By

Michael A. Clark

It was just after dark when I got to Jack’s rented cottage across the small lake from the college campus, a rusty Schwinn Varsity 10-speed chained to a sapling in its front yard. My car tires crunched on the gravel driveway. 

“Hey, dude,” I said as I opened his punctured screen door.

“Hey.”

Three candles flickered atop the wobbly wooden table in the living room, casting shadows along the molding pine paneling on the walls. That meant Babette was over. A low bar backing the living room couch cordoned off the tiny kitchen. A neighbor’s back porch light shone through a dirty window upon the pile of dishes rising from the sink. The fridge hummed, as Pink Floyd played softly on the turntable. 

“Hey, Danny,” said Babette pursing a polite smile. She sat next to Jack on the ragged couch. They had the worn indifference of a couple who didn’t know what to do with each other after having sex. She had on a purple sweater, and black jeans. Candlelight shone in her dark eyes.

“Hey, Babette.” I laid the six-pack of Pabst I’d brought on the table. 

“Dude, we’ve got something that will freak you out,” said Jack, reaching for a beer. That’s when I noticed the skinny guy sitting on the floor with his back against the wall-mounted space heater. “You know Gareth?”    

I nodded at the kid. “Hey.”

“Hey,” replied Gareth softly.

“This guy can do some crazy shit, Danny,” said Jack. “Deep, crazy shit.” 

“Like kung fu?” I asked.

“Nah, no kung fu,” said Jack opening a can. “This dude can stop time.”

 “Huh?”

“I’m serious.” Jack took a swig. “Right, Gareth?” 

The skinny kid spoke. “Well… I’ve made clocks stop, and then go backward a little,” he said, nervously scratching the back of his head. “I, guess you can call that stopping time…”

I remembered him now.  Gareth got free tuition because his mother worked in the college administration office. He still lived at home and wandered the campus like a lost soul.

Jack had played varsity football for two years before the knee injury that still gave him a slight limp. Gareth wasn’t the kind of guy Jack usually hung out with.

“Just because a clock goes backward, doesn’t mean you go back in time,” said Babette. 

I sat down. It was too early in the evening for this kind of stoned conversation.

 “Well, it can,” said Jack. “How the hell else do you know what time it is, unless you look at a clock?”

“A clock is a clock,” said Babette. “It isn’t really time. Is it, Danny?”

Gareth looked at Babette shyly, and shifted against the wall.

“Nope,” I replied. “You can take that old clock off the wall and turn back the hands and that doesn’t mean yesterday will happen all over again.”

Jack shook his head and started rolling a joint from the pot spread thinly over The Wall’s white album cover. “You’ll see,” he said. “Gareth was over last night, and we lit up a bowl, and he made time go backwards so that we could smoke it all over again!”

“Really…” I said.

“No bullshit, man!”

I turned to Babette. “Did you see that?”

“No,” she replied. “Some of us studied for finals last night.”

“You’ll see,” said Jack. “Come on, Gareth. Let’s do it, man!”

Gareth coughed. The poor light didn’t give him a healthy glow. 

“It’s not that simple,” he said. “I’m not sure what it is that I’m doing. I just sit and watch the clock, and then something skips inside my head, and I go blank.  And the clock stops… or jumps back a bit. It kinda freaks me out.”

Babette and I glanced at each other. 

Jack jumped up from the couch. “You’re cool, man! Just take it easy and relax. Like last night.”

“Jack…” said Babette.

“Hey, this’ll be intense!” said Jack. “Come on. Give it a shot!”

Gareth put his head in his hands, pale fingers surrounding sunken cheeks. “I’ve never tried… with this many people around,” he said.

“Are we making you nervous?” asked Babette.

Gareth smiled wanly. “You know, I’ve wanted to push it a bit. Maybe having a few more people might help…”

He ran his fingers through thinning hair.  He’ll be bald in a couple years, I thought. 

“Yeah. Yeah. Cool,” said Jack, lighting the joint with a nearly spent Bic.  Babette slumped back; her arms crossed. I figured she wouldn’t be sleeping with him much longer.

“It worked when I was here last night,” said Gareth.  “Maybe that’s because there was someone else around when I tried… it.”

He rubbed his high forehead. 

“I think all three of you should focus on something,” said Gareth, suddenly more confidant.  “Just pick out something on the floor, or your hand or something and block out thinking about anything but that.”

“My hand or something…” said Babette.

“Come on, babe,” said Jack. “It’ll be a trip.”

“Jack…”

“What the hell.” I stared at a stained Steelers mug on the coffee table.  “Let her rip.”

Gareth looked at the clock mounted above the little black and white TV set perched on plastic milk crates. Its minute hand clicked forward.

“9:37,” said Jack, and Gareth closed his eyes. The glowing end of the joint lay in the ashtray, and then…

Something skipped.

It felt like an electric blanket was yanked off my face. I blinked.    

Gareth’s chin was on his chest, sweat beading on his pale face.

Jack and Babette sat stiffly on the couch. The record player was silent.

I looked toward the clock on the wall…

“Hey, it’s fuckin’ light out,” said Jack. 

Setting sunlight streamed across the little lake, pushing shadows into Jack’s cottage.

“Did we sleep through the whole night?” asked Babette.

“No,” Gareth said in a thin voice. “It’s about three hours ago.”

 “Because I told you I wanted to go to Michele’s party later!” said Babette. 

“Whoa,” said Jack. He looked at the table before him. “Hey, those candles are out. And where’s that joint?” 

The three candles had bled no cooled puddles of wax. And the ashtray was empty. Jack still had a Pabst in his hand. But the rest of the six-pack had vanished.

The clock said 6:43. 

I got up to look outside. “Where the hell is my car,” I said to an empty driveway.

“You haven’t driven it here yet,” said Gareth.

“No, some jerk stole it while we were passed out all night,” said Babette.  “Some jerk stole Danny’s car, and I missed Michele’s party and all because you wanted to see if this… guy, was a frickin’ time machine! Damn it, Jack!”

“Whoa,” said Jack.  “This weed isn’t that good.”

“Is the sun rising or setting?” asked Gareth, rubbing his head in his hands.

I looked out the front door again. We were on the eastern edge of the little lake.  The early evening sun shone over the tall campus bell tower, a half-mile away across the water. “Setting,” I said, feeling foggy. “Where is my car?”

“We went back three hours,” said Gareth to himself. “That’s more than I’ve ever gone before.”

“This… is… stupid,” said Babette.

“So, where is my car?” I asked again

“Where it was three hours ago,” said Gareth. “Before you came here.”

“How come I’m not in it?”

Gareth ran his fingers through his hair again.  “That’s a good question.”

“Call the cops and find out who stole it and you’ll get an answer,” said Babette.

“Hold on, babe,” said Jack.

“Don’t ‘babe’ me! You got us all stoned and someone stole Danny’s car!”

“There must be some kind of radius when I do this,” said Gareth. “We’re all here, and stayed basically the same, even though the world around us went back three hours.” His milky eyes lit up. “I stepped us three hours out of time.” 

A warm breeze eased through the screen door, smelling of skunk cabbage.

“Hey, if we’d slept all night, I’d have to take a piss,” Jack said. “And I don’t!”  He slapped his knees. “We did go back in time!”

 “Oh, Jack…” said Babette.

“Can you go forward?” I asked Gareth.

“What?”

“You know, make up the time?” 

I didn’t want to believe it. “If you did set us back a couple hours, then I’ll have to walk home to get my car to, ah… drive here.”

“I don’t know,” said Gareth. “I’ve always gone back in time. I’ve never tried to go ahead.”

“Well, try now,” said Babette. She groped through her purse.

“Wait a minute,” said Jack. “Maybe we can figure out how to cash in on this.”

“How?” I asked.

“Like, we can know how the Stock Market closed, and tell somebody what to buy or sell and… make some money.”

“Christ are you dumb,” said Babette, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “Do you even know what a ‘stock’ is?”

“Hey, I was just saying…” 

“Maybe we should try figuring out what just happened, before we take on Wall Street,” I said. “Can you go forward to make up those three hours? Or push it back further?”

I regretted that as soon as I said it.

 “Yes. I’ll try again,” said Gareth. He sounded surer of himself. “I want to see how far I can take us.”

“Well, it’s not like we missed anything exciting in the past couple hours,” said Babette, looking at Jack. She snapped a lighter to her cigarette

“I think I’ve got the hang of it. The more I go back, the more I should be able to jump ahead. Like a pendulum.” Gareth slowly stood up. “Yeah. I need you all to focus on something again.”

The warm breeze came back, sweeping through the room.  A flight of ducks quacked overhead.

“Now, wait a minute,” I said. 

“I didn’t agree to anything either,” said Babette.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” said Jack. Babette blew her first puff in his face.

“You think you’ve got the hang of it, whatever ‘it’ is,” I said.  “But you haven’t tried to go forward. How the hell do we know you can get us back to the start, when you haven’t done it yourself?” 

“What’s the start?” asked Gareth. There was an odd look in his eyes.

“Huh?” 

 “How do you know when we really ‘started’? How do we know ‘when’ we really are, until we go back further? See where we may already have been… Then come back to remember it again?”

Gareth smiled for the first time, yellowed teeth against drawn lips. “Don’t we have to go further, to come all the way back?” 

“We don’t know it’s a couple hours earlier,” said Babette. 

“Are you afraid?” asked Gareth.

I could see he wanted to impress her. 

“This is weird,” said Babette, squirming. 

“I’m not scared,” said Jack. “Let’s do it!”

“We and whatever we’re in physical contact with seem to shift in time while the rest of the world stays the same,” said Gareth. “Or, we stay the same, and the rest of the world shifts.”

“You are giving me a headache,” said Babette.

“Why haven’t you tried going ahead yet?” I asked. 

“Why?”

“Well, hell, to see what’ll happen.”

Gareth thought for a moment. “I guess, I never really thought about it.  I just wanted to go back. See if I can change what’s… now.”

“You mean so you can get yourself a life?” snapped Babette.

“Will you lighten up?” said Jack. “This is something majorly cool, like going to the Moon or something. And you’re just dumping all over it.”

“It’s not ‘majorly cool’ to lose three hours out of my life. Which I don’t think really happened,” she said. 

But she did believe it. 

And now so did I.

“Maybe if I can control the past, I can change the present,” said Gareth, almost to himself.

“Just going back in time isn’t controlling anything,” I said. 

“Making joints disappear isn’t going to get you a date on Saturday night,” said Babette.  

“Wait a minute,” said Jack. “Three hours ago… now, I was at the gym working out. And you hadn’t come over yet,” he said to Babette. “What if, ah, I was here? Would I see myself?”

“I don’t know,” answered Gareth.  “I wouldn’t want to.”

“That’s because you don’t like yourself,” said Babette, “And I don’t like you either.”

Gareth winced.

“Babette…” I said. 

“Danny, this is bullshit.   I mean, it’s total bullshit, and it’s creeping me out.”  She looked at Jack again and blew out another smoke cloud. “Why did you ever hook up with this dork, anyway?”

“He’s helped me out some in that remedial math class,” said Jack, morosely.

Gareth looked back at the clock and said, “I can go back further. I know I can.”

“How far back?”

Gareth looked at me. “What if your mother and father had never met?”

“Then like, you’d have a different mom and dad?” said Jack.

“Brilliant.” said Babette. “You wanna go back to change things so you’re not such a loser now, fine. Well, we don’t wanna go along for the ride.”

 “You already have,” Gareth said. “And you’re going to help me try again.”

“Gareth,” I said. “Don’t.”

“You’re not afraid of what I’m doing,” he said. “You’re afraid of me.”

“Nah, nah, everything’s cool, dude,” said Jack.

“Shut up!” yelled Babette.

“Okay, I’m afraid of you,” I said to Gareth. “So why are you doing this? Just to freak us out?”

He stared at me, then the odd look in his eyes faded for a moment. Gareth was a sad, lonely guy who never fit in. He probably both hated and worshipped guys like Jack, who got nice chicks and invites to parties. God knows how many hours he spent alone, staring at a clock. Wishing he could do it all over.

And finally, Gareth makes the clock skip back a second, then maybe a bit more. He wonders if he’s just imagining things.

But he isn’t.

Gareth practices. 

He discovers he can step back in time…

Gareth figures if someone else is near, he can push time back further. Maybe he already lusted after Babette and so he latched onto Jack and enlisted him so he could get close to her.  

Maybe I was thinking too much.

“I have to,” Gareth said, that alien look returning. 

Maybe he could return to the present. 

But everybody along with him might not make it back.

“Danny, make him stop!” said Babette.

Did Gareth have some bizarre plan, where he’d leave Jack in the past and have Babette for himself in the present? 

Where would that put me?

“You can’t go back without us,” I said, my voice rising. “We have to focus on something to help you do it, right?”

“You already are,” said Gareth.  “You’re focused on me.”

The electric blanket ripped all my skin off this time.

My stomach roiled. I felt adrift, like I couldn’t awaken from the end of a long bad dream. I breathed deeply. It was cold. The cleanest, coldest air I’d ever tasted. Like the air you’d breath inside a huge freezer, but without a hint of oiled machinery. The chill burrowed into my bones.

I knew I was outside, under an open sky.

Then a mammoth sound shook the air.  I’d not been to a circus in a long, long time but I knew that mighty trumpeting. 

I opened my eyes.

The cottage was gone, and I stood alone in a crop of willow saplings on marshy turf. The lake before me had tripled in size. A massive hunk of clean ice several stories tall sat in the middle, shedding water in glistening rivets.  Overhead, a huge eagle soared, its Cessna-sized shadow sending rodents as big as pit bulls scurrying through moist underbrush. Far away to the north, I could see the early morning sun reflecting off the great ice sheet, retreating before the warming earth. And the trumpeting of the woolly pachyderms awakening, pulling themselves through the mire of the glacial shoreline. 

Towards me.

Curious about this strange creature, the first human they would ever see.