A Man Who Shouldn't Have Made A Resolution To Help His Family

January 16, 2019

I ran down the street, feet pounding on the pavement. There had to be something open. Something, anything! Any place I could go to get out of this horrible rain. My hood was soaked and my shirt stuck to my skin. 

Wasn’t there any kind of twenty-four-hour store here? I should never have come here. I should never have made a New Year's resolution, much less one to help family members in need. I should have left my sister to deal with her issues on her own. 

There! A bookstore, with a sign that read Scribble’s & Scrawl’s Bookshop. Why was a bookshop open at two in the morning? Not that I was complaining. All I was looking for was shelter. I’d take anything I could get. I ducked inside the tiny store and immediately peeled off my dripping wet jacket. Should’ve packed an umbrella. There was a counter covered in haphazard piles of books, and a woman standing behind them. Her graying hair was swept up into a tight bun, and the lines on her face seemed to be scratched into stone. Her name tag read Mrs. Scrawl.

Wait, were their names actually Scribble and Scrawl? Weird.

She looked up and smiled at me. “Hello, dear! What can I help you with?”

“Oh, I’m just here to stay out of the rain. Nasty outside, isn’t it?”

The smile dropped from her face in an instant, and she looked me up and down with a sour expression. “Well, dear, if you aren’t going to buy anything, you’d best leave. We don’t take kindly to loiterers and squatters.”

“Hey, I ain’t a squa-”

“Buy or leave! Those are the rules.” Her fierce eyes stared daggers at me as she pointed to a small, almost unnoticeable sign above her head that read CUSTOMERS ONLY. 

“Jesus, fine, lady. I’ll look around.” It was clear she wasn’t particularly happy with that answer, but she let it go. 

I had no actual intention of buying anything, but there was no way I was going back out into the storm from Hell. Leaving my drenched jacket on an antique coat stand at the door, I began wandering through the aisles. I skimmed over book titles, not really caring what any of them said. If one of the covers of a display book caught my eye, I’d pick it up and read the back cover, though I usually set it back on its rubber stand before I even finished reading.

Most of the books in the store were brightly colored, with shiny slip-on covers, which is why this particular book caught my eye. It looked old, probably older than me. The cover was dirty, torn paper, and the pages had been dog-eared. 

Why would a store like this have a book in such bad condition? Surely no one would buy it. 

And the title - Time Travel and Fixing the Mistakes You’ve Made? No one wrote books like that anymore. No one read books like that anymore. Time travel just wasn’t popular with fiction readers now. 

Whatever. Whether or not this bookstore sold books no one wanted was of no concern to me. I continued walking when I noticed something strange. The genre sign hanging from the top of the bookshelf. 

“Self Help? That can’t be right.” I backtracked and looked for the book again. Maybe it had just gotten placed in the wrong category? But why would it be on display? Wouldn’t someone have noticed? I picked it up and turned to the back, but there wasn’t a summary there. I opened the book but didn’t see any words on the page before there was a horrible grating sound like rocks in a blender and I blacked out. 

I woke up with my face on the floor. As I sat up, I noticed I had been laying on a book, and the cover was now bent in half. 

The time travel book! I hurriedly placed it back on its plastic stand, hoping that the harsh old woman at the front wouldn’t notice I had damaged it. 

Wait.

Plastic stand?

I looked back, and sure enough, I had placed the book on a stand made of clear plastic. I didn’t know why, but I thought it had been a rubber book stand, not a plastic one. Oh well. I had probably hit my head on the floor. Speaking of which, how long had I been there? The texture of the carpet had left an imprint on my face, so I must’ve been on the floor for a while. Had it stopped raining? I looked around, but there were no windows around. I’d have to go back up to the front to check. I hurried towards the front desk, nearly tripping over my own feet in my sleepy haze. 

There - the window. It had stopped raining! I must have slept for a long time, because the sun was out and the streets were dry. I reached for the coat stand to grab my jacket, but my hand met only empty air. I looked at the place the coat rack had been when I walked in, but it wasn't there.

“Can I help you, dear?” To my surprise, there was a different woman behind the counter. She was much younger, probably in her twenties, and she had a soft beauty about her. She looked familiar, but I couldn't place her. 

“I‘m just, ah, looking for my jacket. It was here, on a stand. Where did the coat stand go?”

“Oh, the coat stand is over there. But are you sure that you had one when you came in? I haven’t seen one there all day.” I looked at the coat stand, and it was empty. Not a single thing on it.

“No. No, I'm not sure of anything right now.” I couldn't help but stare at the woman. She looked so familiar. Then I realized that she looked like the severe woman who had been here before. She looked a lot like the woman who had been here before. Way too young to have been her sister though. There was probably a thirty- or forty-year gap between them. Maybe she was her daughter? Only one way to find out.

Would you happen to know the woman who was here before?”

She looked confused. “I’m sorry, there isn’t anyone else who works here. I own this store.”

“What? No, that can’t be right.”

“Sir, are you okay?”

“No! No, there was a woman here before. She looked like you, but she was older, maybe in her sixties.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but there was no one else here. I’m the owner, and I don’t have any employees. You must be thinking of somewhere else. Would you like me to call someone to pick you up?” 

“No, I know she was here. I came in to get out of the rain, and she was angry at me because I wasn’t going to buy anything. I just didn’t want to be wet anymore. That’s the only reason I was in the aisles. She had a little sign up there and everyt-” I stopped short as I realized the sign was nowhere to be seen.

“No. No. No, I know she was here, I know there was a sign, I remember it!”

“Sir, you need to calm down. There is no other woman. If you won’t calm down, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

That’s when it hit me, like a brick in the face. The reason they looked so similar… No, it couldn’t be…

“What year is it?” I asked tentatively.

She stared at me for a second, then reached for something behind the counter. “I’m calling the police.”

“No, no wait!” I ran my hands over my face. “Okay, please, if you tell me what year it is, I promise I’ll leave.”

Slowly she lowered the phone she had picked up. "Nineteen seventy-four."

"What? No! No, not possible!" Looking around, I ran frantically back through the shelves, looking for the book. It was the book that sent me back in time. I didn’t know how, but it was the only explanation.

“Hey! You need to leave!” The owner shouted at me. I ignored her, even when I heard her talking to a dispatcher. 

While I scanned for the book, I realized that I had been right before. I had picked the book up off of a rubber stand, and set it back down on a plastic one. There were so many other differences that I hadn’t noticed. Like how the hardbacks that had once had shiny new cover sleeves now had thick leather binding. And the signs displaying the genres were different too. They looked new, like they had recently been put in. There were a million other differences that I was in too much of a panic to care much about.

Oh God, this couldn’t be happening.

I spotted the book and grabbed it. If opening it was what brought me to the past, then opening it should take me back. I stuck my fingers between the pages and opened the book with more force than was necessary. 

After a moment, I realized that all I had done was opened a book.

“No! No, come on!” I flipped through the book, but it was mostly blank. Only the first page said anything, so I scanned the page.

So, you wanted to fix your problems, huh? I bet you thought this book was about how you could use time travel to solve all of your issues. Or you thought it was a joke. Either way, you opened it. Have fun with your newfound curse! 

P.S. - This book won’t let anyone time travel again for the next one hundred years - long enough to ensure that you cannot fix this, but short enough to ensure that someone else will get stuck with the same fate as you. Dasvidaniya!

“NO!” I screamed as I threw the book against the wall. I sank to the floor sobbing as I heard police sirens in the distance. It was hopeless. It was all hopeless.