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Dave finds that the episodes he has are more than they appear to be.. |
| TIME SLIP By Kyle Ricketts It had happened again. I was sure of it. No one else had seemed to notice that the car's parked along the street had vanished and been replaced by horse drawn carts. Or the fact that people had stared at us, like we were some sort of oddities that belonged in the circus. Then, as quickly as it had all appeared, it had disappeared, leaving me standing on the sidewalk like I had been slapped in the face. It didn't go unnoticed, but it was so regular now that no one checked to see if I was ok. I have no idea why it keeps happening to me. As best as I can tell, it's like I keep seeing flashes of the past. Maybe I'm going crazy, but they only happen for a few seconds and then go away. I shook myself and ran to catch up to my friends. They hadn't even noticed that I had fallen behind; they were still talking about the movie we had just seen. We walked a few blocks more and finally split, all heading home. We lived so close to the movie theatre that driving was pointless. I put my hands inside my jacket pocket, chin inside my jumper and bowed my head against the cold wind as I walked the couple of blocks to my house. I felt funny, like I'd just ran for an hour. My legs were wobbly, thighs were on fire and I felt like my heart was beating at a million miles per hour. It was always the same after I had an episode. They had been happening to me on and off for years. I could go months without ever having one, then have them a handful of times in one week. There was no warning it was about to happen, no signs that I was going to have some sort of a vision. The after effects of them though ranged. Sometimes I could feel fine, other times it was like my body had decided that it was too tired. It just depended on how long the episode lasted. If it was only a couple of seconds, I felt worse. A couple of minutes and I felt fine. I had been to see several doctors; none of who could explain what was wrong with me. One time, I had an episode while I was at the doctors. I was sitting on the chair next to the doctors desk, the next minute I was standing inside another room with a man on a bed, rolling over too look at me and starting to say something, before I blinked and was back at the doctors. I had only had the episode for a split second. The doctor had looked at me in surprise when, after I had thrown up in his bin, I had told him that I had had an episode right then. I told him what I had seen and he had looked even more surprised. It turned out that fifty or so years ago, the building his clinic was in had been a hotel. That's when I first thought that maybe I was getting sneak peeks into the past. The doctor had run all kinds of tests on me, everything came back normal. He wanted me to go to some government testing facility, to get to the bottom of everything, but I had refused. I wasn't about to become a guinea pig. So I had just lived with the occasional feeling of being sick. My friends used to worry every time it happened, but apart from the side effects, I was ok. I unlocked my door and walked inside. My space wasn't very big. My lounge room and kitchen shared the square space, my bedroom and bathroom each having their own rooms with doors. I slumped down on my couch and flicked on the T.V, it was almost time for my favourite TV show. I was sitting, cross legged on the floor, looking up at the radio. A family sitting all around me were gazing intently at it. A news bulletin was coming across it, "The beings seem to be positioning themselves above...." My T.V appeared in front of me once more and a vicious case of nausea overwhelmed me. I only just made it to my bathroom before throwing up. Shaking, I made my back to the couch and sat down. So it was one of those weeks. I had been right. The week had been full of my episodes. Thankfully it seemed that they were getting longer, so once they wore off I didn't feel sick. Stranger things started to happen though. I had been hanging out with my friends again; we'd gone to a NFL match. Two of my friends had run further ahead and were mucking around, reliving an incredible touchdown we had seen. I turned away to check where another friend was and turned back to continue watch my other friends. Except now, I was watching a group of people I didn't know mucking around, the colours of the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts all around me, which made me frown. Neither of those teams had been playing today. "That had to of been the greatest game ever played!" A man walking past me said to his friend excitedly. He eyed me curiously as he passed and started to laugh, nudging his friend and saying, "Why would you come to the game when your team isn't playing?" Both men looked at me and started laughing as they walked away. I was confused, what had happened? I looked around myself, I was at the same stadium, but something was different. The clothes people were wearing seemed old and out of date. I went to look back at the two men laughing at me. Only to be standing outside a dark stadium, with no one around. Litter was blowing around in the breeze of the night. I stood on the spot, seriously confused and starting to get a little scared. Had I been standing on this spot all day and no one had thought to take me to a hospital or anything? I couldn't stand around there all night too, so I left. Catching a cab home had been a task. Normally there's taxi's all over the place, but with everyone but me gone home, why would they stick around? By the time I got home, I was starving. I hadn't eaten since I had a corn dog at the game. I went straight to the fridge without turning the light on, thinking about frying up some burgers. I froze. None of what was in the fridge was mine. Salads, salad dressing, a half-eaten chocolate cake; the fridge was actually full. I never brought enough to actually fill my fridge. I heard keys in the door and straightened up, clutching the salad dressing. Someone was trying to come into my apartment. The door opened and the light was flicked on. A man and woman walked in, the woman laughing at something the man was telling her. They both saw me and froze. "Who the hell are you?" The man and I asked at the same time. "I live here," I answered. The man looked at the girl, who was clutching his arm. "This is our apartment; we've been here for two years," This had to be some kind of joke, my friends had clearly left me standing at the stadium and organised this little prank. I shook my head smiling, 'Nice try, but you aren't going to trick-" I had looked back at the couple, but they had disappeared. Instead, I was back at the stadium, it was daylight and my friends were still talking about the touchdown we had seen. "Where did you go?" One of my friends asked, coming from the toilet. I stayed silent, I didn't know what had happened, or if this was even real. "Yo, Dude? Where did you go? One minute you were here, the next just poof," he mimed something exploding with his hands, "You were gone," "I-I was here," I managed to say. I didn't feel sick, which meant this episode had lasted a while. It had definitely been longer than any other I had had. "Yeah alright," My friend said, his tone clear that he didn't believe me. I looked down at my hand. I was holding a bottle of salad dressing. The next week, mercifully, I had no episodes. I had put the salad dressing in my now empty fridge and not thought anymore about it. Over the weekend, I had my friends over for a gaming night. My lounge room had cables running all over the floor, the couch was pushed to one end, bean bags brought out and tables set up between them. Four TVs were on top of the tables, filling the living room. Two were pointing towards the couch, two towards the bean bags. My usually empty fridge now was full with alcohol. It had been a good night. There was lots of taunts and swearing as we played online. The later it got, the emptier my fridge was and the more the taunts and swearing became more insulting. One of my friends had gotten up to get himself a beer and had accidentally grabbed the salad dressing. No one had even noticed until he had taken a sip then promptly spat it all over the carpet. Everyone else fell about laughing hysterically, after all it was late at night and we'd all had a few drinks. "Why do you even have salad dressing?" The friend asked angrily looking at the bottle, "It's gone off!" "It's probably been there since the last time anything green was in the fridge," I said, wiping tears from my eyes. My friend looked at the bottle, seemingly checking for an expiration date. He laughed and said, "Looks like someone made a mistake when doing these," "What do you mean?" Another friend of mine had asked. "Says this expires in 2018, since when does salad dressing last for two years?" The first friend said. I grabbed the bottle and checked the expiration date. Sure enough, he was right. I took the lid off and sniffed, it certainly smelt off. I frowned, I had only put this in the fridge last weekend; it shouldn't have gone off. Then I remembered that I actually hadn't brought it, and how I had got it. My eyes widened and I said, "Salad dressing doesn't normally go off for like a month or so," "How do you even know that?" One of my other friends said, staring at his screen. I shrugged on auto pilot; I was still staring at the bottle. Had I somehow gone into the future? That didn't make sense; all of my episodes seemingly showed me the past. How had I now gone into the future? And more so, how had I brought back a bottle of salad dressing? My friends apparently weren't as interested as I was in the bottle, but then; they didn't know how I had got it. For that part, I didn't even know how I had got it. Maybe it was just a typo, maybe during my episode I had walked off, somehow found the bottle and picked it up. Maybe what happened in my episode was just my brains way of making sense of how I had ended up with it. I decided it was just part of my crazy, that it was a typo and that it was nothing. I got off the couch and went to put it in the bin. One of my friends yelled out something and I turned to look at him and laugh. I was now standing alone in my living room, except it was completely empty. My friends, the T.V's, everything had gone. Plastic sheets were all over the house and a high table was in the middle of the room. I looked around, the benches were the same, the cupboards, everything. The difference was that there was no fridge or other appliances. It was totally bare. The door to the bedroom flew open and a girl, hands bound, mouth tapped over and blood all over her, fell out. I dropped the salad dressing in surprise. One of her eyes was purple and bulging, blood flowing freely from a cut above it. She had a white top on, blood splatters all over it, and no pants or underwear. As she hit the floor she looked up at me and started squealing, tears forming in her eyes. Behind her, a fat man slowly walked out of the bedroom, sniffing and wiping his nose. He had just done his fly up and was now, standing shirtless, putting his belt when he saw me. "Who the hell are you?" He suddenly yelled, looking up and seeing me. The girl on the floor, unseen by both of us, had crawled to the door. She made to open it. BLAM! Suddenly there was a pistol in the man's hand, something wet splashed on my face, I flinched. "You coming back to play or what?" One of friends called out to me. I turned and saw my friends and our set up, like nothing had happened. I touched my face; something red was on my fingers, the colour drained from my face. I rushed to the front door of my apartment and started to rip up the carpet, like a man possessed "Dude! What are you doing?" My friends shouted I didn't answer. My friends exchanged nervous glances. I stopped, frozen. There was what looked a bullet hole in the wood beneath the carpet. I didn't go back to the house for days. I stayed with one of my friends. I couldn't go back. The images of what I had seen haunted my dreams, made even freakier by the fact that I had blood on my face and had found the bullet hole. I had looked into the history of my house and found that a gruesome kidnap and rape had happened there over the course of a week, the man who was charged with the crime had tried to pin it on an imaginary man who had appeared in the house, then disappeared just as quickly. Authorities had thought he was just trying to go for the insanity plea, but the victim had corroborated his story. They had both ended up in a psychiatric hospital, her because of what he had done to her, him because he had tried to tell police that a salad dressing bottle was proof of his story. I was shaken. Everything I had seen, was exactly what had been reported. I couldn't make sense of it. That salad bottle had been mine, I was sure of it. I had told my friend about it, but he had just waved it off. "Maybe you just somehow tapped into the memory of what had happened, maybe that's what happens to you when you have those episodes," he had. "Like some kind of psychic?" I had asked. He had just shrugged but didn't say anything more on the subject. The rest of that night I spent trying to get one of my episodes to happen at will. It didn't work. I eventually went back to my apartment, once the shock of everything had worn off. I was worried that maybe being back in that place would set off my psychic ability; as it were however, I didn't have a single episode for a month. Work was the only thing that focused me and made me forget about what I had seen. I was sleeping better; I hadn't had an episode for a long time. Things were starting to look up. Until they didn't. After work one Friday night, some of my co-workers were having drinks. I was asked if I wanted to come. This was new to me. Normally, I come to work, do what I need to and then go home. I don't get invited to things. My own fault, I know. I had gladly accepted the invitation. But within half an hour of being there, I wished I hadn't. I felt awkward, and no one really spoke to me. I ended up saying goodbye to them all early, and went outside. Almost as if they were avoiding me, there were no cabs around again. I decided to take the train home. The train station was back near work; luckily the pub we had went to was only a short walk from there. As I neared the train station, I could almost feel myself step through something and for the briefest of moments all I saw was an empty field with nothing on it, then the station was back. It was the quickest episode I had ever had, and the after effects put me to the floor. I fell on all fours and projectile vomited over the pavement, then curled into a ball. The pain was incredible! People who were walking by muttered to themselves and avoided me, many saying that I was a drunk or that I was on drugs, not one came over to see if I was actually ok. I couldn't blame them; if I saw how I was I would've walked away too. After a few minutes, the pain lessened a little bit and I managed to get up and get onto the train. After a few more weeks, and a lot more episodes, I decided to take a vacation. I figured time away would do me some good. I had just got my passport not long ago and had never used it. I decided to leave the country, try and find a new adventure and just have a good time. I spent a whole afternoon at work looking all over the internet, wondering where I wanted to go. Finally I decided on Canada. Mostly because of my fear of flying, at least this way I could drive there, keeping my feet firmly on the ground. I had meant to go alone, to try and rid myself of the necessity of trying to make it fun for someone else, but one of my friends, Chris, decided that he wanted to come too. "I've always wanted to go to Canada, why not go with a friend?" he said. In the end I didn't argue. Having company might have its benefits. Eventually the time came to depart. In the darkness of the wee small hours of the morning both of us, cold and rugged up with many jumpers, loaded up the car and took off. I took the first shift of driving, I was buzzing! I hadn't been on a holiday in a few years and it was somewhat exciting. It quickly wore off as we made our way north. For most of the trip, Chris and I spoke none stop, laughing and singing songs on the radio, even putting on a CD at one point. We had to stop over at a hotel for a night, but again we got up very early and hit the road. All in all it had been a good trip and by the time we had got to the hotel we were staying in, I was in high spirits. The whole trip I had been feeling good and hadn't had one episode. It seemed as though my idea to have a vacation was working out well. That night we went out and hit a couple of bars, both of us getting very drunk. Hey, we were on holidays! We ended up talking to two local girls and ended up spending majority of the night with them. They took us to some local nightclubs and at some time in the morning, I think it was around 4am, we all went back to our hotel. I woke up late the next day, in bed alone, window open and a slight breeze with sunlight coming in. It was very comfortable. I though back on the night before and smiled, this trip was exactly what I needed. Before I knew what was happening, my door was broken open and five or six men came storming in, all of them shouting. Each one was wearing a black helmet with goggles, black combat clothes and had a machine gun pressed to their shoulders. I looked at them all in shock, backing up in my bed and holding the sheets close to me; I was very aware that I was naked. One of the men lowered his gun and looked at me, his head cocked to one side. Then he yelled, "This isn't-" I was sitting up in bed, staring at the door, my room was now empty. Pale day light was filtering into my room through the curtains and I was by myself. I slumped back down and groaned. I had had another episode. I hoped the girl had left before it happened though. I rolled over and looked at the alarm clock that the hotel had provided. It's red luminous numbers telling me that it was 6:30am. I buried my head into the pillow; I needed more sleep Voices outside made me stare at the window grumpily. Who was up at this time in a hotel? The voices got louder as they got closer till finally they were right outside my window. "- Where he could have gone," Chris was saying, he was worried. I didn't take much notice of it, he was probably just talking to the girl he brought to the hotel last night. "Can you be a bit quieter?" I asked grumpily as they came inside, my voice hoarse because of shouting from the night before. "When did you get back here? We've just been looking for you for the last half an hour!" Chris said loudly and a bit angrily. "What are you talking about?" I said emerging from the sheets, "I've been here all night with Ava," "No, you haven't," Ava said standing at the door with Chris, Chris's date was also standing at the door looking at me. Chris looked at me knowingly and then said, "Ah well, at least you're back," He put his arm around his date and with a wink said, "I'm going back to bed," His date smiled and followed him into his conjoined room. Ava grabbed her stuff and muttered something about having something on today and left. I rubbed my face in my hands and sighed. Sounds coming from Chris's room made me grab my IPod and turn it on; I didn't want to listen to that. We moved around Canada, driving to wherever we felt like and staying in hotels. After my episode, Chris started to keep an eye on me and didn't really leave me alone. I understood why, but it was frustrating. I wasn't some kind of kid that needed to be looked after. We didn't do much sight-seeing, mainly just drinking and heading out at night and lazing around in the hotel room by day. That suited me fine. I wasn't one to be walking around or dragged out to see something boring. Most nights, since that first one, I went home alone. Chris on the other hand was like some sort of magnet. Even when he wasn't trying, women just seemed to gravitate towards him. He wasn't particularly handsome, though he wasn't ugly. He wasn't rich and he dressed mostly in jeans, converses and a t-shirt. What I thought it was, was when they spoke to him. He had a carelessness about himself and he didn't seem to be making a move on them. I guess that made them feel safe with him. On the other hand, I knew what my problem was. I was socially awkward. If I was left alone with a girl, I ran out of things to say and we both stood their awkwardly, drinking our drinks until she said she had to go to the toilet or just simply walked off. I was frustrated with myself; surely being drunk would make it easier to talk to girls. It didn't. At least not for me. Chris sabotaged himself for me at times. If the girl didn't want to come back to the hotel, he wouldn't go with her back to hers; despite me saying multiple times that I was ok. He just said that we were on a trip together and he wasn't going to let me be by myself. After a few days of this, I was seriously wishing he would. One night came around where we both didn't feel like going out. So instead, we decided we'd go out for dinner then head back to the room and watch a movie. Just have a relaxing night. We headed out to a pizza place, all you can eat. I loved Mexican pizza and ended up just taking the whole pan, which caused me to get angry glares from some of the other patrons. Chris gave me a look and I said, "What? They'll bring out more!" Within ten minutes they had. "So tell me about these episodes," Chris said suddenly as he sat back down from getting more pizza. "There isn't much to tell," I said quietly, this was the last topic I wanted to talk about. "C'mon man," Chris said looking at me exasperatedly while chewing some pizza, "I've known you for years, you've said about having them but you've never really talked about them. What are they like?" I didn't say anything at first. "It's like you're hallucinating, but everything seems normal," I explained. "What do you mean?" "Well you know how I had one the other night?" Chris nodded. "I saw a swat team bust into our room, look at me and then start to talk then the next thing I knew I was alone in the room and you guys were coming back from looking for me," Chris chewed his pizza a bit more slowly while he looked at me then said, "Are they always like that?" I nodded, "Not always of the same thing, but something always seems to be happening, or there's some big change," "Sounds like you're psychic," Chris replied. I thought about the salad dressing when he said that and shook my head, "I don't know what it is" Chris started talking about how similar it was to a medium or psychic, but I stopped listening. He had asked me a question, which I hadn't heard. I looked at him and said, "I don't really want to talk about this," "But why not?" He asked, clearly frustrated, "It's so interesting!" "Maybe to you, but you're not the one who has to deal with the after affects, or the things that I've seen," "What stuff have you seen?" Chris asked leaning in. I stood up from the table," I'm going back to the hotel," Chris sighed and got up too. I was tailing a little bit behind Chris, rummaging through my pockets looking for my headphones for my IPod. I went to yell out to Chris and see if he had them or had seen them, but I fumbled my IPod and dropped it on the ground. I went to tell Chris to keeping going, but the street was completely empty. Before it had just been Chris and I. Now, Chris wasn't even walking along it. It was a long street so Chris hadn't walked around a corner and out of my view. I knew what had happened. I turned around to see what was different, but discovered nothing was. I frowned. Was he just hiding on me then? Two people talking interrupted my thoughts and I turned towards them There was Chris and someone walking out of the Pizza place. Had he gone back and ran into this guy? Chris began walking further ahead of the other guy who had started rummaging through his pockets. He had the same clothes on as I did. He then lifted his head, seemingly going to say something to Chris, dropped something, then almost as if someone had deleted him from a picture, he disappeared. I stood slack jawed, not fully comprehending what I had seen. Chris saw me and then looked behind him, "How did you get in front of me?" I didn't know what to say; I just walked past him and picked up the item that the other guy had dropped. It was my IPod. Chris appeared at my shoulder and looked at what I was holding. "Should put that in your pocket or you're going to lose it," I started to shake, I didn't even feel nauseous. Then something else dawned on me; I had seen myself. I was sure of it, the IPod, the clothes the other guy was wearing; everything pointed to it. But the other guy hadn't even looked like me, had he? Behind me, Chris looked at his watch and said, 'Come on Dave, the movie will start soon, it's already seven!" I looked at my own watch; it said 7:30pm. That didn't make sense, I was sure I had set my watch to the time that was one my IPod, which was the same as my phone. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked, it said 7:30 too. I checked the IPod, it said 7:00. My head was starting to hurt; I didn't understand what was going on. "Dude!" Chris said, trying to hurry me up. I turned and started walking again, Chris falling into stride next to me as I caught up to him. He looked at me. "What's wrong?" "It happened again," I said quietly, holding my IPod and Phone next to each other. The different times side by side. "What happened?" "I saw you and I leave the Pizza place, saw me drop the IPod and that was it," I explained. "So, you didn't go back to the original point?" Chris asked me. I frowned at that, "No, time just continued on," "How long was it? Did you feel sick?" I started to look around; I hadn't gone back to the original point the episode had begun, which meant the episode was still happening. I started to panic. Chris noticed this and tried to calm me down, but I was sure that at any minute I was about to be pulled back. We made it to the hotel and suddenly, as if I had been drinking all day, I was throwing up. I hadn't made it to the toilet; instead I was in the shower and let it all out. My body ached all over; my head was spinning and buzzed. These symptoms were new and painful. I couldn't stop throwing up for fifteen minutes. When I finally did, I had a shower, very slowly. My head was still spinning and buzzing. I hadn't realised that during my throwing up stage I had also soiled myself. "I think I need to see someone for this," I said to Chris after my shower. He looked at me in shock; my voice was faint and sounded like an old man. "Yeah, I think you had better too," Chris said. We cut the trip short and the next day started to head home. Chris had tried to convince me to see a doctor here in Canada, but I had refused. I wanted to see my doctor; it would've been too hard to explain everything to a new one. I hadn't gotten any better since the night before; I was still very nauseous and moved slowly. All my joints ached and I was having serious problems holding my bladder. The trip home couldn't have been more different from the trip there. We both were quiet, Chris was doing all of the driving and I was laying in the back seat, trying not to throw up. The trip was made longer by the fact that I couldn't hold on to go to the toilet and we had to make stops every couple of hours or so. I couldn't hold food down, so I was drinking water, which didn't help my bladder, and nibbling on rice crackers, which seemed to be the only thing I could keep down. We had stopped overnight again, but this time we didn't take to the road till the sun was up. I was starting to shiver; I put on a jumper that I had found in my car. It was on old one, one that I had been looking for; it had a yellow square with an M on and was fleece. It still didn't seem to warm me up, so I dived into my suitcase and pulled out a hoodie that looked like my Nan had made it for me. "Always hated that thing," Chris said, trying to get me to talk. "Why?" I asked keeping my eyes closed. "Why would you pay like a hundred bucks to have something that you could make yourself?" I just laughed weakly, and then started having a coughing fit. We stopped at a gas station, I stayed in the car and Chris went inside. A few minutes later he came back out and tossed me something. "Try these for your nausea," He said. I looked at what he had thrown me; they were a pair of sunglasses. But they looked odd, like a pair of goggles that crazy scientist's wear at the front then going into the classic sunglasses arm that sits behind your ear. "Why would this help me?" I asked. "Read the label, says these help reduce the feeling of nausea or car sickness," Chris said starting the car and pulling out of the gas station. I shrugged and put them on. I had no idea where we were, or the route Chris was taking us home. It felt weird, but I didn't have the energy to try and find out. "Stop the car," I said to him. "What's up?" He said looking back at me quickly then back to the road. "I've got to throw up," I said. "I'm just coming up to some bridge called South Fork; can you wait till we get over it?" I shook my head. Chris then started the process of pulling over. I jumped out of the car, all fragility of my body forgotten. Chris watched me from the driver's seat, pity all over his face. I turned to wave him away, so he would stop watching me. I was standing in a group of people, old 40's style cars were lined up all down the road. The road itself not looking modern either. Everyone was wearing their Sunday best, men in suits and women in dresses. All the men seemed to be wearing hats. A bridge stretched in front of all the cars, I looked around totally lost before I stared straight down in front of me, trying to figure out what was going on, not entirely sure that I wanted this episode to finish. A flash went off and I looked at a man holding an old timey camera. "For the bridge opening!" He said holding the camera up, before running off to take another picture. I blinked and I was looking at the puddle of vomit I had made. I turned and looked back at the car, to see Chris. He was already looking at me, white in the face, surprise and shock all over it. "What?" I said, I was feeling very weak and a fresh wave of aches and pains came over me. "You- you," Chris stuttered. Suddenly I was alarmed; I had never seen Chris like this. "I what?" I asked. "You-you just disappeared, then a second later you were back!" I walked back over to the car, Chris just watched me as I got nearer. I needed to sit down, it felt like my strength was fading fast. "That's impossible," I said getting into the back seat. "I swear! One minute you were throwing up then you were gone. I looked way and when I looked back you were there again!" Chris said, he was speaking like his voice was breaking. "The only thing that happened out there was that I had another episode," I said closing my eyes behind my sunglasses. "You disappeared!" Chris repeated, he wasn't starting to drive back out onto the road, which annoyed me. I wanted to get back home to see my doctor. "Chris, I had an episode, I saw a group of people had my picture taken for a bridge opening and then it finished, did you see that happen?" I said a little annoyed. I was more tired than I had ever been; all I wanted to do was sleep. "You weren't there!" Chris said. "Maybe you dozed off for a minute Chris, Can we go?" I was almost asleep. Chris stared at me for a moment and then started the car. Chris pulled up out the front of Dave's house. He was still freaked out. Dave had vanished for a moment then reappeared before his very eyes. But maybe what Dave had said had some truth to it. Chris was tired and had been driving a big distance. Dave had been sleeping since the bridge, he hadn't even woken up when Chris had accidentally drifted in front of a truck and the truck had blared his horn. "Hey dude, wake up, we're home," Chris said giving Dave a little nudge. He didn't wake up. "Dave, wake up! We're home!" He said, louder this time, almost shouting. Still Dave didn't wake up. Chris frowned and then shook him. Dave's arms were limp and Chris could just make out his eyes behind the glasses, they were open. Then he noticed Dave's lips. They were blue, as if he was cold to the point of freezing. Chris held his hand to Dave's head, he was cold. He put two fingers at a point on Dave's neck. There was no pulse. Frantically, Chris jumped into the back seat and started performing CPR, while dialling 911 on loud speaker. The coroner had said that it was a strange case. Dave was twenty seven, but somehow he had died of old age. They were at a lost to explain it. They had his doctor records from his previous visits. All his previous blood work had not shown any evidence of advanced ageing. But the autopsy was conclusive. Dave had died of old age. The funeral wasn't that big, Dave hadn't had a whole heap of friends. Chris was a wreck, having been the one that had been with him at the end he blamed himself for not noticing. He felt as though he could've saved him, despite everyone telling him that there was nothing he could have done. In the weeks that followed, Chris spent an increasing amount of time at home. He stopped hanging out with everyone. He left the house to go to work; where all he did was the bare minimum then went home. Everyone felt sorry for him, but no one could help. Chris wouldn't talk or reach out to anyone. One night, Chris was at home surfing the internet. He was looking at a social networking website and click bait ads kept popping up. One caught his eye titled 'Time Traveling Hipster' He clicked on it and read the story, not that there was much to it. Apparently it was an authentic picture from the South Fork bridge opening in Canada, the 'time travelling hipster' seemed to be wearing modern clothes which made him stand out in the picture. Chris, rapidly losing interest, scrolled down. He stood up so fast that he knocked his chair over as the picture came onto the screen. His heart was beating so fast that it hurt. Some of Dave's last words just before crossing that same bridge in Canada, echoing in his ears. "Chris, I had an episode, I saw a group of people, had my picture taken for a bridge opening and then it finished..." "Holy Crap!" He yelled, understanding dawning on him. He grabbed his jacket; he had news to tell his friends that they weren't going to believe. The image of the 'time travelling hipster' at the bridge opening remained on his screen. |
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