The Jump Journal

by Douglas Corriveau

  The Jump Journal

  Douglas Corriveau

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  The Jump Journal

  All rights reserved. Copyright © 2015 by Douglas Corriveau. Cover art by Ronnell Porter. Edited by Neil Corriveau. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author

  Doug Corriveau (2015-01-20). The Jump Journal. Kindle Edition.

  Printed in the United States

  For my family,

  For raising me to believe that the “impossible” is merely difficult

  And for Bri,

  For inspiring me to chase my dreams

  Prologue

  Time travel is a drug. If everyone else could go back and fix their daily fumbles and flops, they’d realize that being perfect really is a matter of practice. But there’s a catch to this charmed living that no one understands: even perfection wants to be better.

  Take a look at me. I’ve been as next-to-godliness perfect as a man can get. Well, “man” depends on your definition, I guess. Twenty years old falls somewhere between teenager and alcoholic, which is what I would be if I didn’t get kicked out of bars long before closing time. I know it’s terrible, but if you had lived my life, you would find yourself gazing at an empty fifth of Jack Daniels more often than you’d like too.

  Groundhog Day, Back to the Future, that British doctor guy on TV, and all the other gaudy Hollywood notions of time travel leave me in stitches and soaked in my own heartbroken tears at the same time. Allow me to correct those fantasies. My name is Ryan Mitchell. Born: 1993. Current year: 2013. Age: 400 years old. And if you’re reading this, read fast. You only have a day to finish, best-case scenario. Confused? Or maybe you believe these are the ramblings of a lunatic. Either way, you’re right. I’ll explain.

  Unlike you, I’ve got all the time in the world.

  I could begin with the usual jargon, the backstory nonsense that all the vampire books and teen novels start with. I could tell you that I grew up in a normal household with Average-Joe parents in a sleepy Midwest town, living an apple pie American life. But it doesn’t matter what my background is. That actually is how I grew up, but the larger point here is that my old life, my first life, is fading fast from my memory. It just doesn’t matter anymore.

  I’ll jump straight to it since I know you’re dying to hear about time travel, but you’re doomed to be disappointed. In 400 years, I’ve never met anyone else like me. I don’t know if it’s a genetic fluke, a gift from God, or a damn superpower, but as far as I know I’m the only one who can turn the world backwards. I’ve been doing it since last August, four centuries ago.

  You read that right. The years 2012 and 2013 have been replayed more often than Green Day’s “Time of Your Life” at high school graduations. I’ve been 19 and 20 years old for 399 years longer than I should have, and it’s all my fault. It started during freshman orientation.

  In case you don’t remember, orientation sucks. My personal welcome-week hell began when I had the misfortune of being placed in a tour group of recruited athletes with the perfect faces of supermodels and the blackened souls of Hitler. I trotted along at the heels of the pack, trying to work my way into the conversation. When a cute brunette left the herd for a sip from a nearby fountain, I seized my chance. With some quick footwork, I caught up to her before she disappeared back into the group.

  “Hey.”

  “Hi,” she said and flashed me a self-satisfied smile. Clearly, she was used to guys hitting on her and didn’t mind in the least. I was more than happy to oblige.

  I chatted with her for the next fifteen minutes. She wasn’t exactly a sparkling conversationalist, but I stuck with her. What can I say? She was super attractive. Don’t judge me.

  When we reached the end of our tour and were dismissed to go our separate ways, I figured that my best bet was to stick with the girl that I’d been hitting on. So, as she and her friends wandered off, I followed. I’d barely gone two steps when my T-shirt tightened around my throat like a choke collar. As I gurgled in protest, my assailant yanked me behind the closest building.

  After I blinked away the black spots dancing through my vision, I focused on the massive linebacker mouth-breathing at me. His beady eyes glinted threateningly.

  “You like hitting on my girl?” he rasped.

  The veins popping out of his neck distracted me from his words. I shook my head. “I’m sorry…what?”

  “I said, you like hitting on my girl.” He didn’t make it a question.

  “Yes?” I flinched as his bloodshot eyes widened in rage. “Wait, no. I meant no! How did we end up here?” I muttered to myself.

  I had just enough time to see his fist flashing towards my face before it broke my nose. My vision went black for a split second, but I still felt my eyes watering as my body belatedly processed the pain, which hit me all at once. I slid down to a sitting position against the red bricks behind me, staring dazedly at the blood dripping onto my shirt.

  I tried to stand up and take him. I really did. But the world had turned into a mechanical bull underneath me and threw me down every time I tried to stand up. I ended up lying there dripping blood from my nose as the linebacker straightened his Buckeyes jacket and strode off. With a muffled groan, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to take my mind off of the pain by imagining how that situation would have gone if I had known what was going to happen.

  The pain in my face suddenly morphed into a crushing agony that swept over my whole body. My eyes snapped open, and I sucked desperately for air, certain that I was dying, but the sensation was gone as fast as it had come. I hoisted myself back into a sitting position and patted myself down.

  “Hey!I asked you a question!”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. The linebacker was back, snarling through gritted teeth. Panicked, I leapt to my feet and readied myself for another unpleasant encounter. That’s when I noticed something: my nose didn’t hurt. Confused, I felt my face for signs of blood, working my way gingerly towards my nose. As my fingers landed on it, I flinched in anticipation, but there was no pain, no broken tissue.

  He slammed a hand against the wall by my ear, spit flying from his mouth as he repeated himself.

  “I said, you like hitting on my girl.”

  Baffled and, I’ll be honest, terrified, I couldn’t string words into a sentence. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on. Didn’t he remember pounding my face in already? And yet, my nose was fine. There was no blood staining my shirt, no dull throbbing pain threatening to split my head open. He just stood there, drilling a hole into me with his eyes and waiting for an answer. A split second later, it all clicked together in my head. No pain or blood, the same conversation as before…my mind spun. It wasn’t possible. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember what was real. As I concentrated in the darkness, I felt that alien pressure-pain from earlier rush over me again. In the distance, there was a meaty thud and a light, constant pressure against my back. Suddenly, pain flashed out of nowhere and my eyes snapped open.

  I was propped up against the wall again, oozing thick red blood, and the linebacker was nowhere in sight. The pain in my nose wasn’t half as bad as the mental distress that I was suffering. Was I going mad? Maybe I had hallucinated while I was K.O’ed from the punch? With no answers and an aching face, I stumbled to my feet and limped my way over to the nearest building’s bathroom to clean myself off
.

  After some careful washing, my dirt-and-blood-crusted mug no longer resembled a zombie apocalypse survivor, although the puffed-up nose and black circles forming under my eyes altered my features into those of a human shark. I stared at the mirror, still beyond confused and on the verge of a mental breakdown.

  I had this thought that I just couldn’t shake. How had my nose healed? I distinctly remembered feeling up my nose at one point and finding it intact. It hadn’t felt like a hallucination. It niggled at me, undermining my rational thinking until I just couldn’t believe that it was my mind playing tricks on me anymore. Like the genius that I was, I decided that there was only one way to determine what I had experienced: try to do it again. If it didn’t work, well, I had a concussion and a terrible reputation to start college with. If it did…I didn’t know what that meant. Hesitantly, I closed my eyes one more time and visualized that encounter with the football player.

  I was a bit more rational by this time, so I remembered the details a little bit better. I’ll break it down into steps for you, but try to remember, this is the equivalent of telling a five-foot-tall man what it’s like to dunk a basketball; without some divine intervention, he’s just not going to fully understand.

  The pain in my nose disappeared, replaced with a constricting force that squeezed until my whole body protested.

  The sound of running water in the bathroom blurred and mutated in the sound of the soft breeze.

  The feeling and smell of the air changed, and I could sense sunlight beyond my eyelids

  All of these things snapped into focus at once, and my eyes popped open.

  Now that makes it sound very orderly, but that’s because I’m trying to break down the process of a time-jump into neat little pieces. Honestly, it’s as chaotic as trying to prepare a gourmet meal on a fishing boat in the middle of a category 5 hurricane. Yes, I’ve done that, and yes, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds. All that you need to know is that when I found myself against the wall in the exact spot as before, I almost puked. A pair of meaty hands dragged me upright as the football player shoved his face inches away from mine.

  “I said, you like hitting on my girl,” he ground out.

  It was impossible, but my eyes weren’t lying. I was back; nose in one piece, utterly bewildered, but undeniably in the past. The linebacker roared and reared back for a massive haymaker. I was shell-shocked and confused, but I wasn’t an idiot. I flung up an arm to block his swing, lashed out with a powerful return strike, and laid him out. As I stood over him, flexing my aching fist, I felt a surge of adrenaline like you wouldn’t believe. I didn’t know it then, but my life changed forever in that moment.

  I wish that I could say that I stopped there, that I never messed with time again. But I told you, time travel is a drug. I had taken it once, and now, I was cursed. That’s why you’re going to keep reading. Everybody likes someone else’s tragedy. Trust me, this one’s a page-turner.

  Chapter 1

  Something that I’ve noticed about mankind: we really hate what we can’t control, and what we hate, we love. I’m not talking about taxes or going bald; those are trivial, and if you’re creative, you can control them. Things like death, religion, time…..those are the things that we struggle with. Some embrace them; a select few turn to worship of a sort. Self-professed Goths place death on a pedestal, as if it’s a pagan idol that will favor them if they say nice things about it to their friends. Same thing with time. Turning the clock back is everyone’s dream, from middle-aged women with too many wrinkles to lonely old widowers who want to see their wives again. They’re all avoiding this simple question: Is that all you would do with that power? Absolute power corrupts, but power over the movement of time doesn’t just corrupt. It destroys.

  ****

  You’re jealous. Don’t bother denying it. Oh, how I bet your thoughts are racing. It’d be so nice, right? To go back and make yourself look good, rather than having that one story that you pray your best man doesn’t tell at your wedding some day. If you still believe it’s a dream come true after you finish this journal, God save your soul, for you are a moron.

  Of course, I had that thought too. Well, at least after I was done freaking out. I mean, c’mon. It’s cool in theory, but when you first discover a power like that…let’s be generous and say it takes little adjustment. Those first few minutes were a roller-coaster that went from the peak of invincibility to the depths of shock and fear and back up again. The body isn’t great at riding that wave, but once I was done throwing up and my hands had stopped shaking, I went off in search of a place to play with my new toy. That’s all it was to me then. Have you ever wanted something so badly that when you finally got it, it became the only thing that you could focus on for a while? It was like that. I had no idea the magnitude of what I was playing with--like a kid goofing off with a nuclear bomb--but I just had to try it out.

  First rule of real-world time travel: it has limits. I had a hard time deciding what moment that I would go change in my past, so I figured that I’d go on a harmless little adventure before getting to work on my numerous screw ups. As I thought back to the happiest moments of my life, I settled on the time that I went to a carnival in Dayton when I was fifteen. The Ferris wheel had gotten stuck right when I was at the very top, and I remembered feeling so alive, so powerful gazing down at all of the tiny people below me. I figured it was fitting to savor that power again, considering my new gifts. I concentrated hard and leapt back in time.

  Instantly, I knew that this was different. The darkness didn’t just constrict like the last few times, it crushed me like a 360 degree hydraulic press. My bones crunched together and oxygen leaked from my lungs. I thought for sure that I was dying. Then, disconcertingly, the pain disappeared, and the darkness dumped me unceremoniously into a Ferris wheel seat. I didn’t enjoy the view nearly as much this time. The sudden change in elevation made me dizzy which, combined with the excruciating pain, made for one sick Ryan. I don’t know what the terminal velocity of puke is, but I do know that it rained tossed cookies on some poor soul underneath the wheel.

  Slumped down in my seat, I tried to recover and regain my bearings. Even an idiot would have realized that something was different about that jump through time, and I’m no idiot. I lay curled up in the bottom of the carriage, every fiber of my being begging me not to move. This agony was nothing like the ache from my first couple of jaunts down the road less time-travelled. I could only guess at the “why,” but I figured that it had something to do with the number of years back that I had jumped. Clearly, this power wasn’t something to screw around with. I lay stunned in my Ferris wheel carriage, too trashed to even enjoy the view that I had come for. I guess I should’ve taken that as an omen.

  When the ride started back up and I reached the bottom, I tried my best to look like I belonged there. I had come to the dim realization that I’d taken up residence in fifteen-year-old me’s body, which helped, but I still had to hope that nobody had seen anything weird happen at the top of the wheel. I shouldn’t have worried. The ticket guy was stoned out of his mind, a detail that I hadn’t noticed four years ago. He wouldn’t have noticed if a polar bear had come off the ride in my place. I wandered off, ridiculously grateful that I had come here alone when I was younger.

  Still wincing from the jump, I sat down on an ugly wooden bench, watching the fairgoers traipse by as I tried to analyze my situation despite my aching…well, everything. The only conclusion that I drew was that I would have to make the jump back, even though I cringed at the thought. It was that, or spend the next four years wandering around Ohio, hoping that I wasn’t screwing up my future.

  With no other options, I decided to make the jump back right away with a sort of “let’s just get this over with” mentality. The darkness crunched down on me just as painfully as before, but it was compounded by my existing soreness. When I arrived back in my time, I didn’t even have the strength to stand. I collapsed, sprawled out on the ground. Half co
nscious, I spit out some of the pine needles that I had almost swallowed on impact and stared dimly around the woods that I had chosen for my first jump. I blurrily noticed a figure directly ahead of me facing in the opposite direction. Worried that he might’ve heard the commotion, I lay perfectly still, trying not to attract his attention. Without warning, he vanished into thin air.

  Shocked, I stared blankly at the spot that he’d standing in a split second before. Then it hit me. I had just seen myself jump. That’s how I discovered the second rule of time travel: if you jump back to the same moment that you started from, you’ll see an “echo”. I call them echoes because saying that you’re seeing your past self jump causes you to think through the whole loop process and that just gives you a migraine. For the sake of this journal, we’ll call it an echo.

  That was the last jump that I made for a while. The one thing that can consistently stop a destructive behavior is pain, and I had had my fill. It took a solid two weeks to fully recover from the damage that those two jumps had done to my body. Let me tell you, that was not a great way to start my freshman year of college. It was unbearable walking to and from classes, feeling every joint and tendon in a way that I had never felt before and never wanted to feel again.

  Still, despite my injuries, I couldn’t get the image of stepping off of that Ferris wheel in 2008 out of my head. I had done the impossible and that’s something no amount of pain can overrule. I managed to persuade myself not to jump for a month by lightly smacking a wall every time that I was tempted. The resulting pain reverberated throughout my aching body, buckling my knees and making my eyes water. I must have looked ridiculous to anyone walking by, but it worked. Even after I fully recovered, hitting the wall still caused an association in my mind with the dangers of jumping.

  Nothing lasts forever though, and I already had the taste. I was barely able to stop myself by the end of the month. All I needed was one little push, and I would jump again. And, naturally, that’s when I met a girl.