Breath

            I had to actually punch her in the chest to get her to quit holding her breath. Turns out, it’s hard to keep from breathing when that happens, especially when you’re shocked that someone would actually go that far.

            “What the hell was that?” She asked between heavy breaths. I didn’t understand where that indignant tone came from, though. I had more justification in being angry, I felt.

            “Are you done? Can we cut the shit, now?” I asked, placing my hands on my hips. 

            “What, you care now? When did that happen? You didn’t care yesterday when you were fucking that other woman in my car!” Oh yeah, there was that. I remembered why she had a reason to be mad.  This had been going on for years, I had just kind of taken for granted she wouldn’t find out.  I was reminded of the time my father told me to never assume anything, since it makes an ass of u and me.

            That saying made a lot more sense, all of a sudden.

            “Fine, I understand your frustration, but you could try not reacting so childishly!  Holding your breath? Fucking seriously? You’d rather suddenly take up a kindergarten pass time than talk about it or tell me why you’re angry?  You see why I fuck other people? At least they communicate!”

            “So you couldn’t just leave?” She demanded, breathing fine by now.  “Did you have to rip me to pieces and stay? Why?”

            “Well…”  I stopped short.  Why couldn’t I have left? Surely I had a reason at some point.  I must have.  But what was it? I shook my head, and got out of there.  I’ll figure this out sooner or later.

Challenge Accepted!

As I sat in my dinky little seat in this cheap cigar of a plane, I watched Tylar stand at the doorway, preparing to jump.  “Look,” I shouted, “you know how high we are? About 20,00 feet up. Look at the fucking ground! That’s a long fall, are you sure you don’t want a parachute?”  I said this with a death grip on my seat belt, of course.  Fuck heights, man. I hate ‘em.  The only reason I was up there was to support my friend.

            Tylar turned slightly, smiled.  “Oh, come on, don’t you have a bit of faith? What’s the fun of a parachute? You know those work.  We don’t know if this will work.  You aren’t living if you’re safe all the time.”

            I shook my head, “No, no. I don’t know that they work.  I’ve seen plenty of videos of people sky diving where their ‘chutes didn’t open at all.  This is crazy!  Sure, danger is exciting, that’s all fine, but I-“ and Tylar jumped out of the plane before I finished the sentence. “Fucking Christ!” was about all I could get out of my mouth as I somehow managed to get out of my seatbelt without unbuckling it and ran to where Tylar had been just moments before.  I held on to the frame of the plane, for all that thin aluminum would help, and looked down, hoping to not see Tylar falling uncontrollably to the ground. 

            But there my friend was, seeming to levitate a few feet below the plane, yet keeping pace with it perfectly.  I laughed despite myself as I looked for anything that might be connecting Tylar to the plane, but I found nothing. It was pure talent. Pure, unimaginable, talent.  “Ok, your turn!” Tylar playfully shouted at me. I took a few steps back, shook myself, and asked myself what the hell I had gotten myself into as I leapt out of the plane.  I’m glad the pilot expected this, we had kind of told him our plan before we got off the ground, so we wouldn’t scare him in case what we did actually worked.

            I fell past Tylar quicker than I thought possible, and began screaming like hell.  I focused on denying that I was falling, and simply accepting that I might be floating, and I slowly came to a stop. I opened my eyes, not realizing I had closed them until I needed to open them, and started laughing somewhat maniacally as I flew back up to Tylar. “You ready for part 2, since we aren’t dieing yet?” I asked. Tylar smiled like the Cheshire cat in acknowledgement, and I pushed myself in front of the plane.  I kept going until I had gained about 3 plane-lengths’ distance from the nose, and pulled part 2 out of my pocket.  It looked like an impossibly black little square, but as I unfolded the wormhole, it took on an altogether otherworldly appearance. It’d hard to explain unless you’ve seen a wormhole open in your atmosphere before, and then there’s no need to explain.  Thankfully, our timing was perfect. Seconds after completely unfolding the wormhole, the plane and Tylar flew straight through it.  I bade the world farewell as I swung myself through, holding the edge to take it with me. There was no returning from wherever we were headed.

Done Nothing

            I woke up in a jail cell this morning.  I felt fine, other than the fact that I didn’t know why I was in jail. I’d heard of these things happening to other people, but I didn’t expect it to happen to me. I mean, I don’t do anything wild or crazy like that. The most exciting thing I do is play checkers with people at the old folks’ home near my house. They’re nice people, I don’t see why their families don’t see them more often. I mean, sure, it smells funky, but get over it, you know? I’m not into that whole “rules are made to be broken” stuff. They’re there for a reason, and I never really felt jail was where I wanted to be.

            I looked around the jail cell, I saw someone else in a bed. This makes perfect sense, since I surely wasn’t going to be the only person in jail today, but I was still trying to grasp the fact of where I was, so seeing someone else was still spooky.  There were two beds, so I wasn’t sure why I had to wake up on the ground, either.  That doesn’t seem fair. I’m new, but why do I get tossed on the ground?  Not cool, Mr. Prison Guard.

            “Not cool, Mr. Prison Guard.” I accidentally said aloud.

            “Who the fuck asked you?” said a very big-sounding voice down the hallway.

            “What? Oh, uh, no one?  May I ask you a question, though?” That was the best I could come up with while my mind was full of thoughts like “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, etc.”

            “This isn’t a cla-“

            “What did I do? You know, to get me thrown in here.  I don’t remember doing anything.” I know, it’s rude to interrupt, but I really needed to know. I heard foot steps, BIG foot steps, coming down the hallway towards my cell, and couldn’t suppress the feeling of eminent doom that snuck up from my toes and into my head. “Please, please don’t rape me.” I whispered under my breathe.

            “What was that?” the guard asked when he got to my cell. I didn’t look at him. My shoes were a much friendlier sight, I think, and I was already behind bars, so what was going to happen?

            “What did I do wrong? The last thing I remember is watching TV at my house. That isn’t illegal yet, is it?” I asked my shoes.

            The guard answered, thankfully. “You don’t remember?”

            “No.”

            “You didn’t do anything.”

            “I didn’t do anything?”

            “You didn’t do anything. Just think of what would have happened if you had actually done something.” The guard smirked, I think. I still didn’t look at him, but he gave off an “I’m smirking” vibe that I couldn’t help but feel, if that makes any sense.

            “So what happens now?”

            “Nothing. We just changed your location. You’ve done nothing with your life before this point, so you’ll do nothing with the rest of your life in here. We figured you would continue your trend regardless.”

            And with that, he was gone.

Polished

            They had told me that this one was different. I didn’t quite understand how different she was until I started watching her, myself.  The sky changed according to her nail polish, for one.  That was an interesting correlation to find out. I wound up being glad that she wasn’t 8 years old, for more reasons than one.  Had she been a little girl, there would have been odd sparkles, colors, designs in her nails, and I don’t think I want to know how that would have affected things.  Tailing her was hard enough as she was, especially when she broke out the metallic polish.

            It was my job to watch her, though.  Watch, and report. Never interfere or interact, that was the main rule they pounded into your head from day 1.  Hell, I didn’t even know why she was important.  Sure, she’s different, but different and important are rarely the same thing, other than the fact that people are different when they are important.  If celebrities take a shit in a McDonalds, people want to know about it. If I take a shit in a McDonalds, no one wants to know about it. 

            Still, maybe she was important.  People seemed to flock to her, to make sure that she knew they were there, as though she’d be making a daily report of their attendance and observance of her arrival.  She didn’t seem like the type of person that would be that way, but you never know.  The sky kept changing, her hair kept changing, sometimes I wasn’t even sure if I was following the right person.  She always showed a peculiarity or two that proved her identity to me, though.  There are only a chosen few for which the lights are never red, doors never locked, and who seem to emit some sort of light.  I’m surprised more people weren’t confused by this light, but maybe I’m the only one that truly noticed it.  I can’t exactly survey the people she saw on a daily basis, they would have asked her about me.  That would have ruined everything. I can’t find another job, I’ve been training for this one for years.  I couldn’t live with myself if I wound up working at Wal-Mart or some other low-life collection bin. 

            I had to wonder, though.  Were the tales true? Was this one really who we would wind up belonging to?  She hadn’t learned to exhibit her consciousness on anyone else at this point, if she is who they told me she was.  Time travel is a bitch like that. Knowing who someone will be doesn’t make it much easier to find who they were, before they are. If that makes any sense, I’ll be happy.

            I can’t shake the feeling like this is straight out of some movie.  I feel like I’ve seen this before, and in a way I have, but still, what am I supposed to say?  And how do I exit the stage when my part is through?

Water

            As Tylar walked through that desolate ghost town she used to call home, she chuckled quietly to herself.  Things hadn’t really changed much since she had left 15 years ago.   The sidewalks were cracked in the same places, no one had thought to fix the spelling errors in Myster Eliots Sooper Grocery Store, Jimmy’s name was still carved into the sidewalk by his old house, and no one bothered you if you wanted to take a quiet stroll down the street.  Of course, the reasons for why no one bothered you had changed.  People used to be polite enough to leave their fellow humans in peace, but now there wasn’t anyone around to bother you.  Everyone had left almost a decade ago, after the whole “killer chupacabra” scare.  The fact that the whole thing was proven a hoax didn’t coax anyone into coming back, though. 

            The color seemed to have been drained of this place, but her memories of it had stayed alive, regardless.  She found herself walking past her old middle school.  “Why not?” she asked herself, and decided to take a detour through the school.  The front door was unlocked, just as it always had been.  She wondered if anyone had ever actually had a key for that door.  There was Ms. Werner’s room, where Tylar had taken her 5^th and 6^th grade math classes.  She went into the room, and found that there was still some chalk on Ms. Werner’s old desk!  Tylar couldn’t help but smile to herself as she picked up the chalk.  She turned to a room full of imaginary middle school students that had just popped up in the last few seconds, waved, and started to work out basic addition problems on the board.