Time Jump

I’m a time jumper.

I know it’s a bit vague but there’s no other way to put it. Sometimes, when I close my eyes and concentrate, I find myself misplaced in time. It seems to be random. I remember the first time; I must have been about 10. I was sitting at home doing my homework, when I closed my eyes for a second. Suddenly, there was a bright flash behind my eyelids, like when you look at the sun with your eyes closed. I felt wind, and smelt grass, and as I opened my eyes, I realised I was standing in a garden, I think it was on a farm, and a boy about the same age as me, ran up to me. He was a little smaller, but had the same colour hair. There was also a camera round his neck.

“Where did you come from?” He said curiously.

“I’m…not sure…is this a dream?” I replied, convinced I must have fallen asleep. “I don’t think so,” he said. “This is my parents’ house, can I take your picture?” I was a little surprised at how comfortable this kid was talking to a complete stranger that had somehow appeared in his garden, maybe it was because we were about the same age.

“Sure,” I said, a little confused. Is this really a dream? He snapped my photo, and that’s when I noticed that the camera was old, it was one of those that printed out the photo after it took them. He pulled it out and gave it a wave in the air to dry it off. I started to get a headache and closed my eyes again, I heard the boy speak, but it seemed to have an echo to it.

“Are you ok?”

Another bright flash and I opened my eyes, a little bit of confused, plus my head was pounding now. I was in the exact same position I was in when I closed my eyes for the first time, and I looked at the clock, no time had passed. I started to panic a little now, and instinctively looked around my room for the slightest hint that I had fallen asleep. That’s when my eyes fell on a family photo on my windowsill. A thought came to me, a crazy thought, an impossible thought.

I ran into my parents room and looked for the box my parents kept photos in. I quickly located it and looked for the bit where my dad’s old photos were kept, and then I saw it. A photo taken about 20 years ago, of a boy who looked just like me, even wearing the same clothes, standing in a garden looking deep in thought. I never mentioned this to my dad, but I started to notice that, every so often, he would stare at me with a confused look on his face, the same one he wore 20 years earlier, and quickly look away when he realised I’d noticed.

This happened more and more as I got older, and I learnt to be able to turn the random jumps on and off at will. I also noticed a few more stranger things. Once, I was in ancient Egypt, and while investigating the tools they used for crops, I cut my finger. I wasn’t too worried about it, that is until I jumped back into the present. My finger was still cut.

This was when it fully hit me that these were definitely not just dreams, as a tiny part of me had hoped. It was wonderful for a while, going to all these different times. Sometimes I would go to the past, I’ve seen World Wars, World Wonders being built, Abraham Lincolns inauguration speech, Queen Victoria’s coronation, the invention of the lightbulb and so much more.

Sometimes however, I would jump into the future. Obviously I can’t put names to these, or put them in any sort of chronological order, as they’ve not happened yet. Stereotypical hover cars? Yep, we get those. Clean white pavements and buildings in our super-cities? Yep. Not everything is so great though, I’ve seen London reduced to ruins with not a person in sight. Las Vegas reclaimed by the desert. But that’s not the thing that’s bothering me, that’s not the reason I’m writing this entry.

Last time I hurt myself, it made me think, What if I was killed while “on a jump”? What would happen then? As I was thinking this, I blinked, and suddenly found myself in a graveyard, rain pouring on my face. The sky was slate grey and there was something moving ahead of me. I moved closer and saw four men lowering a coffin into an open grave. The sight made me uneasy.

“What’s going on?” I asked cautiously.

“Some guy died, no one turned up for the funeral, poor fella,” He replied. “He was run down by one of them new automobiles, was screamin’ all sorta nonsense before he died, apparently.”

I watched them lower the coffin into the hole, still feeling uneasy, the rain pounding on the scrubbed wood. When they finished lowering, and left to take a break, I walked over to the grave, and stepped over the hole to read the inscription on the little wooden cross that had been used instead of a gravestone.

I felt a cold chill run through my body. It was my name. Written on this stone, was my name. And what made my heart skip a beat was the date of death;

DIED 1911

Somehow, I accidentally jumped into my own future, in the past, in which I died. And since I may not see this happen, I come bearing a warning.

Keep your eye on the sky on the 7th July 2013. You won’t want to miss that.

Credits: danny249