Time In A Bottle

Ellen Matthews reflected on her eighty-six years, the same as many senior citizens do when they reach that age, if they are lucky enough to live so long. Long ago, she’d learned to make the hard times over her lifetime, a nearly forgotten blur and concentrated on the happy and most memorable times over the years. Raising her family and time spent with them were the best times of all. Though only a memory, how wonderful it would be to actually re-live some of them, but of course, that wasn’t possible.

But what was possible, was to again visit the Beach House, where so many happy times had occurred when the children were small and her husband was still alive. Though bought with intentions to move there, they never had, but it was a terrific investment.

Ellen arrived with her cat, Sampson, after she’d had a housekeeper tidy up the place and put fresh food in the fridge. Looking out at the lapping waves on a day with a gentle wind, she strolled onto the white sandy beach. This is odd. Her foot thumped the side of the oddity nearly buried in the sand. When she’d felt the top of the metal, only the round top silver plate was partially visible. As she dug deeper, the object resembled a foot-tall hourglass. It wasn’t full of sand as expected—it was more of a swirling heavy gray vapor, not quite gas and not quite liquid.

Once cleaned and sitting on her coffee table in the den, the intertwining motion inside the glass was fascinating. She considered taking it to the bridge club meeting with other single and lonely widows she’d knew there and had set up.

Picking it up, she drew it close to her face and watched intently. As she clasped the top and bottom of the object, she gave a little twist, like opening a jar, and to her surprise, it turned, and the swirling from top to bottom slowed down. The world felt strange. She looked around to see Sampson, her cat, who had been chasing a toy on the floor, now moving in ultra-slow motion. He leaped into the air, taking five seconds to land. Time had slowed down around her. A glance at the outside birds in flight confirmed it.

Curious. She twisted the top further, and everything, including her cat, not only stopped but moved in reverse. With a further twist, she was in a bubble, and time was moving backward. The room blurred and disappeared. Inside the bubble appeared images of yesterday, the day before, and the further she twisted the top, the faster days and weeks spun in reverse.

When she finally stopped by moving the top back to the center, she wore all black at her old home in Georgia. It was the day of her husband’s funeral fifteen years earlier. She stood while others around her were offering condolences. Still clinging to the oddity, she wanted no part of that day.

With a twist, she swirled further back in time. She went until she recognized herself in fourth grade. Though still in the time bubble, she was simultaneously inside herself at nine years old. Her first boyfriend, Chuck, held her hand, and she felt the same chills run up her arm and warm her heart, just like she’d remembered. It felt real. She enjoyed every second.

“I like you, too,” she said.

With that, he leaned in and gave her the first kiss she’d ever received from a boy. It was more thrilling than the memory.

“Now we are girl and boyfriend,” Chuck said as he gave her a big hug.

She hugged back.

Ellen hadn’t been happy in the fifteen years since her husband died. But this was marvelous—young puppy love in bloom. She revisited the moment four more times. Then she remembered her first genuine love and the most intense night of her late teen years.

With a clockwise twist of the time device, the years swirled forward to age nineteen and slowed until she found herself in Bill’s college apartment. They’d dated and after two years, he’d transferred to her university, and they dated steadily since. This was mid-March, the day she lost her virginity.

She relaxed in his double bed. Soon, they were kissing and necking. Her pulse raced. Then Bill reached underneath her blouse for the first time, rubbed her back, and unfastened her bra after a few fumbled attempts. Ellen was on an emotional magic carpet and loved every move that further fueled the moments. His touches moved to her breast. He could have had fire in his fingertips because the effect was the same. She clung tighter to him, squirming her skirted lower body against him, and her hem was way above her knees.

The next sound she remembered was when she unzipped his jeans.

 Nothing would ever be so heavenly as that first time. And here she was, simultaneously enjoying it again as both observer and inside her teen self. Reliving those minutes with the same intensity was breathtaking.

She fast-forwarded to their marriage three months later, then the births of her four children, two of each sex. She relived holding the newborns in her arms, the kids’ first everything as each grew up. The love for her husband strengthened.

Who’d ever want to live in that weakening eighty-six-year-old body when she could have these moments as long as she wanted? Indeed, this was a miracle of higher powers, and she was glad she was chosen.

But a curiosity finally caused Ellen to go back to the future she’d left. It was the urge to see how the years that remained might progress. So, she returned to that point.

Back in the den, her cat landed chasing the musical plastic ball. With a further forward twist of the time dial, she saw herself without Sampson, but soon a different Siamese kitten was on the scene. And again, from the bubble, she could see herself aged and bent, reposed in a bedroom armchair, probably in her early nineties. She could feel terrible muscle and joint pain from her bubble. Enough. Question answered. She twisted the top to go back, but nothing happened. She looked at the device and all the vapor was at the bottom and had a reddish hue. Time had run out for her. With every ounce of strength, she hobbled to the beach, found a small hole, and covered the useless device with sand. She barely made it up the porch steps when she collapsed.

Her three living children auctioned off the beach house and split the proceeds. Now, the home sat empty. A hundred yards away, almost completely buried in the sand, a partial silver top showed the tip of what lay hidden beneath.