Thirty minutes at a time.

“It’s her,” a ghost of a man said, seeing a baby grabbing clumps of sand by the fistful and throwing them in a bucket. The sound or roaring waves, the salty smell of the ocean filled his lungs calming the aches and pains of his long years. If he could, he'd run, carrying that child on his back.

That ghost of a man saw his reflection sitting beside her. Of course like thumbing through old photos there was a moment to wonder if that was truly who he was before the uncountable list of pains, pleasures, and mundane signs of entropy changed him. That was of course not why he was here, to debate with himself that smarter men and women would debate yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Today he was testing the greatest version of the most cliché gift someone could give to an old man like him. Today like the old, pale man he was, he decided to look back. That little baby girl was dwarfed by a giant who enjoyed the sight of the crashing waves washing away all signs of the people who came to visit and washed up past treasures. When he wasn’t enamored by the timeless cycle he chuckled as he observed the strange habits of this small pudgy faced baby and her large brimmed hat protecting her from the sun.

It was the first thirty minutes. All he had for each moment he could remember, he could drag from the parts of his mind that he battled with using methods available. The little girl filled the bucket and tipped it over and slammed it on to the beach. She babbled and laughed as she made something like a mound. Then she spoke with as much elegant grace allowed in her tiny body as she then battered it with her open palm.

“Is that a castle baby girl?” the man asked her, that girl’s father. A better man, a happier man, a younger man. He laid in the sun, turned red from the summer sun blaring down on him, but sea wind brought a cool comfort.

The pale ghost watched and frowned as he felt the device on his wrist vibrate. Ticking down like a bomb, his stomach turned and his heart fell down into it. To say the least he was close to collapsing to his knees, but he stood in the heat and filled his lungs with the salt-y smell of the currents.

Five seconds. Four seconds. Three seconds. Two seconds. One. A bright light, like a camera flash, but hot like a furnace he was elsewhere. First as his vision focused, the flash disorienting power made him stumble, but after a few deep breaths and using his many years of practicing staying upright when in a compromised state. While his vision was still spinning the smells and humid air hit him at once. The sounds of crowds, cheers of victories over rigged games, but overwhelmingly the screams of frustration as a cost of a few dollars and patience as a couple misses out on a plush bear. Then there were the families who laughed at each member as they all took a turn overshooting or undershooting a pyramid of cans.

It was the smells of kettle corn, the smell of fried funnel cake he followed as his vision returned. Five minutes he wasted trying not to fall. Only three jumps, only an hour and thirty minutes. It wasn’t an impossible task to pick which memories to relive in those time slots, but there were each painful twist of the knife having to pick. People walked through him, some shivering as if touched by a cold wind. He tried to understand the science of it, something akin to a haze of atoms with enough form to smell, hear, and feel temperature but not to truly touch anything. He was out of place like a thin, cold breeze out of nowhere.

It took an extra five minutes to make it to where the food was. Greasy overpriced Americana for the whole family. That young man, as the metaphor was appropriate, the pale ghost thought and chuckled as he called the experience, “Like a funhouse mirror.” He looked down at his device, the complicated gears and lights above his knowledge as all his education and experience gave him was a knowledge of an engine as well as the skill of overcharging people who did not have that knowledge. Twenty minutes to watch, twenty minutes to linger as he saw a little girl with a smile almost to ear to ear as she ripped into a funnel cake with powdered sugar. Between bites and with a full mouth she listed the last rides they had to go to. Limitations of her height and age of course stopping her from her true desires to ride on the roller coasters that even at the time as a brave twenty-one year old would hesitate to ride.

“Then then!”

“Slow down, chew, swallow, and talk,” he told her as he was wild choking down two hot dogs bathed in chili and mustard.

“OK!” she shouted, a bit of funnel cake falling out as a globe on her paper plate. She swallowed and took a deep breath.

“The ponies.” she said as took the last bites like she was starving, and drank the last of her water as if she was pulled from the desert. For a little girl in a cute frilly dress, of course as she demanded a light sky blue she had her father’s habits with food. Eat fast like the food was on the run and drink faster like there was a fire in her belly.

“The ponies?” he asked her, and the pale ghost as if he had a script mumbled the words.

“Yes, because it’s good practice.” she answered as if he should know already.

“For what?” he said a few paper towels, the real cheap kind after a few wipes broke apart as he tried to clean the chili from his chin. 

“When I get one.” She answered. While a young man, he had some semblance of manners, he laughed with his hand and mouth over his to ensure that any bits of cheap county fair hot dawg doesn’t fly out. He swallowed. She looked disappointed and not to break her heart and to not make any promises heSe made some conditions.

“Well you’re too small, so you’ll have to see when you’re older and wh– If we get a proper place for’em.”

The ghost laughed as he saw his younger self strained himself to avoid breaking his little girl’s heart. It was a classic request, and classic problem he had put his mom and dad through asking for wild things while living in a trailer park. He watched as they walked. She swung her arm as her hand, a child’s hand looked even smaller compared to his calloused hands. In scuffed little sneakers she walked with her head looking up at all the people who walked past them. A few hellos, “little miss” and “ain’t she a little blessing.” The man holding his daughter’s hand smiled, nodded and held tightly her two small hands. Then the bright lights and the many young kids who jumped, clapped their hands, and laughed as they waited for a ride. The operator looked over passes and took five dollars at a time.

“Up!” she said.

“Up what?” he responded back.

“Up please!” she asked again, pouting, her big brown eyes and her tight curly hair in tighter braids thanks to her grandmother. Up in his right arm light as a feather she looked over the crowd and sighed and went limp dramatically.

“Serra!” he called her name as he almost dropped her, she sat back up and grabbed him. He laughed, hardy and loud.

“I don’t know what to do with you.”

He lingered here, but never as long as he wished. His eyes looked over the many faces, the people he has forgotten. The device vibrated, he wanted to rip it from his wrist and simply be lost in the winds of time. Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes each little memory. The ghost feels cold, of course. The wind of this fall day kissed him on the check, the smells lingered in his nose, and the sounds were a farewell song as his eyes were open even as there was a subtle burn that made him tear up. It was a dingy, cheap slice of heaven that disappeared in the flash.

He recoiled away. His hands turned into fist, balled up tight enough that if he held anything it’d turned to dust. This ghost kept his eyes closed, as he tried to bath himself in darkness. Yet his ears were assaulted with the sounds of beeping machines, the smell of powerful disinfectants, and the sterile cold air. Bittersweet.

“Mr. Carter?” he heard. The empathetic professionalism a good nurse masters. He opened his eyes to see himself, the tired eyes and worn body of a man too young to look that old.

“She’s awake,” the nurse told him.

“Right right,” he dug in the pockets of his old work phone and looked down at his contact. Serra was called over a dozen times just that week, video call after video call of hard conversations and uncomfortable medical realities. Carter walked into the room with the nurse, who now he sees as this thin breeze was tired. That room was all complicated technology, showing how bodies are machines themselves all firing and running in sync. He could be anywhere now. His past self had nowhere else to be, but he could have gone to softer days where the woman who laid on her back struggling to stay conscious, to keep down food, to be aware of the man who stood before him. Carter, the ghost Carter felt his body scream as if he was whole. The fear crawled out his chest and out as rivers of tears.

“You brick shit house…” that old rough voice. If he had it rough, struggling to get up from the couch without everything screaming at him she had been through hell. Yet. That voice had stopped his tears. The fear gone as now that voice he hadn’t heard for so long brought out the old joys he forgot. He looked over at the living giant who stood stiff as a board, he fished out his pocket with his phone to call Serra.

“Where’s my pretty girl? You didn’t eat her did you?” she sat herself up, this ghost felt alive again himself seeing the old woman who him up as the Carter of the past moved to her side to coax her into resting. With a quick slap to his hand she gave a toothless smile.

“You trying to get fresh with me?” That old woman. Serra’s grandmother, wrinkled, fragile, and mean as she looked at this towering giant.

“No ma’am. I am not, just you need to rest that all.”

“Rest for what? I’m gonna be in this damn bed. All I’m doing is resting, getting tired or being tired. So now you pecker wood where is my pretty girl,” she stuck out her lip at him and he looked down squinting at his phone.

“Too damn young to be squinting like that, you on a diet? Thinner than I last remember, probably ate half a bucket of chicken on your work break at the shop?” Carter was getting red in the face, his ignorance told him she was doing better. The ghost turned around and saw the nurse, her face numb to the cycle. She stood in the hall and looked at someone on her way out. The ghost lingered, listened, every little insult in her accent as he watched himself struggle.

“Carter...you’re working up a fuss for nothin’ I wanna see you. Hard not to with your big ass. Make a shade in the summer.” Ghost could laugh, a smile stretched on his face. A hardy laugh out where no one can hear it.

“I don’t understand,” Carter responded. He called twice, each time straight to voice mail.

“Oh I know, bigger the belly the smaller the brain. Read that in a book once,” she had her hands on her lap, her eyes focused on him.

“Well you old bat, no need to be rude.” the giant put his phone away, his voice was deep and serious.

“Well if you listen, I’d be nicer.” the woman snapped at him.

“fat chance.” As the gentile giant sighed the ghost laughed harder, his lungs ached and he coughed.

“You’d know something about fat chances.” she laughed too, like a cackle. She looked at Carter waiting.

“Come on Carter, this part you call me a witch…” she looked at him.

“Ms. Ethel,” his voice got low, somber, and then he felt a flick from her boney finger.

“No, don’t act like I don’t know. I know what I know, because I know it…” she looked down at her hands, she felt on the I.V. in her.

“Just know...that I need you to hear it from me. You’re done a good job for my little girl, and I know I never said it. So you better remember me saying it, because only gonna hear it once. She’s a smart young lady, and of course it was hard taking care of her without her mother. I did what I could with what little I had.”

“Ma’am I think she needs to hear–”

“No no no, I tell that girl almost too much how smart she is, how proud I am of her, so...I’m telling you. You’re doing good,” she smiled, looking like she had to force the words out.

“I did good.”

“Hey listen now you fat bastard, I said doing good…” Ethel corrected.

“You’ll keep doing good...now remember that. Because I won’t be here to remind you. Now, you just got to keep doing good. I think you will, or I’d be holding on for dear life till you are in this bed instead of me!” she raised up her fist, dramatically.

“Now...call her. Let me tell her again how pretty she is, how smart she is, and how really lucky she’s smart and pretty for having an ugly and dumb daddy,” she smiled at Charter. He looked down at his phone and called Serra again. Now? However, now working in such temporal matters, a ghost is laughing. The device vibrated, he walked closer and leaned in.

“Wait...damn thing.” he needed to see her face, see how her eyes lit up when she saw Serra. When finally Serra answered the phone, tired, with red eyes from tears and sleepless nights.

“Momma?” she called.

“Hey there pretty girl.” Ethel smiled, and Serra smiled. Even then as that giant felt the world crash onto him his lips curled. Then a flash.

The room. It spun and the smell of ionized air was too much for an old man. He stumbled feeling the heat of the last jump making his stomach twist before he dropped and he felt someone catch him.

“Got you. I got you.” That tired voice entered his ears as he felt arms around her. Slowly his senses were coming back.

“Serra?” he called, his vision returned and he saw the tired brown eyes, and tight black braids. Carter felt solid, heavy, as the world kept spinning.

“Yes! Yes...I got you…”

He blinked and took a deep breath, the smell of overworked machines. Burning plastic and oil was accompanied by the sounds of grinding gears. He smiled and looked at his pretty girl.

“You ok?” she asked him. Her full round face looked at him with fear and confusion.

“You hurt?” she asked with more expediency.

“No...no why?” he asked as he worked his way back to his feet with her help.

“You’re crying.” she responded as if it was obvious.

“I’m...I’m ok.” Charter hugged her, his frail body filled with life. Serra froze before falling into the hug with a smile on her face.

“Ok. Ok, come on let me set you down, the rest of the team need to hear about your experience.” Serra attempted a professional tone, but her voice cracked.

“Yeah. We should.” Carter pulled away slowly, then felt a sudden cold breeze over take him. He felt shiver for a moment. He paused as he looked around the lab, a mess of photos, tools, and wires.

“You sure you’re ok? You’re pale.” Serra asked him, as her hand wrapped around his.

“I am more than ok. Just thought I saw a ghost.”