David Finkelstein

Time Travel

“Seriously, what would you do if you could just snap your fingers and travel back in time?

“Okay, look, I don’t believe you, and I never will, so jut stop trying to convince me!”

“Please, just listen okay? Really, I can re-live things that happened before, it’s like my brain takes note of everything that it can, so when I want to I can relive it completely differently!” Ex (pronounced ez) whispered excitedly.

“Okay, fine… then tell me exactly how many cars were on our street exactly 24 seconds ago.”

“Well then, don’t be alarmed when I stop mov-” Ex froze instantaneously, impossibly of-balance.

“Wow, nice, it’s rather obvious though, you just put a rather heavy weight in your foot…” Xe’s mumbled, rather unconvincingly, until he finally realized the absurdity of his proposition. Exactly 24 seconds later Ex put down his foot and turned towards Xe, a disbelieving expression on his face.

“How…how…how did you know?!” At this outburst Xe began to laugh uncontrollably, for how absurd was it for Ex to be asking him how he knew, while Ex was the one with the superpowers!

“What on earth are you talking about?!” Xe looked at Ex questioningly.

“My god…you mean you really named a random number?” Ex blanched slightly, and his composure unraveled a little.

“Of course I named a random bloody number, what in the world are you going on about?!” Ex decided to tell the truth.

“Well, I just went back to 24 seconds ago, and I looked around to see how many cars were on the street, and didn’t see almost any.”

“Ya? So?” Xe tried to restrain from giggling, this was so absurd! But the grim, serious expression on Ex’s face warned Xe that this wasn’t a laughing matter, not at all.

“So…there was only one…a red pick up truck…”

“Oh no! Someone was driving a red pick up truck 24 seconds ago! Alert the police! Alert the police!” Xe burst out in a tremendous laughing fit, while Ex grew steadily angrier, as he realized the seriousness of the situation he was now in. He was now officially witness to a murder, and suddenly he realized that 24 seconds ago and now are not realistically very far apart. Gun shots rang out in the still air, as a BANG rattled the ear-drums of everybody nearby. Suddenly everybody that was caught on the street screamed and dropped onto the ground and covered their heads, woman protecting their babies, men protecting their wives. The shots kept coming, but nobody could figure out where they could possibly coming from, until a half-dead man unsteadily shuffled out of the doorway of a house, his body riddled with bullet holes. Just then a leg lashed out and hit the already dying man square in the back; he went flying. The boot was quickly followed by a dark-skinned man wielding a high-caliber gun, which he brandished wildly. Several people started to whimper, and many seeked cover or protection from this mad-man, who proceeded to walk over to the dead man, kick him in the face, and continue his mission to blow as many holes through the dead man’s chest as possible. The man turned around, and started to randomly shoot at people, a few dropped to the ground clutching various body parts, while the mad-man’s face lit up with a gigantic grin. Ex couldn’t stand it, he quickly picked up a stone, and threw it as hard as he could in the man-mans general direction, the stone hit the man’s gun, and as Ex grimly thought of what life would be like in heaven or in hell, something amazing happened… ●