I discovered time travel. No, I didn't build a time machine; this is not a story about a double-decker DeLorean. I discovered time travel by accident. A trip through the woods behind the cemetery one day, a funny feeling, and suddenly everything changed. I found myself naked in a Victorian apartment on Shrove Tuesday, with two young women, having tea. Or something.
The flat was strange. Dark, dingy, small. And not at all like the plush apartments of the present day. This is Victorian London. Clothes, everything was old-fashioned and strange. Or modern, I thought. Clothing is basically the same as now, but really really old. Nobody wears a hat, or high necked dresses. There are no cell phones, or iPods. No technology at all.
I am greeted with a black and white TV, a fireplace, and a collection of electrical devices that look like they should be in a museum (they were making music! But it wasn't the 1940s; it was 2015!). There was a newspaper, I stole it and read the headline: "Protective Society Reopens" and I became very confused.
I usually don't steal things. Oh, this is the present. I am naked in an apartment. A dead language, odd antique behaviors, the works. Basically, I've traveled into the past. How in the world did I do that?
I sat down to think about what this sudden event might mean. It was never easy to open the locket and wait for the picture to dissolve, but that was the first thing I did, and in a flash there was my own face, looking back at me. I'm me. It's me. I'm here.
I struggled to settle back down into normality. Time had changed the locket, but it was still there, underneath the new picture.
How did I get this picture? The last time I looked in it, I saw my girlfriend, my world, the pretty, vivacious and wonderful Daphne. If you met Daphne, you knew that she was special; she had red hair, green eyes and freckles on her cheeks. I was very lucky.
But now, the new picture was of me holding somebody's hand, smiling devilishly. She looked happy. I had only ever seen her sad. I lost her because I wasn't there for her, so she went and cheated on me. I remembered it. She sent me a message, started dating the guy. The day she left for good, she sent me a video of their first date. He wanted to meet me. I didn't know what to think. I packed my things and went to meet him. But I heard the sounds of a party blaring from her apartment.
I didn't like him. He seemed to be friendly, but was he just lonely? I walked back home, feeling sick. I had just cheated! I knew I was bad, I knew it! I was sorry, and I still loved her, her and I, we were still so good together, we were so happy. The good times.
I blamed myself. I spent so much time at work, so much time on my hobbies. Month after month, I spent less time with her. She would cry, but I didn't take the time to comfort her. I didn't see that she was in need of comfort. Daphne was concerned about her career. She had lost her job and was having trouble finding a new one. She would be crying, looking at the Job Seeker's Register, and I would just be walking around the apartment, minding my own business. I didn't know how to talk to her.
Sometimes I think she wanted me to understand so bad that she would get on the floor and guess what she said, literally. She would march around, talking out loud, having conversations and speaking in a high pitched voice, asking me what I would do about certain work situations, shouting about how it was for her. She wanted me to be sensitive and support her, but how could I? The only thing I could do was work, work and work. Just like I always did.
And she wouldn't talk to me, not even to ask me nice things. She just gave me a look, a look that hurt, a look that asked me why. I hated it, and I hated myself. I internalized it, quietly, and the distance between us seemed to grow.
Soon, I couldn't even remember the good times. They were fading fast, and my mind would scramble whenever I tried to think of them. It was like a bad dream, only it had been real. A long road of bad choices. I blamed myself for a long time, until I finally accepted that it was nobody's fault. It was just life.
So, one day, I went back to the apartment. It wasn't hers, but it was empty. Her stuff was all gone, she had moved in with her new guy. The whole thing made me feel gross and dirty, like I had been unwrapping a present to find out it was filled with worms or ants.
In a box, the gift of her life was still there; her video camera. That was the only thing that kept her alive. On top of the camera, a stack of tapes labeled 'Last Life'. I put one in and watched it. Her last days.
I hadn't thought about her much, but now that she was gone, I wanted to know what had happened. I wanted to see our last time together.
It began with them walking down the block, hand in hand. They went to a café table and he sat down, and she sat down, and they started to talk without her. I didn't have the heart to look. I put the tape away and threw the camera onto the floor.
They just kept coming. Every day of that week, I watched them, sometimes together, sometimes apart. There was nothing I could do. It was all over; she was gone.
I was thinking a lot. I was thinking about what it would be like if I had been in her shoes; if I had left. I had never looked at it that way before. It was as if I thought she had done something wrong. I saw how sorry I was. I was a bad man. Even though I hadn't known it at the time, that I had failed her. I had been selfish. Now I have only one thing to do. I have to make it right.
I'm going to try again.
I opened the locket and saw me holding Daphne's hand. I thought about how sorry I was, how I felt so terrible about it. I apologized to myself, over and over. Then, I put back the picture of my life, me in the apartment, without Daphne, without a life.
I closed the locket, and fell into a deep sleep. I dreamt I was in the middle of a vast, empty desert. It was nighttime. The first thing I saw was the full moon.
I woke up in an elbow, rested on a pavement. It was nighttime, pouring rain. A single, pale streetlight illuminated a circle around me.
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