Regrets

 Lemming was a small town, remnants of a large port since abandoned. Well not really abandoned, just forgotten as time had progressed. Rederk stood on Fifth avenue, perpendicular from Herbert street, a name he still fumed at. He was an elderly man, bent and frail, his skin weather beaten, and worry lines written into his face. His face was ashen grey and his eyes were vague and glassy. Streetlamps shown dimly and people in muted colored coats shuffled hurriedly past. This is where it was. This is where it had all begun.

The houses on this end of the street marked the poorer section of the city Lemming. Rederk was relieved to see the city has kept its name for all these decades. Coughing, he stood and looked wistfully at one house in particular at the end of the street. A shabby, broken, eyesore, overgrown house. One it had been a cheerful yellow with red gardenias in the window boxes, which had been broken off. All the windows were shattered, and the inside floor was moldy and rotten from years of rain water damage. The furnishings were missing or else destroyed into rubble, either way they were gone. It panged his heart to see it so close to ruin, but he was elated it still stood. Bit by bit, pieces of history had started to make sense, and it led him to this house. 

Herbert had died a fool's death, having fallen and bitten his tongue, which later attracted a serious infection. He was dead by the end of the week. It was Rederk’s only comfort however vulgar it seemed. After all this time, his rival was the one who got the glory, the honor, the remembrance, even the street name. And Why? Because Rederk had disappeared for a century and was unable to defend himself against the verbal assaults on his name. Because Herbert was jealous of his hard work and longed for it to be his own. Because Herbert had made a name for himself while Rederk had ruined his own life in the name of science. Because Rederk made a decision he would forever regret no matter how revolutionary it was.

He coughed painfully again, leaving him breathless and gasping for air. He shook from the sheer exhaustion of coughs racking his thin frame.He knew he was dying, that had been confirmed long ago. Not even the specialists now could help him. So before he left this cunning cruel world behind, he wanted to stand and look at where it had all gone wrong. Where his fantasies had deceived and betrayed him.

Rederk's mother begged him not to do it. She had clung to his arm and wept saying she couldn't lose another son. But he had had no choice, she would lose him either way. Rederk was glad at least he got to see the progress of the world his family never had the chance to. It was with a bittersweet pain he searched for any news of what had happened to the Stanton family, but no one seemed to have retained any memory of them. His mother, father, brother, Anne, all of them. However hard he tried Rederk could obtain no information on them. He had searched for days through the records at Lemming hall, and came upon a book of history in which he was named.

There was one sentence written about him, the most famous inventor in history, one sentence, whilst there were whole chapters on Herbert. His one sentence portrayed him as a fool. 

“Rederk Staton was a self proclaimed inventor who disappeared after his first invention of shoe umbrellas.

It had left him seething and furious, all he had worked for was gone. Shoe umbrellas? Out of all his 128 inventions that was the only one listed in his name. And his last mission had failed too. Centuries before, he had been devastatingly ill. Rederk had gone to every healer he could, but to no avail. There was no cure for his strange disease. He had been a man driven to desperation, and there was one choice left.

Himself being a brilliant inventor, he had created a machine to launch his body and soul into the abyss, the future. He had slaved over it for five months, his condition growing steadily worse. At the end of the fifth month, it had been finished. 

The machine had been a beautiful thing, and it had been created in the house before which he now stood. He knew every crevice of his family’s beautiful home, and it agonized him to wonder what had caused its downfall and how there was no living relative to upkeep it. Of course, it had been a little over a century but he had always imagined the Stantons would always live on, and that someone would always occupy the family house.

In this he had built his time machine, and it had later been destroyed by his devastated mother, which had been his last wish. Herbert absolutely could not get his hands on his time machine as he did with every other invention. How ironic the most revolutionary invention he made, which could launch a person into the past or future, was the one that had to be destroyed.

He had gone a century into the future in hopes they could have found a cure for his illness, but with a heavy heart they told him they couldn't. Even going 100 years ahead no one could help him. Rederk had lost everything and all that remained was for him to die.

Making his peace with his wasted life, Rederk solemnly laid his arrangement of flowers at where the doorstep of the house should have been and walked away down the sullen street. His black coated figure melted away into the somber shadows of twilight as he padded along fifth avenue for the last time.

Rederk died the next day, and all his regrets were laid to rest, except the memory that time is not at all what it is perceived to be.