The cemetery is cold and rainy as cemeteries are wont to be. You don’t begrudge it this. The downpour lets it wash away the skin of memory that lingers in the field like a morning fog.

You don’t know why you’re here, but you’re an expert at being out of place and right now, you are where you need to be. Something here rings familiar, like the church bell of your hometown. Or the sound of your father’s footsteps. You walk the worn paths, collecting names.

The stones, so carefully cut and laid, are waterlogged, rivulets of water running through perfect lettering. The names here are important, more important than most. Some are names drawn before their time, some still have life in them.

There are others walking among the stones like wraiths. The rain and fog blurs their solid lines, leaving only memories and impressions of men. You feel a kinship with them. They are also lost, looking for meaning among the dead. Looking for answers.

A stone in front of you catches your eye. It’s not a particularly nice gravestone, moss covers the front, obscuring any meaning left there. You scrape it off carefully. No one deserves to be lost to the march of time.

As you work, you notice the first name is the same as your own. You slow slightly at the realization. When the last name is also the same, you slow further. 

When the date of death matches your birthday, you stop. 

Memories crash in. 

Suddenly you are on a beach, feet digging into the sand as you charge uphill. Bullets fall like hail, tearing through the men around you, shredding the metal ship you leapt out of. One passes through your sleeve, leaving an angry line of fire up your forearm.

You dive headfirst into a mortar crater, the only break in this landscape of flat inevitability. This pit of death protecting you, balancing its purpose.

A man dives into the same hole, rolling down the side, coming to rest at the bottom. He crawls next to you, blue eyes wide. You yell into his ear, trying to convince him that it will be alright, externalizing your own reassurances. He babbles something you can’t hear over the violence pouring down the hill then looks confused. His arms buckle and he sinks back to the earth.

You flip him over and see the stain of red on his chest. His body sought shelter too late, instinct failing in the face of chance. He was dead when he took cover, but shock took that knowledge from him. 

Frantically you check your body for similar wounds, but the blood from your sleeve has covered everything. You could be dying right now and would never know it. Any second another mortar could come and you would be nothing. You read the man’s dog tags then take them off his neck, preserving his memory as yours will likely be preserved today.

Your thoughts blur, as you escape into the depths of your mind to prevent these horrors from breaking you. Desperately, you cling to old memories, willing to give anything to avoid the inevitable.

A man steps out of thin air, wearing a black suit of a brand new style. You blink, dazed. A moment ago you were alone on the battlefield, now a man is staring into your soul with commanding eyes.

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 “Charles Williams,” he says or asks, you can’t tell with the ringing in your ears.

You stare at him blankly, wondering if you’ve lost your mind. It happens often in the trenches and more often in mortar holes. But if he were a figment of your imagination, it would pay to be polite.

“Sir?”

“It’s been determined that your death has no bearing on the outcome of this battle. Come with me.” He checks his watch, “We have thirty seconds.”

“Come where?” you ask. Doing anything but hiding here is sure to get you killed. Bullets don’t concern themselves with the etiquette of man.

“Does it matter?” He waves his hands vaguely, “Away from here”

You look at the edge of the hole, fiddling with your collar nervously, hearing the bombs go off around you. He is right, it doesn’t matter. Anything is worth getting away from here. Anything. 

You take his hand, coughing to cover the jingle of metal.

Instantly, there is a rush in your gut that reminds you of the roller coaster at the carnival. It’s a wrenching twisting motion that leaves your heart beating fast and your body unsure. Sweat beads your skin. 

The world around you blurs and shifts, grass growing quickly to cover the torn soil. Flowers bloom and die and bloom and die as the seasons shift rapidly. 

Time, you realize. You are moving through time.

The thought flashes vivid in your head then starts to fade as the years progress. You scratch your chin, pulling your hand away in surprise when there is no beard there. Your hands are smaller than normal and shrinking by the second.

The man beside you ages rapidly, hair going from jet black to grey, smooth skin gaining lines and years. His jaw is clenched, but he opens it at your unasked question.

“The years have to be paid”

You travel forward until your thoughts turn incoherent and your vision blurs. Eyes too young to focus properly.

Then you arrive, swaddled in the fabric of your former uniform, held by an old man in an ill-fitting suit. He hands you off to a waiting nurse then picks up a metal disk underneath him and climbs gingerly up the edge of the hole. He messes with the device for a moment then places it down and vanishes, eyes losing their wrinkles in the short moments before he fades.

Even as you see glimpses of this, it dissolves in your head, washed away by the distractions of a newborn. The memories locked deep in your subconscious, waiting for the right moment to trigger.

Like the moment you saw your grave.

You jerk backwards, suddenly in the graveyard again, still kneeling on the grass. The rain soaks through your shirt as your umbrella falls from your slack hands. You barely notice the discomfort. Your eyes dart through the field.

The earth around you feels empty now. Some graves never had bodies to begin with, their remains lost to the violence of war. Now you realize that some sit empty because their owners avoided them altogether.

You will die early, you know. The time you spent is still part of you. Your heart has only so many beats before it wears itself out. But it will be stopped by fate, not by circumstance anymore.

You reach down and touch the stone in apology then walk back to the parking lot, passing more ghosts along the way. Your umbrella lays forgotten on the ground.

Back in your apartment, you go to your shelf, opening the oak display case and taking out the dog tags there. They are cold, nothing like they were when you first held them all those years ago. You always thought they belonged to your father, a hero. The man that gave you life.

And you were right. Private Charles Williams did give you his life. 

He gave it to you when you snapped his dog tags off his neck and went with the man in the suit. A man that arrived thirty seconds too late and assumed your name, ignoring the body on the ground. 

You didn’t bother correcting him. 

Anything was worth getting away from there. 

Anything.