When I was eight, I was abducted for about an hour.
I know that’s an odd statement, but trust me when I say it gets weirder.
When I was eight, a man abducted me right off the street. My parents and I lived in a shabby apartment about a block from my primary school. Since mom worked days and dad worked nights, I was responsible for getting myself to and from school since I was six. I walked the same way to school every day, and if someone were trying to snatch me, it wouldn’t have been hard to learn my routine.
So there I was, walking to school with my Power Rangers bookbag swinging on my shoulders, thinking of nothing more pressing than the math test I hadn’t studied for the night before.
Suddenly, a white van rolled close enough to ruffle my hair with their side mirror when a hand caught the handle at the top of my bookbag.
I struggled as the meaty hand lifted me into the passenger seat, but he pulled me up with little effort. He reached over to shut the door, his arm crossing right in front of my face, and this was the opportunity I needed to bite or kick or fight in some way before he got the van rolling again. I found myself unable to react, though, frozen by the ease with which I had been lifted from the street. As we moved away from the curb, I glanced at my abductor as he sat behind the wheel.
It’s funny how your mind always creates a picture of a potential abductor. When the teacher talked about strangers in school, I always pictured a man in a long coat, a wide-brimmed hat to cover his face, and a soft voice with a gentle nature. On all the tv shows I wasn’t allowed to watch but did, child molesters were always these casual business types with vans full of candy and sweet smiles. This guy, however, looked nothing like the guys on the TV. The man sitting next to me was large, gray, and scary-looking. He looked more like the prisoners on the tv prison shows I watched when no one paid attention. He had long greasy hair that was graying in odd places, muscular arms connected to a barrel chest barely contained by his dirty sweater, and a pair of eyes that looked a thousand miles away as he piloted the van on its course.
I became terrified that I would never see my parents again, that I would never see my toys again, and that my parents wouldn’t have anything to remember me by except the school pictures I’d brought home last week.
It’s funny sometimes the things a child worries about.
“Don’t worry, Mark, I’m not going to hurt you.” the guy said in a gravelly voice full of mucus.
I stiffened in my seat, “How do you know my name?”
That was a stupid question. The man had probably been stalking me for weeks before making his move. He knew my name, knew my parent’s names, knew my address, knew the kids I played with at recess, and what time I took my first poop every morning. He had stalked me like a hunter stalks a deer, and now it was time for him to move in for the kill.
“Because I am you.”
That took me by surprise.
I had expected many things. I had thought maybe he’d say he was in love with me. To scream that he wanted to kill me so I’d be scared so he could “get off” on my fear. Maybe even that he would keep me forever or be my new dad, and I would be his son. I hadn’t expected him to say that he WAS me.
“What do you mean?” I asked, visibly confused.
He stared straight ahead, seemingly unable to begin. I thought again about how he was probably going to hurt me and leave me in the woods somewhere after he’d killed me. That was what the killers always did on Unsolved Mysteries after they killed someone. I bet he had a shovel or something in the back. My eight-year-old mind could already see him carrying my limp body off into the forest to bury me in an unmarked grave. The dogs would come sniffing after me at some point, and they’d unearth a perfect little skeleton in a hole in the woods. My parents would cry and scream, just like the parents did on TV, and Robert Stack would ask the viewers to call in if they had any information.
It’s funny, the places a kid’s mind goes to in time of panic.
“This is hard, kid. Now that I’m here, I don’t know how to start.”
We sat in silence for a few more minutes before he found his words.
“So in forty years, humanity cracks the secret of time travel,” He paused again, unsure how to continue, before finally settling into a rhythm, “By the time they do, you will have spent twenty years of your mandatory two life sentences; in prison.”
I turned to look at him, unable to comprehend what he was saying, “Prison? Why am I in prison?”
He sighed, fishing a cigarette out of the cupholder where he had several sitting loose.
He pressed the lighter on the dashboard and put the cigarette in his mouth as he waited for it to pop out again.
“We’ve done some things we aren’t proud of, Mark. We acted in haste, and now we must contemplate at leisure. Let’s just say that you took the easy way a few too many times, and finally, it came back to bite you. The old neighborhood claims us all eventually, Mark. You’re living in a septic tank, and it’s only a matter of time before it pulls you down into the shit.”
The lighter popped, making me jump, and he yanked it out and pressed the tip to his cigarette.
He inhaled and turned back to look at me.
“We don’t have much longer. Someone noticed me take you off the street, at least they did last time, and the cops are going to pull me over in about ten minutes. You have to stop this from happening. You can’t let the old neighborhood claim you like it always does. There are bad people there, people that will be responsible for our downfall. You have to get as far away as you can. You have to get away and never look back. If you stay, you will be forever damned. GET OUT MARK, GET OUT AND LIVE!”
The cigarette jittered in his lips. He was shaking me then, yelling into my face and shaking me as the cigarette’s red end swam back and forth in his mouth. I felt my head getting fuzzy as he shook me, and when the red lights started flashing, I thought it must be from all the shaking. He stopped then, turning to look at the lights, and reached into his pocket to pull out a glimmering piece of steel.
It was a gun, a big gun, and when he stepped out of the car and leveled it at the policemen, they seemed afraid.
They weren’t afraid when they shot him, though.
They yelled at me as I climbed out of the driver’s door, but I didn’t care. I held his hand as he lay dying, his face turned to look at me, and I could see that half his cheek was missing. His sweater was turning the color of autumn leaves, and when he spoke, it was gurgly and wet. He coughed a bright daub of blood onto my shirt, and I still remember how it stood out against the bright yellow as the cops ran towards me.
“Get…out…Mark. Get…out…before it’s too…”
By the time they got there, he was dead.
My parents arrived shortly after I got to the police station. Mom hugged me, crying, and Dad wrapped himself clumsily around me as well. It was the first time in months that I could remember seeing them together. As they folded me into their embrace, I remembered thinking that everything was going to be okay. I could avoid the scary man’s prophecy and prevent the terrible fate he was trying to warn me about.
How naive I was then.
That night, mom and dad had a terrible fight. Mom wanted to leave the neighborhood. She wanted us to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for a while until we could find a different place. She didn’t feel safe here, not in a place where people just got picked up off the street and nearly kidnapped in broad daylight. Dad wouldn’t hear of it. He had lived here all his life, and this was where his work was. She was crazy, maybe she could just go get another job anywhere, but he wasn’t about to throw away ten years on the job because she was scared.
As I lay in my bed, I realized that everything wasn’t just going to be okay.
I clutched my stuffed ninja turtle tightly as they continued to rage at each other in the living room.
The next day, mom came to talk to me.
It was decided that mom and I would stay with my grandparents for a while.
It was also decided that dad would stay at the apartment.
A “little while” turned into the next ten years of my life.
My parents got divorced a year after we went to stay with Grandma and Grandpa. I went to see him a few times, but mom usually insisted that he come to us. When I did go to see him, she came with me. She still didn’t trust the old neighborhood, and the few times I went back, I saw that it had only gotten worse. Gangs and drugs had taken over, and Dad had become a stranger to me. When the construction company he had been with for so long closed down, he joined the element around him. Mom wouldn’t tell me what he was doing, but I’m sure he was making drugs now.
The last time I saw him, he looked like a zombie from a horror movie. His hair was thinning, his face was gaunt, and he smelled like a truck stop toilet. He told me to stay in school and make something of myself. He told me not to end up like him, not to let people I thought were my friends drag me down into something I couldn’t get back out of. Whether he knew it or not, he spoke the words that the strange man had said to me when he told me never to come back to the old neighborhood.
“It’s a trap, son. The only thing it can do is ruin you.”
When his apartment burnt down a few months later, mom wouldn’t even take me to his funeral.
I was fifteen by then, just starting high school and ready for the rest of my life.
My grandparents had money, money that I now understand that my mother wanted. They gave both of us the best life they could. With my grandfather’s influence, I got into private school after private school. My mother made it very clear that I wasn’t to squander the gift they had given me, and I took her words to heart. By the time I was eighteen, I was top of my class and ready to enter almost any college I wanted.
College was where I met Tabitha.
Tabitha was where everything changed.
I went to a prestigious college, but I won’t sully their reputation by naming them here. They were proud to name me amongst their alumni when I first stepped into their halls of learning. I took to my classes much the way I had in high school. I excelled, was noticed, and was praised for my hard work. I made the dean’s list and was invited to join the kind of academic circles that would ensure I had my own level of influence when the time came for my children to attend school. I was as far from that sidewalk in my old neighborhood as I had ever been.
Little did I know I was closer than I thought.
Tabitha was a year above me. She was a film major I’d met through a friend, and I knew I wanted her from the first time I saw her. My friend, Jace, was not what you would call “centered on his studies.” Jace had been accepted on a sports scholarship, and I had accepted that he was a burnout who was here to party and meet girls. Jace thought it was the height of hilarity to get me to skip out on my studies to hang out with him and his friends, and Tabitha was one such friend. It was she who brought about my return to my old life.
It all started because Jace was in my room, calling the person he bought drugs from.
“Morherfucker!” He yelled, slamming the phone down and startling me from my work.
“He won’t sell to me anymore!” He sulked, drawing his feet to his chest as he sat on my bed, “Says my friends keep calling and coming by, and he thinks they’re bringing heat around. Where am I supposed to get my Aether now?”
Aether was a drug that was trendy on campus at the time. I knew it was amphetamine-based, but other than that, I had little knowledge of it. I didn’t take drugs. I wanted to stay sharp, and other than the knowledge I gained from Jace and his friends, I was pretty ignorant of the whole culture.
“I was supposed to get some for the party tonight. Now I’ve got to show up empty-handed.”
A party? Maybe Tabitha would be there. I wanted to see her again, but if Jace wasn’t invited to any more parties, neither would I. I thought fast and realized that I might not be as ignorant of the culture as I thought.
Maybe I did know someone.
“I know a place you could get some drugs,” I said, almost shyly.
An hour later, we pulled up in front of my uncle Randy’s house. “Uncle” Randy was what I had always called Dad’s friend Randall for most of my life. He and Dad had been childhood friends, Uncle Randy had been the best man at my parent’s wedding, and I had kept in touch with him a little after dad died. His house had once been pretty, too pretty for a bachelor mom would often say, but now it looked run down and kind of creepy when we pulled up.
Jace looked as if this was not how he was used to buying drugs, but I climbed out and told him to follow me.
Randy was on his front porch, and he looked rough. He had clearly been cooking for quite some time. Burn scars and adult acne spotting his face, his receding hairline had been scooped back until the shiny pate drew attention to the greasy ponytail that hung limply off the back of his head. He looked like every internet troll you’d ever seen meme’d, but his weasley eyes were full of dull hate and a bright hunger for whatever he could get from others.
He greeted me warmly, but those eyes never smiled.
We bought Aether from him and were gone without much catching up or small talk.
Apparently, Uncle Randy didn’t have time for small talk anymore.
The party was a huge success. Tabitha was there, and after Jace told them all how I had saved the party, she warmed up to me considerably. I didn’t need the Aether that she puffed into my mouth with every passionate kiss. I was high enough off just her being close to me. She spent most of the party with her hand wrapped around mine, her body pressed against me.
We started dating after that.
I wouldn’t use Aether, just getting a contact high when we kissed after she used it. She called it Aether Hopping and delighted in pushing the potent smoke into my mouth with every kiss. We started becoming very close. As we spent more and more time together, I tried to juggle my studies with the rush of my first girlfriend. I had always been too consumed by this term paper or that collegiate essay to have much time for a companion. With Tabitha, though, I felt happy in her distractions and full of her presence.
Eventually, we graduated from college and moved into our own apartment. She got work as a columnist for a magazine, and I started work as an architect at a firm in the city. The money was good, we were both making enough money to do the things we loved, and we found ample time to spend with each other. Tabitha kept her drug use under control, and I had broken myself of what little habit I had. Tabitha was enough for me, and I hoped I was enough for her.
I was so naive.
We had been together for a few years when she started spiraling. She said that she wrote better when she was on Aether. She certainly wrote more, but probably not better. The magazine she wrote for began to kick her articles back, not pleased with her work. This made her more self-conscious and made her use more. As the money stopped coming in, she still seemed to find a way to get Aether. She never asked me for money, but I could always tell that she was just going day to day, trying to find her next fix.
In hindsight, I should have realized what was going on.
She began to be gone for long periods, always coming home tired and irritable. She was aloof and confrontational. When I confronted her about it, she became aggressive and often combative. I never knew what to do with her in these times. She was so removed from the Tabitha I had fallen in love with, and I didn’t know what to do with her when she became this venom-spitting demon. Afterward, we always made up. She said how sorry she was and promised never to do it again. Then we repeated the experience a few weeks later.
The night she came home with the bruises was when I really lost it. We fought, a screaming match like none we had ever had, and she stormed out of the apartment. I heard her car start up and leave the lot. I just sat there in our apartment, wondering what I should do.
What I did, in the end, was follow her.
I had often worried that her drug use might send her spiraling out of control. So, I had installed a program on her phone that would let me track its location from my phone. I know this sounds invasive, but I was terrified that she might get lost or hurt, and I might need to find her quickly. Aether has severe health risks, and the thought of her having a heart attack or something and no one being able to help her hurt me deeply.
I wish now that I had just let her leave.
I followed her to the neighborhood.
I followed her to Uncle Randy’s house.
Her car was parked outside. As I walked up, I could already hear a low noise coming from the living room. The lights were off, the living room curtains drawn but illuminated from behind by the glow of the TV. The door was ajar, one of her purple sneakers left across the threshold. As I pushed the door open, I could hear Tabitha’s heady moans and could guess what was going on. Randall was her supplier. When she couldn’t pay him, she had settled up in other ways. Now she was in his living room, paying with the only currency she had left.
I’d like to say that I flew into a rage, but I didn’t.
I’d like to say that I blacked out, but I didn’t.
I remember everything with crystal clarity.
I opened the coat closet and took out the shotgun that I knew was there from childhood. It was loaded, as it always was, and Uncle Randy had kept it as clean and oiled as the day he had shown it to seven-year-old me. He told me it was for bad people that might want to hurt him. He told me it wasn’t a toy, and I should never point a gun at anyone I didn’t want dead.
A lesson that came back to bite him that day.
Tabitha screamed when she saw me framed in the living room door. She had been smiling moments before, sitting in his lap and writhing on top of him, but now all the blood had drained from her face. She looked like the corpse she would soon become. Randy turned his head, that greasy tail swinging. He looked at me in surprise, and I leveled the shotgun at the two of them, my face a cold mask of indifference. Tabitha said my name, mouthed it once before her perfect chest was a spray of blood, and the buckshot turned it into a pitted landscape of gore and viscera.
Randy said nothing.
The first shot had opened up the top of his skull, and he died instantly.
She lay atop him, tears welling in her eyes as she fought for breath. She fixed me with those eyes as if to say, “Well, what else was I supposed to do?” I didn’t have an answer for her. I just dropped the gun to the worn rug and walked out onto the front porch to wait for the cops. I wasn’t there when she died. I didn’t hold her in my arms and tell her how sorry I was. I just sat on the porch and listened to her gasp out her last breaths until they were muffled by the sound of approaching police cars.
I was convicted of a double homicide at the age of twenty-two.
I was given two life sentences and will never see the outside world again.
Except, I will, I guess.
I don’t know how old I will be when the program makes me an offer. The self I met was old, but everyone over twenty is old to an eight-year-old. If I had to guess, I would say he was somewhere in his forties, but that’s just a guess. He told me I would be in prison for twenty years. I guess this is a fact that’s set in stone. As I sit in my cell and think about what my future self told me, I often think about what he said.
“Someone saw me take you off the street. At least they did last time.”
That leads me to believe that he experienced this when he was a child. Maybe I always go back and try to warn myself, and perhaps I always fail. What if my life is nothing but a loop of trying and dying to keep myself from coming to Randy’s living room and ruining my life? How long has this loop been going? What would happen if I closed it? Would I simply cease to exist?
I lay on my single bed some nights, staring at the roaches crawling across the ceiling and think about the people who have brought me to this point. My mother, father, grandparents, Jace, Tabitha, Uncle Randy, and I somehow know what must be done as they all swim by.
When it’s my turn to step into the past, I don’t think I’ll explain anything.
I might just take the gun out of my pocket and shoot myself as I sit rooted in the passenger seat and see what happens next.
I’ve got twenty years to think about it, I guess.
Plenty of time to work out the finer points of my own murder.