Occupational Hazard

Michael's eyes snapped open at 6:47 AM, thirteen minutes before his alarm was set to go off. Something felt wrong. Not wrong in the way that signaled illness or injury, but wrong in a way he couldn't quite articulate. His skin felt alive, electric, as if every nerve ending had been dialed up to maximum sensitivity. A tingling sensation rippled across his body in waves, starting at his fingertips and toes before cascading inward toward his chest, then radiating back out again in an endless cycle.

He lay there in his small Brooklyn apartment, staring at the water-stained ceiling, trying to make sense of the feeling. It was like static electricity building up, or the pins-and-needles feeling of a limb falling asleep, except it was everywhere and nowhere all at once. Michael flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulders. Everything seemed to work normally. Maybe he'd slept in a weird position.

The alarm blared to life, and Michael slapped it silent. He went through his morning routine on autopilot. Shower. Teeth. Deodorant. The tingling remained constant, just there, like a song stuck in his head. He pulled on his usual work uniform: dark jeans, a faded Iron Maiden t-shirt, and his worn leather jacket.

He grabbed his keys and wallet and headed out into the cool October morning. The stairs of his walk-up creaked as they always did, and he nodded to Mrs. Chen from 2B returning from her morning tai chi session. The familiar rhythm of his neighborhood greeted him: the bodega on the corner, the smell of fresh bagels from Goldstein's, the distant rumble of the subway.

Michael had walked this route to work a thousand times. From his apartment on Atlantic Avenue to The Bookmark bookstore on Court Street was exactly seventeen minutes at his usual pace. He'd worked there for three years. For someone who'd dropped out of NYU's history program in his junior year, working in a bookstore felt like a reasonable compromise with his abandoned academic dreams.

He was halfway down the block when he realized his headphones were missing. Michael stopped and patted himself down. Keys, check. Wallet, check. Phone, check. Headphones...shit. Still on his nightstand.

"Damn it," Michael muttered. He could go back and get them, which would make him late, or go without them. The tingling sensation seemed to intensify slightly. Michael sighed heavily. "I wish I hadn't forgotten them," he said to no one in particular, closing his eyes.

The world lurched.

It was like missing a step going down stairs, like the split-second of freefall on a roller coaster. His stomach dropped, the tingling sensation exploded across his skin, and then

He was standing in his apartment.

Inside, in his small living room, facing his bedroom door. The morning light streamed through the same windows at the same angle. Everything was exactly as it had been when he'd walked out five minutes ago. Michael's heart hammered in his chest. He spun around, disoriented. Had he blacked out? But no, he was fully dressed, his keys were in his hand. The tingling sensation intensified for a few seconds, reaching a crescendo that made his teeth ache, then dimmed back down.

"What the hell?" Michael whispered.

He walked to the door and checked the locks. They were engaged, the deadbolt thrown, the chain in place. But that was impossible. He'd been outside. He'd walked down the stairs. He'd seen Mrs. Chen.

Hadn't he?

Michael pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. Maybe he'd just imagined the whole thing. Maybe the strange tingling sensation was affecting his perception somehow. That had to be it. The alternative, that he'd somehow teleported back to his apartment, was absurd.

Michael walked into his bedroom. There, on his nightstand, were his headphones. He grabbed them and headed back to the door. This time, he paid attention to every detail. He unlocked the deadbolt, unlatched the chain, turned the doorknob, stepped into the hallway. The stairs creaked. Mrs. Chen was gone now. Michael walked down Atlantic Avenue with his headphones around his neck, still trying to shake off the weirdness of the morning.

By the time he reached Court Street, he'd almost convinced himself that he'd imagined the whole thing. Almost. He stopped at his usual coffee cart and exchanged pleasantries with Ahmed. "You look tired, my friend," Ahmed said. "Weird morning," Michael replied. "Coffee fixes everything, yes?" Ahmed smiled. "Let's hope so."

Michael continued down Court Street, finally putting his headphones on. He settled on AC/DC. "T.N.T." started playing, and Michael let the driving rhythm wash over him as he walked. He tilted his head back, looking up at the buildings that towered above him, and let his mind wander.

Michael's mind drifted, as it often did, to history. Court Street had been here since the colonial era, had witnessed the Revolutionary War firsthand. The Battle of Brooklyn, August 1776, the largest battle of the entire Revolutionary War, had raged across this borough. What must it have been like, Michael wondered, to stand on this street in 1776? To watch the Continental Army face off against the most powerful military force in the world? To hear the roar of cannons, the crack of musket fire?

The tingling sensation intensified.

Michael barely had time to register it before the world lurched again. He blinked and the world changed.

The modern buildings were gone. The asphalt beneath his feet was now packed dirt and cobblestones. The cars had vanished, replaced by wooden carts and debris. And everywhere, there was chaos. Men in red coats fought hand-to-hand with men in Continental uniforms. The clash of bayonets rang out. Musket fire cracked in irregular bursts. Artillery boomed in the distance. Smoke hung thick in the air, acrid and choking. Men screamed. The metallic smell of blood mixed with gunpowder and sweat.

Michael stood frozen, unable to process what he was seeing. AC/DC still blared in his headphones, a surreal soundtrack to the carnage. A Continental soldier ran past him, his face streaked with powder burns and blood. A British officer on horseback shouted orders. This wasn't possible. He was hallucinating. He had to be.

But it felt real. The smoke burned his eyes. The ground shook with each cannon blast. The screams were too visceral to be imagined. And the tingling sensation was everywhere now, so intense it was almost painful.

A line of British soldiers, maybe twenty yards away, turned in his direction. Michael watched, paralyzed, as they seemed to notice him. He must have looked bizarre, a man in strange clothing with wires coming out of his ears. One of the soldiers pointed at him and shouted. The others turned to look.

They began to march toward him, muskets held at the ready, bayonets fixed. Their red coats were splattered with mud and darker stains. Their faces were hard, professional. Michael's paralysis broke. Terror flooded through him. They were going to kill him.

"No, no, no, no," Michael heard himself saying. He stumbled backward, nearly tripping over a broken wagon wheel. The soldiers kept coming. Michael squeezed his eyes shut. "I want to be at work," he said, or maybe screamed. "I want to be at work, I want to be at work, please, God, I want to be at work."

The tingling sensation rushed.

It was like being struck by lightning, like every nerve in his body firing at once. Michael felt himself falling, or flying, or both. Reality twisted around him, and then

Silence. Complete, total silence.

Michael kept his eyes squeezed shut, afraid of what he might see. His heart was racing. His breath came in short gasps. The tingling sensation was fading now, dimming back down. Slowly, cautiously, Michael opened his eyes.

He was standing between two tall bookshelves in The Bookmark. The familiar smell of old paper and coffee surrounded him. Soft classical music played from the speakers. Morning light streamed through the front windows. Everything was quiet, peaceful, normal.

Michael looked down at himself. His hands were shaking. His coffee cup was gone. His headphones were still around his neck, AC/DC still playing, though the song had changed to "Highway to Hell," which felt grimly appropriate. He pulled the headphones off with trembling fingers. Michael's legs felt weak, and he stumbled forward, catching himself on one of the bookshelves. He was hyperventilating.

"Okay," he said aloud, his voice shaking. "Okay, okay, okay. You're okay. You're fine. You're at work. You're safe."

But he wasn't fine. Because either he'd just traveled back in time to the Revolutionary War, or he was having a complete psychotic break.

Michael forced himself to take slow, deep breaths. His racing heart began to slow. The shaking in his hands gradually subsided. The tingling sensation continued its steady hum, a constant reminder that something fundamental had changed.

But he had no memory of arriving this morning. One moment he'd been on Court Street, thinking about the Revolutionary War. The next moment he'd been in the Revolutionary War. And then he'd been here. No. Not teleported. Time traveled.

The thought was absurd, impossible, but Michael couldn't deny what he'd experienced. He'd been in 1776. He'd seen the Battle of Brooklyn with his own eyes. It had been real. And if that was real, then appearing back in his apartment after wishing he hadn't forgotten his headphones, that had been real too.

Michael's mind raced. The tingling sensation had been there all morning, and it had intensified right before each jump. And both times, he'd been thinking about being somewhere else. Wishing he was somewhere else. Was that how it worked? Think about a time and place, and the tingling sensation would take him there?

He needed to sit down. He needed to think.

Michael made his way through the store on unsteady legs to the reading nook in the back corner. A worn leather armchair sat next to a window that looked out onto a small courtyard. A small table sat beside the chair with a stack of books. Michael sank into the chair. He was safe here. He was in the present.

He picked up the top book from the stack, needing something to focus on. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. A memoir about growing up poor in Ireland in the 1930s and 40s.

He opened the book and started reading, forcing himself to focus on the words, on McCourt's distinctive voice. It was working. The familiar act of reading was calming him down. His breathing steadied. His hands stopped shaking. Michael read about McCourt's childhood in Limerick, about the rain and the poverty. The prose was vivid, evocative, painting a picture of a time and place he'd never experienced but could now see clearly in his mind's eye.

Too clearly.

He could see the narrow streets of Limerick. The gray sky. The rain falling endlessly. The cramped, damp apartment where the McCourt family lived. The tingling sensation intensified.

Michael's eyes snapped open wide. He slammed the book shut and threw it onto the table as if it had burned him. His heart was racing again. The tingling was building, that same crescendo he'd felt before each jump.

"No," Michael said firmly. "I'm staying here. I'm staying in the present. I'm not going anywhere."

He focused on the bookstore around him. The smell of coffee. The classical music. The morning light. The present. The now. He was not going to 1930s Ireland. He was staying right here, in this chair, in this bookstore, in 2024.

The tingling sensation peaked, held for a moment, and then slowly began to fade. Michael let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He'd stopped it. He'd prevented the jump. Which meant he had some control over this ability.

Michael leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, but didn't let himself drift into thought. He kept his mind firmly anchored in the present, thinking about the mundane tasks he needed to do today. Normal things. Present things. After a few minutes, when he was confident that the tingling had returned to its baseline, Michael opened his eyes and looked at the stack of books. Angela's Ashes sat on top, innocent and unassuming, but Michael knew better now. Reading about the past, imagining it too vividly, that was dangerous. That could trigger a jump.

But it also meant possibilities.

If he could travel to any time period just by thinking about it, by reading about it, by imagining it vividly enough, what could he do? He could witness history firsthand. He could see the things he'd only read about in books. He could go back to ancient Rome. He could watch the construction of the pyramids. He could see dinosaurs. The possibilities were endless.

But it was also terrifying. He'd almost been killed by British soldiers. What if he jumped to the wrong moment? What if he appeared in the middle of a plague or a natural disaster? What if he couldn't get back?

He looked at his phone. 8:47 AM. He'd been supposed to open the store at 8:30. Somehow, despite everything, he'd still made it to work on time.

Michael stood up from the chair, his legs still a bit shaky but functional. He needed to actually open the store, turn on all the lights, unlock the front door, start the coffee maker. He needed to do his job and pretend that everything was normal, even though nothing would ever be normal again.

As he went through the familiar motions of opening the store, Michael's mind kept returning to the same thought: what was he going to do with this ability? He could ignore it. He could try to suppress it, to never think too hard about the past, to keep his mind firmly anchored in the present.

Or he could explore it. He could learn to control it better, to choose his destinations more precisely, to ensure he could always get back.

Michael unlocked the front door and flipped the sign from "Closed" to "Open." The morning sun streamed in, warm and bright. Outside, Brooklyn continued its daily rhythm, people walking to work, cars driving past, the city alive and vibrant and firmly rooted in the present.

But Michael knew that the past was just a thought away. Just a moment of vivid imagination, a spike in that strange tingling sensation, and he could be anywhere, anywhen. The knowledge was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure.

He walked back to the reading nook and looked at Angela's Ashes sitting on the table. Maybe, he thought, after his shift ended, he would pick it up again. Maybe he would let himself imagine 1930s Ireland, let the tingling sensation build, and see where it took him. Maybe he would start to explore this strange new ability. But for now, he had books to shelve and customers to help and a normal day to get through.

The tingling sensation hummed steadily beneath his skin, a constant reminder that his life had changed forever, and there was no going back. Only forward. Or backward. Or sideways through time.

What the hell was he going to do with that?