Up in the Air (short story)

I was maybe flying in the air for five seconds. But that would be silly. Less than two seconds I guess would be the most accurate count, but if you had been in my shoe, in my shirt, with a leather jacket over it—if yours had been the head in my full-face helmet, you’ll know it actually seemed like years had passed while I was up there flying in the air. But let’s say it was five seconds.

            Riding gloves should be written in the bible of motorcycle riding. I almost always wore a pair. There were maybe two times I could remember when I didn’t—the first had been that one time when I had to ride bare-handed because my gloves stank of dog piss and I had to wash and hang them up for days. James Corden, my dog, found them on the floor and, I don’t know, maybe saw them like a fire hydrant. Fortunately, I was on a long vacation from work then, so I had no valid reasons to get out of the house and burn doughnuts on the roads, save for that one instance when my wife, whom I had been suspecting of being unfaithful to me with some douchebag at her office, screamed at me into submission, and I was left with no choice but to lift my ass and pick up our little daughter from school. But that had been the only instance in that whole stretch of rest days I had. The rest, I let her go and pick Minnie up herself.

            Not that I was a bad father. I love Minnie. I do. I care for her. I certainly don’t want her to get home from school all by herself—she’s only nine. But my wife, screaming at me like that, like it was the only obligation I have for little Minnie and implying that I can’t even do it? I took offense from it then. It seemed it, it was what was in my head then, after I had brought my daughter home and had been left to ponder on it all—when I am left with my thoughts, that’s when my head actually functions. And that was my conclusion—she can’t scream at me like that. I am the father of the house, I provide for the both of them. I need to be respected, I need to be left alone when I am on my rest day—I can’t ride my bike without my riding gloves!

            The second time I rode my bike without donning a pair happened just a while ago. A second ago, in fact. Technically, I am no longer riding my bike if I am already afloat in the air at the moment. While I was thinking about that first time and what-not that I just related, a second had passed already since I started flying off of my motorcycle. I knew it would be a violent landing once this whole five-second trip was through. A couple of broken bones at least—more than a couple I’m sure. Spots where skin would be peeled off—particularly on my legs, what with me wearing just a pair of shorts. Bruises. Blood loss. Loss of consciousness, maybe. But at the least I could give myself an assurance that when later I’d land on the asphalted ground, there would not be a serious damage to my head, and the gray matter inside it. I had my helmet to save me from that. I had to trust it. It should do the job, with the ridiculous price tag it came along when I bought it, it should. It was the hip helmet, it was the bomb! If you have it on while you drive the roads, you are the Ghost Rider incarnate. Yet now I had to spend the second second of my current trip thinking and thinking sure this expensive piece of shit could absorb all the momentum of the impact once I’d finally crash on the ground for the boom.

            Then the succeeding second suddenly I spent on the thought of my wife. Before all the doubts, before all the suspicions of infidelity, before I looked at her and looked at her like she was less a living thing than James Corden, I used to look at her like she was the Crab Nebula. There was love at the sight of her. She had seemed to me the sun I would gladly agree to collide with and live out the rest of my mortal seconds in such beautiful disaster. When I married her, I knew I married a piece of classical music, a conglomeration of stardust just roaming around the universe for billions of years waiting until I was ready to love. She had been the comeliest little space traveler this side of paradise. I knew little about the chance of her stardust elegance fading away in time.

            Now she seemed to me a stranger. The day unfortunately arrived when I found myself waking up and asking, “Who is this woman sleeping in my bed, eating on my table, watching my TV? Who is this alien slowly sucking me into her own vortex of strange components where I’m sure nothing goes along but despair and hatred?” I realized I was living with a foreign entity where no dog-piss-on-my-riding-gloves could make me want to stay at home forever.

            She had been the reason why I was compelled to ride my bike today despite not having my riding gloves—this for the second time. The intel that involved a motel room and an hour or two of illicit fluid exchange, and the Ghost Rider was off along the trails, ready for the climax and denouement of this once magical fairy tale to be amalgamated into one seamless scenario. But make no mistake, I wouldn’t be there to get my wife, I wouldn’t be there to unleash whatever I was supposed to unleash with the supposed celestial pang of jealousy I was supposed to have in my heart. I wouldn’t even be there to kill anybody. I would be there because I wanted to end things with her all while catching her red-handed, clothes-less in bed with another man. I pictured out a scene where every hateful word came only from me, because where would she ever pick the slightest right to talk her side of the story while she’s wallowing in a fresh iteration of her sin?

            But that was all out of the question now. The only room I’d be finding myself in after this journey aloft would be the emergency room. But I could accept it. I had no choice. Instead of the explosive scenario I planned to have in the motel room, I guess I would have to resort to a calmer approach. When she would be standing there beside me on the hospital bed, that’d be the time to tell her it’s all over between us. I wouldn’t be able to unleash any vehement tirade, or explanation. I knew that already. That moment would be a peaceful nova of what was once had been the only sol my earthly heart was orbiting.

            Three seconds had passed, and now’s the time I realized that while the helmet may prevent my skull from cracking open, there may still be the chance that I’d slip into some serious aftermath in my brain, perhaps some case of amnesia. I’ve seen movies with this kind of plot. And I worship movies enough to not dismiss the possibility—may it be majestically infinitesimal—that I would end up waking to a world where everything would seem new to me. I’d lost every memory I have from when I could stretch it all the farthest to these last five seconds before I hit the ground. I couldn’t wander along with this chance and spend these last precious seconds of consciousness remembering things that are mired with misery and hate. If I should slip into the void of unconsciousness and open my eyes in a once-again uncharted world, I would rather take with me to the edge the memories from when I feel the most of Earthly joys.

            Minnie. My little princess Minnie. She was all the brightest star left in this part of space since everything fell out with my wife. A nine-year old cosmic creation that shone the most beaming of light waves since she was born, since she was laid on my arms the first time, since the first solar flare that came out of her eyes astounded me and conjured in me a soul that was more than just riding gloves, motorcycles, and interstellar choice of words. Minnie was born a star and her gravity was more than I could bear. She pulled me into her own slice of the universe and kept me there revolving, rotating, and making my own place in the world the only place to be in.

            As Minnie was growing up, she became even more adorable. And when the animosity between me and my wife started, I was able to focus all my care and endearing to her, and that had been when the realization that only Minnie could bring true happiness to me became entire. No one else came close to my heart than my daughter. My Minnie. My little Minnie. Only two days ago I bought her a new stroller bag, pink-colored, and when she first saw it, I could see solar flares bursting out of her eyes and her joy was a contagion I was wholly reduced to magical infection.

            The last second. I never thought this to be the part where I’d reconsider every decision I had been planning to undertake, the one particularly with my wife. I knew the glimmer of her cosmic constitution had become dimmer and dimmer already, and becoming dimmer and dimmer still by the second, but she was still my little Minnie’s mother. Every bit of stardust that made up my Minnie’s picturesque existence came from the woman I married. And I don’t want my little Minnie to grow up within the remnants of an apocalyptic cosmic system. I knew that despite all the hatred and all the ill wills that had slowly severed the orbit my wife and I once had of each other, everything could still be compressed into a singular chance at reconciliation. And in getting through this accident, after this five-second trip up in the air, we would turn things around for the better, for the sake of this share of celestial space we had borrowed from the universe.

            And then a second of darkness. I had finally crashed.

            I could hear sirens. I could hear people talking. I could hear someone, near, maybe stooping on the ground beside me—must be the emergency response team.

            “Just keep still, sir. You’ve been in an accident. Help is coming. Keep still.”

            I could feel the heat of the asphalted ground where I had crashed. The visor of my helmet had been broken and detached, and I could see from about five meters away the motorcycle that I had made a diving board of. And despite the apparent intensity of the accident as a whole, I could feel no major or tremendous discomfort anywhere in my body—that maybe I had just made it through this entire tragedy unscathed. Maybe a few bruises and scratches but overall, I couldn’t feel any searing pain or realize any part of my body that I can’t poke the nerves of. It could be that the shock was overriding the pain—that was a possibility. But I tried to get on my feet, and somehow I managed it. All my bones were left intact, at least. I could hear the man talking me out of doing what I was planning to do, but I needed to know. I took off my helmet, trying to see better what I had just seen earlier when I was on the ground. I had seen a pink stroller bag, lying near the motorcycle.

            It couldn’t be. I had told her not to go home on her own. That I’d be picking her up today. My little Minnie, my dear little Minnie, she shouldn’t be crossing the street on her own—she was only nine.

            And my star, she was lying there, on the same asphalted ground where I had crashed into like a miserable meteorite, peaceful, bathed among the clouds of stardust that she had emitted. And it didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense at all.

                                         

(end)

June 15, 2016

For a man who is terrified of swimming into the seas, I sure did make the right call plunging into the waters in pursuit of you. I still remember the first time I laid my eyes on you—you the shy thirteen year old you. I was already seventeen then, but given that I was at the same time already committed to a puppy love affair that was actually doomed from the start, I didn’t really pay too much attention to that particular first time. But I know I had to remember that moment, as I am doing now.

I turned eighteen around two or three months after that, and you fourteen after another couple of months. I had already had my heart broken then. You still had yours kept afloat on the love affair of your own. But that didn’t last long either. Skip to the next two months, we found ourselves alone in our individual infinity. That’s right, I’m buying into the shit John Green said about infinities. But, yeah, we found ourselves alone.

You were fourteen and I was eighteen. You were June and I was October. It didn’t sound very romantic, not even perhaps appropriate then.

But somehow we found a way to distort space-time and meet each other in a dimension that I knew was meant for us. You burst out of June and I skidded out of October, and we saw eye-to-eye, standing across each other in September. And life became stellar since then.

I was there in a lot of your phases, and you were there in mine. We laughed, we cried, we kissed, we danced in tornadoes and in fair skies, and here we are still stiff, polished and tuned for the rest of our unified infinity.

And now you’re twenty-one, and I’m twenty-five. See, it doesn’t sound so odd now. But I still remember the first time I laid my eyes on you, you at thirteen. I would remember it from time to time, because you always remember that first time—that very first instance—when you lay your eyes on to someone and that someone has made your life worth the length of every infinity.

some days she would ask me

Some days she would ask me

“Why did you stay?”

And I would  answer her

“Because I love you.”

But then I thought to myself

Hey, God can answer it better

So I asked God one night

“God, why do you let me stay?”

Then God answered:

“Listen, kid—

She needs you more than you know it.

“She loves photography:

                She’s gonna stop in a sudden

                Taken by some scenery along the way

                And though you know nothing about cameras

                Of course, she’s gonna need you to carry her bag.

                She can’t wave a camera with a bridge on her shoulder.

                Also, she might gonna need someone to throw the petals on her model.

“She loves eating:

                She’s gonna have a list of all this restaurants

                From streetfoods to fine dining ones

                But then she’s gonna deny herself the meal

                She’s gonna say no to eating most of the time

                She’s gonna say she has gained too much weight

                She’s gonna tell herself she’s fine without anything in her stomach

                And you’re going to be there to change her mind every time

                You’re going to tell her she’s the sexiest woman in the world

                You’re going to tell her you left Jennifer Lawrence for her             

                Also, she likes that part of the shawarma that you can never finish.

“She loves to roam around F21:

                She’s gonna dance around the displays of blouses and jeans

                Of course, that’s about all the names of the clothing you know

                She’s gonna throw in some clothing names that you’ve never heard before

                She’s gonna try on everything, try on the hats, fathom on the prices

                And you’re gonna be there all saying, “You’d look very beautiful in that.”

                Because you know she’d always be beautiful in everything

                You’re the Craig Ferguson who’s gonna tell her everyday in every clothing she wears

                “Why, you look sensational!”

“She’ll put the world in a backpack:

                She knows nothing about the Earth but to be roamed

                She’s gonna show you pictures of beaches and wonderful tourist spots

                She’s gonna tell you every day that she wants nothing more than to travel

                She will be your ticket to the world, kid.

                She will be the needle that will prick you out of your introvert bubble

                And you’re gonna be where she wants to be

                She will need you because you are part of her world.

“You stayed because she loves the life that contains a ‘you’

You stayed because she needs you in everything she loves

You stayed because you love her through the odds

And most of all, you stayed because you make her happy.

So happy.”

two birds

two birds sitting over a wall
singing a song in unison
of love, of melodies they call
of memories that come and gone,
the truest kind of love they've won.

two birds through the night have seated
wings touching while upon a wall
passed the moonlit hours embedded
in a dream of a starlit fall,
where all their worries turn to null.

two birds sunk in bliss and in awe
not even envying the stars
of beauty from the skies we draw
of wonder from their brightly wars,
there are beams even in their scars.

two birds that are happy, are still
you can hear the tune they're singing
the world doesn't bend to the sky's will
but to the hearts that keep racing,
two birds just happily sitting.

Travelogue of an Immovable Paranoid

I only have the darkness around me
As the paranoia starts to kick in
Silently pallid and suddenly strong
These voices and pictures growing within.

I only have the silence to soothe me
And battle off the raging disturbance
Like ghosts that haunt in tempestuous ways
Though fear is scarce and worry’s abundance.

I only have a little to cling to
And it barely saves me from my own self
Nil is all it is for a fighting chance
When it is your own mind you have to delve.

A Nightshifter's Guide to the Galaxy

when morning breaks away from dawn
and you stream the sunshine along the way,
i cast a beaming smile of my own
and wear it through the rest of the day.

and when afternoon breaks away from morning,
when i've plunged beneath an ocean of sheets,
you steal into my head's silent wandering
and color it through a thousand beats.

and when evening breaks away from afternoon,
when we're riding through the sunset and dim,
we rush forth feeling chased by the moon
and wrap ourselves in a starry dream.

and then when evening slips into midnight,
when we'd return to our separate strings,
i look back to the seconds of the passing day's flight
and carry on with the happiness it brings.

Read (read: read) List

A list of all literary works I have read since I began reading the first of them.

A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sign of the Four - Arthur Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes (Short Stories) - Arthur Conan Doyle
Kapitan Sino - Bob Ong
Ang Paboritong Libro ni Hudas - Bob Ong
MacArthur - Bob Ong
Ang Mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan - Bob Ong
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
The Old Curiosity Shop - Charles Dickens
The Prestige - Christopher Priest
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Damned - Chuck Palahniuk
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
American on Purpose - Craig Ferguson
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
Inferno - Dan Brown
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
Shutter Island - Dennis Lehane
(Short Stories) - Edgar Allan Poe
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket - Edgar Allan Poe
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Marley and Me - John Grogan
Noli Me Tangere - Jose Rizal
El Filibusterismo - Jose Rizal
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Caroll
The Godfather - Mario Puzo
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
The Revenant - Michael Punke
The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman
(Short Stories) - O. Henry
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith
The Shining - Stephen King
Cujo - Stephen King
The Running Man - Stephen King
Pet Sematary - Stephen King
It - Stephen King
Misery - Stephen King
Needful Things - Stephen King
Gerald's Game - Stephen King
The Green Mile - Stephen King
Lisey's Story - Stephen King
Blaze - Stephen King
Duma Key - Stephen King
Under the Dome - Stephen King
11/22/63 - Stephen King
Doctor Sleep - Stephen King
Four Past Midnight - Stephen King
Different Seasons - Stephen King
Joyland - Stephen King
Nightmares and Dreamscapes - Stephen King
On Writing - Stephen King
Rage - Stephen King

The Elevator Man (short story)

My life is a life full of running. In all directions, that is. But that’s the thing: you are always reduced into a constant race with time. Some people just sit and wait in a corner, while some people run and live the race. As for me, I run because running is what makes my life still.

                Now, here’s the picture: two men—one was a young teenager, on the left side and facing the door, and the other was an old man, on the right side and much nearer on his side of the wall than the young one—were standing inside a claustrophobic room, quietly, at least for some time. The young man was embracing a brown leather bag in his arms; the old man had his arms free, save for his right hand he put easily over the panel buttons on the side of the door before them. As time went on inside that elevator (as I have assumed you have probably assumed yourself what that room is), the young one was feeling an increasing discomfort within him. I should know—that young man was none other than me.

                “Are you alright, boy?” the old man, a so-called elevator man, asked. “You don’t seem alright, if I may say. You’re awfully very pale.”

                The young man looked slowly toward the old man, mistrustfully, I’d say.

                “You don’t look fine at all,” the old man said.

                “Just a…” the young man began. “Just…a little dizzy.”

                “Do you have a thing against closed rooms? Do you get all panicky when you’re inside one?”

                The young man had returned his eyes back on the closed door in front of them, and seemed to have not heard the questions recently asked by the old man.

                “Alright, I’d tell you now,” the old man said. “You’re running away from something, am I not right?”

                The young man glanced back at him, his attention utterly taken. A whole lot of sweat was threatening on the folds of his forehead, and if he could only see the look of his own face at that very moment, he’d laugh his butt off surely and forget in himself that that elevator ride was just the first one of the rides he had planned to take in but another escape attempt of his dear young life.

                “What did you say?” he asked, as if he did not hear what the old man had just said.

                “How many times have you run from something, Randy?”

                “How did you know my name?” The panic inside him had risen considerably up his throat now. “Who are you?”

                “An elevator guy,” the old man said. Randy, the young man’s name, had taken a few steps back away from him, instinctively. “Or, if you would allow me, I can be someone who can help you out with this new running of yours.”

                “Help?”

                “That’s right. I can offer you a hand in this escape.”

                Randy looked ponderously at the old man for a string of seconds. “Who are you, mister?”

                “My name is Danny.” The old man offered his hand for a shake, which Randy took reluctantly. “And I am going to tell you that I am not just any of your old, anonymous elevator man. I know a way out of everything.”

                “What are you trying to tell me, mister?” Randy asked.

                “Please, call me Danny,” the old man said. He moved his hand over to the floor buttons and pushed the button for the eighth floor. Currently, they were just cruising past the fourth floor and going down.

                “What are you doing?” Randy protested.

                “Relax,” Danny said. After he had pushed the “8” button, the elevator seemed to have come to a stop. The noise coming basically from the gliding of the elevator had turned into an eerie silence. Slowly, the numbers embossed on the other buttons started to disappear, leaving only the eighth floor button with a number. A few seconds after though, the number 8 slowly rotated counter-clockwise and stopped on a “lying” position, making it look like a mathematical symbol for infinity.

                “What’s happening?” Randy asked, frantically.

                “I’m showing you a way out of the trouble you’ve put yourself into, Randy. I’m offering you a hand, a friendly hand, that is.”

                Randy clutched his bag vehemently closer to him, although he was not at all conscious of it. The mystery enshrouding the old man, and the, let’s say, supernatural turnaround of things inside the elevator had caused him to absently lose hold of himself. Consequently, as cliché would suggest it, he thought he was just submerged in a very deep dream, and sometime later he would just wake up from all of it.

                But this isn’t no dream, Randy. Yes, it’s me, Danny, the elevator guy. Welcome to the place called “the past.”

                The elevator door opened to a bright, blinding light. Randy battled it off his eyes with his arms, inadvertently dropping the leather bag that he was holding them with. Gradually, the light dissipated and slowly showed to him what was outside the elevator as they had been standing inside it at the minute. A hallway, basically, the eighth floor hallway. But he remembered he had just been welcomed by the old man into a new place, apparently, which he called “the past.”

                Randy opened his eyes carefully, not knowing that the light had just been fainting out. When his vision had cleared out at last, he saw that it was not the eighth floor hallway that was waiting outside the elevator. He had somehow expected to see this different place, anyway. And he was also still clinging on the notion that what was happening was merely part of a dream.

                The opened elevator door led out into another room—someone’s bedroom. The ambiance implicit around it concurred with the nomenclature provided by the old man. It did look like a room inside a house inside an era of the past.

                “Take a step out, Randy,” the old man said. “I’ll follow you shortly.”

                Randy asked no further question. He stepped out of the elevator into the surreal room that looked sepia all over, and was quite unconscious of his steps. When out, he finally saw the entirety of the room. Danny was following him behind.

                “What is this place?” Randy asked.

                “The past,” Danny said. “To be exact, this is a room straight from sixty-seven years ago.”

                Randy’s eyes stretched in utter disbelief. “You mean to tell me that I have time-traveled sixty-seven fucking years into the past?”

                “Yes, you did.”

                “What are we doing here? This is your proposed way out for me?”

                Danny walked toward one side of the room, to a wall where a number of framed pictures were hanging, and stood specifically beside a large black-and-white photograph of a man staring dead-on toward every direction.

                “His name is Don Teofilo Villon,” he said. “He’s a doctor. And I’m sure you don’t know him.”

                “Yeah, I sure don’t. Who is he?”

                “Let me tell you a story. There was once a young Spanish adventurer many years ago who had joined the crew of a large Spanish ship named the Voyager. This adventurer’s name is Lopez. The Voyager was set on an expedition toward the Philippine islands, unbeknownst to them all that that would eventually be its last trip. So they sailed on for a month before they met a small canoe in the middle of the ocean which was just floating aimlessly. In that canoe was a famished, almost dying man who refused to talk who he was or what fate had beset him prior to that current time. The ship’s crew took the man in and provided him with much comfort, since they had expected that he would no sooner die. Lopez was the last man to see to him before he died; and without the knowledge of the other sailors, the dying man had told Lopez, before his last breath, about a large diamond he had swallowed during the mutiny of the ship’s crew he had last sailed with. The diamond was worth a fortune beyond all fortunes. He told Lopez that if he dies, and he’s sure it won’t be long then, he told him to slit a part of his stomach open and take the diamond. He did just as what he had been told.

                “When the others had heard of the man’s death and seen the wound in his stomach, they immediately thought Lopez had killed him, as opposed to letting the man die a natural death. Lopez was sentenced to a walk in the plank for his alleged crime. But before that, after he had taken the treasure from the dead man’s body, he had also swallowed it himself, lest the others would find it. He plunged the cold waters of the ocean and was left by the ship to his fate. Fortunately, another boat passed by the area after the first ship had gone a considerable distance away. He was taken in on that boat, which was coincidentally also headed toward the Philippines.

                “At the time of their arrival, Lopez immediately went about looking for a surgeon to get the diamond out of his stomach. That was how and when his path and Don Villon’s path eventually crossed. The doctor agreed to operate on him, after Lopez promised to give him a large part of the fortune that precious stone was worth. Unbeknownst to Lopez, Don Villon was planning to kill him off and take the treasure all to himself.”

                Danny paused speaking when suddenly a movement was seen from the other side of the room. There was a bed on that side where somebody had been lying beneath a couple of layers of blankets. Randy instantly knew who it was on the bed.

                “Shouldn’t we go now?” Randy asked.

                “No,” Danny said. “If you’re concerned about the man finding us here inside his room, then I’m telling you, that concern of yours is pointless. At the moment, we are but an inexistent pair of visitors relative to their timeframe. They cannot see us, they cannot feel our presence.”

                The door of the room located few steps away from the bed suddenly opened, permitting the entrance of a young woman. Her face had been drenched in tears as she slowly walked toward the man lying on the bed.

                “Who is she?” Randy asked.

                “She’s Don Villon’s daughter,” Danny answered. “Mary.”

                “Why is she crying?”

                “That is because, Randy, Don Villon is a dying man.”

                Randy observed the following sequence of events inside the room, and discovered another incredulous property of this peephole they were looking through. Don Villon’s daughter, who was sitting on the floor beside his father’s bed, was clearly mumbling some words. Randy could see her lips moving for him to deduce it. But in wonder of all wonders, not even a faint sound was audible from her. It had been like watching a motion picture in a TV that was set in mute.

                “We can only see, Randy,” Danny said, noticing the look of wonder on Randy’s face. “This part here has no audio yet.”

                “What is she saying?” Randy asked.

                “I don’t honestly have an idea. But what I do know is that Don Villon has to have someone to pass the diamond to now before he finally expires. As you can see, he has to do it as soonest as possible.”

                “He cannot possibly entrust that to his daughter. A woman!”

                “Exactly!”

                And Randy was struck with the quick understanding of everything before him.

                “I know who you’re running from, Randy,” the old man said. “I was just looking for a chance to confront you with this one of a time chance to relieve you of all your troubles.”

                “Who really are you? Don’t tell me this isn’t all just a dream.”

                “There are people pursuing you, dangerous people whom you have owed a large amount of money. This is your chance, Randy.”

                “I am dreaming,” Randy said, wandering about his place from disbelief.

                “Don Villon has already lost that diamond to history. Now, I’m giving you this precious opportunity to change that course of history and turn the tide in your favor. Imagine the treasure that lost gem can promise you, Randy. It’s a vastness of richness beyond measure.”

                Randy looked straight into the eyes of Danny, reading their depth.

                “Time is no more a luxury in your position,” Danny said. “You have to think about this now.”

                “No, I still have time,” Randy said. “I need time to think about this. I will get back here tomorrow. And by then you will have my decision. I need the treasure, I can comprehend as well its promised fate for me should I be able to obtain it from Don Villon, but I still have to think this over. Until now, these things haven’t gotten into the bottom of my mind yet.”

                Danny let out a brief sigh. “Alright. I’ll be just right here tomorrow. I shall expect you and your final decision. Be wise, Randy. Be wise.”

                Randy then quietly turned his back to the open door of the elevator. It looked very much a different world than the room of Don Villon. It was the world that he had lived for years. Turning his back to it to another one that was surely going to shed him from all his present troubles would surely be a matter needing of a heavy pondering. Deep within him, he was torn by two sides that were way much parted from each other.

                He got inside the elevator, waiting for Danny to move his way back in also. As soon as the old man had gone inside, Randy said to him, “You have to tell me everything I need to know about this dimension and this travel itself should I comply with your offer, Danny.”

                “Of course,” Danny said, fetching a smile on his lips.

                Randy needed the time to think, but at that very moment he had already been fixed on a final, irrevocable decision—Don Villon’s diamond, of course. Perhaps, he just needed the time to prove to himself that everything was not inside a dream.

                The next day, after managing to find a way through the people going after his tracks, he once again found his way inside the elevator, standing alone with Danny. The old man initiated that second meeting in a thought that Randy would be hesitant to talk first. And, as is usual, every time-travel should start with a smile.

                “So, is it a yes?” he asked.

                “Tell me the dos and don’ts,” Randy said.

                “Perfect!” The old man faced Randy and thrust his hand to the eighth floor button beside the elevator door. “Strap your safety belt for this one-of-a-hell journey, Randy.”

                “First, you’ve got to tell me if there’s a chance that I could go back in the present.”

                Danny seemed to have been taken aback, but he quickly regained himself. “Well, there is this one important rule we have to consider for this travel, quite connected to what you’ve just asked. You see, once a person has gone back in time through this elevator, all his memories of the present time will disappear from his mind. But no worries, since you would have the knowledge of a typical man of that era once you get there. You won’t be starting back as a baby inside an adult’s body.”

                “You say I won’t be remembering anything of the present?”

                “Yes. I should’ve told you yesterday, but I think it would not be a thing of concern for you now, given the past whereabouts that you are trying to run away from here.”

                Randy took a deep sigh. At first, his only reason in asking the question was to at least have a sure way out of the past if ever he should find himself in the middle of trouble again in there. Knowing a way out of something is always a rule. The news of the consequent total amnesia once in there was a bit of a surprise.

                But what was going to be a matter for consideration following that vanishing of his memories, anyway? He started thinking about the life he had led, the nineteen years he had spent in this fabric of time. There had been not a bright year, it seemed. He had no family, he had no friends, and hell! he couldn’t even find a point in his past that was worth keeping in memory. So maybe that would just be fine, losing his memory.

                But, “How can I get back here, in case?” He directed that question to the old man with total gravity.

                Danny looked at him in quiet awe. “How can you get back here?” was the first thing he could say after spending some seconds in silence.

                “Yeah, in case,” Randy said.

                “Perhaps we can do something about that,” Danny said, hesitantly so. “But you won’t be remembering anything, anyway. You won’t be aware that you came here in the first place.”

                “In case, Danny,” Randy said, almost in a whisper.

                “Alright.” Danny heaved a deep sigh. “I know it’s an odd thing to suddenly live in a life that is not yours firstly. We have enough secrets in this world to try and come up with another one. I know you won’t be comfortable, in any way, concealed behind the fact that you’re living in a completely foreign world, much more a completely foreign era.

                “So here’s what I’m thinking you should do. Once you get out of this elevator and into the past, inside Don Villon’s room, you will take the diamond from him, and find your way back to these doors.” (He pointed toward the ones of the elevator.) “Of course, it won’t be visible anymore from your reference point inside the past, but I will you show the trick of it. And of course, I will tell you where the diamond is hidden.”

                Randy’s face seemed to beam with excitement, though he actually tried to keep it from the old man.

                Danny took out a piece of paper and a pen from his pocket, wrote something, and continued, “Bring this. Hold on to this so that you could read it at once.”

                On the paper was written: “I HAVE TRAVELED BACK IN TIME. I SHOULD ASK NO QUESTIONS. I SHOULD GO OUT OF THIS ROOM AND GET INSIDE THE ROOM DIRECTLY ACROSS THIS ONE. ONCE INSIDE, I SHOULD GO TO THE CABINET BESIDE THE BED OPEN THE DRAWER AND GET THE BOX INSIDE. THE DIAMOND I HAVE COME HERE FOR IS IN THERE. THEN I SHOULD GO BACK TO THE FIRST ROOM AND STAND BY THE WINDOW WHERE I HAVE COME FROM. I SHOULD CLOSE MY EYES AND THINK ABOUT THE YEAR 2014. JUST THINK OF THE NUMBER. REMEMBER NO QUESTIONS!”

                Randy looked dubiously at the old man after he had read what was on the paper.

                “Just focus, Randy,” Danny said. “This is the only, and might just be the perfect way, for you not to get stuck in the past.”

                “Okay,” Randy said. The situation called for him to stay silent, as he tried to make a final pondering about what he was about to do. But the game had been fixed in his mind. He folded the paper into a lengthwise strip and put it between his two fingers. He looked at Danny, now with a seeming gratitude, and said, “Thank you.”

                “Always be happy to help,” Danny said.

                The door of the elevator finally opened, and the gloomy interior of Don Villon's room appeared before them like a sick old man on a hospital bed appears before you—as gloomy as the room itself, it had seemed. Randy glanced for the last time at Danny, smiled a little, and then took his first step out of the elevator. Officially, if it would be a great deal (as it apparently would), he was now standing in two time eras at the same time.

                The elevator door closed behind him in a slow, thrilling fashion, and for a thousandth time in his furthest memory, he felt alone. But then he thought, there is no need to worry about the breadth of my memory anymore—I'm going to lose it in a second now...

                In a second now.

                He looked around the room, curiously. He recalled the first time he got here that he hadn't been this curious as to look around the details inside this room. The bed was there on the far wall, sheets bulging and taking the shape of the old man lying beneath them. A continual rising and falling of them indicated the pace of the man's breathing. And then he remembered that the man was actually in the last moments of his life now. And he remembered...

                Remembered?

                Wait a sec.

                I cannot possibly remember anything. And I, yes I. It all goes back to me now. The Randy who's been running and running from almost everything.

                This can't be right! I look around the room faster now, and I feel the paper slipped between the fingers of my hand. Danny's note.

                I HAVE TRAVELED BACK IN TIME. I SHOULD ASK NO QUESTIONS.

                But I am filled with them now. I read the next lines and feel odd about it than ever. I decide to do what is just asked of me by the note. I run out of the room as fast as my feet could, finding the said room across this first one. And then at that point, all memories suddenly come back into me. Every memory I have of this room, and of this house, and of this era, apparently. I am starting to remember. But understanding is still out of the question.

                The room before me now, I know it. Yes, I know whose it is. The vague thoughts following the sight of it—cloudy thoughts of the past.

                Past?

                Which past?

                By then, I have remembered: For years, I have actually been putting the future into my past.

                But I am referring to another past this time. I cannot make my mind to concur with it, but apparently, there seem to be two fabrics of the past that I have lived through. The one which introduced me to Danny, the elevator man, and the past I have with this house.

                And then it starts to become clear. The rule. The important rule of this time-travel. All your memories of the present time will be lost in your mind—and the reason why the memories I have before I took the elevator ride aren't lost right now is because that time is not my present time.

                The door across me suddenly opens, and behind it stands a young woman—a familiar young woman, she is. Her cloudy eyes stretch to a width when she sees me, like she hasn't seen me for eternity. And eternity, it may have actually been.

                “Randy?” she says, in her broken voice.

                “Mary?”

                “I thought I wouldn't see you anymore!” She breaks down into more tears as she throws herself to me, embracing me with a grip that is a clear implication of how badly she has yearned for it. “I know you wouldn't leave me. I know you didn't mean what you said.”

                “Mary.” And I cannot bring myself to add more words to that. The very memory of what and why Mary has clasped me as she has starts to seep into my mind now—a memory involving her, an unexpected news, my want to escape from it, Don Villon's threat, and a mad scientist. Sixty-seven years into the future, the latter has said.

                I have entered the time machine to escape her, and her father's will to kill me for deciding to elude my responsibility. Don Villon is not dying! Yes, Don Villon is old but he can still grab a diamond and push it down into my throat like any Tuesday. And what diamond? There is no fucking diamond! The shithead Danny has only invented a backstory enough to convince me to get inside this hellhole! (Unfortunately, what has been my original hellhole.)

                “Please don't leave us, Randy,” Mary says, amidst the chaos inside my head. She is rubbing her belly as she speaks. “We need you. Little Danny needs you here.”

                Danny?

                And my mind shuts off in that instant like a movie cuts to black.

(end)