Day 1 - Time Travel

100 Day Challenge - Flash Fiction

Day #1

Prompt: Time travel, the Angel Gabriel, a bookmark.

I awoke to an infuriating rapping against my window. A violent, constant prattling reverberated throughout the otherwise silent room. The annoyance continued as I lifted the book I had been reading from my chest. Inserting a

bookmark I received from my sister’s church, I tossed the book onto the nightstand and averted my attention to the headache summoning me.

Prancing about on the window-sill garden was a deranged bird, ceaselessly attacking the glass. I rushed to shoo it, opening the window outward to brush it off of my mangled herbs. The bird fluttered off across the street to the park visible from my loft.

The park.

With a deep exhale, I made my way to my son’s room, passing with a glance the giant globe-shaped clock hanging above my bed. I ignored the hesitation that came with waking a pre-teen at seven on a Sunday morning, but the urge to shuck work and spend the day with my boy outweighed the hour-long begrudged movement he would undoubtedly display during breakfast.

I noiselessly crossed his room and sat upon the foot of his bed. Even in his dormant state, Marcos bore the traits of his energetic and stubborn mother. Ten years without her, and yet her antics remain etched into his personality. He was only
about two years old when his mother arrived too late to the hospital after her appendix burst. Only two years old when their family of three shattered into a family of two.

Marcos stirred in his bed. I cupped my hand around his ankle and gave a soft tug. His eyes opened at just enough speed to express his annoyance at being woken. He grunted a wordless inquiry as to the wake-up call and sat up.

“Get ready. I’m making eggs and bacon, and then we are going to the park. The air is great. Grab your ball and we’ll kick it around for a couple of hours.” I stood up and flipped on the light. A moan was my response. I peered back to a lump of a child cocooned in his blanket. "Be fast about it an we’ll stop by the new ice cream parlor on the way home. I hear they have some interesting combo flavors.” The bemoaned child maintained his reluctant enthusiasm, but slid his feet out onto the floor regardless. I left him with a chuckle.

In a matter of minutes Marcos sat himself at a stool in front of the island, placing his soccer ball in his lap. His hair still dripped from a quick splash of water, but he definitely put his reluctant behavior back to sleep. His eyes glinted in the same manner his mother would whenever she was gearing up for a day out of the house. “Don’t you have work to do, though?” Marcos asked, grabbing a banana from the basket in front of him.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, seemingly waiting for me to realize I still had work today. I bashed around the eggs before pulling out my phone. Sure enough it was the lab with three missed calls.

“It’s fine. We’ll go for an hour, check out the new ice cream place, then drop you off at your uncle’s.” I tapped away a quick message to my colleague saying I’d be in close to lunch.

We quickly finished our breakfast and climbed into the car. The sun warmed our faces as we drove with the windows down and radio blaring. Marcos drummed his fingers against his soccer ball in rhythm while swaying his head in a figure-eight formation.

I smiled. I don’t know where he got it from, but he’s been doing that for years as he listened to music or zoned out. Perhaps I should sign him up for music lessons next year.

I don’t know what I noticed first. The ball dropping, Marcos freezing, or the truck running a red light. The thing I remembered last, though, was the sheer terror that seized my son. My hand flung out to shield him.

Darkness.

They say I was in a coma for about a week. I received a few fractures in my face plus a few broken ribs. There was swelling in my brain for a short period of time, but that no longer posed a problem now. I was healthy enough to head back home, but needed to come back to be re-examined in a few days. I had spent two weeks in this dreadful place, and yet I remained in the chair clutching Marcos’s deflated soccer ball.

A soft knock at the door pried me from my thoughts. My brother stood in the doorway, blocking the hospital chaos from leaking into my silent hell. He waited a moment before speaking. “The nurse says they need the room. He says- ” His voice trailed off.

I traced the edges of the hole pierced by the car. I didn’t lift my gaze, but my voice breathed out a plea for five more minutes. My brother drove me home and spent the next couple of weeks on my couch while I remained in my room, locked away from reality.

I sat on the edge of Marcos’s bed for hours, gripping the photograph of him and his mother. Days had passed before I even had an appetite, but when I emerged from the hellish solace of my son’s room, my brother placed a sandwich on the table without a word and returned to his seat in the living room. He knew from my grieving with Marcy’s death that while I needed someone with me, I also needed to be alone.

I ate in silence, looking at the island full of gift baskets and flowers; gifts of condolences from various people who were kept at bay at the front door by my brother. The insignia of my lab caught my eye on a letter resting against a basket of
chocolate.

What better way to forget my reality than with chocolate? 

I stood up to grab the letter and a box of chocolate and returned to my room. The note simply read “Never allow the darkness of life to erase the light of your soul. Keep on challenging the laws of nature and the norms of life you disdain. With love, Lily.”

I put the letter on my pillow and headed to my desk, opening my laptop. The screen awoke to resume to my algorithms for time travel. Years of my life was coded within this program. I had begun a new line of trials during the week leading up to the accident. I scrolled through the various windows and apps until my mindless switching back and forth led me to the scenario tester I had begun the night before.

A green box flashed with the words Successful simulation. I checked the code and grabbed my phone. It worked! While still a ways from any successful human testing of time travel, the simulation proved successful to send inanimate objects backwards in time. Within an hour, I made my way to the lab where Lily was waiting for me.

We spent the week perfecting the algorithms necessary to send a dollar back in time to a specific time and place. The algorithms proved to be unsuccessful in sending anything back in time until one afternoon the green box showed its glee one more time to send back a living organism. We began to challenge the past.

Lily placed a bird into the glass box for the trip backwards in time. She began to type in the destination and time to that morning I lost my son, before we went off to the park. I placed a lily into the box with it from a gift of condolence.

With a flash of sequencing, the box was empty.

I grabbed my backpack and went home; I knew it wouldn’t be until morning before any sign of success emerged. The program still had a few quirks to smooth out, exact location being one of them.

I lay back on my bed, closing my eyes to the sound of my brother laughing softly at the television in the den. Through thick and thin, he was always there with a smile to ward off the sorrows that plagued us. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to this time around.

 * * *

I awoke to an infuriating rapping against my window. A violent, constant prattling reverberated throughout the otherwise silent room. The annoyance continued as I lifted the book I had been reading from my chest. Inserting a bookmark I received from my sister’s church, I tossed the book onto the nightstand and averted my attention to the headache summoning me.

Prancing about on the window-sill garden was a deranged bird, ceaselessly attacking the glass. I rushed to shoo it, opening the window outward to brush it off of my mangled herbs. The bird fluttered off across the street to the park visible from my loft, flapping a flower onto the floor in front of me.

A lily.

An unknown pain coursed through me, knocking the wind out of me. I bent over to pick up the lily, torn and wilted by the antics of the bird. I returned to my bed with the lily in my hand, still reeling from the surge of anguish that had no source.

I looked at the book across from me. The bookmark stuck out showing an image of a lily. I pulled it out to give it a better look. In a border of lilies, the angel Gabriel was sketched onto the face of the bookmark. At the bottom was the address of my sister’s church with the time of the morning Mass. A phrase written in calligraphy was emboldened just above that. “May the Angel Gabriel guide you, revealing to you the path.”

I looked at the clock. I still had an hour. As the anguish dissipated, I hurried to get Marcos up out of bed. I knew he would hate getting up at seven on a Sunday morning, but the lily still in my hand was easing that mysterious anguish. Whatever it was, I felt we should visit my sister at her church.

Within an hour we made our way down the block. Despite being within walking distance, we had yet to visit her church even after her many offers to pick us up. I knew she would be thrilled to see Marcos and me finally attending Mass with her.

* * *

The noise of the television and a rumbling of laughter woke me up. It had been a long few weeks working in the lab on the time travel sequencing. All I wanted was a few hours of undisturbed sleep.

I opened the door and walked into the dark living room lit up by the flashing of the television. Another bout of laughter rumbled as I approached from behind the couch. A head swayed in a figure-eight formation, chuckling at the cartoon playing in front of him.

Marcos turned around. “Oh, did I wake you?” He grabbed the remote and turned the volume down a few notches. He smiled at my with a wink. “Sorry.”

I leaned forward and kissed his head. “No, it’s fine.” My legs fell numb. “I missed you, anyway.”

Marcos rolled his eyes. “You went to sleep an hour ago. How much could you miss me in that short of time?” He scooted over and held open the blanket for me to sit down next to him.

“You couldn’t imagine.” He rested his head against my shoulder as he continued laughing at the television. I rested my head against his own. “I love you.”

“Me too.” Another flurry of action on the television brought him into yet another bout of laughter. My eyes drifted shut, gazing at the vase of lilies resting on top of the television set. With a deep sigh, I let myself fall asleep, releasing my pent up exhaustion and grief as my boy was finally in my arms again.



- (c) Kevin Barrick