Random Story :
Censorship can go Fornicate Themselves
Author: Jules Jensen Rock sat in a cool café, taking …
You Won’t Recognize Me
Author: Alicia Cerra Waters
The current of the river surged in silvery waves, rushing over rocks jagged enough to turn bones to dust. It roared, quiet as any monster. Anyone could go backwards in time if they were brave enough to jump in with a conduit. I kept telling myself I was brave as I waited, holding the last book my father ever read.
I heard my brother’s footsteps before I saw him. Even over the noise of the river, I knew him. His flannel shirt hung off of his bony shoulders, with that forever-smirk on his pinched face. “I thought I’d never see you again,” he said.
“Sorry to disappoint,” I put my hands in my pockets. “I have the book.”
“And I have the conduit,” Damian took the metal sphere out of his pocket and it whirred with otherworldly energy. Its power was a magnetic, leeching drag on the atoms that made up my body. I wanted to throw up and come closer at the same time. Some people thought the conduits could talk, but that was just superstitious bullshit. At least that’s what I told myself as I pretended I didn’t feel a voice pushing at the edges of my consciousness, trying to find a way in.
“How can you carry that thing?” I asked, stepping away from its thrall. Maybe that’s why Damien looked so sallow, like he hadn’t had a real meal in months.
Damian shrugged. “Somebodys gotta to do it.”
I looked down into the dark water, second thoughts making me dig my hands into my pockets. Just give him the book and he’ll go, I told myself. If nothing changes, we can avoid each other for another ten years, no problem.
“You’re willing to give it up for an old book?” I said.
Damian nodded, and I saw the exhaustion that ringed his eyes. “The conduit wears you down.”
We stood with a stretch of browned grass between us, already dormant as winter bit into the air. He gave me a knowing smile, like the asshole didn’t think I could do it. The thought grated more than it should have. “Just give it to me,” I said.
He didn’t move. “Are you sure you won’t unravel? Like Dad did?”
Even with the energy field the conduit created, that was a risk. I pressed my lips together, trying not to think about the vapor of atoms that people could become if they went too far back in the river. It happened to my father, but that didn’t have to be the end.
“You don’t think I can stop him?” I said, crossing my arms so I didn’t feel tempted to throw a punch.
Damian barked a laugh. “If two young sons at home couldn’t stop him when he left, a grown man on a suicide mission won’t.”
I threw the book onto the grass between us. “Give me the conduit.”
Damian twitched. “You miss Dad enough to try and go back for him?”
I took the conduit out of his hands and he didn’t stop me. “The next time you see me,” I said, “It won’t matter. Because I’m going to stop Dad from jumping into the river. He’ll raise us himself. You won’t recognize me.”
Damian put the book into his pocket. “Time travel is the worst thing that humankind ever did,” he said.
I barely heard him over the voice of my father coming from the silver cylinder. The conduit throbbed as the water pulled me under, and I heard the first words of the book; once upon a time…