Killing Time - A Time Travel Adventure Novel

by Jack Hunt

  The silver sedan pulled into a driveway and the woman and kid got out.

  That’s when I saw it. I mean, that’s when I saw him.

  There, coming out to greet them at the house was Harry Castle. The boy zipped past him without even saying a word. The enthusiasm in his face that he had after the game was gone. The blond woman said something to Harry and then slammed the house door behind her. Harry, the one by the house, waited for a few seconds nodding slowly and then followed them in. My eyes drifted over to the car that was parked down a few blocks.

  When Harry pulled away I followed him until he returned home. He was catching his kid’s ballgame. The very one that he hadn’t attended in the past. Was that what was taking him out most nights? What had gone wrong?

  As I drove back I thought about my conversation with Harry. I couldn’t imagine that my father was a CIA agent. How could he have managed to keep that secret from us? Or did my mother know? I contemplated phoning her to ask. When I got back to the dorm I couldn’t settle. What would anyone else do in my situation? Would they have said screw it and gone back to before my father died? I would have given anything to see him one final time. Harry’s words echoed in my mind. You can’t go back and tell him. You have no idea what a change like that could do. Was that why he was observing his family from afar? Was he reliving what he regretted missing?

  Thankfully, when I returned to the dorm this time I was not greeted by the horrific sight of Ash’s ass. Neither were they tangled up in some Kama Sutra pose. Instead he was playing a game on the computer and she was flipping through her phone.

  “Your keys.” I dropped them in his lap. “Thanks.”

  “No problems, I presume?”

  “Just a large scratch down the side.”

  “What?” His eyes widened.

  “I’m joking.”

  I laid back on the bed and thought about Harry’s kid. He was probably like me, someone who never fully understood what his father did. What excuse had he told his family? My own father had told us so many. I even thought at one point he was cheating on my mother with all the time he was away from home. But now I knew.

  My father, a CIA agent? I chuckled at the very thought of it.

  As much as I wanted to see him again, I had already screwed up one thing and I wasn’t about to do it again. I shot a text over to Eric to let him know I was back at the dorm. I asked him how things were going. He texted me back that I was a stubborn prick and I wouldn’t listen.

  Sounded like me.

  “We’re going to have to come up with something else as this is not working.”

  Tomorrow would be Saturday. One more day to turn this around. If Eric wasn’t going to get through to me, perhaps Kelly could.

  Chapter 18

  There was only one thing on my mind when I awoke that morning. Speaking to Kelly. I knew how the day would progress. To assume that Eric could convince me to ignore Harry’s strange behavior was a little too much to ask. I knew that morning he would return after breakfast. Later, my other self would come over to the dorms so I needed to make sure I wasn’t around.

  I glanced over at the clock and realized it was close to nine. I jumped out of bed and woke up Ash in the process.

  “Dude, what the hell?”

  “It’s nine already.”

  “No, it’s eight. The clocks are running fast.”

  “Great way to give someone a heart attack.”

  “Why, are you expecting someone?”

  “Yeah.”

  After taking a shower and getting changed, I strolled down to one of the local cafes on campus and purchased a coffee and donut. I was nervous about what needed to be done today. I was a ball of nerves around Kelly on a good day. I wasn’t thrilled by the fact that I was going to have to embarrass myself for a second time. I tried to think about the best time to go over to her house. Did I go in the morning or the afternoon? Or did I wait until after she was returned to her house later that day?

  I figured the best time would be after she had been returned home by Eric.

  There were four things that I knew about what I did on Saturday.

  One. I spent the morning having breakfast with my neighbor.

  Two. I visited Eric at his dorm.

  Three. We tailed my neighbor and lost him for a brief period after returning Kelly.

  Four. We observed my neighbor at the parking structure.

  As I came out of the café and was making my way back, I saw Eric pull in. He looked out of breath. He hopped out of his car and made a beeline for the dorms.

  “Eric.”

  He spun around.

  He pointed. “Future you or present you?”

  “Future, and you might not want to announce that too loudly.”

  “Right.”

  “I tried to get back here as fast as possible. You really were persistent in wanting me to stay. And your neighbor. What a freak.”

  “I told you.”

  “Look, I tried to persuade the earlier you to let it go but you really just don’t take no for an answer. Anyway, so what’s the plan today?”

  “Well in about an hour, the other me is going to show up here, so I’m going to the library to do a little bit of research.”

  “Okay, but what about the plan?”

  “I think I’ve an idea.”

  Eric pointed to my coffee. “Is that mine?”

  “Dude, get your own.”

  He snorted. “So I’ll catch up with you later?”

  “Yeah, in about an hour. Though it will be the other me.”

  “Whoa, this is super confusing. I hope you get this shit sorted out today as it’s doing a real number on my head and trust me, after you spend a long time having Ash as roommate, that’s saying a lot.”

  The campus was pretty quiet that morning. As I wandered into the library, I was keen to find out what I could dig up on one of the computers about Harry Castle. He said he knew my father but I had never met him. Then of course there was last night’s detour to the baseball game.

  What was he hiding?

  I pulled up a chair in front of the computer and placed my coffee down. A few heads bobbed up and down over the tops of computers. A librarian did her rounds with a trolley placing books back onto shelves before someone came along and asked them a question.

  Bringing up the search engine I did a routine check of his name. Nothing came up. Perhaps he wasn’t one for social media. I tried again, this time typing in CIA. I didn’t know why I thought his name would be listed but it was worth a shot. Nothing again.

  I tapped the table with my fingers, thinking. I gnawed the inside of my lip then typed again. This time I typed in his last name and the word teenager. Again nothing came up. This guy was a ghost.

  Bringing up Google Maps I typed in the name of the street I had followed him to. I went down to the street level so I could see the houses. Once I saw it, I zoomed in on the door number. Got it! I went back to Google and typed it in to see if anything came up.

  I leaned back in my chair, frustrated. Maybe he was just curious. Perhaps like me he just wanted to relive his past. Experience events that mattered to him.

  Not making any headway I looked down at the watch on my wrist. It was a little after eleven. I still had hours to kill until I could show up at Kelly’s. Or did I? Could I just go forward? I had already existed two days in the future, and I only wanted to shoot forward a few hours. I was aware that I couldn’t go beyond that which I’d already experienced.

  In my haste to leave I knocked coffee all over the keyboard.

  “Shit!”

  A girl across from me hushed me.

  “Sorry,” I replied as I reached for some scraps of paper to wipe up the mess. One of the librarians came over to help. She didn’t look too impressed.

  I left and went into the washroom. I locked the door on the bathroom and changed the time on the watch to around three in the afternoon. That would give me plenty of time to get back over to her house.

>   I mentally prepared myself. Who was I fooling? No one could prepare themselves for this. Just as I was about to hit the button I heard someone bang on the door.

  “Open up.”

  Odd, they didn’t sound like a kid. I figured they were staff. I didn’t linger a second longer. I hit the button. Water pipes burst and I saw water shoot up in the air, then everything around me slowed down. I went unconscious.

  My head was hurting when I came to. A sign for wet floors was in the bathroom. It wasn’t there before. Someone coughed in the toilet, and I felt my hand being touched. I suddenly realized that I had passed out and come to and my hand was under a washroom stall. I pulled it back in shock and bolted upright. That’s when I felt the throbbing headache.

  I glanced at my watch. It was three o’clock.

  It had worked.

  Chapter 19

  I had to admit, I felt like a bit of a creeper lurking in the bushes, trying to stay out of sight. I saw Eric’s car pull up and drop off Kelly who was royally pissed off. She tossed him the bird and began walking up her driveway as the car peeled away. It was still within sight when I stepped out. Kelly reeled back, startled, then turned and looked back at Eric’s car.

  “How? How did you…”

  “I’ll explain everything. Can we can go inside?”

  “If this is another one of your games I swear I’m going to go ape shit on you.”

  “We don’t have long. I’ll be returning here in a few hours.”

  She gave a confused look. “You’ll be what?”

  I gestured to her house and she led the way, all the while she kept a close eye on me. Once we were inside it was quiet. All that could be heard was the ticking of a clock. Her gray Persian cat came padding over and nuzzled its face against Kelly’s leg.

  “You probably should take a seat.”

  “What is going on, Alex?”

  I took a deep breath and brought her up to speed on what had happened, but before I could get to where I had come from she flew off the handle.

  “Get out of my house.”

  Okay, that wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for.

  “Listen, Kelly, you need to believe me.”

  She began shoving me back towards the door. “Oh I believe you. I believe you are out of your mind. Now take your ass back over to your place and tell your ass hat friend the same thing I told you.”

  “I can prove it.”

  She stopped for a second. Her hand against my chest.

  “I can show you.”

  I could see that she was curious. That was one thing about people. Regardless of what a person might have thought was insane, if you offered to prove the impossible, no one could pass that up.

  “How?”

  “Do you remember at my father’s funeral? You came outside and talked to me by the tire swing.”

  The tire swing had been created by my father back when I was six. It hadn’t got much use after I was nine. It had weathered from many a winter. From time to time over the years, when the stress of life became too much I would sit out there, swinging back and forth slowly, allowing my mind to wander.

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Do you want to experience that moment again?”

  I could see the look in her eye. The temptation to prove me wrong or a natural curiosity to know if it was true was compelling. I didn’t have to wonder if I could take her with me. The bag I had been carrying came with me the last time I had traveled. That meant anything I was holding at the time would go too.

  “I don’t know, Alex. This is all a little too weird for me.”

  I held out my hand. “Trust me.”

  She glanced at my hand, then locked eyes. She reached out and grabbed a hold of my hand. We headed out the door and I took a path that went around the back of the houses. When we reached my backyard, I looked around for a good place. Somewhere that had remained the same even three years ago.

  I pulled her in tight to me. I tapped in the year, month, day and time.

  “Now hold on.”

  Close together I could feel her heartbeat quicken. An expression of nervousness spread across her face as I hit the button. The world changed around us and in the blink of an eye everything went dark. For a few seconds I didn’t know if it had worked. The clock showed the correct date and time but there was no one on the swing.

  “Alex?”

  Then Kelly pointed through the bushes. Coming out of the house dressed in a black suit was a younger version of me. I watched myself amble towards the swing.

  Kelly’s face was a picture of shock. “How… how is this possible?”

  We crouched down to stay out of view, concealed within a thick tree line. Bushes around the back of our neighborhood hedged us in. A small stream flowed just down from us. A flock of birds broke in the trees and for a brief moment my younger self looked back but then returned to rocking back and forth on the swing. Five minutes passed and then Kelly’s younger self came out of the house and strolled down to the tire swing. I glanced at Kelly who was mesmerized by what she was seeing.

  Her eyes were bugging out. At first she didn’t say anything.

  “Holy crap! Can I meet myself?”

  “No. If you lock eyes you will cease to exist.”

  “Instantly?”

  “It’s not instant as far as I know but fairly quickly.”

  “What if you break eye contact?”

  She was beginning to have too many questions. I looked down at my watch. Below the time it showed the last coordinates. I swiped it up.

  “We need to go.”

  “But I just got here.”

  I paused for a moment. We sat there watching our younger selves converse. All the feelings that I had that day came rushing back to me. The utter despair of loss. The confusion over what I had seen. The finality of death. The regret of not having said more to my father.

  I took a hold of her hand and hit the button.

  We felt the jerk of being catapulted through an invisible wormhole. And just like that we were back to where we began. Her hand was trembling a little. There was very little exchanged between us as we walked back to her home. I could tell she was lost in thought, full of questions and in need of answers.

  “This is unbelievable. I can’t believe I just saw myself.”

  “I never did thank you for what you said to me that day,” I muttered.

  Kelly glanced at me. “You still miss him?”

  “Every day.”

  There was silence again and I kind of figured the question would come.

  “If you can go back, why haven’t you stopped your father’s death?”

  I swallowed. It wasn’t like I hadn’t given it much thought. Since gaining the means to travel, it was forever at the forefront of my mind but so was what Harry had said about the butterfly effect and making changes. I had no idea what it would change.

  “I can’t. Right now. Well, that’s why I need to talk to you.”

  “Where did you get this technology from?”

  I glanced at her and she nodded slowly. “Your neighbor? Oh my god, I didn’t believe you. I though both of you were mad.”

  “Ah, don’t worry, I would have thought the same.”

  “But if you were in the car, then where have you come from?”

  “Sunday.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. I need to stop myself from showing up at the parking structure.”

  I filled her in on the rest of the details that I hadn’t managed to get across. We made it back to her house and I glanced at the clock. It wouldn’t be long before my other self would show up looking to apologize.

  “And you want me to help?”

  “Look, how do I put this? You are probably the only one that I know that could distract me from making that phone call to the cops.”

  As the words rolled off my tongue I saw the look on her face change from confusion to clarity. Her lip curled up at the sides. I cleared my throat feeling the awkwardness
of the situation.

  “Alex Flynn, how come you never told me?” she asked.

  “I dunno.” I tossed my hands up. “To be honest, I guess I’ve always thought you were out of my league.”

  “You give me too much credit,” she said wandering off into the house to get us a drink. “You’ve dated others.”

  “I guess with you I found myself at a bit of a loss for words.”

  She smirked. “Am I that intimidating?”

  She stepped in a little closer to hand me my drink and I felt my mouth go dry and my pulse quicken. She then leaned back against the counter and took a sip of her drink, eyeing me over the top.

  “So how do you suppose I distract you?”

  “I don’t think it would be that hard. What you’re doing now is working pretty well.”

  She looked amused, maybe even flattered. She walked over to me and placed her drink down. Slowly she got close. “So what? Would this be enough?”

  I felt my heart pounding in my chest. “Yeah… that might work.”

  She pressed herself up against me. “Or what about this?” She ran a hand up my arm. She seemed to be enjoying herself or at least enjoying watching me respond.

  I swallowed hard. “That could do it.”

  “Or this?” She leaned in cupping her hand around my neck and gently bit down on my lower lip, then pressed her lips against mine before removing them.

  I smirked. “I think you’re getting the hang of this.”

  She smiled. “Then again I could do this.” I felt her hand reach around and grope my ass. She burst out laughing. “Relax, Alex.”

  She took the glass from my hand and placed it on the counter and before I knew it, our lips were locked. I lifted her up and ran my hands through her hair. Like two people with a ferocious appetite, we pulled at each other’s clothing trying to pry each other out. For a brief while I lost myself in her and I forgot all about what I was there to do.