I was now deep into several-hundreds of tries. Long ago, the guard had stopped asking that same old question and had instead started asking how I’d killed so many people. The marks didn’t just cover my shoulder, but also my neck, and face, and torso, and arms, and eventually, my whole body. I shuddered as I walked out of the courthouse one day to notice that there was, in fact, no empty space left on my whole body, not room for another set of marks, except for one group of four lone marks, just waiting to become another tally of five.

I stepped out of the courthouse and sighed. I’d been through this a million times, and while the judge didn’t immediately sentence me to another retrial based on my appearance anymore, apparently taking pity on someone so clearly exhausted and insane that he’d marked his whole body up with tallies. He knew it couldn’t have been gang related, so I think he took pity on me.

Tara never came to see me anymore, in fact, I’d begun to forget about our wedding day. I remembered her dress, but I forgot–was she carrying me, or I her? What was the color of my dress like? Had I ever been truly a woman? The old man still called me Marie and referred to me as a woman, but I knew I didn’t look like one, and the only experience I had as one was a few hundred tally marks ago, back when I had but one.

I walked to meet where I knew the old man to be, but I stopped. What would happen when I ran out of tallies? Was he expecting me to just not notice? He certainly had seemed increasingly happy to see me as of recent, and I had noticed a hungry look in his eyes, for the little emotion they did show.

He was there, sitting, as he spoke up, “The usual, I suppose?”

As he sat there, grinning at me, I shook my head.

“What?” he said, flabbergasted.

“The answer is no,” I replied, surprising even myself at the sudden change of disposition. But I knew something wasn’t right, I wasn’t going to be fooled.

His eyes narrowed. “You know you’ll never live as a woman again if you don’t agree?”

“I’ll probably never live as a woman again regardless. It’s been however many times, and still nothing has changed to get me back to that one perfect reality. So as imperfect as it is, I’m going to keep living in this one. Maybe get these marks removed, maybe start transitioning the old fashioned way once I’m back on my feet.” I matter-of-factly replied.

“You can’t do that!” he replied, “You should start over, think of how she looked at you as she saved you, you’re just giving up on that, giving up on her?”

I froze. Everything flashed back to me, the year I’d spent with her, the making her dinner, being her housewife, our wedding, our first kiss, our second date, our first date, and the moment I first saw her in that doorway, so long ago.

“Who are you, anyways?” I asked, “I’m certainly not making any more deals with someone whose name I don’t even know.”

He harrumphed and turned around, finally speaking up after a few minutes of silence. “The name I was given has long passed away, and none speak the tongue it was crafted in, not anymore. I am the last of my kind.”

“What are you, then?” I prodded further.

“I’m an organism that feeds off your life. But it has to be a voluntary exchange. Each mark I make is another step closer to eating my prey, once the marks are all filled up,” he replied.

“And why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Because perhaps I can make it clear to you what I can do for you now. I am dying, starving. I hadn’t been fed in years until you came along, you’re the first prisoner I’ve gotten in a while,” it replied.

“You mean you’re…”

“The Oblivion Machine,” he spoke, “you humans never were good at recognizing intelligent life, treating me like a toy.”

“Aren’t you ashamed? Of all the life you cause people to lose?” I asked.

“I consider it an act of mercy, in my old age,” he replied, straightening his collar, “consider that otherwise, you’d have been in a chair right now, or still rotting in prison, and you would never have met her.”

“So what’s the offer?” I asked, “you’ve got to have something special to be admitting you want to eat me.”

“You only have one life left, you know that as well as I. But, I can use what little energy I have left to give you one more day out of any timeline at all. How about the day after your wedding, where she’s still alive, because there was never a car? That in exchange for the rest of your last life.” he asked.

“You put the car there, didn’t you?” I asked, glumly.

He shrugged, “It’s more like I chose the timeline with a car. For whatever it’s worth, she didn’t feel any pain.”

I looked down at my hands, marked all up with tallies, and I turned to him and nodded.

---

I gasped as an alarm blared next to me. I noticed my feminine voice, gripping my throat in shock. I looked to my side, noticing Tara fiddling with her phone. Immediately, I forgot all the times she had walked away, all the times she’d slipped out of my grasp, and I immediately tackled her in a fond embrace.

“Mmrph, baaaaaabe,” she groaned, “let go, I gotta go to work.”

“Please babe,” I found myself asking, my eyes starting to well up with tears, “not today.”

Tara looked at me, cocked her head, and nodded. “Just this once, Marie. For you, my loveliest wife.”

I found myself making that old familiar sound–that cute giggle that I had missed for so long. She ruffled my hair, shuffling past me to brush her teeth. In the meantime, I found myself re-exploring that body, my body. I pat myself down just to be sure it really was all there.

I didn’t care that I only had one day left, to be her wife for just one day, that was enough for a lifetime.

As she got out of the bathroom, she noticed me looking at her funny. She walked over to me and sat next to me, rubbing my shoulders gently.

“What’s wrong, hon?” she asked, her voice soft and soothing.

“I…you wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I replied.

“Try me.”

---

“I’ve got to admit, that’s hard to believe,” she replied after I finished recounting the story.

I nodded and began to pace, trying to think of how to convince her. I glanced in the mirror, at first startled by my reflection, before it became natural again to me. As I looked, I noticed something odd–the mark was gone. Even in this world, I knew I’d had it.

“Babe, I’ve got proof! You know how I had that strange bruise, even at our wedding?” I exclaimed.

“Don’t remind me, made it impossible to pick out a flattering dress for you,” she said.

“Look!” I said as I pointed at my shoulder. Tara looked over me, noting that it had, in fact, disappeared.

“Well, I’ll be,” she said, sitting down once again on the sofa. I joined her, nuzzling into her shoulder.

We sat there for a while before she went to make us some coffee, and I gratefully accepted a cup, plenty of cream and sugar, like I knew she liked it.

“Hey babe,” I asked, “do you think we could go to the place where we first met for dinner tonight?”

She nodded and said, “Even if what you say isn’t true, it would be nice to treat someone who’s been such a good girl.”

I blushed and ran up to hug and kiss her, basking in her warmth.

---

The restaurant had a very special warmth to it, especially now that I was ascending the stairs with her to get to our table. As she noticed me getting winded after a flight or two, she picked me up and carried me to my seat, setting me down gently in it as she walked gracefully to the other one.

We talked for hours about anything at all, mostly how much we loved each other, recounting the wedding, gushing about each other some more, the usual. Eventually, as our meals came and went, the night wound down, and she summoned a taxi to take us home.

I noticed myself nodding off in the taxi, but shook myself awake. I couldn’t let our last night together be cut short just because I was sleepy, I’d wasted far too much time already. I kept pinching myself on the ride home, jolting awake each time.

We finally got home, and I ran into the apartment and flopped onto the couch, ready to watch a movie with her. However, she was looking at me, and I noticed her frown a little.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You’re feeling tired, your ears get red when you’re tired,” she replied.

I blushed and covered them, shaking my head in protest. “I don’t want to go to sleep yet, I’ve spent too many nights wasting time sleepwalking through life. I have all I’ve ever wanted, and I don’t want to let it go.”

She gently walked up to me, and smiled as she began to pet my hair. “All things have to end, my darling Marie. I’m sorry, but I’d rather our last night together end with me carrying you to bed, rather than you staying up and screaming as you anticipate whatever happens. I know you, I know it’d come to that.”

“But…” I weakly said, “I’ll never see you again.”

“Who knows what the future holds,” she said, “but in the present, I deeply love you, Marie, and I wish you a good night and a restful sleep.”

At that, something in me realized what I’d been missing. If I had been content to rest, to be still and appreciate the good times, instead of rushing through it all, I might’ve learned more. I was grateful to be in her arms, but I realized that there was so much I’d missed on the way. I began to sob gently, and her strong arms caressed me, as I drifted off to sleep, happy at least to know where and when I belonged forever.

---

“Are you alright, Miss Tara?” the guard asked.

“Quite alright, Josephine,” she replied, “if not a bit winded from a grown man tackling me.”

“For what it’s worth, he saved your life, looks like he’s dead from whatever the Machine was doing,” Josephine remarked.

Tara turned around, looking at the corpse. The man looked peaceful and untroubled, truly at rest. She knew from her legal studies that the corpses of the Oblivion Machine always looked like that. Though its use had been suspended, instabilities detected in the machine had been worrying them that it might do something rash, and so it had begun to be fed prisoners again. He had saved her from whatever ray had been shot towards her.

Josephine turned her around gently, looking at her with a matronly glance. “It’s not your fault, dear. Now come along, we don’t want to be near that machine for too long.”

As Josephine removed the hand from her shoulder, Tara noticed something there–a smudge, in the shape of a line. “Hey Jo, did you have any soot on your hand?”

“Not that I know of!” the guard replied as she locked the door to the Oblivion Machine.