Infinite Time: Time Travel Adventure (4 page)

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Is he honestly sending my mom back to work? If he’d get off his lazy ass and look for a job, maybe we wouldn’t have to live like this. Maybe my mom would actually be a mom instead of working twelve hours a day, seven days a week at the local grocery store. Maybe she could be here, see what happens in this house when she’s not around.

But none of that is ever going to happen.

“Where are you going?” Neil calls as I head up the stairs.

“Leave him,” mom says softly.

“Your kid really is a miracle kid… it's a miracle he’s still alive,” Neil says, laughing, loud enough for me to hear him upstairs.

All I can do is slam my door in response.

Mom and dad called me a miracle baby. Neil has no right referring to me as that.

When I was born, I never cried for my first breath. The doctors tried everything, but it never worked. They declared I was a stillborn—born still, dead.

My parents loved to tell me the story of that day. I was placed into my mom’s arms after the doctors had cleaned me up. They thought they were holding a dead baby, but then I took my first breath, in her arms.

Everyone in the room was completely surprised with my outburst of screams, which were followed by my mom’s cries that I was alive.

News quickly spread in the town of my being a miracle baby. I even had my photo taken for the local paper. That was the peak of my life. They say everyone has their fifteen minutes of fame. Mine were the first few minutes of my life, but it quickly went downhill after that.

I look at the family picture on top of my dresser. That was my old family. Mom is smiling up at dad, dad is smiling down at me—we’re the perfect family. The photo was taken during the last family vacation in our holiday home in Texas, where Dad was from. He loved taking me out there and teaching me to shoot. I was a pretty good shot.

We did have a good few years, and that’s one of the hardest things to get over. I can still remember what a normal family is like. It's like being given a taste of chocolate, only to be told you will never taste it again. My life is bittersweet.

A loud thundering sound rolls into my brain from the oncoming train, on time as always, every hour on the hour. The house shakes as the train flies past. One day the house is going to crumble and crash down to the ground.

This house is rotten. In the winter the walls are damp to the touch, and there are stains of black mold in the corners of the ceiling that have started to creep down the walls. As if the mold is trying to cover the walls with its creepy darkness, surrounding me in its damp poison.

In the winter the darkness enters my lungs, choking me from the inside, which results in my spending most of winter sick in my bed as the darkness swallows me.

This house is making me sick, but there is nothing we can do. I long to be back in my old house. I never felt winter in that house; the temperature was always perfect. Dad loved natural fires as well, so we used to have an open fire in the living room. The flames would roar as we placed our hands in front of them, warming them after playing out in the snow. Now we just have one main room, which Neil has claimed for his own. There is no family room anymore, just as there is no family.

I reach for my computer game next to the family photo. Time to get lost in another world, a world where the real Parker doesn’t exist.

“Take that!” I yell at the screen as I fire a barrage of bullets, and the figure of my foe drops to the ground, along with mine.

My heavy eyes look at the screen. The sunlight has stopped seeping through the blinds and is replaced with stars. My head throbs from this afternoon’s knockout.

I wish that it were Neil’s body laid dead on the TV screen. No, wait, I wish he were the one lying outside the store, in the rain, with blood draining from his body, and not my dad’s.

Why do Neil and Travis get to live while my dad is left in a cemetery?

Great,
bet I will have more frigging nightmares replaying the night my dad was murdered. I think of Clara; memories of her are the only things that stop my nightmares.

I drop the controller to the ground and click off the TV, leaving a tiny blue glow from the TV monitor and a red glow from my alarm clock, which sits on the nightstand by my bed. The glowing number 12:56:01 reflects off the edge of the orange bottle with my sleeping pills. I’ve been on them for years, since I was a child. I had a habit of sleepwalking. Dad once found me in the neighbor’s house when I was a little kid.

I hate the way they make me feel in the morning. It's like I’m in a thick fog that allows nothing to seep into my brain, which makes school a nightmare, even more than normal.

Not tonight
, I tell myself, as I do most nights. Tonight is the seventh night in a row I’ve gone without the sleeping pills.

I throw the blanket over my head and bury myself in the heat it provides, hoping it will knock me out, but all it does is steam my glasses up.

It really would be easier to sleep if this bed wasn’t so uncomfortable. I flip around trying to find that sweet spot, but can’t.

12:59:01. If it gets to 01:00:00 I’m taking the sleeping tablets.
Parker, don’t do it!
You’re just starting to feel normal, as if the years of medications are finally leaving your body.
No doubt I’ll fail tomorrow's math test, from the lack of sleep. But I would rather fail one test if it means I get out of this permanent zombie state.

I reach my hand out with my glasses to put them on the side by my clock, but the darkness enters my mind before I get there...

Darkness surrounds me, swallows me as a hole dragging me down, down, deeper down. I feel as if I’m free-falling from the edge of a cliff. My body twitches and I fall, and crash-land against ground.

What the frigging hell? Dreams aren’t supposed to hurt.

I open my eyes. I’m lying on the road. People’s feet hurry past me. I flip onto my back. My hands and knees burn from the crash landing. Next to me are my glasses. I inspect them.
Thank God they didn’t break in the fall.
The thought makes me laugh.
It wouldn’t matter if they did, it's just a dream.

I put my glasses on and notice a scratch on one of the lenses, making my eye travel to that, but only for a moment. That’s when I realize I’m in the frigging middle of a crosswalk. A sea of people swivel around to look at me. Some of them have their faces covered with surgical masks. Their almond-shaped eyes glance at me for a moment before the people continue their fast movements across the road.

There’s no Chinatown on Long Island, so I couldn’t have possibly sleepwalked here.
It is just a dream
, I remind myself. I’ve never dreamt about China, if it is China. Who knows? All the signs look like they’re written in Chinese, but they could be anything. I’ve never left America; the only other place I’ve been to is Texas on our annual family trip. Well, it used to be our annual trip. That’s now dead, along with my dad.

Stop it, Parker. Don’t derail the dream, it will only end up turning into the normal nightmare.

Okay, so this is definitely not Long Island, and there is no way I could have gotten to NYC’s Chinatown if I was indeed sleepwalking. I set my mind back on track to this cool dream.

The harsh smell of nicotine enters my lungs as I get to my feet; the smell is way worse than in NYC. People stare at me as I stand.

Oh crap, I’m in the same clothes I went to bed in: my Avengers boxer shorts, and nothing else. I close my eyes and imagine I’m wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

I open my eyes, but I’m still in nothing but my boxers. This is weird.

The warmth from the sun beams down on my naked body. If this were real I would be in real trouble; sunburn would be having fun with my pasty body.

I place my hand over my nipples and move into the crowd, which parts as they see me. Maybe I should try this in real life—I could get to places a hell of a lot quicker. Nah, I don’t think I will try it.

Problem is I haven’t got a clue where I’m going.

The ground beneath my feet is warm. Every pebble pokes into the bottom of my naked feet, as if I’m really there.

It feels like something is stuck on my foot. I hop onto my left foot for a second and lift my right foot up to inspect what’s on the bottom of it. Chewed gum, yuck. I pick it off with my fingers and wipe them down on my boxers and keep walking.

This is probably the oddest dream I’ve ever had. It’s weirder than the whole naked-in-class dream I have at least twice a month. It’s always history, and Clara normally points and laughs at me.

There’s got to be a point to this, right? My subconscious mind must be looking for something.

I keep walking, hoping the dream will change and I’ll be somewhere a little more entertaining.

And just as in any good dream, my prayers are answered—well, in a weird, twisted way. A little girl weaving between the crowds runs toward me. She looks no older than five, and is speaking a mile a minute to me in a language I don’t understand. Why couldn’t she be a hot, older girl instead?

She wraps her tiny hands almost painfully around my thigh, looking up at me with big, almond-shaped brown eyes, her bangs resting perfectly above her eyebrows as desperation pours from her lips.

I want to help, but I can’t understand a thing she’s saying. I grab her wrists and try to pull her away, but she’s holding too tight. It feels like she’s trying to give me a Chinese burn.

I bend down to be on her eye level. “Where are your parents?”

More words pour from her mouth, none of which I can understand, but the words are full of emotions, and based on the speed in which they flow, she must be scared, very scared.

“Do you know this girl?” I reach out and snag the sleeve of a passing kid. “Can you help me? I don’t know what she’s saying.”

The kid jerks her arm away.
What the hell?
“Kimi, what the hell are you doing in my dream?”

Kimi looks at me with a puzzled look, like I’ve just told her she’s won the lottery as I rip her winning ticket up at the same time. As quickly as she appeared, she disappears in the sea of people.

“Hey Kimi, come back, help me,” I yell.

Then I grab hold of another passing person, a middle-aged woman who looks like she might have some experience with kids. “This girl needs help.”

But, again, the person doesn’t stop, just glances at me with confusion. Well, I must look odd, being a nearly naked whiter-than-white kid speaking a language they don’t understand.

I stand on my tiptoes, trying to see over the crowd. Maybe there’s a cop or someone who might help the girl. Instead of spotting a cop, I see a head of red hair bobbing through the crowd, standing out from the black hair surrounding it. I can’t really tell from this distance, but whoever it is seems to be headed straight for us.

Maybe it’s the girl’s mother. But their hair color is different. The sobbing girl’s hair is jet black.

I try to remove the girl’s hands from my thigh again, but she’s a strong little bugger. I can’t even get her to move a little lower so that she’s not tugging at the bottom of my boxers. If she doesn’t stop, this might turn into one of those naked dreams!

I look over the crowd again and spot that head of red hair. I can see that it’s a girl. A pretty girl. Her hair is long, pulled back into a tight ponytail, and she has intense brown eyes, not almond-shaped eyes like everyone else’s. Her eyes remind me of something, but I can’t quite place what. They lock onto my pale body, and they don’t look happy.

Why does she look pissed off with me? I don’t know what I’ve done. Problem is I can’t exactly run away, because of the little girl still attached to my thigh.

I hold my hands up, not really eager to get beat up by a girl, even in my dreams.

She rushes up to me through the crowd that seems to part for this strange white girl. She’s dressed in a tight all-black ninja-like getup, with a sweet, long, black leather coat, making her look a bit goth and kickass all merged together. In fact, she looks like an assassin sent to kill me.
Cool.

She stares at me for a long second as though assessing the situation.

Then she speaks quickly to the child in whatever language these people speak. Chinese? Japanese? Thai? I still don’t know, and it really wouldn’t make any difference, since I don’t know any of them.

The kid responds, her hold on my thigh finally loosening.

“We have to go,” the girl in black says to me in a perfect American accent.

“Who are you? What the hell is going on?”

“Scarlet. The girl is Tora,” she says.

“I’m Parker.”

Scarlet’s eyes scan the crowd. “We don’t have time to talk now. We have to go.”

“Why are you in my dream?”

Her eyes narrow as she focuses on me again. “Dream?” She shakes her head. “No matter, we need to go now,” she says, gritting her teeth.

There is a shift in the crowd behind us. Screams erupt as people begin to yell, diving out of the way of something we can’t yet see.

Scarlet says something to Tora, and then picks her up and places her on her hip, like a mother would a small child.

Scarlet grabs my arm. “Run, now!”