A Common Mistake | Short Story # 6

Written: Saturday. September 26, 2002.

Who would've thought that the simple mistake of writing the year wrong could bring me back to the past? Today's September 26, 2020. But I had written the year wrong when I started my journal entry for today, so now I'm 18 years in the past. The year 2002, to be exact.

I still have my memories intact, and I'm still an adult...but everything around me has changed. I had a bit of trouble when I realized that I was face-to-face with complete strangers inside our house. The little girl lying on the bed screamed at the top of her lungs, and it alerted her parents. I didn't bother explaining to them why I was there. I think you know for sure how they'd react to a strange grown man suddenly being inside a child's bedroom. So I got out of the house as quickly as I could, hearing the yells of the people behind me as I went.

But then I noticed something weird; weirder than the situation I was already in at the moment: Things only seemed to "go back in time" wherever I was currently standing in. When I had gotten out of the house, the yelling stopped, and I saw the front of my house--the way it was back when it was still the year 2020, or should it be "the way it will be"? Doesn't matter.

I mean, I was still in the past, I think. Things looked different--looked old--even as I looked around our front yard. There were a bunch of kids playing around in the streets, with their yo-yos, and text cards, and some were running around playing tag.

Definitely the early 2000's, I thought. But how? And then I thought back to the last thing I did, and that's where we are right now.

This whole time-travel thing has got me wondering about other possibilities. Like, what if I wrote a different year? What if I had written something like 2040, or 3020? Would it send me the same way it did the first time? Could I even actually do it the second time around? What if I was stuck here? I can't have that happening to me, so I went back inside the house.

I looked back, and the yard was back to how it looked--just empty. I heard the voice of the mother from before behind me. "Excuse me, who are you? What are you doing inside of our house?"

"I need a pen and paper!" I exclaimed.
"Sir, I don't think you--"
"Now, dammit!" I yelled, and she hurriedly looked for a pen and paper, and gave them to me.
"Thank you."
"Sir, what are you--"
"This will just take a moment, miss." I said to her, as I jotted down the correct date this time. "There."

But as I looked up, I realized my mistake once more. Everything was shiny and glistening. Dammit what did I write?

"September twenty six, twenty...twenty-thousand and twenty? Fuck! I did it again!" 






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