The morning after he worked on the Madame's fence, Ben is outside her gate again. There's no bell—no way to reach her at all, other than shouting. But he never has to shout.

"Why are you bothering me?" The Madame stands on her upper balcony wearing a silk nightgown the color of the sky. A gust of dry wind lifts it away from her body. She wants me to see, he thinks.

"These boards," he shouts back, pointing to the leftover lumber on the inside of the fence. His house needs some repairs and he hopes she'll let him use them.

"Wait right there," she commands, then disappears into the house.

Ben waits, and as he waits, he remembers.

***

The day Daphne disappeared, Ben was outside the Madame's fence, vision white with anger and hands clenched around the iron bars of the gate. He'd gone to Daphne's house and found it deserted. There was a note on her cot, scratched in charcoal, which read:

I'm sorry, I had to.

I know how you felt.

D

Ben banged on the gate until his hands were bruised and bleeding. Finally, the Madame appeared at her front door. She made her way down the steps—slowly, like molasses dripping from a spoon—savoring every single second Ben had to wait.

"What did you do to her!" he screamed when she reached the bottom. "She was my only friend!"

The Madame stood with her hands behind her back, a poisoned grin snaking across her face. "You did it to her, Ben."

"Me!" he repeated, spittle flying from his mouth. "What did I do?"

"You loved her, Benjamin. And that was quite enough."

"You...evil...bitch!"

"Oh, come now," she cooed. "Let's be civil. You should know she left on her own volition. Unharmed."

"Now you're a lying bitch! She wouldn't just leave me!"

"Not so. I gave her a choice. She could leave, or I could kill you. She was gone within the hour."

Blinded by anger—the kind that twists your gut like a sudden sickness—Ben pressed his cheek against the bars and reached through, his fingers stopping only inches from the Madame's face.

Before he could blink, she'd grabbed his arm and spun around, pressing her back against the gate for leverage. "Let's teach you some manners, shall we?"

Ben felt the knife before he saw it. It pierced Ben's skin just below the elbow and filleted his forearm all the way to his wrist.

She let go as he yanked it back, gasping in pain.

"Now you have something to remember her by," the Madame spat, the knife dripping red. "Now run along and bandage it before you bleed out."

***

"Take what you want," the Madame says, still in her gown. "I have no need for them."

Ben walks inside the gate and begins gathering the lumber in his arms. The Madame passes him as she goes out to inspect the repairs. As Ben exits the gate, his arms full of lumber, he thinks he sees a flicker of movement behind the Madame.

When the shot rings out, Ben thinks for a moment the universe itself might have ripped—that things are finally over, thank god. Then he sees the look of terror on the Madame's face and the hole that has opened right above her breasts. He realizes his hands are covering his ears. Ben waits for her to clutch at the hole, to try and stem the red tide spilling out of her, but she can't. She's already dead. She falls onto her face, her blood pooling only momentarily before soaking into the dry earth.

The man who stands behind the Madame has Ben's face and looks at Ben the same way Ben looks at himself in the shard of glass on his bedroom wall. His eyes are blue, like the Madame's, and he's older than Ben. Much older. This means something—something important—but Ben can't quite form it into a coherent thought.

The man drops the weapon (gun!) to his side. "Come on, Ben, we don't have much time," he shouts, rushing at his younger twin.

Ben cowers as if the man is going to strike him, but he only grabs Ben's arm and leads him through the open gate. He knows my name, Ben tells himself as they take the stairs two at a time. Something deep inside him responds: of course he does. When they reach the top, Ben pulls away from the man's grasp and looks out over the town. For a moment, he marvels at how different it all looks from up there. Then his eyes dart to the houses, and to the people who are beginning to come down off their porches.

They're all walking in the direction of the Madame's house.

"Ben, inside. Now!" the man shouts.

When Ben looks back, the front door is already open. He hurries through and joins the man in the foyer of the house. The man slams the door and locks it, then leads Ben into the main living area.

Ben stops in the middle of the room, his mouth wide open as the man runs down a hallway to his right. The walls (That color! Sky and grass and sunlight) are covered in shelves, and on the shelves are curiosities Ben could never have dreamed up if he tried. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.

In the adjoining room (the kitchen?) Ben sees the machines that prepare the Madame's food. Without a pot and a fire, like before. What marvels! he thinks. When did it all go to ruin?

"Ben!" the man shouts from down the hall.

Ben awakens from his reverie and rushes toward the sound of the man's voice.

The room at the end of the hall is different than any room Ben has ever been in. The walls aren't mud, wood, or even plaster—they're metal. Smooth, grey metal. The ceiling and the floor, too. There's a chair in the center suspended above the floor, attached to a large bank of electronics that connects to the ceiling. Wires run out to machines on either side of the room.

The man is huddled over one of the machines.

"Come here and watch," the man commands. "We haven't got long. They'll be finished with the Madame shortly, and then they'll take the house." Ben shuffles to the man's side and watches as he works the buttons and dials. "Can you remember?"

"I think so," Ben answers.

"Now, over here." The man leads Ben to the far wall and repeats the process. "See? This dial controls where you go. When you go. You have to set it here, or you'll die before you get back."

"Get back?" Ben echoes. He feels as if he's watching the man from underwater. "What is all this?"

"A time machine. The Madame uses it to..." He pauses mid-sentence, cocking his head.

Ben can just make out the dull thumps coming from the main room. The townsfolk are beating on the front door, trying to get in.

"Sit down, Ben. Right here." The man grabs Ben's arm and drags him to the seat. "The Madame uses it to go back to before the sky was scorched," he explains again as he straps Ben in. "To when the earth was still green. That's where all the stuff comes from. The food. The clothes. The things you saw in the other rooms."

Bens stares blankly at the man's sky-blue eyes.

"Doesn't make any sense to me, either. What use is a kingdom at the end of the world?" When Ben doesn't respond, the man waves his hand. "Never mind that now. She's dead. And all the rest will be too, now that the food's gone. That's why they're trying to get in."

"How do you know all this?" Ben finally asks. I know I think I know. "Who are you?"

The man smiles a familiar smile. His bottom teeth are just as crooked as Ben's. "You know who I am. I was sitting right where you're sitting. A man that looked like me showed me what buttons to push, just like I showed you, and he sent me back. Thirty years. Back to the before time. It's taken me all this time to find this place again. Most of the guns were destroyed when the world went dark, which is why it had to be so far back, I guess. We...he...had to be sure."

"Sure? About what? Why would you ever come back?" Ben asks. "Why?"

Before he can answer, there's a crash from the front of the house. The townsfolk are through the front door. The man rushes to the door of the metal room and slams it shut. It's only wood, Ben thinks.

When the man turns around, he wears a smirk. "To kill the Madame, of course. And God, did it feel good!"

Ben's first thought is: Yes, she deserved it. He doesn't say it, though. "You waited all that time just for revenge?"

"And you will too, Ben," the man says, clenching his teeth. "You hate her as much as I did."

All at once, Ben understands. "It just keeps happening," he whispers.

The man nods. "Around and around, like the snake that eats his own tail. We always come back to kill her."

"But thirty years?" Ben cries. "What a waste! Why didn't you try to fix things? Do something important?" As he says it, he realizes he's asking himself the same questions.

For the first time, Ben notices the deep creases in the man's face. His eyes are tired. "I told myself I would, Ben. I promise I did. You will too..." Behind him, a piece of the door splinters inward, the gleaming blade of an ax head poking through. The man doesn't even look back.

"I thought I could come back at first, maybe choose a different time to travel to, but I was stuck there. The townsfolk obviously destroy the machine." The man chuckled. "Forgive me Ben. It's just strange being on this side of things. Anyway, I almost joined the war when it first started. I thought maybe I could make a difference, but it didn't happen that way. I wish I had time to explain everything to you."

The man runs to one of the machines and flips a switch. Ben can feel the chair he's sitting in begin to gently vibrate as the time machine springs to life. The man is now holding a small metal controller in his hand. Behind him, the ax does its brutal work. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. The hole is big enough that Ben can see several pairs of black eyes staring through.

"Oh!" the man gasps, reaching into his pocket. He retrieves a shiny silver key and tucks it into the front pocket of Ben's overalls. "You'll need this to get into the Madame's house."

"What about the gate!" Ben shouts. "I could shut the gate!"

"We leave it open every time. Besides, they'd eventually just tear the fence down." The man slides a panel on the remote, revealing a single button

"I have a choice. Don't I?" Ben squeaks. He begins to struggle, but the iron cuffs around his wrists are unyielding.

"You've already made it, Ben. Over and over and over again. We can't change who we are," the man answers. Ben looks past him as a thin arm—not much more than bone and skin—reaches through the hole in the door and blindly searches for the latch.

"That's why they burned the world in the first place. They couldn't change who they were."

The hand lands on the latch, turns it. The door bursts open, a horde of starving people with eyes as black as the sky piling through.

When they eat me, I won't have a name, Ben thinks.

The man presses the button.