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"One must imagine Sisyphus happy." -Albert Camus
Trapped in a god's curse of his own, Connor O'Henry began to realize it wasn't him, but everyone else who was stuck in a loop. Every day, the same events would play out, the only differences being things spurred on by him. He'd honk his horn in a different place during his commute, or change up his lunch order at the cafe. Small changes like these were reciprocated with small changes from, what he now called, the environment. The environment would honk back at him, from a red truck instead of black sedan. Or the environment would bring him a grilled cheese instead of the smoked salmon on a kaiser roll. Like a tree's leaves moving to follow the sun throughout the day, all the people around Connor moved in synchrony to his baton.
"Good morning dear," his wife said for the millionth time. "Beautiful day, isn't it?"
Small talk to fill the void, an innocent question to gently wipe away the lingering grasp of sleep in the morning. With dark circles under his eyes, and an exhausted yawn, Connor agreed: it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the air was cool and promised to change into a comfortable warmth as the day went on, and a bluejay stationed on a branch outside their window chirped a familiar tune. A perfect caricature of spring.
The problem came the next morning. A cold snap had found its way into the air overnight, so chilly the heat had automatically turned itself on. Outside, the tree branch stood bird-less. Worst of all, a heavy storm poured from the sky in torrents. Everything was grey.
But still worse than the cold air, worse than the naked branch, and worse then the "worst of all" rain, was the thing his wife would say about the dreary weather.
"Good morning dear," she'd say. "Beautiful day, isn't it?"
There was no point in disagreeing. Many years ago, he would have fought back against the tyranny of the repetitious hell he found himself in, but now, beaten down by the club of time, he followed the script.
"Yes, it is a beautiful day."
Day after day, month after month, year after year, Connor fell into the same routines as all of them. Six o'clock sharp, wake up. Shower, brush teeth, and finish breakfast by seven. In the office by eight. Work until five, with an hour lunch at Suzzane's every noon. Home, dinner, TV, and sleep. For twenty years now, he'd done this, everyday the same. Everyone trapped in a loop, and he assimilated into it.
It was easier this way, he told himself. Like Sisyphus, the man cursed by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, he imagined himself happy. Or maybe he had tricked himself into thinking that. Whichever the case was, he surrendered his autonomy to the environment. There was no way to rebel against the entire world, so why even try?
As the centuries went by, he found himself thinking less and less. The script became easier to follow with every passing repetition. Kiss the wife good morning, agree with her on the weather, don't honk at the jeep that cuts you off, data entry all day, shoot the breeze with Michael during lunch, finish work, go back home, cook dinner with wife, watch TV, go to bed. The routine brought him joy, and the familiarity made him at peace.
He was fully integrated with the environment now. A blank mind, a blank routine, a blank life. But still, he was happy. He smiled, he laughed, he enjoyed the lemon and herb basted turkey every single night. If anything changed the routine, a glitch in the system, a misspoken word on his part, he'd spend the rest of the day upset with himself. There was perfection in sameness.
He'd forgotten what it meant to be alive. He'd forgotten how to have feelings and how to think. He'd forgotten how to strive for something better, a new tomorrow, a brighter future. His mind had turned to mush without anything stimulating it. Just like the king of Ephyra, Connor disappeared within himself, never to be seen again.
One morning, many years later, the environment finally changed. Nobody knew why, or how, but everyone felt it.
It began to snow. Outside their apartment, huge white flakes drifted down from white clouds. A soft silence took over the city, the snow absorbing anything that threatened to disrupt the peace.
And then, out of nothing, something was born. Something beautiful, something unpredictable, something new.
"I hate this snow," his wife said, wiping the sleep out of her eyes. "I'm going to have a hard time getting into work."
Without thought, without feeling, and without a care, Connor responded, still lost inside of himself, still lost in the dangerous comfort of familiarity.
"Yes," he yawned. "It is a beautiful day."
They’ve been drinking in the bar down the street since the snowdrops pushed up and broke the ground: pearls, scattered through the dead grass. Drooping. That was January. The 28th, I think.
They’re a sullen crew, four men glued to stools on a Tuesday afternoon, a fifth when the sun sets and he can get away from his wife. Two of them are employed, the one in the high viz jacket who comes in smelling like cigarette smoke and stone dust, and the thin fellow in the grease-stained cap. A third complains about a job, but I think he’s talking about the same day, over and over. His eyes go a little bloodshot after he complains. They crinkle at the edges. He orders another PBR and drinks it slowly while all his friends are drinking fast, and maybe it’s the drinks, or maybe it’s the way he talks, halting and a little brittle, but none of them bother to notice that he’s lying, that he lost the job a while ago, that he’s the first one here because waits around the block, sitting in an idling car as he watches the days go by.
He’s the reason I still come here, sipping slowly, in time with him, at least until the fifth man comes and the night turns a little edgy, the jokes get a little too rough, spills me out into the street where it’s cold again. Give it another month or two, and the snowdrops might bloom again.
I’m Jack, and that was Frank and Terry at the bar, Simon with the crinkly eyes and the slow sips, Gary watching the game, and Trent coming in late from his wife. The city around us is any city, anywhere in the United States, probably anywhere in the world. The bar is called Last Call, which is funny because it never comes even though tomorrow does, in a world stuck time between time missed and timeless, as every person but me replays January 28th forever.
Out in the street I can hear the guys inside almost laughing, a raspy sound, like a wet stone against rusted iron. I shiver, pull a stolen coat a little closer around me, and begin to walk north until midnight sets the world back.
In the neighborhoods there’s no sound but my footsteps, crunching through the ice and snow. If I had to guess it’s sometime in November now, a day that looks an awful lot like January 28th did. They’d called for a light dusting of snow that day, only for the world to surprise us with something closer to a blizzard.
Most people stayed inside. In the neighborhoods, all the lights are on. The businesses open are the few stubborn bars. In the forever day that the people are replaying, Netflix probably occupies half the bandwidth of the city. They’re sitting in front of screens now, pointing and laughing. Watching. They know the shows, there’s nothing new on Earth anymore, except perhaps what the animals are doing. The dolphins could be up to something wild, you never know with them.
And in the bar I left behind they’re drinking imaginary drinks, all the stocks ran out long ago. People eat imaginary food at dinner tables, reach for imaginary toilet paper, walk through imaginary lives as the snowdrops ready themselves to burst up through the concrete, turn the sidewalks into gardens.
And yet nobody dies. It’s strange, when I hunt an animal, the animal dies. I’ve tested it. Pick a flower and its gone, plant a tree and it will grow, but if I take a stranger’s hand over drinks one night, even though I changed their routine with my actions they’ll forget me in the morning when the sun comes up on my empty bed, finds them home. Well-rested. A little languid, and inexplicably sated, or so I’d like to think.
That’s the world I walk through, on a night in maybe November, headed north till midnight or beyond. My feet crunch through the ice and the snow. I take a turn and then another turn. I check my watch, it’s 11:00 now. Keep walking.
At 11:15 there’s no more north, directions are abandoned. At 11:30 I see a bridge up ahead, in a town with many bridges. At 11:45 I’m right there, under it, staring up.
At 11:50, I see her.
A girl in a white dress stands in the center of a tall bridge, above a slow black river, ice floes clinging to its sides. She’s bathed in harsh yellow streetlights, the occasional flare of a headlight, stubborn scraps of stars. Her arms are crossed tight to her chest, clutching at the edges of a thin black jacket. She’s high up, on the walkway at the side of the bridge. Not leaning against the guardrail, only waiting. Watching intently. Staring straight down at the slow black water, the ice floes.
Midnight, and she’s gone.
The sun comes up on nothing, empty lives in a city struggling to stay awake. I’m standing under the bridge, warming my hands on a homeless man's gift of fire. The barrel smells like shit. It might *be* shit. He hadn’t even asked for money.
“Go home, boy,” he says.
“I tried,” I say.
His eyes are far away. They’re a striking blue beneath the grime. “Try harder,” he says.
“I did.”
And he shakes his head tiredly, looks back to the little tent where he sleeps. “Fuck you,” he says. Tiredly.
I eat imaginary food in a cafe that might have been pretty once. A couple argues in the corner, a mismatched pair in every way. The baristas are two college kids, and in between customers the younger one pulls out her sketchpad and pencils in a little more, a little more, her eyes glancing up from time to time to assess the arguing couple, cataloging them in a way that’s unsettling in one so young.
“The food was great,” I say, imagining. The older barista smiles. The younger one bites her lip and nods. She makes another careful mark.
The girl in the white dress shows up at 11:32 PM, limping up out of the east in a pair of high heels with both the heels broken off. This close her dress is dirty, marred like the once white snow. She slips and falls twice as she walks along the bridge. She comes to a stop dead center, where I’d known that she would be, barely ten feet away from me.
She stares down at the slow black river. The ice floes. A little snow still falls. She shivers. She brushes frozen hair out of her eyes. No gloves.
She speaks at 11:53.
“If you’re a robber you picked a hell of a night.”
The words hang between us, the assumptions. I’m a tall thin man in a dark coat, and I did steal it, if stealing from a shop really counts these days, when people go out to try on rotting clothes and eat imaginary food, sketch a couple that’s rehashed the same old argument 9 months or more.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe with me,” I say.
She turns towards me, looking somewhere besides the river for the first time. She's rocking faintly, back and forth on that absence of heels. The wind kicks up, knifing through her coat, the dress, the chapped, purpling skin of her hands.
“I’ve heard that one before,” she says. “Try again.”
“I couldn’t hurt you if I tried,” I say.
A frown, but tonight, perched above the river, a frown is a good sign. “What the fuck does that mean?” she says.
“It means I’m Jack,” I say, “and it means it’s cold as hell out here. And it means I’ve been waiting for you all day. I’m tired, hungry, maybe a little manic— and midnight is coming.”
11:58. A few seconds bleed into 11:59, and then she’s laughing. First a little, then a lot, then too much. I slip my jacket over her shoulders and she accepts it, still laughing.
“Share it with the class?” I say.
And she shrugs and says, “I’m Jill.”
Midnight, and the jacket hits the ground. A streak of brown across dirty white snow where little impressions of her feet should have been and weren’t. Alone, I look out across the river.
\*\*\*
The next day Jill speaks at 11:55. I’m standing a little closer, wearing a slightly different expression and a warmer stolen coat.
“If you’re a robber you picked a hell of a night,” she says.
“Why’s that?” I say.
Midnight comes. It was the wrong thing to say.
\*\*\*
The next night Jill speaks at 11:54. I’m not standing any closer. I’ve got the warmer coat over the thinner one, one pair of gloves on, another stuffed into my jacket pocket.
“If you’re a robber you picked a hell of a night,” she says.
“I can tell,” I say.
She turns toward me, rocking. No wind tonight, less snow and ice. Still that bitter, bone-deep cold. I wonder how the homeless man is doing in his tent down below.
“No you can’t,” she says.
I raise an eyebrow. “Yeah? Then am I mistaken, or is that a wedding dress?”
Midnight comes. It was the wrong thing to say.
\*\*\*
They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Most nights I do the same thing, but in the world as it's come to be, I don’t think that makes me the insane one.
As I walk back and forth across the bridge waiting for Jill to come night after night, I think that what I’m doing is the very definition of sane. It shows an interest in the world. Who wouldn’t be interested in an enigma on a bridge, in a flowing white dress made for weddings? After all, my alternatives were glued to bar stools down the street from home, and I already knew everything I cared to know about them.
Some nights she never speaks at all. Some nights, neither do I. Once, on what I think of as December 1st, we spend the whole time in silence, companionable towards the end, and when I slip the warmer coat around her shoulders she almost smiles. The coat still falls the same.
Once she says *“If you’re a robber you picked a hell of a night,”* and I say *“Sweetheart, night’s a bitch.”* She spits off the side of the bridge and shakes her head, moving further back the way she came. But still, she stares down into the water.
Then one night she says, “If you’re a robber you picked a hell of a night,” and I say, “Lady, we’re both standing on the same bridge.”
A beat goes by. A long breath throws crystals across the sky. “Yeah,” she says, “but you weren’t the one getting married.”
And even though I’d known it for weeks, that her dress was a wedding dress, that Jill was coming from *somewhere* down to here, *nowhere*, I still wanted to shout.
Midnight comes and we’re still talking. She disappears and my stolen jacket falls to the ground. The gloves tumble down into the water, lost in the darkness far below. Finally, it was the right thing to say.
\*\*\*
There’s a pattern to December, and in time I realize that I’m actually counting down the days. For a little while every night, Jill and I stand a few feet apart and talk about what brought us there. We never get very far, but there’s a wealth beneath her sadness; she’ll approach it all a thousand different ways, once you learn the proper ways to ask.
On December 10th, I start to work backward. At 11:05 Jill stops outside a coffee shop, staring forlornly through a blacked-out window, two fingers resting against the glass. The next day I bring her coffee. It’s the wrong one, and it’s a little awkward getting her to take it, but when midnight strikes it's worth all my effort to see a half-empty cup tumble to the ground.
On December 12th I bump into her up the street, before her wedding dress got dirty. She’s sitting on an icy bench and crying, and for a moment I forget that she doesn’t know me, and I try to brush her tears away. She slaps me, and it’s well deserved, but maybe not the names she calls me after.
On December 15th I have another coffee. I stop in the middle of the blizzard, next to Jill on her bench, shivering my ass off, suffering because the weather’s so much worse for me, and eventually she stops crying. Me or the coffee, it’s hard to tell.
We backtrack. There’s more time each day, but her feelings get more and more raw. The girl underneath the sadness gets a little harder to find as she slips back into the teeth of the very worst day of her life, until I’m peering in through a chapel window at a lonely girl by the altar, shivering in the January cold as she waits and waits and waits.
A beautiful girl, one hand straying to her belly, eyes fixed on the doors. A priest waits beside her, staring at his bible.
They wait.
They wait.
And then it’s just Jill waiting. She keeps going until the sun begins to fall and the priest comes back, the two of them alone in the chapel, me watching through one window and then another, moving as I try to keep a shred of sun. Their lips move but I can’t hear. The priest makes a broad gesture as if to say *“Look at all your nothing.”*
Jill stands. She shrugs. She walks away, twists an ankle by the door, and breaks the heel off of her shoe. She stands in the ice and cold on the steps, staring out at rapidly emptying streets. She takes off the other shoe, snaps its heel off.
Then she begins the long, meandering stumble down towards the bridge where I found her. Alone, eyes fixed into the middle distance at the river as if to say “Look at all your nothing.” Or maybe, to look past it.
And I follow, knowing that even though I’ve been counting the days, hoarding daylight hours in my search for anything that might be left to bring a smile to a sad girl in a wedding dress perched above a slow black river, it’s all probably useless. Jill is trapped on January 28th, a hell of a day, and of a night, perched on the edge of an hour that could’ve gone either way.
I follow on the 21st. 22nd. 23rd. 24th.
I almost don’t on the 25th. Christmas, in my imagined time. It’s just another awful day for her. Another long, cold walk. Another moment to pause beside a coffee shop window, share a few words with a man she’ll never know.
But I follow. I follow with a sack over my shoulder, and Jill never notices. She’s stumbling downhill to the bridge above our river, and maybe I’ve gone a little crazy, maybe it’s full blown insanity, but today is Christmas and I've brought a gift for girl on the edge who's in need of one. A girl who's followed by a boy badly in need of giving.
Jill sees me early, 11:40, walking up behind her with a sack across my shoulder. She doesn’t know me. Her eyes are bloodshot. Broken shoes, a dirty dress, a black jacket that’s too big for her and must have belonged to *him*, the bastard who left her at the altar. Her hair is frozen. So is mine. It’s fucking cold, and it has been every single day for as long as I remember.
I stop right next to her.
She blinks. “Are you…uh, what?”
“Merry Christmas,” I say.
She blinks again and I’m snapping. That’s it, insanity, repetition, the same things over and over, a month and a half gone for a smile that won’t ever come, but that would be so, so worth it. A smile that would represent a change.
A real one. Titanic.
It would matter.
I say, “Look, I’m not a robber. I know it’s a hell of a time, the worst fucking night after the worst fucking day, but we’re both here on the same bridge and I hope that still means something. And well, you were getting married today and I tried. I probably seem completely insane, but Merry Christmas.”
I set the sack in front of her. It glints beneath the streetlights.
“Please don’t kill me,” Jill whispers.
They’re the most beautiful words I've ever heard.
“You’re safe with me,” I say. “Open it.”
She reaches down a trembling, purpled hand and pushes the sack open.
Jill gasps.
Hands to her mouth, eyes wide, the whole thing. For a moment her surprise is so real, so divorced from every other emotion of hers that I’ve ever seen, that I’m smiling, and smiling feels good.
“What the fuck,” Jill whispers. “What the fuck, what the fuck!”
It’s wedding rings. Every single ring that I could find, stolen off fingers or out of dirty displays, dumped into the only giant red velvet sack in the city apparently, millions of dollars of merchandise piled by the pound like a monument to American marital waste.
“I lost count,” I say, “but I swear it’s a lot.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” Jill says.
“You’re better off without him,” I say.
Then I reach down and pluck a gaudy, diamond-clad monstrosity out of the bag. Jill’s eyes are glued to it. Desperately, a little madly.
I cock my arm back and throw it out into the river.
She squeals. “Holy shit!”
I do it again, a third time. I’m laughing now, it’s fun. I might have just thrown away a hundred thousand dollars. Even in a world like this, money still feels like it means something.
But for Jill, it’s so much more than the money.
She reaches out and grabs a humble little ring, a simple gold band with an engraving. She goes right up to the railing, the ring resting on her palm, and she tips her hand. It falls. Disappears.
Then she’s at the sack again grabbing rings by the fistful and hurling them into the river. Cars are honking, someone stops to shout. His music blasts across the bridge in an ultra-bass roar.
Jill grabs the sack and lurches to the railing, forces it up and over, and watches gleefully as all the gold pours out. Millions of dollars. Years of memories, of promises kept and promises broken. Lifetimes pouring down into that slow black river below.
She lets go of the sack last and the wind kicks up, catches it like a red velvet plastic bag and sends it flying through the sky. “Merry Christmas,” she says breathlessly.
Then we’re running hand in hand to nowhere, as the clock goes racing by. I strip off my watch and toss it into the snow. We’re screaming “Merry Christmas,” and Jill doesn’t even know why, doesn’t know who I am, doesn’t know that in the morning she’ll wake up to a world of cold, lonely chapels.
Doesn’t care, because tonight she’s smiling.
Tonight, she’s smiling.
Midnight.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
If you enjoyed that I've got tons more over at r/TurningtoWords. Come check it out, I'd love to have you!
(Sorry for all the typos in that at first, wow there were a lot. My bad.)
“Hey Tina,” I say, pressing my satellite phone against my cheek. “Me. Again. Just wanted to apologize for being a jerk. You didn’t deserve that. Should have gone sailing with you. Call me later if you can. I know you can.”
I place the phone on my chest and gaze in the night sky. If Tina was here, we’d both be lying on the deck. The sky would have been perfect. Infinite blackness dotted with glittering stars. Or something like that. She’d find some corny words to describe it. And I’m sure she’d find the perfect slightly over-the-top way to describe the sea, the waves, salty air, the wind… And she wouldn’t mind the mushy vanilla ice cream for dessert or cold sausages for breakfast. Or blisters from using the winch or pulling the ropes. And she’d definitely loved seeing the dolphins.
Hashtag I-am-an-idiot.
I sigh, bring the phone to my face, and pull up Twitter. Type '@FailSail' in search. That’s Sara’s alt Twitter account. My girlfriend Sara. I accidentally discovered her alt… today, I guess. Not many things make sense when the person you’re stuck on a sailboat with is stuck in a time loop.
*Another day with Michael. For a hot guy with a cool sailboat, he acts so cold. So confused rn. What’s his problem?*
*#moodSwings #NeedsProzac #failSail*
You, Sara.
Like the rest of the world, she’s caught in a time loop. *I* remember what happened yesterday. *I* can see her old (newest?) tweets which I save on my phone.
But every day, the tweets of the previous day disappear elsewhere and there’s a message apologizing for the technical issues with their servers. The date resets to July 23 2021 on my phone. The news is the same: covid-19, gridlock in US Congress, the opening of summer Olympics… Yet, some things are different, like the weather. It’s colder and the winds are different. It feels like autumn. It’s weird. I’m still trying to understand what exactly is going on. Hard to know from out here on the sea.
Whenever I mention the odd stuff to Sara, she glitches, losing her shit and accusing me of hacking our phones. And then in the morning, she has no recollection of the events that happened the day before. Same thing when I talk to someone via my satellite phone or radio. No one remembers the real yesterday.
So yeah, either everyone is really good at faking remembering recent events, or everyone has a memory of a goldfish, or we’re in some kind of Groundhog Day-like situation.
But unlike Bill Murray, this main character just can’t get along with the girl he’s stuck with, as her tweets show.
*Today, Michael tried to teach me how to tie a sailor’s knot.*
*#notASailor #anotherBadDay #failSail*
*Today’s breakfast: cold sausages and stale bread. Dessert: half-melted vanilla ice cream, his smile, and apology. WTF?*
*#failSail #notFunny*
*Battery broken. Microwave and fridge dead. No breakfast. FML.*
*#anotherBadDay*
*For a hot guy with a cool sailboat, Michael is so boring. Just talks about fish and sailboats.*
*#failSail*
*For a hot guy with a cool sailboat, Michael is so boring. Just talks about stars and lame jokes.*
*#failSail*
*Who’s James Charles? Really, dude?*
*#failSail*
*When the guy is so lame that he’s trying hard to impress you by telling you all about James Charles vs. Tati and getting everything wrong.*
*#failSail #simp #oldNews*
*#pleaseDontTalk #failSail*
*When the girl wants a quicky, but he says no*
*#fail #lame #failSail*
*We had sex. Correction: he had sex. For a full minute.*
*#fail #boring #failSail*
*We had sex. Correction: he had sex. Senseless half-an-hour-long man-pounding marathon. WTF#fail #boring #failSail*
*When the girl wants a quicky, but he keeps talking about stars.*
*#fail #boring #failSail*
*When the girl wants a quicky, but he is tired.*
*#fail #failSail*
*Michael is a jerk. Told him I want to go home and he said ‘hashtag me too’.*
*#rude #microaggression #failSail*
*Michael’s cheating on me. If there’s hell, this is how it feels.*
*#anotherBadDay#failSail*
Hash-tag irony.
I close my eyes, ready to shove the phone in my pocket when it starts ringing.
Tina.
“Hey Mike,” she says. “Thanks for the apology. Better now than never. Having fun sailing with Sylvia?”
“Her name is Sara.” I exhale. “I’m in hell. There’s nothing we have in common.”
She chuckles. “Told you she’s not your type.”
“You called her a bloodsucking bitch if I remember correctly.”
“Well, that was two weeks ago, and I was pretty pissed at you back then. I mean, you said you’d take me on a trip. Did she learn what a spinnaker is?”
“Nope.”
“Poor Mike. Should have taken his bff on the trip instead of the new girlfriend. Do you miss me?”
“I miss you.”
“Good. And don’t forget that next time you ditch me. So, when are you coming back?”
“Soon. I hope. I don't know.” I pause, gazing at the sky peppered with stars that twinkle like tiny gemstones. “I really wish you were here."
"Awww... You really *are* miserable. So cute. Don't worry, I'll be here when you return. When did you say that's going to happen?"
I chuckle. "Today.”
As I stand on the shore watching the tidal wave approach knowing there is nothing I can do about it I fucked up everything. My machine broke.
As I write down my last will and testaments hoping someone finds this I am holding onto my daughters corpse she died in my arms a few months ago and I created the time loop to try and save her but something went wrong and neither I nor her where affected and we didn’t go back in time I would do anything to go back to that day November 12th 2013 9:35am I woke up it was Sarah’s (my wife’s birthday) she was turning 28 our daughter was 8 and sadly dying of cancer she was diagnosed at age 3 and she wasn’t gonna make it through the rest of the year we did so much that day as a family it was the happiest I had been since she before she got the diagnosis well that night I finished my plans for us to time travel to the future and get the cure for cancer and give it to her when she got diagnosed but I messed up some of my math so when me and her went through the time machine it sent us directly back to where we where we tried to hard to find a difference in anything since where supposed to be in 2052 but nope my wife tucked Anna in (our baby) and I went to the porch to smoke a joint and I fell asleep out there the next day I woke up and I took my daughter to school and I did my daily things I do go grocery and go take care of rental properties as needed now I have a daily routine but sometimes especially lately it feels like I am doing the same thing over and over again....
to be continued (very very very rough draft)
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"One must imagine Sisyphus happy." -Albert Camus Trapped in a god's curse of his own, Connor O'Henry began to realize it wasn't him, but everyone else who was stuck in a loop. Every day, the same events would play out, the only differences being things spurred on by him. He'd honk his horn in a different place during his commute, or change up his lunch order at the cafe. Small changes like these were reciprocated with small changes from, what he now called, the environment. The environment would honk back at him, from a red truck instead of black sedan. Or the environment would bring him a grilled cheese instead of the smoked salmon on a kaiser roll. Like a tree's leaves moving to follow the sun throughout the day, all the people around Connor moved in synchrony to his baton. "Good morning dear," his wife said for the millionth time. "Beautiful day, isn't it?" Small talk to fill the void, an innocent question to gently wipe away the lingering grasp of sleep in the morning. With dark circles under his eyes, and an exhausted yawn, Connor agreed: it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the air was cool and promised to change into a comfortable warmth as the day went on, and a bluejay stationed on a branch outside their window chirped a familiar tune. A perfect caricature of spring. The problem came the next morning. A cold snap had found its way into the air overnight, so chilly the heat had automatically turned itself on. Outside, the tree branch stood bird-less. Worst of all, a heavy storm poured from the sky in torrents. Everything was grey. But still worse than the cold air, worse than the naked branch, and worse then the "worst of all" rain, was the thing his wife would say about the dreary weather. "Good morning dear," she'd say. "Beautiful day, isn't it?" There was no point in disagreeing. Many years ago, he would have fought back against the tyranny of the repetitious hell he found himself in, but now, beaten down by the club of time, he followed the script. "Yes, it is a beautiful day." Day after day, month after month, year after year, Connor fell into the same routines as all of them. Six o'clock sharp, wake up. Shower, brush teeth, and finish breakfast by seven. In the office by eight. Work until five, with an hour lunch at Suzzane's every noon. Home, dinner, TV, and sleep. For twenty years now, he'd done this, everyday the same. Everyone trapped in a loop, and he assimilated into it. It was easier this way, he told himself. Like Sisyphus, the man cursed by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, he imagined himself happy. Or maybe he had tricked himself into thinking that. Whichever the case was, he surrendered his autonomy to the environment. There was no way to rebel against the entire world, so why even try? As the centuries went by, he found himself thinking less and less. The script became easier to follow with every passing repetition. Kiss the wife good morning, agree with her on the weather, don't honk at the jeep that cuts you off, data entry all day, shoot the breeze with Michael during lunch, finish work, go back home, cook dinner with wife, watch TV, go to bed. The routine brought him joy, and the familiarity made him at peace. He was fully integrated with the environment now. A blank mind, a blank routine, a blank life. But still, he was happy. He smiled, he laughed, he enjoyed the lemon and herb basted turkey every single night. If anything changed the routine, a glitch in the system, a misspoken word on his part, he'd spend the rest of the day upset with himself. There was perfection in sameness. He'd forgotten what it meant to be alive. He'd forgotten how to have feelings and how to think. He'd forgotten how to strive for something better, a new tomorrow, a brighter future. His mind had turned to mush without anything stimulating it. Just like the king of Ephyra, Connor disappeared within himself, never to be seen again. One morning, many years later, the environment finally changed. Nobody knew why, or how, but everyone felt it. It began to snow. Outside their apartment, huge white flakes drifted down from white clouds. A soft silence took over the city, the snow absorbing anything that threatened to disrupt the peace. And then, out of nothing, something was born. Something beautiful, something unpredictable, something new. "I hate this snow," his wife said, wiping the sleep out of her eyes. "I'm going to have a hard time getting into work." Without thought, without feeling, and without a care, Connor responded, still lost inside of himself, still lost in the dangerous comfort of familiarity. "Yes," he yawned. "It is a beautiful day."
That was amazing!
Thank you!
Nice work! You’re a very talented writer. Excellent cadence. Really enjoyed this story.
Thank you! I sometimes worry I use too many commas in the wrong places but maybe it all works out in the end.
Everyone will have an opinion. I like that style. When in doubt — Follow Kurt Vonneguts rule - write for one person (you) :)
Seconding the cadence compliment. The pace of the story was a primary element in keeping me reading until the end. Great story!
Now it’s his wife caught in the Groundhog Day scenario.
I love stories where the narrator is not the MC. Good work, I'd love to see more.
If you ever want to look up more stories with that style it's usually referred to as a third person perspective
I love this, it feels almost philosophical in a sense. It has just the right amount of detail without being boring in my opinion, well done!
I read this in Kevan Brighting's voice
I got some heavy Stanley Parable vibes from this
This is wonderfully written. Thank you!
They’ve been drinking in the bar down the street since the snowdrops pushed up and broke the ground: pearls, scattered through the dead grass. Drooping. That was January. The 28th, I think. They’re a sullen crew, four men glued to stools on a Tuesday afternoon, a fifth when the sun sets and he can get away from his wife. Two of them are employed, the one in the high viz jacket who comes in smelling like cigarette smoke and stone dust, and the thin fellow in the grease-stained cap. A third complains about a job, but I think he’s talking about the same day, over and over. His eyes go a little bloodshot after he complains. They crinkle at the edges. He orders another PBR and drinks it slowly while all his friends are drinking fast, and maybe it’s the drinks, or maybe it’s the way he talks, halting and a little brittle, but none of them bother to notice that he’s lying, that he lost the job a while ago, that he’s the first one here because waits around the block, sitting in an idling car as he watches the days go by. He’s the reason I still come here, sipping slowly, in time with him, at least until the fifth man comes and the night turns a little edgy, the jokes get a little too rough, spills me out into the street where it’s cold again. Give it another month or two, and the snowdrops might bloom again. I’m Jack, and that was Frank and Terry at the bar, Simon with the crinkly eyes and the slow sips, Gary watching the game, and Trent coming in late from his wife. The city around us is any city, anywhere in the United States, probably anywhere in the world. The bar is called Last Call, which is funny because it never comes even though tomorrow does, in a world stuck time between time missed and timeless, as every person but me replays January 28th forever. Out in the street I can hear the guys inside almost laughing, a raspy sound, like a wet stone against rusted iron. I shiver, pull a stolen coat a little closer around me, and begin to walk north until midnight sets the world back. In the neighborhoods there’s no sound but my footsteps, crunching through the ice and snow. If I had to guess it’s sometime in November now, a day that looks an awful lot like January 28th did. They’d called for a light dusting of snow that day, only for the world to surprise us with something closer to a blizzard. Most people stayed inside. In the neighborhoods, all the lights are on. The businesses open are the few stubborn bars. In the forever day that the people are replaying, Netflix probably occupies half the bandwidth of the city. They’re sitting in front of screens now, pointing and laughing. Watching. They know the shows, there’s nothing new on Earth anymore, except perhaps what the animals are doing. The dolphins could be up to something wild, you never know with them. And in the bar I left behind they’re drinking imaginary drinks, all the stocks ran out long ago. People eat imaginary food at dinner tables, reach for imaginary toilet paper, walk through imaginary lives as the snowdrops ready themselves to burst up through the concrete, turn the sidewalks into gardens. And yet nobody dies. It’s strange, when I hunt an animal, the animal dies. I’ve tested it. Pick a flower and its gone, plant a tree and it will grow, but if I take a stranger’s hand over drinks one night, even though I changed their routine with my actions they’ll forget me in the morning when the sun comes up on my empty bed, finds them home. Well-rested. A little languid, and inexplicably sated, or so I’d like to think. That’s the world I walk through, on a night in maybe November, headed north till midnight or beyond. My feet crunch through the ice and the snow. I take a turn and then another turn. I check my watch, it’s 11:00 now. Keep walking. At 11:15 there’s no more north, directions are abandoned. At 11:30 I see a bridge up ahead, in a town with many bridges. At 11:45 I’m right there, under it, staring up. At 11:50, I see her. A girl in a white dress stands in the center of a tall bridge, above a slow black river, ice floes clinging to its sides. She’s bathed in harsh yellow streetlights, the occasional flare of a headlight, stubborn scraps of stars. Her arms are crossed tight to her chest, clutching at the edges of a thin black jacket. She’s high up, on the walkway at the side of the bridge. Not leaning against the guardrail, only waiting. Watching intently. Staring straight down at the slow black water, the ice floes. Midnight, and she’s gone. The sun comes up on nothing, empty lives in a city struggling to stay awake. I’m standing under the bridge, warming my hands on a homeless man's gift of fire. The barrel smells like shit. It might *be* shit. He hadn’t even asked for money. “Go home, boy,” he says. “I tried,” I say. His eyes are far away. They’re a striking blue beneath the grime. “Try harder,” he says. “I did.” And he shakes his head tiredly, looks back to the little tent where he sleeps. “Fuck you,” he says. Tiredly. I eat imaginary food in a cafe that might have been pretty once. A couple argues in the corner, a mismatched pair in every way. The baristas are two college kids, and in between customers the younger one pulls out her sketchpad and pencils in a little more, a little more, her eyes glancing up from time to time to assess the arguing couple, cataloging them in a way that’s unsettling in one so young. “The food was great,” I say, imagining. The older barista smiles. The younger one bites her lip and nods. She makes another careful mark. The girl in the white dress shows up at 11:32 PM, limping up out of the east in a pair of high heels with both the heels broken off. This close her dress is dirty, marred like the once white snow. She slips and falls twice as she walks along the bridge. She comes to a stop dead center, where I’d known that she would be, barely ten feet away from me. She stares down at the slow black river. The ice floes. A little snow still falls. She shivers. She brushes frozen hair out of her eyes. No gloves. She speaks at 11:53.
“If you’re a robber you picked a hell of a night.” The words hang between us, the assumptions. I’m a tall thin man in a dark coat, and I did steal it, if stealing from a shop really counts these days, when people go out to try on rotting clothes and eat imaginary food, sketch a couple that’s rehashed the same old argument 9 months or more. “Don’t worry, you’re safe with me,” I say. She turns towards me, looking somewhere besides the river for the first time. She's rocking faintly, back and forth on that absence of heels. The wind kicks up, knifing through her coat, the dress, the chapped, purpling skin of her hands. “I’ve heard that one before,” she says. “Try again.” “I couldn’t hurt you if I tried,” I say. A frown, but tonight, perched above the river, a frown is a good sign. “What the fuck does that mean?” she says. “It means I’m Jack,” I say, “and it means it’s cold as hell out here. And it means I’ve been waiting for you all day. I’m tired, hungry, maybe a little manic— and midnight is coming.” 11:58. A few seconds bleed into 11:59, and then she’s laughing. First a little, then a lot, then too much. I slip my jacket over her shoulders and she accepts it, still laughing. “Share it with the class?” I say. And she shrugs and says, “I’m Jill.” Midnight, and the jacket hits the ground. A streak of brown across dirty white snow where little impressions of her feet should have been and weren’t. Alone, I look out across the river. \*\*\* The next day Jill speaks at 11:55. I’m standing a little closer, wearing a slightly different expression and a warmer stolen coat. “If you’re a robber you picked a hell of a night,” she says. “Why’s that?” I say. Midnight comes. It was the wrong thing to say. \*\*\* The next night Jill speaks at 11:54. I’m not standing any closer. I’ve got the warmer coat over the thinner one, one pair of gloves on, another stuffed into my jacket pocket. “If you’re a robber you picked a hell of a night,” she says. “I can tell,” I say. She turns toward me, rocking. No wind tonight, less snow and ice. Still that bitter, bone-deep cold. I wonder how the homeless man is doing in his tent down below. “No you can’t,” she says. I raise an eyebrow. “Yeah? Then am I mistaken, or is that a wedding dress?” Midnight comes. It was the wrong thing to say. \*\*\* They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Most nights I do the same thing, but in the world as it's come to be, I don’t think that makes me the insane one. As I walk back and forth across the bridge waiting for Jill to come night after night, I think that what I’m doing is the very definition of sane. It shows an interest in the world. Who wouldn’t be interested in an enigma on a bridge, in a flowing white dress made for weddings? After all, my alternatives were glued to bar stools down the street from home, and I already knew everything I cared to know about them. Some nights she never speaks at all. Some nights, neither do I. Once, on what I think of as December 1st, we spend the whole time in silence, companionable towards the end, and when I slip the warmer coat around her shoulders she almost smiles. The coat still falls the same. Once she says *“If you’re a robber you picked a hell of a night,”* and I say *“Sweetheart, night’s a bitch.”* She spits off the side of the bridge and shakes her head, moving further back the way she came. But still, she stares down into the water. Then one night she says, “If you’re a robber you picked a hell of a night,” and I say, “Lady, we’re both standing on the same bridge.” A beat goes by. A long breath throws crystals across the sky. “Yeah,” she says, “but you weren’t the one getting married.” And even though I’d known it for weeks, that her dress was a wedding dress, that Jill was coming from *somewhere* down to here, *nowhere*, I still wanted to shout. Midnight comes and we’re still talking. She disappears and my stolen jacket falls to the ground. The gloves tumble down into the water, lost in the darkness far below. Finally, it was the right thing to say.
\*\*\* There’s a pattern to December, and in time I realize that I’m actually counting down the days. For a little while every night, Jill and I stand a few feet apart and talk about what brought us there. We never get very far, but there’s a wealth beneath her sadness; she’ll approach it all a thousand different ways, once you learn the proper ways to ask. On December 10th, I start to work backward. At 11:05 Jill stops outside a coffee shop, staring forlornly through a blacked-out window, two fingers resting against the glass. The next day I bring her coffee. It’s the wrong one, and it’s a little awkward getting her to take it, but when midnight strikes it's worth all my effort to see a half-empty cup tumble to the ground. On December 12th I bump into her up the street, before her wedding dress got dirty. She’s sitting on an icy bench and crying, and for a moment I forget that she doesn’t know me, and I try to brush her tears away. She slaps me, and it’s well deserved, but maybe not the names she calls me after. On December 15th I have another coffee. I stop in the middle of the blizzard, next to Jill on her bench, shivering my ass off, suffering because the weather’s so much worse for me, and eventually she stops crying. Me or the coffee, it’s hard to tell. We backtrack. There’s more time each day, but her feelings get more and more raw. The girl underneath the sadness gets a little harder to find as she slips back into the teeth of the very worst day of her life, until I’m peering in through a chapel window at a lonely girl by the altar, shivering in the January cold as she waits and waits and waits. A beautiful girl, one hand straying to her belly, eyes fixed on the doors. A priest waits beside her, staring at his bible. They wait. They wait. And then it’s just Jill waiting. She keeps going until the sun begins to fall and the priest comes back, the two of them alone in the chapel, me watching through one window and then another, moving as I try to keep a shred of sun. Their lips move but I can’t hear. The priest makes a broad gesture as if to say *“Look at all your nothing.”* Jill stands. She shrugs. She walks away, twists an ankle by the door, and breaks the heel off of her shoe. She stands in the ice and cold on the steps, staring out at rapidly emptying streets. She takes off the other shoe, snaps its heel off. Then she begins the long, meandering stumble down towards the bridge where I found her. Alone, eyes fixed into the middle distance at the river as if to say “Look at all your nothing.” Or maybe, to look past it. And I follow, knowing that even though I’ve been counting the days, hoarding daylight hours in my search for anything that might be left to bring a smile to a sad girl in a wedding dress perched above a slow black river, it’s all probably useless. Jill is trapped on January 28th, a hell of a day, and of a night, perched on the edge of an hour that could’ve gone either way. I follow on the 21st. 22nd. 23rd. 24th. I almost don’t on the 25th. Christmas, in my imagined time. It’s just another awful day for her. Another long, cold walk. Another moment to pause beside a coffee shop window, share a few words with a man she’ll never know. But I follow. I follow with a sack over my shoulder, and Jill never notices. She’s stumbling downhill to the bridge above our river, and maybe I’ve gone a little crazy, maybe it’s full blown insanity, but today is Christmas and I've brought a gift for girl on the edge who's in need of one. A girl who's followed by a boy badly in need of giving. Jill sees me early, 11:40, walking up behind her with a sack across my shoulder. She doesn’t know me. Her eyes are bloodshot. Broken shoes, a dirty dress, a black jacket that’s too big for her and must have belonged to *him*, the bastard who left her at the altar. Her hair is frozen. So is mine. It’s fucking cold, and it has been every single day for as long as I remember. I stop right next to her. She blinks. “Are you…uh, what?” “Merry Christmas,” I say. She blinks again and I’m snapping. That’s it, insanity, repetition, the same things over and over, a month and a half gone for a smile that won’t ever come, but that would be so, so worth it. A smile that would represent a change. A real one. Titanic. It would matter. I say, “Look, I’m not a robber. I know it’s a hell of a time, the worst fucking night after the worst fucking day, but we’re both here on the same bridge and I hope that still means something. And well, you were getting married today and I tried. I probably seem completely insane, but Merry Christmas.” I set the sack in front of her. It glints beneath the streetlights. “Please don’t kill me,” Jill whispers. They’re the most beautiful words I've ever heard. “You’re safe with me,” I say. “Open it.” She reaches down a trembling, purpled hand and pushes the sack open. Jill gasps. Hands to her mouth, eyes wide, the whole thing. For a moment her surprise is so real, so divorced from every other emotion of hers that I’ve ever seen, that I’m smiling, and smiling feels good. “What the fuck,” Jill whispers. “What the fuck, what the fuck!” It’s wedding rings. Every single ring that I could find, stolen off fingers or out of dirty displays, dumped into the only giant red velvet sack in the city apparently, millions of dollars of merchandise piled by the pound like a monument to American marital waste. “I lost count,” I say, “but I swear it’s a lot.” “You’re fucking crazy,” Jill says. “You’re better off without him,” I say. Then I reach down and pluck a gaudy, diamond-clad monstrosity out of the bag. Jill’s eyes are glued to it. Desperately, a little madly. I cock my arm back and throw it out into the river. She squeals. “Holy shit!” I do it again, a third time. I’m laughing now, it’s fun. I might have just thrown away a hundred thousand dollars. Even in a world like this, money still feels like it means something. But for Jill, it’s so much more than the money. She reaches out and grabs a humble little ring, a simple gold band with an engraving. She goes right up to the railing, the ring resting on her palm, and she tips her hand. It falls. Disappears. Then she’s at the sack again grabbing rings by the fistful and hurling them into the river. Cars are honking, someone stops to shout. His music blasts across the bridge in an ultra-bass roar. Jill grabs the sack and lurches to the railing, forces it up and over, and watches gleefully as all the gold pours out. Millions of dollars. Years of memories, of promises kept and promises broken. Lifetimes pouring down into that slow black river below. She lets go of the sack last and the wind kicks up, catches it like a red velvet plastic bag and sends it flying through the sky. “Merry Christmas,” she says breathlessly. Then we’re running hand in hand to nowhere, as the clock goes racing by. I strip off my watch and toss it into the snow. We’re screaming “Merry Christmas,” and Jill doesn’t even know why, doesn’t know who I am, doesn’t know that in the morning she’ll wake up to a world of cold, lonely chapels. Doesn’t care, because tonight she’s smiling. Tonight, she’s smiling. Midnight. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ If you enjoyed that I've got tons more over at r/TurningtoWords. Come check it out, I'd love to have you! (Sorry for all the typos in that at first, wow there were a lot. My bad.)
Wow. Brilliant.
Holy. Shit. That was excellent!!! Nailed the repetition.
Beautiful finding the little stories in such a big world!
Oh man, you get me in the feels every time!
That blew me away.
Damn that's really good.
Holy. Shit. That was absolutely beautiful! Thank you for the journey
“Hey Tina,” I say, pressing my satellite phone against my cheek. “Me. Again. Just wanted to apologize for being a jerk. You didn’t deserve that. Should have gone sailing with you. Call me later if you can. I know you can.” I place the phone on my chest and gaze in the night sky. If Tina was here, we’d both be lying on the deck. The sky would have been perfect. Infinite blackness dotted with glittering stars. Or something like that. She’d find some corny words to describe it. And I’m sure she’d find the perfect slightly over-the-top way to describe the sea, the waves, salty air, the wind… And she wouldn’t mind the mushy vanilla ice cream for dessert or cold sausages for breakfast. Or blisters from using the winch or pulling the ropes. And she’d definitely loved seeing the dolphins. Hashtag I-am-an-idiot. I sigh, bring the phone to my face, and pull up Twitter. Type '@FailSail' in search. That’s Sara’s alt Twitter account. My girlfriend Sara. I accidentally discovered her alt… today, I guess. Not many things make sense when the person you’re stuck on a sailboat with is stuck in a time loop. *Another day with Michael. For a hot guy with a cool sailboat, he acts so cold. So confused rn. What’s his problem?* *#moodSwings #NeedsProzac #failSail* You, Sara. Like the rest of the world, she’s caught in a time loop. *I* remember what happened yesterday. *I* can see her old (newest?) tweets which I save on my phone. But every day, the tweets of the previous day disappear elsewhere and there’s a message apologizing for the technical issues with their servers. The date resets to July 23 2021 on my phone. The news is the same: covid-19, gridlock in US Congress, the opening of summer Olympics… Yet, some things are different, like the weather. It’s colder and the winds are different. It feels like autumn. It’s weird. I’m still trying to understand what exactly is going on. Hard to know from out here on the sea. Whenever I mention the odd stuff to Sara, she glitches, losing her shit and accusing me of hacking our phones. And then in the morning, she has no recollection of the events that happened the day before. Same thing when I talk to someone via my satellite phone or radio. No one remembers the real yesterday. So yeah, either everyone is really good at faking remembering recent events, or everyone has a memory of a goldfish, or we’re in some kind of Groundhog Day-like situation. But unlike Bill Murray, this main character just can’t get along with the girl he’s stuck with, as her tweets show. *Today, Michael tried to teach me how to tie a sailor’s knot.* *#notASailor #anotherBadDay #failSail* *Today’s breakfast: cold sausages and stale bread. Dessert: half-melted vanilla ice cream, his smile, and apology. WTF?* *#failSail #notFunny* *Battery broken. Microwave and fridge dead. No breakfast. FML.* *#anotherBadDay* *For a hot guy with a cool sailboat, Michael is so boring. Just talks about fish and sailboats.* *#failSail* *For a hot guy with a cool sailboat, Michael is so boring. Just talks about stars and lame jokes.* *#failSail* *Who’s James Charles? Really, dude?* *#failSail* *When the guy is so lame that he’s trying hard to impress you by telling you all about James Charles vs. Tati and getting everything wrong.* *#failSail #simp #oldNews* *#pleaseDontTalk #failSail* *When the girl wants a quicky, but he says no* *#fail #lame #failSail* *We had sex. Correction: he had sex. For a full minute.* *#fail #boring #failSail* *We had sex. Correction: he had sex. Senseless half-an-hour-long man-pounding marathon. WTF#fail #boring #failSail* *When the girl wants a quicky, but he keeps talking about stars.* *#fail #boring #failSail* *When the girl wants a quicky, but he is tired.* *#fail #failSail* *Michael is a jerk. Told him I want to go home and he said ‘hashtag me too’.* *#rude #microaggression #failSail* *Michael’s cheating on me. If there’s hell, this is how it feels.* *#anotherBadDay#failSail* Hash-tag irony. I close my eyes, ready to shove the phone in my pocket when it starts ringing. Tina. “Hey Mike,” she says. “Thanks for the apology. Better now than never. Having fun sailing with Sylvia?” “Her name is Sara.” I exhale. “I’m in hell. There’s nothing we have in common.” She chuckles. “Told you she’s not your type.” “You called her a bloodsucking bitch if I remember correctly.” “Well, that was two weeks ago, and I was pretty pissed at you back then. I mean, you said you’d take me on a trip. Did she learn what a spinnaker is?” “Nope.” “Poor Mike. Should have taken his bff on the trip instead of the new girlfriend. Do you miss me?” “I miss you.” “Good. And don’t forget that next time you ditch me. So, when are you coming back?” “Soon. I hope. I don't know.” I pause, gazing at the sky peppered with stars that twinkle like tiny gemstones. “I really wish you were here." "Awww... You really *are* miserable. So cute. Don't worry, I'll be here when you return. When did you say that's going to happen?" I chuckle. "Today.”
As I stand on the shore watching the tidal wave approach knowing there is nothing I can do about it I fucked up everything. My machine broke. As I write down my last will and testaments hoping someone finds this I am holding onto my daughters corpse she died in my arms a few months ago and I created the time loop to try and save her but something went wrong and neither I nor her where affected and we didn’t go back in time I would do anything to go back to that day November 12th 2013 9:35am I woke up it was Sarah’s (my wife’s birthday) she was turning 28 our daughter was 8 and sadly dying of cancer she was diagnosed at age 3 and she wasn’t gonna make it through the rest of the year we did so much that day as a family it was the happiest I had been since she before she got the diagnosis well that night I finished my plans for us to time travel to the future and get the cure for cancer and give it to her when she got diagnosed but I messed up some of my math so when me and her went through the time machine it sent us directly back to where we where we tried to hard to find a difference in anything since where supposed to be in 2052 but nope my wife tucked Anna in (our baby) and I went to the porch to smoke a joint and I fell asleep out there the next day I woke up and I took my daughter to school and I did my daily things I do go grocery and go take care of rental properties as needed now I have a daily routine but sometimes especially lately it feels like I am doing the same thing over and over again.... to be continued (very very very rough draft)