Back to the Future
The bar was dark, dank and dusty and emptied;
exactly what I wanted to continue my drinking to oblivion. A fortune telling
machine stood in the corner. On an impulse I went to put in the required
quarter and realized it took dollar coins. I only had two Susan B. Anthony
dollars that my girlfriend, Amy had given me before she died in the bus
accident ten years ago on three days before we gradated high school .
A card popped out of the fortune telling machine interrupting my sad thoughts of Amy and how I'd never love anyone as much as her. I peered at the card dumbfounded for I recognized my own hand writing and it read, ‘True love that you seek is available
if you turn back time, put in another coin for details.’
How could it be my handwriting? The message was
ridiculous. Turning back time indeed if only I could. instead I sought oblivion in the bottom of my glass. I sat down and had another drink, but the machine beckoned to me still. I found myself propelled to it and put
in the other dollar Amy had given me. A card came out and I read, ‘What
you seek is close at hand.’
I threw down the card in disgust; but when I looked
down my body was seventeen years old again. I ran out the bar door and found myself back at my high school. The school the
bus was there waiting for the music department's year end trip. (The trip I had missed because of appendicitis.)
I entered it and hoped to stop the bus before it left, but the
second I entered the bus lurched and started driving. I tried to get the bus to stop l but several teachers corralled me, tied me down and placed me with a duct taped
mouth beside Amy. The accident happened just as it had before, only this time as the bus rolled over and over I felt pain and then felt the life drain from me.
I woke drooling in a beer,in that dingy bar; I looked for the fortune telling machine but it had disappeared. I concluded that it must have all been a dream. One good thing came from all of this finally I could
move on from my guilt nothing I could have done could have saved my friends or my girlfriend, Amy. Life was for the living they said and I'd been dead for ten years it was time to start living.
©Sheilagh Lee July 18, 2018
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