"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." -Arthur C. Clarke

A stitch in Time saves none. I knew it with every cotton puff exhalation. Stares inside of oxygen molecules. The world in epileptic seizures. Any second now...

Who knew Time gave birth? Two days ago She was a lower case it, a product of humanity feigning punctuality.

But She knew! And She made them, Axiom Wanderers, Pale Eyes Of The Membrane. Historical hoarders, merchants of order. Aliens.

Unless you opened the Jar. The black, sullen mason jar buried under the floorboards of the Devil's house. I visited on an academic dare.  Go. Search. A geocache in the form of tangible regrets awaits! I traveled, I adventures, I dared. I awakened Her.

She acid-rained sweet Gehenna napalm nightmares to the dingy Delaware town I now crept through. Axiom Wanderers. Remember them. Time is like the night, meant to be experienced but never truly seen. It's that way looking up at space. Who can view nothingness? Precisely. It's a sensation. The visuals are mental constructs. Mind needs eyes to formulate. Time needs no one.

I saw. The dare forced me. Fine!! It inspired me. Impressing Dana made me. The cool cats by the water cooler jawing smack every Monday about super risks and quantitative states of late-night karaoke. I drove here to the science forsaken First State for a Jar of Bitter Hopes. Heh. The old wives' tale.

Old Wives knew too much.

But the maddening detrimental state of existence lies in its sheer absurdity. The portal to crack Time, in a common vessel? A force of Nature rendered sick with mental illness by the simple act of unscrewing a lid? Yet I held preposterousness in my hand, felt the cold static buzzsaw deer tick sucking awareness from my nervous system, millions of slow motion, microscopic Grim Reapers swinging memory sickles at helpless neurons. 

The Wanderers were around the corner! time blinks and they take on solidity. She winks and one is behind me, breathing from twelve slits on a polyhedral face. I flee from what pretends to be an alley into a red barn. Its classic features help me remain as the Axiom Wanderer fills my sordid head with falsity. A new past. I never married Sheila. Never got divorced. A car accident at age fifteen messed up the right leg. No. That isn't mine! It's a masquerade. I rip off the mask and climb into the seedy loft, yelling out Dana's name. The reason I came here. Hold onto this feminine fabric and maybe, just maybe, the invasion I unleashed can't rewrite us all.

A Wanderer greets me at the top. It sits in the straw, relaxed. Time on its side like a loving Mother. Thirty spider-dome eyes of fickle quartz. The back of the head opens and closes in petals. Nineteen fingers. Five limbs. When the sits smile my parents are never born and JFK is nothing more than a drunk on a side street in Wissahickon. Oh God, what have I wrought?

They're here. They aren't. I live young die fast a hundred women give birth to me at my funeral as Great Zimbabwe Rome marches sideways launching ships to the Moon I am flash-frozen victimized successor to a fate unworthy but delicious to touch. I am outside of Time! She made me unbound. I exist because I don't. They will come after us because we now know they never were.

I drive up to the general store. It's antiquated and I take an instant liking to it. The young woman inside seems ill-suited to the place. She stares. I fumble for words.  In a minute I ask about where I can find the venerated Hobbs Place.

She giggles. "You're not one of those, are you? The ones who come here every year or so searching for that Jar? The one on the internet? You do know this place doesn't have ancient magical relics, right? This is Delaware."

"I know. Time as an alien species that got trapped in a jar in the Roaring Twenties. Nonsense." My assurance of knowing is beyond reproof. Nothing ever happens here. Time can't be locked in a jar, for crying out loud. I get the directions from her sweet face, joke about her twelve tiny mouths and head out the crying door to begin my quest.