Just a Little Chemistry

“So I heard that you sell the stuff,” Moxxie asked after taking a seat with the goth girl, Gina.

“I sell lots of stuff. You’re going to have to be more specific.” She barely glanced an eye over as she continued to sketch in her notebook. From what Moxxie could tell, it was some weird demon girl with a bloody mouth and a human head in her hands. Creepy, but very well drawn.

“You know, the stuff that makes sleep feel like twenty years all in one night.” Gina spared him a single glance before returning to her drawing.

“What makes you think I have that.”

“James, from your Chemistry class, got it from you. Said it worked wonders.” She groaned and rolled her eyes before pulling a piece of paper from her bag.

“Sign this.” Moxxie grabbed it and looked it over. The print was tiny and barely legible.

“What is this shit?”

“A consent form. This level of chemistry can be unpredictable, so if anything goes wrong, you can’t blame me.” He shrugged his shoulders and grabbed a pen from his bag.

“Fair enough,” He said as he handed the filled out form to the goth. Gina accepted it with a forced smile and gave him a bag of white looking powder.

“It’s not cocaine.” He brought the bag closer to his face to examine it.

“Very convincing.” She grabbed it out of his hands and gave a mean scowl.

“Fifty bucks.”

“Fifty! I heard it was thirty!”

“My product, my price.” With a glum face, he fished out his wallet and threw the bills onto the table. She picked them up, checking them quickly before placing the bag in their place. “Mix it with a glass of water before bed, make sure you drink the whole thing. It’s been a pleasure doing business.”

*****

“I totally got the stuff dude. Goodbye, eternal tiredness!” James laughed from over the speaker of the phone.

“I swear that stuff works wonder. I was able to stay up for two weeks after without feeling a single thing.” Moxxie opened the bag and poured it into a glass of water on his nightstand.

“This is going to be perfect, late-night gaming sessions, here we come! I’ll see you tomorrow, dude.”

“Don’t forget to set back your alarm clock, the time change is tomorrow.” Moxxie hung up on James before changing his alarm and chugging the glass of water. With the lights out and the blankets all wrapped around, he was ready for the sleep of his life.

*****

“Hunny Bunny, it’s time to wake up. You don’t want to be late for work.” Someone kept shaking his shoulder. The voice was feminine, so he assumed it to be his mother. It was a small hand, very soft skin on his bare shoulder.

Wait a second…

Moxxie remembered he wore a shirt to bed. He opened his eyes to meet ones that he didn’t recognize. A soft smile laid upon this stranger’s lips, along with glossy brown hair and beautiful blue eyes that matched her underwear. Moxxie’s cheeks went red as he quickly shoved his head under the blankets.

“Who are you, and why aren’t you wearing any clothes?!” He heard a laugh, oh it was so beautiful.

“Are you alright, Hunny? It’s Millie, your wife.” Moxxie unveiled his head to see this woman flash a shiny gem on her left hand. “We’ve been married for twelve years, silly.” Moxxie’s face stayed in a state of confusion. Millie leaned down and pecked his cheek. “I’ll go make you some tea just the way you like it, maybe that will help your cloudy head.”

“Uh, thank you, Darling.” Those words felt weird to say out loud. After she left the room, Moxxie got up to investigate. The first thing that set off more alarms in his head was the fact that this was not his room. It was twice the size of his room, with paintings hanging around the room, and clothes actually put away in their drawers.

Moxxie spotted a phone on the nightstand next to the bed, he had to contact James and figure out what the hell happened. As soon as he lifted the phone up, it unlocked, revealing a background phone of him, Millie and a small girl in between them.

“I have a kid!” Shock kept him still as he tried to process the fact he had a kid. “No, this isn’t possible. I’m only fifteen,” Moxxie was smacked with disappointment real quick. “I got laid by a hot wife, and I can’t even remember it?”

His shaking hands finally made their way over to the messages where he searched up James and went to click on the call button. That’s when he saw it.

The date was wrong. Twenty years’ wrong. The sleeping power messed up. He had slept for twenty years.

Moxxie still felt tired. What a rip-off.

He grabbed his phone from the nightstand and rushed into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. With some quick clicks and very long seconds, he heard James’s voice through the phone, but it was now deep and kind of sexy.

“Mox! I’ll be there in half an hour to pick you up, is everything cool?”

“James! I slept into the future.” Moxxie half yelled into the phone, still in a panicking state.

“Slept to the future? Did you forget to set forward your phone again? It was daylight savings, remember? I always have to remind you, thirty years of being friends, and you still can’t remember!” Moxxie looked at himself in the mirror while James ranted on.

‘Man, I got into shape. Look at those abs. My muscles are huge!’ He did a flex in the mirror before his eyes travelled down to the nether region. ‘Looks like someone else got bigger as well.’

“Mox? You still there?”

“Yeah, but I swear man that is not what I meant! Remember back in tenth grade when we got that sleeping power from Gina?”

“The goth girl? Yeah I remember her, but that was twenty years ago, why are you bringing it up now?”

“Last night was when I took the powder. I didn’t get my twenty years of sleep in one night, I slept for twenty years.”

“You’re joking, seriously stop pulling my leg or else both of us are going to be late.”

“I’m being serious! I went to bed a fifteen-year-old and woke up a thirty-five-year-old with a wife and a daughter. I don’t even know my daughter’s name!” The other side of the line was silent, but Moxxie could hear James breathing.

“Okay,” James started off, voice sounding off. “First of all, your daughter’s name is Maxine. And secondly, what are you going to do?” Maxine, the name of his favourite video game character. Still a geek, all these years later.

“I need to find Gina and fix this mess. I don’t want to miss out on twenty years of my life!”

“Solid plan, my husband works with Gina. I’ll tell the staff that we are sick today, and we can go over there and get you fixed.”

“James, you are the best!” Moxxie paused for a second as he processed what James said. “Wait, did you say Husband? I thought you said that Annie was going to be your wife? What happened to that?”

“Oh yeah, forgot you missed that conversation back from university.” James chuckled over the phone. “I’ll be there in thirty and give you the whole rundown on the way to Gina.”

*****

“You slept with Annie’s brother?” Moxxie watched as James’s cheeks glowed slight red. His grip on the steering wheel was getting tighter. “How did that even happen?”

“Annie and I had been separated for a month, and we were still good friends, so she still invited me over to her house for dinners and study sessions. One day I got there early, and it was only her brother and me, and honestly, I don’t remember how things escalated, but man, I tell you it was the time of my life.”

“Wait, how does that even work?”

“Search it up on pornhub once you get back to you.”

The car turned into the parking lot of the most prominent university in the city. Beautiful gardens surrounded the grounds, and the buildings look as if they were castles.

“I always wanted to go to this place.” James came out of his side of the car and gave him a pat the back.

 “Well then you are going to be happy to know that we did go here.” Moxxie double-backed, and wonder-filled his eyes.

“Seriously?” James chuckled and wrapped an arm around his shoulder and lead them on.

“Yeah! You went to Computer Science, and I went for business. We kept hold of our plan to run a Game Design Business together, got a whole office and a staff of fifty people.” Moxxie smiled to himself as they walked into the science department.

“The future sounds amazing, I really want to experience it for myself.” His smile fell through. “Gina better be able to fix this.”

They entered a hallway lined with sparkling lockers and marbled floor. Students walked in groups around them, mumbling things about planned parties and upcoming assignments. Moxxie had absolutely no idea where he was going but trusted James to navigate as he opened a door into a chemistry lab.

“Hi Sugar,” James announced loudly, causing two bodies to turn towards them.

“James? Aren’t you supposed to be at work? Why are you dragging Moxxie around?” Annie’s twin brother, Adrian walked up to the both of them, shoving a pair of lab glasses onto both of their faces.

“Well I missed you too. We are on a mission today, in need of Gina’s help to fix a little problem.” The second body in the lab coat walked towards them and crossed her arms.

“What do you need my help with?”

“Gina! Your stupid sleeping power went wrong! I went to bed last night, a fifteen-year-old, and now look at me!” Moxxie wildly gestured to his grown body. Gina turned around and went right for a desk and started rifling through a bunch of documents.

“I knew doing these things would be a good idea.” She pulled out a very familiar documents with Moxxie’s signature on the bottom. “You signed the consent form, you can’t blame me.” Moxxie could feel his neck start to twitch and his stomach twists from feelings of regret.

“I am not here to blame you,” He said after taking a deep breath. “I just want help getting back to my time. I know nothing, I can’t mentally stay here.” Gina’s frown grew, and she groaned as he rubbed her temple.

“Fine, I’ll help. You are lucky I am working on a reversal.” Both Adrian and Gina went into a back room while Moxxie waited with a jittering heartbeat. It felt like forever by the time they both returned with a syringe in her hand.

“What are you doing with that!” Moxxie sub-consciously took a step away once his eyes laid sight on the monstrous needle in Gina’s hand.

“Don’t worry Moxxie, this is what’s going to fix the mental time jump.” Adrian offered his support while James pushed him forward. Gina handed him yet another consent form. He grudges as he took it and filled it out with a nearby pen. She took it back and gave a suspicious smile.

“Five hundred bucks.”

“Five hundred!” Moxxie exclaimed. “Last time, it was fifty!”

“This is so much more high tech, and I had to pay for the materials myself. Five hundred bucks. My product, my price.” Moxxie groaned and opened the wallet of his older self but saw nothing but cards.

“Don’t worry, dude, I can run it through the company. Millie would not be happy; you spent five hundred dollars.” Moxxie smiled and nodded, thanks to James. Gina took the cheque and folded it into her pocket.

“Close your eyes and try and relax,” Gina instructed as she forced him into a chair. Moxxie felt a painful prick in his neck and had to resist the urge to swat at it.

“See you in twenty years!” Moxxie heard James’s voice, but everything after that became muffled and confusing. It felt like his body was falling, but he couldn’t move any of his limbs, and his eyes were glued shut. His head was swirling, and his gut was telling him that something was coming up. The taste was awful coming up, his cheeks swelled up until he could finally move, and it all came out.

“Ewwww!”

“That’s Disgusting!”

Moxxie held a hand to his stomach, using the other one to wipe his mouth. After opening his eyes, Moxxie saw he was back in second-period math class. The time on the clock matched the time on the laboratory clock, but he was back in his pubescent body.

“Moxxie? Are you all alright? Do you need to see the nurse?” He didn’t even waste any time answering, just bolted out of there as soon as possible.

*****

“You seriously puked in the middle of class?” James’s voice came out of the phone. It was no longer the sexy voice from the weird dream he was having before he got sick.

“It was awful dude, I still can’t get the taste out of my mouth.”

“What even happened?”

“I must have fallen asleep in math class, I was having the weirdest dream.” It was a dream, right? It was the only logical explanation Moxxie could come up with. ‘Why was the dream so vivid? I usually don’t remember my dreams.’

“Weird? What happened?”

“I woke up like twenty years into the future! I had a hot wife and a cute kid, and we ran a game design company together.”

“That sounds awesome! Were Annie and I married?” Moxxie had to suppress a chuckle.

“No, dude, you were married to Adrian!”

“Adrian! Why the hell would I marry Adrian?” Moxxie was full out bursting with laughter.

“I don’t know, ask university you.”

“No way, dude. I bet you a hundred buck that I’ll be marrying Annie.”

“Suite yourself, I’ll be a hundred dollars richer on your wedding day.” They both bid their goodbyes, and Moxxie got himself ready for bed, hoping for no more semi-realistic dreams again. He was about to close his eyes when he remembers the second half of his conversation with the dream James.

With his laptop out and the incognito mode on, he searched up the topic they won’t teach in sex ed. With the top-rated video chosen, Moxxie observed the two people as he tried and figured out how the interaction worked. Things were getting really intense when the bedroom door opened behind him.

“Are you feeling better, Dear?” The laptop slammed close.

“Mom!”