouldn’t have gotten paralyzed. I used another card to go back in time again and cancelled our date to the show, which spawned another argument. I tried again four times, using 5 cards total, all with terrible results. In the end, I failed so badly that my wife and I lost several months of our marriage to arguments and cold-shouldering.

All because of my cowardice.

I had wasted my entire deck of cards because of that fatal flaw—I had avoided death or humiliation to face worse consequences exactly forty-six times. Why had I been so afraid of the police? I wasted two different cards to avoid various crime scenes so I wouldn’t have to testify in court. Why couldn’t I have suffered through an embarrassing dinner with a client the first time around? When I retried the dinner with a card, I tried so hard not to repeat a humiliating incident that I accidentally offended her. She decided not to do business with the company I worked for, resulting in a demotion for me. These and every other card I wasted.

I first discovered that I could also use them to travel into the future near the beginning of a painful social gathering. As I used the restroom, I said something to myself about how much I wanted the party to be over. I dropped my ace of diamonds by accident, and found myself in the bathroom with the clock reading two hours later and my wife frantically searching for me so we could go home.

My final time using my cards had been when I accompanied a group of heroes in hopes of redeeming myself, men and women much better than me, who had been determined to stop a group of terrorists who wanted to destroy the city with an incredibly dangerous ‘volcano bomb’. After a short but deadly battle, the only people left at the bloody scene were me, one other ally, and a single terrorist, who was closer to the bomb than either of us. She looked at me with unfeeling eyes and raised a tiny pistol at me.

Any hope I had had of redeeming myself was lost as fear overtook me. I threw down one of the last two cards up my sleeve—the king of diamonds—and I disappeared thirteen hours into the future. Just as I was about to jump through time, I glanced back at the man who I was betraying. I didn’t deserve to be called his ally. As he realized that I was disappearing, the shock that filled his expression crumbled my spirit into dust.

I must have been disconnected from time the moment the bomb went off, because I survived the blast to be the only person left in the city.

And I hated myself for it.

I traced the pip on the ace of spades listlessly with one finger. The ace cards in my deck had been by far the most powerful of all the cards, allowing me to choose how far into the past or the future I wanted to leap to. It was my only opportunity to fix the mistake I had made.

But the thought of staring down the barrel of that gun made me cold inside, despite the hot, smoky world around me.

I had to redeem myself. I had to prove that I was not a complete coward. My death would not be peaceful if I didn’t try to fix this destruction. I knew that if I sacrificed myself, it would give the remaining man I had been helping time to retaliate and win. And, even if I failed, at least I could fail bravely, not fearfully.

I wanted to die bravely.

I stood up, my legs asleep from kneeling on them for so long. I traced a finger thoughtfully along the edge of the ace card and then, taking a deep breath, spoke.

“I want to go a day into the past, to the moment when the terrorist pointed her pistol at my heart.” My voice shook uncontrollably.

The pip on the ace began to glow. With trembling hands, I dropped it to the ground.

Darkness flashed around me, and then I was standing in a dimly lit building, with a woman dressed in black pointing her pistol at me.

I had no more cards up my sleeve.

“You’ve forced my hand.” she snarled, and pulled the trigger.

Finally, I was at peace.