The Pillow Fort

They closed the curtains and shut all the doors. They unplugged the computer and turned off their cell phones and even put towels at the base of the doors to block any external air from coming in.

They had closed out they world and had turned a small stack of pillow into a home, on the floor, in the middle of the basement.

Mary asked him if he was ready and he said that he was. With that, Adam flicked off the lights and they settled into their new feather down nexus.

It was so dark that they couldn’t see their hands in front of their faces and as they quietly laid there, allowing their limbs to intermingle, they were always surprised when they brushed against each other. There was nothing else in the room, yet when the two of them somehow found each other it seemed somehow magical, somehow lucky, somehow meaningful.

Outside, the mailmen were delivering bills and crossing guards were shooting stern glances at mediocre drivers, and politicians were making promises and parents were parenting and plants were growing and the sun was shining and we were all slowly dying.

But inside, Mary and Adam had created the world’s first real time machine. They had agreed to stay in this state for exactly one day and when they had emerged, the world would have travelled nearly 24,000 miles without them. People will have been born and people will have died and empires will have toppled but in their world nothing will have changed.

Only the touching of hands and feet, the exchange of breath, and the occasional whispered admission. An apology. A fear. The last flickering lights of hope. Drifting in and out of sleep, they had stopped time and created a second world where the rules didn’t apply.

“Where were you yesterday?” people would ask but there would be no answer. They were nowhere.

They just were.