Word Count: 2307
This is kind of a revenge fantasy daydream.
Time Travel
Doc Brown had it half right. Time travel does involve plutonium. But it involves a whole lot more than what was shown in the movie, and just about everything short of a flux capacitor. That’s where I got the initial idea for time travel, but as the decades past it seemed like that idea would never come to fruition. You might think to yourself, what would a person like me want to go back in time for? I could stop the creation of the Atom bomb? I could right wrongs like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap. I could see the signing of the Declaration of Independence. No, none of that. What I want is much more important. And as I step into the five foot squared box that’s going to rocket me into the past, I feel exhilarated. None of my classmates knew the reason behind the year I chose… 1991. There was nothing too significant that year, and so I said it would be a good year to make the first jump. Unbeknownst to them, I did have an agenda, and as I felt the static electricity of the machine as it came to life, I smiled and laughed.
I was always told I had an evil laugh, but this one definitely was meant to be. The air popped around me and the lights in the science lab flickered. Any second now and I would be transported to another time and place. We had sent test dummies and animals into the past and future, and both came back unscathed. Now it was time for the first human experiment. I chose eagerly to be first. I told them to give me a few hours before they called me back. That should hopefully be enough time to get the job done. I had already done the research… after all, I lived it. And now all I had to do was get there, find the kid, and complete my mission. So as the machine made its final calculations, I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, I was in the year 1991.
Things were so much simpler and innocent back then. But life seems better when you look back, than when you actually lived it. What’s the old saying? Hindsight is twenty/twenty and all. My life was not better though. It was hell. Pure, unadulterated, hell. Every single day I was picked on by this one kid. I didn’t mind the random teasing from others, but this boy made every single day of my teenage life, hell. That was when my depression started, and it continues to this very day. I missed out on so many of the things a teenager is supposed to experience. Prom, friends, dating, I missed it all, all because of this one boy. Because of his constant teasing, I found that I just could not put my trust in anyone. Nobody was worth it. And it continued on throughout the years. When I would make friends, they would backstab me. I couldn’t keep jobs, because of co-workers harassing me. It’s been a constant in my life, this lack of trusting.
When I finally graduated high school I thought that hell would be over. I thought I could finally move on with my life. But that torture has stayed with me every single step of the way. The one constant thing in my life was my hatred for him. The one thing that just irked me to no end was that he called himself a Christian. Ha! Yeah right! And that was when I said to myself “If this is how Christians act, then I don’t want any part of it!” And as the years passed, the hatred grew. I wanted to go to my ten year reunion just to confront him, and maybe punch his lights out, but I didn’t. I couldn’t even muster up the strength to do that. I didn’t care about the consequences, I just wanted revenge. And now, after all this time, today I get that.
I befriended this nerdy kid in college. I found out he was working on creating a time machine for his thesis. I knew that it was quite unlikely that he would ever discover it, but he was one of the smartest people I had ever known. So I geeked up. I learned whatever I could about physics and science, which wasn’t an easy task considering I’d failed science class multiple times in high school. He tutored me though, and we developed a bond. I wanted to help him out so that he could find his answer, and so that I might be able to go back in time and take care of a few things. The bond grew into love, and even if it wasn’t reciprocated by me, I used it to my advantage. We spent countless hours working on this project. One night we just kind of stumbled upon it, and had a ‘eureka’ moment. A year later we had the working machine and started testing. And six months after that, I’m standing in the middle of a parking lot in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, in the year 1991. Amazing! Absolutely amazing!
It took me a few minutes to realize where I was, it had changed so much in the last fifteen years. It was a good thing I looked young, I should be able to pull off a young fresh-out-of-college teacher. So I oriented myself to my surroundings, and start to walk off towards the school’s main building. If I’m not mistaken, the new principal started that year, and it was the first day back from summer vacation, and my younger self would be starting her junior year. The new Principal wouldn’t know who the new teachers were for that school year, so hopefully I can walk right on by without any problems as long as I look the part… confident and nerdy.
They say a certain smell can take you back to when you were a child. It was exactly like that. As I walked through the wide open halls, kids bustled around me, and it was completely surreal. I remembered where my locker was, where I had my Christmas gift from my best, and only, friend stolen from me. The girl, whom I can’t remember her name, had the audacity to play with the gift right in front of me in my next class. I saw the old classroom where I used to wait out front to catch a glimpse of the boy I’d had a crush on all semester, only to find as he exited the classroom, he would point and laugh at me with his friends. I came across the hallway where a boy was messing around and lifted my shirt only to find that I wasn’t wearing a bra. Because I hadn’t developed yet, I found no need to wear a bra. I was a late bloomer, which made the teasing all that much worse. It was one thing to be short, but to not bloom… let’s just say I loved the TV show Doogie Howser M.D. until that year. All these memories I had forgotten about until I took one step into this school, and they all came rushing back in a torrential downpour.
But here it was, the pièce de résistance right here in front of me. The classroom that I had with ‘him’, that started this downward spiral that is my life. I sucked an involuntary breath in. I started to visibly shake, and the palms of my hands were slick with sweat. I peeked in the little window on the door. I could see me with my New Kids on the Block t-shirt on, and my green shoes with the metal pieces on them that I had gotten that summer on a trip to Atlanta with my mom and aunt. I was so proud of those shoes. Too bad I only wore them once, because after that day of ridicule, I couldn’t bring myself to wear them again. “Where’s your glove, Michael Jackson” is the one phrase that has repeated itself in my head so many times. I absolutely adored Michael Jackson anyway, and that’s I guess why I really loved those shoes. But I must tell you, if I didn’t have my best friend, and the New Kids on the Block, I don’t think I ever would have survived. I wanted to kill myself each and every day.
So as I stand there peering into the window as the tardy bell rings and kids are scrambling to their classrooms, I see my younger self start to tear up. This was the worst out of all the bad days. This is the one day I remember the most, when I think of back then. The one day I wish I could forget. Which is why I wanted to come back and change it… to erase it from my memory. I jerk the door open and the teacher looks over towards me. God she always loved to freeze us out. The only thing is, the cold room worked opposite on me, I just wanted to fall asleep while all the other kids were wide awake. Oh what was her name? Mrs. Smith maybe? I can’t remember. But I look at her with all the confidence that I can muster, and say “I need to speak with Mr. King please?”
“May I ask what it’s pertaining to?” she inquires.
“I’m sorry, I’m new in the office and didn’t even think to ask, they just wanted to see him for a minute?”
“Ok, Paul, you need to go with this nice lady here to the office,” she says to him, as he nods his displeasure. I see myself sitting there, in my dorky short curly hair that my mother would just not let me grow out, give a sigh of relief.
As we step out the classroom door, I nod for him to go one way.
“But the office is the other way?” he protests.
“I know. We’re not going to the office,” and as he tries to resist I grab him by the scruff of his shirt and drag him out to the parking lot at the back of the school. Luckily all the kids were in their classes by now, so nobody followed us.
“You know, I came here to kill you today,” I say as I push him up against one of the cars in the parking lot. He tries to scream so I cover his mouth. “But I’m not going to do that, because I’m not that type of person.” He stops squirming and I continue. “You know that girl you were just picking on in the classroom?”
He gives me a how-did-you-know look, and his brows scrunch together. He calms down so I lift my hand off his mouth while still holding him up against the car.
“That is me. I travelled back in time to this very day to change my history.”
“Yeah right, lady!” he smarts off, and I grab the back of his head. My fingers curl around his short hair, and I smack his head into the car window, nearly breaking it, but hard enough to give him a nice little bruise on his forehead.
“You are a little son of a bitch, you know that? You made my life a living hell, and I can so easily end yours right now! So what would you want me to do, huh?”
He rubs his forehead and glares back at me.
“I thought so. Now, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to go back into that class as if nothing happened, when it ends, you are going to apologize to her, and then after that, you are never going to speak to her again. You will never think about her again. You are just going to pretend she does not exist. You won’t look at her, you won’t joke to your friends about her, and if your friends start to joke, then you will change the subject very quickly, do you understand?” He nods and I continue. “If you so much as blink her way, I will know, and I will come back, do you understand? I have a time machine at my disposal and I will use it if I have to!” Another quick nod and I push him back towards the school building and he slowly walks back to class.
I wasn’t sure if my memory would change instantaneously, if I had to wait for it to happen, or if it wouldn’t change until I got back to my timeline. I didn’t get the chance to find out, because seconds later I felt myself start to fade out. They must be pulling me back early, but by my calculations I still had an hour. Something must be wrong. I wonder if the Professor had come into the lab that morning only to find we started without him and decided to pull me back sooner rather than wait. I looked down at my hands as they started to dematerialize. This wasn’t how I jumped here, why was it different on the way back? Maybe it was because I wasn’t in the box? I don’t know, but as I continued to fade, I closed my eyes and prayed for the first time in years. When I opened them back up, I was standing at my desk, grabbing my backpack and talking with Paul. I couldn’t believe it, did he actually just apologize? Did Paul actually just say he was sorry for picking on me all this time, and that it wouldn’t happen again? I think I might be sick. I think I might actually just faint right here, right now. And so I do.
No comments:
Post a Comment