by Leo Hunt
*
At the end of that year, which was, for reasons I trust are apparent, something of a turning point or epiphany in my adult life, the snows came. The heat of the summer was matched by the spite of the winter. Christmas was fast approaching and I was throwing a party in my house, one of the last I ever held there. I had bought cheap wine and expensive wheels of cheese, and lit candles on the kitchen table. I invited seventy people and more than half managed to struggle through the ice. They drank heavily and I made cheese sandwiches on the grill.
I found myself outside, late in the evening, on the porch with a female acquaintance whom I had admired for a few months. The mood was marred by her extreme inebriation, exacerbated by an as yet undiagnosed intolerance to goat’s cheese. She was wearing a stunning dress of gold sequins and had been explaining her mutual admiration for me when she was overtaken by nausea. She was vomiting over the railing of my porch while I stood sober, wrapped in a coat, feeling that as usual I had been denied a pleasant and easy life. As she retched, I caught a strange smell in the air. I realized it was the scent of my grandmother’s carpet. I ventured into the snow-fattened garden.
The time machine was in its usual spot. I followed the tracks from the machine and ended up in front of the newly-dug pit for the pond.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
My future self had changed. His hair was bone white, receding to a stubble. He was unshaven, with a wattle of flesh hanging from his neck. I put him as thirty years older than the man who had visited me in the summer. He was wearing a bathrobe, and reached for me with scarred hands.
“What fuckin–” he began.
“You fell into my pond,” I explained. He lay there in the snow. He started to fumble a silver flask from his robe.
“What, do we drink now?” I asked.
“Do you want to know when I last saw our father?” he asked. “He was full of cancer. Chewed up, nothing left. Begging to die. Went there that last time, to be with him, could hardly get in the door. Was full of... us. Me. Room full of us, thirty of us. Fifty. We were at the windows too. All there for his final breath. I can’t stop going back. All of us clearing our throats, each one looking for the exact right thing to say.”
“Don’t tell me this,” I said.
He took a swig from the flask.
“Know why everything isn’t meant to happen at once? Took a long time to work it out but I fucking know now.”
“Please, just–”
“When it’s just the past it happens and it’s done. You move on. But for me... it’s all still happening. He’s still dying.”
“He’s still alive,” I said. “We could go see him.”
“You don’t understand,” said my future self. “That makes it worse! That’s what makes it worse! You don’t know now, but you will!”
The snow was settling on his face, his hands.
“You’re going to get hurt,” I said to him. "It’s too cold.”
“Give me that photo,” he said, “give it. Not too late.”
“I don’t have it,” I said. We both knew it was in my desk drawer, both knew I had booked flights to Africa, was taking the photo to every expert I could.
“That’s the other thing. Can’t stop it. You think life is a roller coaster, but it’s a tram ride to your grave and you have to keep your hands inside the vehicle.”
“You’re not making sense. I think... you should go.”
“Will go.” My future self hauled himself up from the frozen hole. I held my hand out but he ignored it. “Don’t know what the fuck you’re getting into. No idea.”
He shuffled back into the machine and left. The snow had thinned and I could see the house, porch lights a molten orange in the dark. My female acquaintance was still on the porch.
“I feel alright now,” she said.
“Good.”
“Better out than in. Who were you talking to?”
“Huh?”
“There was someone there. I heard.”
“Nobody you know,” I told her.
The snow kept falling.
“I could smell something too. Like the back yard smelt when I was a kid. The flowers, you know? I could smell my mother’s flower garden.”
“I think time machines smell of nostalgia,” I said.
She didn’t hear me. I took her hand and we went back into the house. We danced slowly, pressed against each other, until the guests had all gone and every candle was burned down to a stump.
About The Author
Leo Hunt is a student of the Creative Writing program at UEA. His previously published work took the form of messages written in blood on the walls of his hometown, for which he received national media attention and a brief custodial sentence. Read more of his work at coldstarharbor.tumblr.com.