Time Travel in 3 Parts: Part One

         Vincent watched the young man disappear down the wooded trail from the window of his tiny cabin. If he wasn’t so goddamned depressed, he might have savored the surreal nature of the situation he was in, but he was depressed- goddamned depressed- and no meds in sight to put him into a sleepy haze of mediocrity. He did have whiskey, though. He took a sip from his blue and white-speckled cup, wincing in pleasure as the honey-colored liquid burned his gullet.

         The world had turned to shit around the same time he turned twenty-seven, but he’d known it was going to happen for a little while- long enough to cash in his 401k (meager as it was), buy a parcel of land in Appalachia, and build a cabin barely larger than his body.

         If he’d known just how shit it was going to get, he might have spent his retirement fund on hookers and an obscene amount of cocaine instead of a water purification system, solar panels, guns, and enough ammo to single-handedly win every war of the 20th century. Vincent gulped the last finger of whiskey and set the tin mug on the window sill. It was his first in a week, but he barely felt a buzz. It would take four or five more to get him feeling good and another three to numb the sense of helplessness that had followed him around like a stray dog for the last thirty years.

         All that time, Vincent had felt the weight of the unchangeable pressing down on him, boxing him in. He’d seen the ugly future by a strange stroke of luck and it defined what now had become the majority of his life. Little did he know just how much it had defined him. Until now.

         When he was kid- maybe eight years old- his dad had taken him to see the bears at a local preserve. It was called a preserve, but when they got there it was just a large, fenced in field with a couple of trees. The trip was supposed to make him happy, but it had only made him sad. He didn’t know why at the time, but now he did. It was the mirage of freedom: the fool’s paradise. Now, instead of sadness, all he could feel was rage. He wasn’t the little boy anymore. He was the fucking bear.

         A laugh, part hysterical, part howl, erupted from his throat. At first, he’d thought the arrival of the young man was a coincidence, odd as it was, but, after he'd sobered up, it hadn’t taken him long to realize what was happening. He’d had these conversations before. He’d slept fitfully in this cabin three and a half decades ago, but not as the owner.

         Picking up the 1911 .45, he decided the young man was out of earshot. The cool metal barrel nestled at his temple and, calm as Stu Ungar with a losing hand, he squeezed the trigger.