by Michael Shaw
“Before Jonathan Ashe finds the watch.” David crossed his arms.
“Before his father even invented it.” Jacob leaned back against the counter. He exhaled, an invisible load falling off of his chest. “We’ll prevent everything that’s happened. We’ll prevent time travel from entering the world.”
“There’s only one thing we’ll have to be wary of,” Howard said.
They stopped their celebration and looked his way.
“Sometimes there are… malfunctions.”
“Malfunctions?” David repeated.
“What do you mean?” Jacob asked.
“This is our only option,” Howard tried to assure them. “Believe me, this is our last resort.”
“Howard,” David stepped toward him, “what malfunctions?”
He stroked his chin, eyes tracing the cracks in the floor. His gray hair was the only thing that shone in that dark room. “Sometimes, it doesn’t go as far back as you need.”
“What?”
“Sometimes, it stops mid-journey. Whenever they tested it, they used it to go a week back. And most the time it went the whole way. But sometimes, it only went four days.”
David shook his head. “No. No way can we risk-”
“Then what, David?” Howard bellowed. The sound of his voice bounced off the hard walls of that small room and hit everyone’s ears with force. Jacob shuddered.
“We’ve exhausted every other option.” Howard put the phone to his ear and walked toward the hallway. He stopped short under the door frame.
David and Jacob just watched.
“We know what this present looks like, and I can’t live it in anymore.” He took one last look at them before leaving.
“I won’t tolerate the present that we live in. Not this one.”
Chapter 22
It ended, and my bones ached. The veins pumped from within my forearm. The trail had grown; it had moved from my wrist all the way to the full extent of my arm now. The veins pounded against the walls of my skin, as though demanding exit from a vessel.
Next to me was David Kemp.
All around us, time was frozen. We had fallen to the ground, still in the hotel room. Jacob’s face was stuck in a timeless yell. Howard’s eyes were still, outraged at insubordination.
Our hands, once fighting for the watch, both let go of it. It left David’s palm immediately, but it held to mine just a moment before releasing and falling to the ground.
We both were slowed by the experience of the flash. I leaned back, hands pressed against the carpet. It was wet from the blood of my former companions. Damp, but unstained, as the fabric itself was already red. I reached up to touch my ears as the headache set in. Like I had expected, it was worse than all the preceding times. Blood trickled down. My chest rose and fell like the tide of a stormy shore, and David’s seemed to do the same.
Our eyes locked, and I wondered if he had seen as much of my life as I had of his.
I looked down at the watch; its cover was closed.
“You saw your parents after they died…” He mumbled.
I brought my eyes back to him, connecting everything to the images of his past. “You came back in time to kill me.”
Before I could even form another thought, David Kemp clenched a fist and punched me in the face. I was knocked unconscious once again. But this time, there was no memory to accompany it.
Just darkness.
∞
I awoke to a sound. A low hum. At first I could not tell what made this noise. When I looked up, I saw a fluorescent light, but its bulb was dead. I looked back down. In front of me, two lanterns sat on a counter, and a third lantern was on the floor. I attempted to shield my eyes; my hands couldn’t move. Tied. I tried to stand, but my legs could do no more than shake. They were tied, too. Even in the act of taking a breath, I felt suppression against my stomach. More ropes. Yellow cords that constricted me like serpents. I was tied to a chair.
I was groggy, but full vision eventually came to my eyes. I saw three figures before me. White tile under my feet. A green plastic bin in front of my body, resting on a small table. It was filled with water.
The three of them all wore coats. The light flickered for a second. Everything finally came into view.
I was in a public bathroom. By the looks of it, abandoned. Perhaps part of an old gas station. Rather spacious, too.
David Kemp stood with the watch in his hand. Jacob Richards was to his right, with his back leaned against the counter. The lamp sat right next to him. A pistol was in his grasp. He kept it pointed at me.
On David’s left, next to the stalls, was Howard. Crossed arms.
I opened my mouth, but what would I say? I looked down at myself. I was completely restrained. I caught my reflection in the water of the plastic bin. Dust and smudges were all over my face. Dried blood went from my ears to my cheeks. It was as though they had dragged me in here like a rug.
I brought my eyes back up to my captors. Jacob’s face, fearful, but determined. Howard’s, calm and calculated. A furrowed brow.
David’s held focused anger. The pocket watch was tight in his grip. He bared his teeth.
“Time returned to normal speed after ten minutes…” Howard began, looking down at the watch. “Not something I’ve seen before. Some sort of cool-down?”
They all stared at me. I stared back with an entirely new understanding, thanks to the pocket watch. And the memories. “What year were you born?” I asked.
No one responded. Jacob stole a look at David.
“You’ve seen my life,” I groaned; the ropes were so tight, I struggled to allow room for my chest to even move. “Do you want to know what I’ve seen of yours?”
David’s lips shut over his wall of teeth. He understood what I was saying. He had seen part of my memory. And there was no way for him to know what I’d seen of his.
“You just killed two people; they were my age. Kids, practically.” My lip shivered, realizing that my new companions had left this earth just like that. “All of you… What year are you from?”
Howard glanced at the two of them, then at me. He looked as though he were unimpressed. He brought his hands up to rest on his stomach, which protruded just slightly from inside his jacket.
“When Jonathan Ashe turns 75 years old, he will release the world’s first time machine to the world.”
The statement stopped me. I held my breath as the words sank in. And then I just inhaled deeply, shaking. Through my nose. “No,” I said, “why would I sell time travel-”
“It is swiftly made illegal due to all the potential chaos that could arise in a world unbound from time.” Howard began to pace in front of the other two men, not even looking at me as he continued his narrative.
Jacob kept the gun trained on my face. David stared at the bin of water.
“Even Jonathan Ashe realizes that to jump back through time would be something too dangerous for the general public to have, so he decides to withhold this technology. Instead, he brings products that only pause time. They become widely sold within the black market.” Howard looked at me, and his countenance fell. Sorrow. His wrinkles deepened. And his eyes begged me to speak. To answer for things I had not yet done. Things that I heard of in David’s memory, and that I was even now hearing. But I could not believe that I would do them.
“Where we come from, Mr. Ashe, people don’t waste their lives on methamphetamine or heroine. Typical substances have become secondary drugs.”
I swallowed and stared at the watch. Even as these words hit my ears, which sat on my face under crusting blood, I felt a longing for it. A magnetism hindered by the ropes that bound me. Ropes that began to feel like a noose, strangling me. Keeping me from what I knew I needed. The pocket watch.
“In the future, the largest drug empire the world has ever knows makes its money selling the one thing that everyone wants.” Howard’s hands fell back to his sides, and his eyes screamed condemnation at me. “Time.”
; Everything they had been working for, their entire purpose, had been focused on me. Preventing me from ruining the future, which was their present. The last time I had seen David Kemp’s memory, back on the train tracks, I had heard him talk about a man who had “started all this.” It hit me that he was talking about me. I was the selfish man he so wished to eradicate. They were here because I had ruined their lives, but in this present, I hadn’t even done it yet.
But how could I have done it?
I couldn’t believe what they were saying. “I… I would never do any of that,” I asserted.
“In our time, you already have.”
I looked at all of them. Then back at the bucket.
David opened the watch. His eyes widened with rage. But he tempered himself as he said, “it’s dead.”
I swallowed.
He turned it toward me. “I told you that you were nothing without this pocket watch.” The power was at zero percent. “Now look what’s become of you.”
I shifted my posture underneath the ropes. The lifeless snakes made it almost impossible to move.
“It is because the watch is dead that we have brought you here.” Howard glanced at the watch. “Our original plan, Jonathan, was to go back in time.” He nodded to David.
David took his jacket off and lay it on the counter.
“We had to go back before any of this happened. Eliminate the man who would invent time travel.”
And that was the second blow. My suspicions had been true. The man who invented time travel. My arms jerked involuntarily. My fingers wrapped themselves into fists. But there was nothing I could do. My lips parted. “My father…”
David handed Howard the pocket watch.
Jacob bit his lip and kept the gun aimed at me.
“We had to deal with him before the idea was even conceived,” Howard went on, “but something went wrong.”
David walked around to the back of the chair. His feet fell with soft tones upon the floor tile and his breaths hit the back of my neck.
“The device we were using dropped us here, over ten years away from our intended destination. A malfunction due to poor design.”
David kneeled down and untied the knots that bound my torso to the chair. My wrists and ankles remained tied.
“So,” Howard held the watch up into the light, “we had to find a way to get back to our original destination.” He lowered it and looked me over with grave eyes. “And you gave it to us.”
I was suddenly brought down to my knees. I hit my head against the edge of the plastic bin. David Kemp had pulled the chair out from under me.
The water splashed around with the jolt, and I saw the image of my face. Distorted. Mangled. Different.
“But now that there is no power left, we need to find its source.”
Jacob reached down and picked something up. He handed it to Howard with one hand. It was another claw device. His other hand kept the gun aimed at my face.
They still have one, I said to myself, watching the claw.
“Easy, Jacob,” Howard cautioned with his eyes on the watch.
Jacob hesitantly lowered the gun.
“We need that power source.” Howard opened the back of the pocket watch and dropped the claw to the floor. “The device can’t help us without it.”
Too much was happening at once. If their point was to eliminate my father, then had they already succeeded? Was that why my father died?
These men are going to go back in time to kill my father.
“You want to kill a man who’s already dead,” I mumbled. “He’s already been murdered.”
“Yes, but it occurred at the wrong time,” Howard replied.
“And was that you?” I stared at the water.
“Perhaps. Maybe it’s evidence of a past attempt that is now being overwritten by the current chain of events.”
I looked up. “What does that mean?”
David loomed over me from behind.
“It means that time travel is trial and error. Fix the past until you get it right. Your father’s death proves we’ve already tried once.” Howard scratched his stomach.
I exhaled and felt the tremor in my breath. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you have the power source. And you need to tell us where it is.”
“If you think I know how to power that thing,” I replied, “you’re sadly mistaken.”
He nodded at David. Suddenly, a hand came from behind and grasped my by the hair. Another hand gripped the top of my head and held my face over the water.
“You’ll tell us where it is.” He handed the watch to Jacob, who then put it on the counter. “And then we will kill you.”
“I don’t know a single thing about the power source!” I pleaded, eyes on the tub below me, for it was the only thing I could look at. David wouldn’t allow my head to budge.
“Where is it?” Howard demanded.
I breathed through my mouth. “I don’t. Know.”
Silence.
My lips practically touched the water. I groaned out of nothing else than fear.
Suddenly, it was everywhere. My head was thrust down into the fluid. I tried to just hold my breath, but it was immediately futile. David kept both hands down on me so that my head stayed submerged.
I thrashed and jerked. Fought for a way out. Bubbles flew out of my mouth and nose. A scream for it to stop could not be heard. Water began to pour into my lungs.
He pulled me up from the bin. Waves crashed around within the miniature ocean, and water flowed down from my head and face, dribbling back into the plastic torture box. I gasped for air and heaved in and out.
“Endurance is really the question here, Jonathan.” Howard knelt on one knee in front of me. “We don’t want to drag this out.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a single photograph. A little girl. “The fact that we’re here with you now has proven the lengths to which we can go.”
“Who…” I moaned, still sucking in every breath deeply. “Who is that-”
“My daughter,” he growled.
And then it happened again. My head took another dive. David drove me down so far that my head hit the bottom of the bin. Half of my shirt became soaked from the dunk. My mouth sputtered and the floodgates of my lungs were opened. No matter how much my body flailed around, David Kemp’s grasp on me was steadfast.
When I came back up, Howard had put the photo back in his jacket.
Jacob sulked in the corner. He kept himself firm, but he looked more and more uncomfortable with each second. The gun was on the counter now, and he had something new in his hand. A briefcase.
I took exasperated breaths and looked at the water. A brown tint left from my face’s dried blood. Small particles of dust and dirt swam around the small, nauseating pool.
Jacob handed the briefcase to Howard, and he pulled out a laptop. “You should have learned something by now, Jon.” He opened the computer. “You and your father are not the good guys.”
David lifted my face so that I’d look him in the eye. I bit my tongue and breathed quick breaths.
“At least now, your friend Alex knows this.”
“What…” I gagged.
David forced my head back into the tank. I squinted and fought against the water’s entrance into my airway.
Back up.
“David!” Howard rebuked. “Enough.”
He protested. “He hasn’t had enough yet-”
“David,” Howard overpowered his voice.
My lip hung open. The image of Howard was blurred by the water in my eyes.
David reluctantly deferred. I heard his foot tapping behind me. Impatience. With each tap of his foot came a thick breath from his nose that hit the back of my neck and chilled me.
Howard turned the laptop to face me. It was then that I remembered Alex’s parting words with me. He said that these men had shown him how his father died. He said that this was why he turned on me. Why he couldn’t trust me.
The screen flashed on.
“Your youth is by no means implicit of innocence, Jon.” Howard turned the screen on. “We know what kind of man you will become. You’re responsible for my daughter’s death.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true.”
“And we know what kind of man your father was, too.”
I watched the laptop A freeze frame came into view. A dark room. The image looked to be taken from a security camera mounted in the corner. Four figures were displayed.
“This is the kind of man your father was.” He pressed the spacebar.
One man had his back to the camera. He sat on a folding metal chair. In front of him, on his knees, was a second man, bound and held by two unknown bodies. Shrouded in dusk, the men’s identities were disguised. The only one that the light caught was a man whom I recognized.
It was Alex Nelson’s father, Jarod Nelson.
The action was sudden. The man with his back to the camera lifted a gun to Mr. Nelson’s face and fired.
I clenched my teeth down in a cringe, biting my tongue in the process.
Alex’s dad dropped to the ground. The men stepped back. Shortly after, a pool of blood emerged from his head.
The video ended in static.
Howard closed the laptop and gave it back to Jacob.
I trembled uncontrollably.
Howard stared at me with increased contempt in his eyes.
My lips, which felt cracked despite their immersion in the liquid torture, separated. Forming a word was the part that escaped me. The only thoughts were images of this man killing my friend’s father in cold blood.
“Who…” I said with trepidation, “Who was-”
“George Ashe always tied up loose ends.” Howard said.
“No!” I burst. “No! That wasn’t him!”
“What else would have provoked your friend to abandon you?”
“My father didn’t-”
“Yes. Yes, he-”
“My father is not a killer!” I screamed. My ankles and wrists writhed for release. The chair rocked on its legs.
“The evidence states otherwise,” Howard replied, raising his voice.
I stayed determined. Determined to defend my father. My eyebrows burrowed deep down, and I grit my teeth. “My father… never killed anyone.”
