The Time Travel memoirs: Lost And So Alone

I awoke gasping for breath. I was dizzy and I felt incredibly sick. The memories of Dan and his psycho squad were still fresh in my mind; the possibilities of what could have gone wrong were too startling to think of. I was on a park bench in a park in London, Regents Park I thought. People were walking around me, looking at me in disgust. My head was hurting badly; it was almost as if I had a separate heart in my head. I put my head in my hands and thought about what I had done. I had essentially killed three men. The pleasure of killing Dan was what I was worried about, yeah he deserved it, but it was if I had a demon living in my brain.

I had found out the date by checking a discarded newspaper in a bin. It was 31st October 2003. I smiled at the date. Halloween, I liked Halloween; it was one of the few times of the year I did like. I should have realised really, I mean, people were walking past me dressed as witches and ghosts. Perhaps spending time on Massidonia messes with your mind a little. I looked at the pocket watch. The watch had stopped, but time hadn’t.
2003 was very different. I stood up and looked around. It was nearly night time; some stars were appearing in the sky. I could hear the excited chattering of children who had dressed up in order to take sweets off their neighbours.

I remembered my childhood; I remembered looking at the other kids dressed up, outside of the window of the orphanage. I envied them, I wanted to dress up like Dracula or Frankenstein, I had seen the movies and I had loved them, it would have been amazing to dress up as them. Halloween wasn’t so big in 1985, not as big as it was now in 2003, but quite a few kids dressed up near the orphanage.

I took a stroll and walked outside of the park, where the lights ceased to light my way. I felt more than I saw movement and I looked behind me to see where it had come from. During this process I hadn’t stopped moving. There was nothing there, I continued my walk, with no real purpose and the feeling of being followed did not go away. I began to run. Running was a thing I always loved, before I had met Faith I had ran every day in Chelsea in my apartment, I don’t know why I had stopped. Now I was definitely aware of being followed, I swerved to my left into a graveyard.

When I was a child, the prospect of graveyards scared the hell out of me. Of course when you are a kid there is a monster behind every gravestone and the dead would always be ready to walk. That was always my overactive imagination, growing up as a teen I sought graveyards as refuge, a quiet place to be, away from the world and the people who inhabit it.

Now though in 2003 I rushed through the graveyard in blind panic, tripping a couple of times and not daring to look back. Perspiration tortured my eyes, so much so that I didn’t see the woman if front of me. I bumped into her and knocked her over. I felt really bad; I helped her up and smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry Ma’am, I really am.” I looked over my shoulder and groaned, she looked at me in a way which confused me, as if I were a pleasing puzzle which she couldn’t work out. I smiled and ran past her, saving her lovely bemused expression in my mind for later.

I could see a church in the distance; I decided to head for that. I was still thinking of that beautiful woman when I entered the gate of the church to another smaller graveyard. She had the most beautiful Auburn hair, very tidy and short and the most dazing green eyes I had ever seen. She looked wild and energetic. Her features had been bathed in beauty as if nature had just crafted them. The graveyard was damp because of rain, perhaps from the night before and my feet squelched in the mud.

I hated mud.

I lost my footing and slipped, I landed in front of a gravestone. I looked up and before I could swear I read the gravestone. I gasped for breath as I read the gravestone. “Here lies George Carter, died December 25th 1985.” My eyes widened and the gravestone was wiped blank. A foot which was nothing but bone landed on the gravestone, the flesh was long gone.

It was then I also noticed the wind blowing a long black cloak of fine silk, near where I kneeled. I didn’t believe in death till that day in 2003. Mainly because the theory seemed too much like that of a fairy tale Then again, I didn’t believe in demons either or planets called Massidonia. I shuffled away from the figure as he brought down the heavy wood of the scythe to the Earth where I had sat.

Death was pretty much how I had imagined him. He was just a skeleton with a cloak and a scythe. Death was an animated skeleton and moved just like a human being. Just watching him was daunting. The lipless face looked like it was smiling, I don’t know how he managed it but that’s how he looked.

He pulled the scythe out of the Earth and practically strutted towards me. I stood up to face him. I wouldn’t say that all of my fear had simply vanished because it simply hadn’t, but I felt that I could face this guy. I noticed that my shoulder and leg felt as good as new. Damian and Beelzebub wanted my body preserved; they wanted me to be alive so my mind could be destroyed, so they healed me. How sweet of them.

As Death walked towards me he ran the scythe slowly down his ribcage, making a small tune, like a xylophone. Death was mocking me, was he here to take me?
I turned to run, less than a second after I had turned around, the scythe was eating my flesh, it was buried deep beneath my shoulder blade. I screamed, I screamed and wailed like a banshee, I did not deserve this. I. Did. Not. Deserve. This.

Death pulled the scythe out of my shoulder with a painful tug and hit me with the heavy wooden handle. I fell to the ground. “Damian’s technique won’t work, the lord says that if I beat Damian to your soul then I shall be rewarded George, it’s nothing personal. It’s just business.” What the hell was he talking about? Did demons and Death compete?
No, he was a bounty hunter for Beelzebub. The best man would win. If Death killed me he would take my soul, but if I escaped then Damian would have a better chance. I raised my eyebrow at the scythe as it was swung again. I was hardly spoiled for choices. Beelzebub liked games and hated humans and demons alike. The scythe was getting closer.
I heard her shout before I saw her.
Death felt her brick hit his skull.
The scythe missed by inches and I turned over and vomited on a gravestone.