Stuck in a Moment

The rules were written on the inside cover of the first journal, given to him by his father:

Rule #1: Do not change history. Do not interfere with events. Don’t. Ever.

Rule #2: Pick the jobs carefully. If the item is too small and unnoticed by the market, there is no profit to be had. Too large or well-known, and the risks outweigh the gains.

Rule #3: Keep track of your time. The Orb does.

Rule #4: Remember Rule #1, no matter the profit. No matter what.

###

The rain had stopped precisely four minutes prior. Steam rose, floating in the stifling air. The single dark cloud that had showered the area had moved on, leaving it only more humid.

It was nearly noon (three minutes and forty-two seconds before) as Abe Meriwether walked along the curved, paved path. A harsh shadow flew across the pavement just ahead of him, and screams filled the air. He didn’t look up as the roller coaster thrummed with its own thunder overhead. It held only thirty of the thirty-six possible at the moment. Two rows empty (third and next to last) and two people rode alone (rows nine and eleven.) Abe knew this as well as he knew the kid in front of him would drop his popsicle right… now. The kid’s mother, a woman with long, wavy black hair, continued, unaware of the child’s mishap or that he was trying to retrieve the treat.

Abe sidestepped the popsicle, then moved to the side again to avoid the little girl who popped out from behind her father a moment later. He didn’t look too closely at the girl. He knew she wasn’t Victoria.

He didn’t need to waste time looking at anyone who wasn’t Victoria.

Ahead, the Mid-America Amusement Park employee, an acne-faced teen with the faded red golf shirt with the clown logo embroidered on the left chest, swept up pieces of debris left by guests.

Abe could see the little sitting area carved into a corner of the park for tired parents and overheated kids. A single tree threw what shade it could manage over a pair of benches, while tall, thick bushes surrounded it on three sides to provide a little privacy when needed.

He slowed now that he was within sight and waited. Victoria and her father, a younger Abraham Meriwether, soaked from the recent shower, would be coming from his left right…

Now.

His heart ached as he saw her. He was here every chance he could to witness again, hoping to see when she vanished into thin air.

It took no effort for him to remember at any given moment what she looked like that day in June. Her print dress featured characters from a TV show that all five-year-olds at the time seemed to be watching. Her white sandals. The red hair scrunchie holding her delicate brown hair at the top of her head.

She was tired. Her body sagged, and the younger Abe had to give her a little tug to move her out of the way of the woman on the motorized scooter who was aiming for the restrooms. Younger Abe steered her to the benches.

Abe didn’t need to be close to know what he told her. “Sit here in the shade. I’ll get drinks. I’ll be right there.” The other Abe emphasized this by pointing to the drink kiosk. There was a line, but “It will just take a minute. Stay put.”

Victoria nodded. She looked drowsy, and he had, at that time, figured she would be asleep when he returned.

Abe scratched absently at a scar on his chin as he watched his younger self turn away from her, and he, again, fought the urge to yell at himself. Stay with her! Even for just another minute.

But he couldn’t. Rule #1.

She leaned her head over onto the bench arm. Her eyes fluttered, trying to stay open, but the day had been long and humid, and even the thrill of being at the park had to surrender to exhaustion. They had come here to take her, and his mind off other things. An empty space at their table. A mother absent from kindergarten graduation. Searching for a little fun among the sadness.

Her sandals swung back and forth under the bench, like a metronome lulling her into sleep.

Abe watched this, taking in every last moment of her existence. Time and time again, he stood here, out of view of himself and her, for what could he say if she saw her father in two places at once? He stood witness again and again, yet had never seen it happen.

That was what brought him back time and time again.

Each time, he hoped this would be the time something changed. Maybe the large church group of yelling, laughing teens exited the roller coaster a few seconds later instead of blocking his view of her on the bench at that critical heartbeat. Or the commotion of an elderly man falling against the trash can didn’t cause a rush of people past the benches.

But they were all locked in place. Locked in their time. Only he had the opportunity to move freely in this time and place. After countless trips here, he had found the one spot he could see without being seen. But it was never the right place at the right time.

The roller coaster roared past, throwing its shadows and screams across the drink kiosk. Younger Abe, still two people away from the drink counter, looked up to watch it pass and then back to Victoria.

Who was gone like the dark cloud that had showered the park minutes earlier.

Again.

And again, Abe watched as his younger self ran toward the benches, colliding into one of the teens, spinning around, and falling down onto the ground. His chin smacked the edge of the bench, the very bench where she had been moments before, and split the skin wide open.

###

Abe opened the door to the apartment over the closed family antique store.

He flicked at the switch, and a pair of floor lamps came on deep in the apartment. He wove through the shadows of antiques that were crammed into random spots throughout the space. Pieces that had been brought back for personal enjoyment and ownership, and not for a client.

Most items he brought back for clients, items of just the right size and notoriety to fetch serious money in today’s market, that had been lost to time, only to show up at auction in the modern world. There was much to be brought back from history, as long as it was the right size and didn’t break Rule #1. Ever.

Abe found his recliner, surrounded by stacks of books with dark, thick, leather covers. The TV in front of him remained off as it had since the last time Victoria had watched her favorite cartoon, the one with the characters on her dress.

He reached over and took a notebook from atop the pile of books. He undid the elastic band and turned it almost to the back. He pulled the pen from its spot and wrote in it. The message was brief, little more than the current day and time, the time spent in the past, and the time he lost from his life. Two days each time that nibbled away at him.

He had given up on the math ages ago. How much was being taken from him? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

He glanced at the old answering machine and saw no lights blinking. Abe knew that using it made him an antique in his own time. But antiques were worth something, he often reminded himself, and he was worthless, unable to protect the most valuable thing in his life.

Later, he felt himself dozing off. He startled himself awake with a snort. After a moment, he looked at the dark bedroom doorway. Considered.

He rolled his head back to the side and allowed himself to sleep in the recliner.

###

Time was and is an odd thing.

Abe knew this deeper, felt it in his bones more than anyone else could. The Meriwether’s relationship with time bordered on the obscene, and they often forgot that time was the one in charge.

And time made itself felt. He realized this more and more each time he woke up in the recliner, vowing not to sleep there again as he stretched his back and legs to stumble to the bathroom, and he could feel time taking its toll on him. Time always collected its toll.

Yet he was here, awake another day. And that gave him another chance to go back.

###

Her sandals swung back and forth under the bench. Back and forth. Back. Forth. Stopped.

Abe saw her head tilt that last tiny bit into a restless, heat-induced doze. The perfect ponytail barely bounced as her head tipped. Her eyes fluttered at the sound of the roller coaster flying past, but then were still once more. Her mouth seemed to murmur something.

The group of teens was exiting the coaster. They were clapping each other on the back. Supporting the one who looked a little green in the face.

Abe forced himself not to blink. Do not allow anything or anyone to take his eyes off of her. She was everything. She was this entire moment in time.

The surge of people rushed past to help the old man get back up.

She was gone.

Abe allowed himself a sigh. He turned away, scratching at the scar on his chin, already looking forward to being back here, despite the pain. Despite the inability to change things. But drawn back anyway. To see her. To witness her.

To mourn her.

###

The Orb sat on Meriwether land, owned for generations now. How long had it been there? What had created it? None of them knew. They only knew what it did. It took them back.

Concentrate, Abe had been told when he turned 18 and was “introduced” to the Orb and to how his family made their living in antiques. He could recall perfectly standing in front of the Orb in the clearing, watching as it mesmerized him with its shimmer and ripples. He had nodded as his father stood next to him, explaining how to focus on the when and, just as importantly, the where.

“It’s not perfect,” the elder Meriwether had told him. “But close enough. From that spot, we go and find the item we’re being paid to find. Then return. Here. This is an easy one.” Abe had been handed his first assignment and had focused on the time and place.

Before him, the Orb thrummed. The center of it flexed in anticipation, like a diner licking their lips as the food approaches.

“It’s painless,” Abe had been told as a hand to his back nudged him forward.

###

Now, the shimmer and ripples played over the Orb in the otherwise empty meadow. It thrummed, startling a pair of crows, sending them cawing into the dark, leafless trees.

Abe, so much older than the 18-year-old who had gone into the Orb with a mix of nervousness and excitement so long ago, stepped out. He took two steps and fell to his knees. There was no warning. He collapsed like a pilgrim who had crawled a thousand miles to the temple, only to find the place overrun with tourists and souvenir shops.

He sobbed, something he thought he had stopped doing years ago. The tears that should have dried up ran down his cheeks.

He turned his head, looking like a dog glancing back at its disappointed master, to the Orb. It rippled silently. It didn’t care. It only took.

He stumbled to his feet and left the clearing.

###

He wrote in the journal, logging the trip to Victoria. He thumbed through the pages, seeing the numbers flash past like a flipbook. So many numbers. So many pages. How many journals had he filled? He couldn’t remember.

He should do the math, he told himself. Rule #3. Keep track of the time the Orb took from you. The time spent wherever and whenever the Orb took you wasn’t free. It was tallied, with interest tacked on.

Each trip was the time there plus two days. Abe had asked why two days? “A day there. A day back,” was the only answer given.

Simple math, but deadly. Too many trips and he would find himself looking like a 70-year-old man while barely in his forties, his father had said. That had been what had happened to his grandfather, a man Abe had never met.

He set the journal down and stood, wincing as he did. He shuffled to the bathroom, feeling the tightness in his thin muscles. He had been sitting too long. He needed to move more. Exercise. He knew that.

He faced the sink and looked up, blinking as he ran water over his hands.

An old man looked back at him. What was left of his hair was a thin, gray strip that ran around his head. The wrinkles around his eyes and over his cheeks were deep and filled with shadows cast by the harsh vanity light.

Good Lord, he thought, I could be Victoria’s grandfather. His own father had died before he ever knew his granddaughter. He wasn’t sure she would even remember seeing photos of her grandfather.

Abe brought a dripping finger up into view and poked at his scar hidden among the wrinkles on his chin.

“Who are you?” he asked his reflection.

It didn’t answer.

###

Abe walked into the clearing, and the Orb thrummed. It had never sounded louder to him, but he stepped into it without hesitation.

###

The teen sweeping the pathway walked along, swiping at the debris, unaware that a man whom he swept around hundred upon hundreds of times was not there.

“Rule #1,” Abe muttered. But he didn’t hear himself.

He stood behind the bushes and waited. He stood on a path of flattened grass that was used by others as a shortcut to the log flume ride. He had looked back here on his earliest returns, expecting to find someone there. Someone peering through the thin gap between bushes, waiting for a small fish to come along into its net.

But it had been empty. Just himself, eyes spilling tears as he had realized he still didn’t have an answer.

He had never bothered to look back here again and had instead watched from out front time and again. He didn’t know exactly how many times. But he didn’t need to do the math in the journals. The mirror had shown him the toll taken.

The roller coaster filled his brain with its rumble and dry thunder. Screams of fun and adventure took over the air all around.

“Sit here in the shade. I’ll get drinks. I’ll be right there.”

Abe gasped. He stepped forward and saw their shapes through the gap. Saw her nod.

“It will just take a minute. Stay put.”

He turned away and walked to the kiosk.

Abe felt his heart thudding in his chest. He heard his breathing increase. It drowned out the next roar of the coaster. The screams seemed like an eternity of time away.

He looked down and saw her head tilt that last fraction into sleep. The ponytail twitched a little. He knew the sandals had stopped swinging under the bench.

Teens yelled. Laughed.

No one was here. No one was close to her. Except him.

Abe stepped through the small gap in the bushes before he knew he had even moved, just to the side of the bench, wedged between it and the bushes. He knew the teens were blocking his view. Knew the elderly man would stumble in a moment.

It was him. It had always been him.

He looked down at her. Perfect, just as she had been. Just as he had seen her for more years than he wanted to add up. She shifted, and he reached over, slid his arms under her thin frame, and lifted. He grunted with the effort. Lord, he felt so old.

Her eyes fluttered open. She looked up at him as he stepped back through the bushes. Confusion crossed her face, but at five, she wasn’t sure what triggered the confusion. Not entirely. She asked the only thing that registered in this funny dream. “Daddy. Why do you look so old?” she murmured.

He smiled at her, knowing there would be more questions, serious ones, soon enough. He knew he might not have the answers she would need. He didn’t know what they would do when they got home.

He would worry about Rule #1 then.

That was for the future.

###

In the clearing, the Orb sat there, waiting through time as it always had. Waiting to see if it would thrum and ripple again.