The October Amaryllis: Everything Has a Cost

Chapter 2 - May 18th, 2020 3:37 A.M.

I might have the worst sleep schedule of any human being that has ever lived. Sometimes I go to sleep at 8:40 P.M., and others where I fall asleep as late as 4 A.M. the next day. I’m always tired during the day and almost always awake at night; I promised myself years ago to establish a proper sleep schedule, but at sixteen, nothing ever really came of it. I always make plans that I either forget or don’t act on; that’s why I haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions in years. What’s the point of making a promise that you’re never going to keep? The only one I ever kept was to drink more water, but that was because my electrolyte imbalance gave me a grand mal seizure.

It wasn’t too fun; I woke up and saw a bunch of EMTs surrounding me. They kept asking me questions such as my name and age, but I was so out of it I told them, “I was born a couple of days ago.” They ended up taking me to the nearest hospital and kept me there for a day. It sounds terrible, but I watched Jurassic Park on the TV in my room, so it wasn’t all that bad. I also developed a massive crush on the nurse that was taking care of me; she was one of those fresh out of med school type girls. It must have been quite a sight watching a thirteen-year-old flirting with someone twice his age… I can be pretty flirty when I’m in the mood; I’m good at reading people, which helps me out significantly. The problem is, I always end up falling in love with people I know I can’t have. I’ve even had moments where I’ve fallen in love with fictional characters, I know it’s pathetic.

What do I do instead of sleeping like normal people? I do a strange combination of reading about weird conspiracy theories such as lizard people, listening to music, and imagining all the different time travel paradoxes possible. My favorite one would have to be the causal loop; it’s where the alteration of previous events by a modern you create a bizarre ripple effect that affects everything down the line, kinda like the Back to the Future movies. Those would have to be my three favorite films of all time. In fact, when I was around ten, I could sing all the songs from each of the movies note by note; I’m not saying that I was good at it, though…

I used to sing a lot in the shower until my dad asked me if I was crying in there. I still remember the song I sang on that embarrassing day; Hey Jude by The Beatles. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it since that day. My favorite Beatles song would have to be Helter Skelter; they practically invented heavy metal with it. It’s too bad Charles Manson ruined the song for everyone… I still remember where I was when I found out he died. I was doing my math classwork when a guy I knew (Brian Hedgesworth) yelled out loud enough for the whole United States to hear that Manson passed away. Brian was a funny fella; he never spoke below 140 decibels and knew everything about D&D. He taught me all about moral alignments and what they all meant. Unfortunately, he moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, so I haven’t seen him in years. Class was a lot… quieter after he left.

But you know what I would really do if I could time travel? I would save my dad by bringing a cure to cancer from the future to him in the past. There is nothing in this world that I would want more than that. It would be impossible to accomplish, of course, but sometimes we wish for things that are simply impossible. Nothing is quite so boring as reality, where your whole life is determined by other people telling you what to do and what not to do. It’s like you’re only born to follow in line with others; where’s the fun in that? I won’t be just another brick in the wall. I’ll do what is right no matter what I have to do to accomplish it. I’ll break every law out there if it makes the world a better place. I’m what you call chaotic good, although I lean towards chaotic neutral at times.

“I wish I could go two hundred years into the future,” I whispered to myself. I have a habit of saying my thoughts aloud at times; people have looked at me like I was crazy more than once because of it. I find that I remember things much longer if I say them out loud. I have a pretty terrible memory, to be honest with you. Well… that’s not entirely true. I have a great memory with memorizing what they teach us in class. For example, during 8th grade, we had a contest to see who could name the most elements. I won first place with a total of seventy-seven elements named. You wouldn’t guess it looking at me, but I’m actually a pretty good student; I have three As and three Bs.

At that moment, I felt as if something infinitely stretched my body in every direction across time and felt my room rapidly spin around me and change every time I looked at it. The walls started shifting up and down and appeared to melt like wax. Every second I would see new backgrounds form in my room, including docks from every age in time, medieval castles with guards holding torches looking about for enemies, and people that I had never seen before but that were part of history from the past, the present, and the future. I heard unfamiliar sounds that were loud enough to drown out all of my thoughts and saw the backgrounds finally melting away into nothingness before I screamed and found myself standing in an alley in a tomorrow that I had never seen before.

Well, I guess I got what I asked for…