Time travellers aren’t human but not alien either. They appear as normal humans, but this creature can travel through time. But here’s the twist, they can’t control it. They don’t have control over when they drift into another time, and they can’t even control which time era they travel to. Worst of all, he can get stuck.
As a time traveller, Ely lived in the constant fear of suddenly drifting and waking up in a completely different time era. It’s normal but what scared him most was forgetting. Forgetting about everything that he had seen and heard. He had felt a range of emotions after his travels. Anger, happiness, sadness, and guilt. All these emotions had left him confused, so very confused. Ely would always carry a notebook with him so that he could write down what happened in his travels. This helped Ely understand the past and future.
Mysteries. So many mysteries he had seen. So many things he had written down, So many mysteries he had read and wrote. So mysterious.
Ely had been doing his work when all of a sudden, he drifted. Just like that and when he gained his conciseness, he found himself in a chemist. He looked around and that, was when he saw someone very familiar. Ely quickly hid behind a shelf and carefully peeped around the corner.
Ely had seen so many peculiar things but not as peculiar as what he was looking at. He was looking at…himself? More specifically, the back of his head from a far distance. It was the first time he had seen himself. He was pretty sure he was in the future. At least he thought.
Seeing yourself from the back is weird but it’s even weirder if you see yourself doing things you wouldn’t usually doing, like for example, buying VERY expensive bandages. Why was he buying that? And why on EARTH would he buy bandages. Did the future hold something bad? Did he himself or someone getting hurt? Was he the cause of it? Ely’s head was filled with questions. As if on cue, he blacked out and woke up back in normal time. Ely thought to himself. Should he go get bandages? It’s better to be ready for the worst. So, Ely got up and made his way out of the library he was in.
Ely made his way to a near by chemist and went to the bandage section. He looked through and found good quality ones. They were expensive. A monthly payment of pocket money, all down the drain, but if it could change anything bad from happening it would be worth it.
Journals. Books in which you can write your daily experiences and secrets. Ely kept a small journal in which he wrote what he saw so that he could reflect on those times. Ely decided it was time to go through his journal and see if he had times when he saw himself, but he couldn’t. He flipped page after page after page…but he didn’t find anything, but he did find something. A journal entry, from, tomorrow? How did that happen. There was no way there could be two of him writing in the same journal. The journal entry said:
May 21 2023,
I don’t know what’s happening to me. First, I see myself buying bandages and now I’m stuck in a loophole. I keep on drifting to the day I saw myself, but each time I’m buying something different. So, hi past me. I’m here to tell you what I have learnt.
It’s not what it seems. It’s not real. Give up on trying to figure out what’s happening. Leave it all in the past, or rather behind…just leave it. Forget about it. Please, stop doing what you are doing so that I can get out. So that I can escape this loop. Please, for your sake.
Yours truly,
Yourself
Ely was worried. He was so overwhelmed. What did he do that got his future self stuck in a loop? Should he try to solve it. He knew his future self told him not to, but he was so curious. So curious. Living in a world where there weren’t a lot of people like him was hard. He knew there were people out there like him, but he had never met anyone. Maybe he had but those people didn’t know he was like them. I mean, he wouldn’t go around telling people he was a time traveller. People would think he was insane. To add on top of that, he wasn’t even human. He just had a human form. People finding out about his powers would end up in him being a lab rat.
Ely continued to flip through the journal, trying to find anything that could help him understand. He had fell into a hole he couldn’t get out of. He had fell too deep into the rabbit hole of the present and the future. He was held up in what the future help for him, held up in the thoughts, worries and information that was in his head. Intriguing isn’t it?
A new journal entry. Good right? Right?
???
Stop. PLEASE just stop. It hurts. If you continue trying to look into what’s happening, the worse its going to get. If this continues, you might just disappear. I might just disappear. I’m not sure how many of you…me are stuck in this. But it is happening because of you…me? This is getting so confusing. I have been disorientating so much. It feels like I’m not real. Maybe I’m not. But if I am how are you reading this? But you wrote this so I must be the fake one. I don’t know anymore. Just stop. I don’t even know if I’m…Real
A 1000 words are not enough.
Shaken. Scared. Frightened. Just a few words to describe what Ely felt. Should he stop? What would you do?