Take A Hit Backward, Man
An original short by @MadMikeMarsbergen
 
 
 
 

1

It was an oddly warm day in winter, when I inadvertently helped turn Adolf Hitler into a world-renowned artist. Yes, the same jerk of a man responsible for bringing about the Jewish Holocaust. As I'm sure you can imagine, however, the temperature was hardly the oddest part of that day.
        So take a seat and get comfortable, grab a drink—maybe a snack, too—and let me tell you my story. You need not worry—there won't be any questions afterward. This is not an exam. This is simply the story of my life, recalled for you from the deepest depths of my memory, so that you might begin to understand the whys of the world we live in. And believe me, there are many.
        My life took a serious turn for the weird on that warm winter's day. The sun had cut through the cover of clouds, and we were all amazed that we could comfortably wear tee-shirts and shorts without catching a chill. My best friend at the time—we'll call him Jimmy, even though his real name didn't start with a J, or even a G, for that matter. My best friend Jimmy came over with this new bong he'd purchased. He wouldn't stop raving about it, claimed it could transport us anywhere throughout time, and that we had the power to change the past, present and future.
        Where I sit now: an old man inside the Gables Institute For The Stupid, Deranged, Impaired, Elderly Or Otherwise Insane, staring out a window with the world at my back and the grave right here before my eyes, I wonder if I—we—would have been better off with the way things were.
        Maybe I should have wrenched the bong out of Jimmy's hands and smashed it, right then and there. Maybe our world wouldn't be the way it is now, with all the changes I find myself being held responsible for. It's too much. Too much weight for one man's—an old man's—shoulders to carry.
        Oh well. And, as the popular saying amongst youngsters goes: 'we dun mucked up real bad, suh, oh yessuh we did'.

2

On this abnormally warm winter's day, say, seventy years ago—though, due to the nature of time-travel, it's rather difficult to say exactly how long ago this actually was—I had been sitting outside amidst the melting snow, partaking in some fine, fine herb. I've never been much of a bong man—let that be known. Call me old-school, or call me Gandalf—he's a wizard from history, though not the history that you might know—but I much prefer a nice wooden pipe.
        Anywho, enough about my preferences.
        Jimmy Jammerson—that's what we'll call him—came around to my abode, as he always did back in those days, and he was wielding quite the weapon. It was a wild purple bong, with a wavy-style tube that looked like a crazy-straw, and it was made out of cheap glass from Chinakistan (though it wasn't called that, back then). I could hear the dirty bong-water sloshing around in there as he came skip-walking—that was his primary method of movement—down my drive.
        "Heeey, buuuuddy," Jimmy said cheerfully.
        I could tell by his bloodshot eyes and his higher-pitched voice that he was already five to ten bong-hits deep—and it was barely noon on a weekday. He was wearing tie-dye shorts and a 'Save The Dolphins' tee-shirt—not referring to the now-extinct mammal, but to the Miami Dolphins. They used to be a rockball team, way back when, except back then it was called football. "Hey, Jimbo, what's cracklin'?" I said, putting my pipe to my lips for another draw.
        Jimmy smacked the pipe out of my mouth and it hit the ground. Thankfully, because it was wooden, it didn't break. But the contents of the bowl spilled out, scattering embers and ashes across the interlocking stones.
        "What the hell was that for?" I asked him, eyeing the bong. There was a horrible smell coming off it, too—like old sweat-soaked socks.
        He held up the purple crazy-straw bong. The irregular—for that time of the year, at least—sunlight hit the glass and made little bits of light dance all over it, inside and out. He said, "You're not gonna want that pipe, buuuuddy. Not when you try this!"
        "Oh? And why is that?" I picked up my pipe and rubbed some dust off the stem.
        Jimmy smacked the pipe away again. "Because a hit off this baby will send you back through tiiime, maaaan." He broke out into a grin which made me wonder if he was, by any chance, the victim of a nasty bout of head-trauma.
        I looked at him, straight-faced and stern. "How high are you? A time-travelling bong?" I asked, incredulous of his claims. I decided to humour him, or maybe I was merely humouring myself. "How does it work? I presume you have some idea."
        He nodded. "Oooookaaaay, Raz. Listen up. You pack some bud in the bowl here—you see how it's a very large bowl, too, eh?—and then you hit it. Just like, like, normal. But this is where it differs, maaan. For every teeeen seconds, maaaan, that's ten years you travel back in tiiiime."
        "So," I said, thinking of what I'd do if I wanted to go back. I had an idea. One that any sane person would have. "If I wanted to, let's say, go back to 1907 and kill Hitler, long before he ever put any bad ideas into people's heads, I'd have to smoke that bong for a minute straight?"
        "Riiiiiight," Jimmy said, grinning. "You catch on quick, maaan."
        "Okay. Let's say I believe you. After going back in time, how does one get back to the present?"
        His face lit up. Evidently, he'd been waiting for this question, and was eager to answer it. "It's easy, maaan. You know, I'm glad you asked. You just, like, dump out the boooong-waaater." He demonstrated for me and poured out an oily brown liquid, which reeked even worse now that it was out of the bong. It had melted a hole through the soft snow.
        I thought I had caught him in his lie. "Okay, but if you had to get back by dumping that dirty water, then why was it still dirty? Wouldn't you have had to dirty it again by smoking out of it and, therefore, transporting yourself back in time."
        He grinned again, laughing. "Because, maaan. I wasn't, like, sending myself back, the last few times... I was sending others back. Smelly, for one." Smelly was his dog, a Golden Retriever.
        "So, you're telling me that Smelly will be back in the present, now that you've dumped that water?"
        "Yeah, maaan. It's toooootally, liiiike, saaaafe. No worries."
        It was unreal. Back then, I remember thinking that Jimmy, my best friend, must have smoked one too many bowls. I'd soon learn that that thought had been most incorrect.
        "Come on, Raaaaz. Let's go take a hit backward, man." He motioned for me to follow him into my own house. This was common for Jimmy. He felt at home anywhere. What was yours was his, and he would always let you know exactly that.
        I followed Jimmy Jammerson, time-traveller, inside. Little did I know, those were the first steps I took on a giant journey through time, and one of playing God with our world.

3

"So where'd you even get this magik bong, anyway?" I asked Jimmy, watching him fill it up with water from the sink.
        "It's not magik," he soberly informed me. "It's some scientific experiment, maaan. I've been part of a project—it's Chineeese." He waggled his eyebrows, as if to show the importance of this revelation. "Anyway, Raz, we're testing these new gadgets, but they resemble ordinary things. It's so they, like, go unnoticed and don't raise any eyebrows and stuff."
        "Okay... And this won't give us cancer or anything, right?" Cancer had yet to be eradicated, back in those days. I suppose that's one positive of this present future we live in now. Though it's hard to say if cancer would be gone, whether we altered the regular timeline or not.
        "Naaaah, maaan. You know the Chinese. Quality stuff." He raised the bong to look at the water-level. It was half-full and ready to go.
        We went off to the lounge and threw a record on. Records were these things we put music onto and we could play them with something called a turntable. Sort of like your newfangled MindSounds, but a little different in that it wasn't a chip inserted into our brains. Anyway, we had decided on Captain Beefheart's first album, 'Safe As Milk'. Great weird blues album... Blues was a style of music, back in those days. Sort of like how you kids have your acidophallic-post-post-grunge-jangle-jazz-block-rock-nu-silent-core. Excuse me for saying that your music manages to both suck and blow at the same time.
        Ahem, anyway. We sat down on the couch as the album began playing 'Sure 'Nuff 'N' Yes I Do'. Jimmy had the bong in his hand and he pulled out a bag of pungent-smelling herb. While he worked on packing the bowl, I decided there were some holes in this story of his, and they needed filling.
        "So, Jim-Jam. Let's say I wanted to go back to 1907, I would still be over here in America when I travelled back, right?"
        "Yeah, Raz," he said absent-mindedly. "Unless you think of your destination. If you think it, Raaaaz, then you go there."
        "Fair enough. But I'm assuming only one of us can go at one time, yes?"
        "Nah, maaan. We can both go. We just need to be, like, uh, holding haaands."
        I thought about this for a few moments. I didn't really like the thought, but I certainly didn't want to risk going back in time and being all alone—assuming the whole thing worked, anyway.
        "Ready to rip, Raz." He handed me the bong and a lighter. "You do the honours, good buddy."
        "Me? You sure?"
        "Yeah, man. Think of Vienna."
        "So we're going back for Hitler?"
        "Sixty years, maaaan. A full minute."
        Jimmy grabbed my free hand and held the bong for me. I put my mouth to the tube, lit the bowl and inhaled slowly, needing to make the bowl last the full sixty seconds if I wanted to go back and remove Hitler's stain from history. A tough deal.
        Vienna.
        The smoke flowed through the twisting tube, thickening to a milky-white underneath the purple glass. I was breathing in through my nose a little, just to help facilitate the process. It struck me then that I had no idea how this would send us back through time. I was smoking a bong, for Christ's sake.
        Vienna.
        Jimmy was eyeing his wrist-watch. And when I couldn't hit the bong for any longer, he gave me my much-needed relief. "Clear it, Raz!" he yelled over the music—now playing the quite-fitting 'Zig Zag Wanderer'—clutching my hand even tighter, mixing our anticipatory sweat.
        Vienna.
        I removed the bowl and inhaled all the smoke, sucking it up like a vacuum (a sort of cleaning machine, which served as a predecessor to modern-day worker-bees).
        Vienna.
        And before my lungs had even begun to process all the smoke I'd just fed them, the room started to spin. Colours mixed and melded, looking like an artist's paint-spattered jeans, or something a child might expel on Halloween—oh, that's a reference you won't get, either. It was like the beginnings of some bad acid.
        Vienna.
        Reality faded in and out. My head started to hurt, with a distinct pressure on my temples and brow. I thought I might be sick. Thankfully, the pain ceased as everything went black, climaxing with an audible (in my head) POP! A moment later, my eyes spied the sight of an old city's streets.
        "Nice work, Raz," Jimmy said, letting go of my hand and wiping the hand-sweat onto his jeans. "We're in Vienna, maaaan."

4

People went out of their way to avoid us. We looked very different from everyone else—in our colourful tee-shirts and shorts fit for a future summer—and I was holding a bong, which I'm sure they'd never heard of, and—to top it all off—we had popped, quite literally, out of thin air.
        "Jimmy, maybe we should get out of here," I said, not liking the strange looks we were getting from the passersby. Maybe the bong could be passed off as a creative-looking vase, but it was winter, too, and it wasn't a weirdly-warm winter day in Vienna, Austria-Hungary: 1907. It was freezing.
        "Naaah, Raz. Let's go exploring. We need to find that Fine Arts place Hitler wants to attend." Jimmy was already racing off on our mission of foolishness.
        I struggled to keep up, nearly knocking down a group of nuns, who scolded me in their harsh German tongue. Jimmy was up ahead, heading up the front-entrance of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. "Jimmy, wait up!"
        But Jimmy thundered on, reaching the front-doors just as they were opened by a young man coming out. He had a framed painting in his hands and he appeared dejected and sullen. I caught up, panting, and by that point Jimmy had struck up a conversation with the young man, who was showing him his painting: a landscape of a house sitting on a hill, overlooking a lake. It was pretty.
        Then I saw the signature at the bottom. 'Aug. 1907    A. Hitler'. I looked up and studied the young man's face. It was him. It was Adolf Hitler, minus the moustache and a good thirty to forty years. I knew my history—he'd just been rejected from entering the art school. He would try again the next year, only to be rejected once more. And what came later was one of the worst genocides in human history. I didn't know whether to punch him in the jaw, or give him a pat on the back and tell him it would be okay.
        Because it wouldn't.
        "This is him," Jimmy said to me. "I understand a little German, and Hitler here says the Jews have denied him entry. They say he's terrible and they want what's popular, which he says totally sucks, in so many different words. Can you believe that, man?"
        I didn't know what to say. I only nodded.
        "I say we go in and teach them a lesson." There was an edge to his voice I hadn't heard before. I didn't like it, either. He pulled out a then-advanced-looking handgun from under his waistband.
        Hitler's eyes widened; he whispered some things in German, which made him sound more like a hissing snake than a person.
        "Nah, Ade, don't worry. We're gonna get you into art school, good buddy. Or die trying." Jimmy pointed at the painting, then at his gun, the painting, then Hitler. He opened one of the doors to the school and motioned for Hitler to follow. He added to me, "You coming? You wanted to change history, didn't you?"
        It struck me then that Jimmy didn't seem too stoned. He was too driven, too calculating.
        I think he was sober—had been all along—and he'd only been acting as high as a kite being towed along by a bird... to fool me and bring my guard down. Then he dragged me into this mess he had been planning on making.

        Sighing, I followed the two inside.

5

I'd love to describe for you all the interior décor of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, but truthfully I don't know what it looks like. It was all a blur to me. I just remember racing along, trying to keep up with the two determined gentlemen ahead of me, my mind going at a mile a minute. Adolf 'Bloody Holocaust' Hitler and Jimmy Jammerson: Twister of Time.
        So I can't provide much—if any—description for you. No idea what colour the walls were, or whether there were famed frescoes lining the halls. No idea. All I know is that what happened next both shocked and revolted me. These events still, to this day, put chills up my spine and ice in my balls—excuse the image.
        Hitler took the lead and brought us to the room in which he received his artist death-sentence. He presented it to the handgun-holding Jimmy, and Jimmy cocked his weapon before calmly entering the room with a lunatic's grin plastered on his face.
        I only went inside because I was too horrified to stay out of sight of the whole fiasco.
        "You motherfuckers speak English?!" Jimmy shouted to a bunch of scared art-dorks in suits. "Anglais? ENGLISCH, bitches!"
        One at the back with a big nose raised his hand, trembling in fear. "Ya," he said, remarkably calm.
        Jimmy started explaining, and the others listened carefully. You always listen to the man waving a gun far more advanced than you've ever dreamed. "I understand this man, Adolf Hitler, has just been denied entry into this fine school of yours. You told him, in so many different words, that he sucks a fat one. That he's a failure. That he'll never live to see his dreams become a reality."
        The same man nodded, gulping—and his throat actually made a sound when he did it.
        "I'm from the future," Jimmy said, cracking open the egg of insanity. "You can probably tell by the clothes of me and my friend here." He motioned to me with the gun. "And this gun, of course," he added, grinning. "Do you know what this young man, Adolf Hitler, does when he grows up... after he fails in becoming a famed painter, all because of you fine gentlemen?"
        The audience shook their heads, their eyes never leaving that gun.
        "He becomes a ruthless dictator. He leads a group of evil men—and some not so evil, but forced into the shit—and they end up killing over six-million Jews, another eleven-million quote-unquote 'undesirables', nineteen-million civilians and prisoners of war, and twenty-nine-million soldiers from the worst world-war ever. So far. How's that sound? You want that to happen? You like the feeling of all that blood on your hands? Huh?"
        More head-shaking. It seemed they'd caught on to English quickly.
        "So here is what I propose," Jimmy continued. "You let young Herr Hitler here into your precious school. You teach him, as you would any other talented would-be artist. You avoid the Holocaust, and no-doubt the deaths of you or your own families. Hitler ends up fulfilling his dream of being an artist. Deal?"
        The man who had raised his hand—the one with the shnozz—gulped again and turned to his suited peers. He croaked something out in German. The others replied, accompanied by firm head-shakes. The first man then said, "Ve cannot do ziss. How do ve know vat you speak iss true?"
        Jimmy, surprising me with his careful planning, pulled out a folded bit of newspaper from his pocket. He unfolded it onto the table and showed it to the suits. It was called 'Das Reich' and the issue, dated from 1942, showed an older Adolf Hitler wearing his iconic black toothbrush moustache as he saluted a massive organized crowd of German citizens and uniformed-Nazis alike.
        The suits stared disbelievingly at the paper, then up at the young and innocent Adolf Hitler in front of them. Comparing the two men before them.
        "It iss true...?" the first man with the shnozz said, practically gasping while he did it. "But, how... How iss diss possible?"
        "Have you ever read 'The Time Machine' by HG Wells?" I said, finally speaking up. "Came out not too long ago."
        Nobody answered, but I think—or maybe it was just my imagination—that I caught a glimmer of recognition in at least one set of eyes.
        Jimmy waved it off with his gun. "Let him in," he ordered, waving the gun again. "Or I start popping heads."
        "Ya, ya."
        "Write it down on a piece of paper. Official. Let him into this school. Don't fuck this up."
        Shnozz frantically scribbled something down on a paper with the school's official letterhead. He stamped it, signed it, got the others to sign it and then removed a second sheet, which had been underneath the first sheet. He pushed this one across the table to Hitler, who eagerly snatched it up and scanned it.
        "Good work," Jimmy said, smiling. "You may have just avoided the Jewish Holocaust. Now, because I can't trust you gentlemen—" He aimed the gun at the head of the suit closest to him, then he pulled the trigger.
        The suit's head blew to smithereens, the spatter of blood and brains splashing onto the shocked faces of the others.
        Jimmy quickly shot them: some headshots, some in the chest. He left Shnozz alive. "You're my security," he said to the pale-faced man with the huge nose. "You, and you alone, know what truly happened. Time-travellers came here and told you the future. You hold the key to all this. Make sure Hitler here becomes a famous painter, you prick."
        Hitler was as white as a sheet. He had this absent, vacant look in his eyes, like he'd just seen a ghost—or a group of people murdered, to be more accurate.
        "Now, Raz, take us out of here."
        I was frozen. I barely recognized the words I'd heard, couldn't piece them together in my head in any way that made sense.
        "Raz. Dump the bong-water. Adolf, you wanna make yourself disappear." He punctuated this with some dismissive hand-motions.
        Hitler nodded and ran for the hills, painting and acceptance-letter in hand.
        "Raz," Jimmy said again.
        Coming to my senses, I tilted the bong upside-down and poured the water out onto the floor. The room immediately swirled away in a fit of colours and fading sounds. Shnozz was screaming for us to come back, in German and in what little English he knew.
        We were already gone.
        And back in my lounge. 'Zig Zag Wanderer' was still playing. And it seemed as though nothing had changed.
        But lots had. Oh yes.

6

"Fuck, I forgot that stupid fucking goddamn shit-fucking newspaper!"
        That was the first thing I heard after we'd settled back into good ol' familiar 1967. Evidently, planning can only get you so far. The stressful job of time-travelling means screw-ups aren't necessarily guaranteed, but are certainly probable. "Should we go back?" I asked him, risking it.
        "No," Jimmy said, looking at me coldly. "We can't go back there, Raz. It wouldn't even be the same place, with the changes we've made. Oh well. It's not like anything will be traced back to us. Now, we've gotta find a history book and see what became of old Adolf."
        "I've got a book on my shelf here," I said, trying to stay calm considering what I'd just played witness to. I set the time-travelling bong down and turned off the record-player, no longer being in the mood for Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. The bookshelf was right beside the turntable, so I browsed through my assortment of books, arranged in no real alphabetical or chronological order. I picked out two. "'Great Artists through the Ages'," I said, "and 'The Horrors of World War II'. So we didn't completely eliminate ol' Dubya-Dubya-Deux, Jimmy. The question is: did Hitler take part?"
        Jimmy only nodded, waiting for me to crack open the books.
        "Shall we start with the art book?" I asked.
        "Sure, man. Have you got a real bong? I could use a hit."
        "I have another pipe in my room," I told him, and off he went.
        Meanwhile, I flipped open the book on history's great artists and turned to the index at the back. Looking through H—for Hitler, Adolf—I found it, perhaps unsurprisingly. By the time Jimmy came back with my other wooden pipe in hand, I was reading the section on Adolf Hitler: Great Artist.
        "He in there?" Jimmy asked, packing a quick bowl.
        "He is." While Jimmy smoked up, I read the section that had accompanied a few of Hitler's most-famous landscape paintings—one was a grand view of the Swiss Alps, as Panzer tanks lumbered past.
        "Considered to be one of the finest landscapists of the twentieth century, Adolf Hitler is famous for far-greater accomplishments. Defeating the Axis power-block of Great Britain and the United States of America, in 1939 Hitler led to victory his Nazi Freedom Alliance—containing Russia, Japan and China (among others) as allies—and solidified a New World Order of peace, prosperity and equality. Not to be overshadowed by his rich military past, Hitler continued painting beautiful landscapes well after the war was over, producing as many as seven finished pieces per year. Hitler currently lives in his German villa, with his two blond German Shepherds and his wife Eva. Shy of the limelight, he occasionally makes public-speaking appearances."
        "I'll be damned," Jimmy said, blowing out a lungful of smoke. "Look what we've done, man. We did that." He immediately took another long draw of smoke—eager to finish that bowl and, I suppose, build on the ego-high he was feeling.
        "Is it just spin, though?" I asked, more to myself than him. "The history book won't tell us the reality of the situation, if Hitler's the supposed hero. History is written by the victors, after all."
        "Only one thing to do." Jimmy set the pipe down next to the time-travelling bong, stood up, twisting his back and making it crack. "Let's go out and see this brave new world of ours, Razzle-Dazzle."
        "Let's hope it's not too bad, Jim-Jam."
        It was.

7

But not in the way you might be thinking. Well, partially. Let me explain.
        We stepped outside and the entire town around us was different. Jimmy and I had lived in a small town, back in the original 1967. But the one we stepped into—after altering the past, present and future—had become a sophisticated mega-city.
        Cars whipped around high above our heads. There seemed to be invisible streets up there, or maybe they had robots controlling the vehicles already—Jimmy and I never had the chance to check out any hot rides.
        On the streets, people came in swarms. We were out of place yet again. Our very-much-in-style apparel for the other 1967 was no longer so. These people wore grey turbans on their heads, plain-white dress-shirts and black skirts—even the men. A crowd gave us strange looks as they walked past. One person even shook their head, stopped and slapped us both.
        "For shame," the man said, shaking his head some more. He continued on his not-so-merry way.
        "What the hell did we do, Jimmy?"
        Jimmy looked around. The great spires shooting up into the sky, so tall the tops were obscured by fluffy white picturesque clouds. The cars whizzing through sky-streets, all a blur. The people in their...uniforms, for lack of a better word. "I... don't know."
        We followed the next group of people. They were all going the same way, so that seemed like a good place to start our journey in this new world. We were led to a gold statue of Hitler wearing the same uniform as the others, saluting as he had in the past. There was an entrance directly behind it, a staircase leading down. We descended, keen to see what was hidden below.
        It was us.
        Jimmy and me. Gold statues of us—yes, wearing the uniform like everyone else. There was an inscription below the statues that read:

THE TWO TIME-TRAVELLERS, HELPERS OF FATHER HITLER

        "Helpers of Father Hitler," I said.

        "You know what this means, right?" Jimmy asked, already leading me back to my new house.
        "No, what?"
        He turned to me before we stepped back inside. His eyes were crazy. Big black pupils, sitting right in the middle of a field of red. I wondered if he had a brain-tumour. He said, "We've gotta go kill Hitler, Raz."

8

Since you know who Hitler is, and you know of the horrors he orchestrated—passed off as a good deed, of course—then you know that we had to have failed in our next endeavour. But that's no reason to skip this next part of the story, because what comes next is essential to what came after. Somehow.
        It was the only other thing we did, and things went very wrong.
        We went back inside my home and refilled the bong with water. Of course, Jimmy grabbed my hand and made me hit the bong again. For another minute. We thought of Vienna, like before. The swirls of colour and such came on again, but it was nowhere near as strong as the first time. I guess it's almost like a drug in itself, time travelling.
        Anyway, we were back in Vienna. Back on those streets. But something was different. The people's faces were slightly trailing them as they walked. Blurry, fuzzy—like seeing through a window while the rain drums against the glass, beading down and making everything on the other side look odd and distorted.
        Only Hitler was normal—actually, he seemed to have a glow about him. Nobody else noticed, I don't think, and I don't think Hitler noticed the other people being blurred out, either. I think it was something only Jimmy and I—meddlers of the universe—were affected with.
        We saw Hitler running from the art school, his painting tucked under his arm, the admission-slip flapping in the cool breeze.
        Jimmy took out his handgun and took aim. The people around us screamed. Someone shoved me from behind in their panic, and I nearly fell. What stopped me was Jimmy. I tried so hard to keep that bong from dropping—shattering on the ground and spilling all that precious water everywhere; who knew what would happen?—that I grabbed Jimmy by the shoulder. His aim went wild and he'd pulled the trigger at precisely that moment. Of course.
        The bullet went somewhere. I'm not sure where. But it certainly didn't go into Hitler, that's for sure.
        Hitler spotted us, his eyes went wide, he pointed directly at us, and then he ran out of sight.
        "Fuck!" Jimmy yelled. And then he took it out on the fleeing people, dropping innocents like a swatter to a swarm of flies. Their faces may have been blurred, but their blood was red and readily flowed, pooling in the gutters and clogging the drains.
        I took the liberty of dumping the bong-water at that moment, wanting to avoid any more bloodshed.
        The swirling commenced and we were

9

back in 1967. A new 1967, of course. But it wasn't too different from the one we'd been in prior to our most-recent trip back in time.
        "Why'd you do that, Raz!?" Jimmy yelled into my face.
        "I could ask you the same thing." I didn't like the way he held the gun, aiming it at my gut without really meaning to. "They were innocent people, Jimmy. What the hell..."
        "We gotta go back," he said, grabbing the bong from me.
        "We'll never find him," I replied, taking back the bong. "He's gone by now."
        Jimmy collapsed into the couch, scratching his forehead with the barrel of the gun. "You're right," he mumbled.
        There was a sudden furious knocking at the front-door. Really hammering away.
        "Open up! Police!" came a shout from the other side of the door.
        My eyes met Jimmy's. His were wider, wild like an animal's. Rabid and scared. "What do we do?" he whispered. Who knew what he'd do.
        "I dunno—"
        The door blew open and a squad of heavily-armed and -armoured men stormed inside. They had their high-tech guns trained on us, laser-sight and everything.
        "Freeze!" the lead man yelled. "You two are under arrest for altering the natural order of things! Orders from Father Hitler himself! He's been waiting a long time to nab you two!"
        Jimmy still had his gun. In one speedy motion—so fast the police didn't have time to do the job first—Jimmy put the now-outdated handgun to his forehead and pulled the trigger. His mind blasted out the back of his skull, spewing an assortment of goo all over my bookshelf. Some of the blood-brain mixture dripped to the floor, some of it stuck like glue.
        I looked to the police. Their bugged-out eyes told me they weren't used to seeing such things in the everyday line of duty.
        The lead man shook his head. "Barbaric way to go." He removed a device from his belt and said, "Bring your hands together. You're under arrest."
        I did as I was told. Putting my hands together revealed the time-travelling bong for all to see.
        "What is this...?" The lead cop took the bong from me and threw it off into the corner, where it then smashed into what may very well have been a million pieces.
        It certainly felt like my own life—the one I was born in, grew up in and formed all my dreams in; all those dreams died that day—felt like my own life had been destroyed, too. Just like the bong. Broken beyond repair. My only way back, to maybe fix things: gone. Gone like Jimmy.
        Before I could say or do anything crazy, the head cop tapped my hands with his device. Two blue rings buzzed out and wrapped around my wrists, connected by string of more blue. Naturally, I tried to remove my hands from the rings and I received a nasty shock. Futuristic handcuffs.
        They led me out of my house, loaded me up in one of their sky-cars and off I went for processing. Do I really need to tell you any more? Perhaps.
        My life after the time-travelling experiment-gone-wrong was simple. I was arrested, interrogated, beaten, interrogated some more, deemed insane, thrown into an institution—the very institution I live in to this day—and go about my days looking out the windows, watching the clouds slowly drift on by as my own hourglass runs dry.
        If I could, would I change it all, or maybe just one thing? Sure. Wouldn't you?
        The main thing I'd change, however, would be to get my old friend back.
        Jimmy Jammerson. I sure do miss that old bastard.
        We dun mucked up real bad, suh, oh yessuh we did.

-

Rasputin finished his story, shaking and trembling down to his bones. These memories were awful, permanently singed into his mind. There was no escaping them. He wiped away a tear, put it on his plain-grey institution slacks—where it was absorbed and changed to a darkened spot—and turned away from that rain-beaten window. His audience was a group of people who claimed to be his family. But he didn't know them. He'd never seen them before in his life. Not even way back when. Back in that old 1967.
        "That's how the world you all know came to be," he said to the group of frauds.
        One of them, a boy who was supposed to be his grandson, rolled his eyes and snorted. "Sounds like you're just crazy, Grampa Raz."
        The boy's mother, supposedly Rasputin's own daughter—though he never remembered ever having a wife—giggled to herself and slapped the boy's arm. "That's not nice."
        "Don't... don't call me Raz," Rasputin said, shuddering and wiping away more tears. "Please..."
        "Raz! Raz! Raz!" the boy shouted gleefully.
        Some of the others joined in, too. Even his own 'daughter'.
        "Raz! Raz! Raz!"
        "Stop! Stop it! Please!" Rasputin cried, cowering in the corner and covering his head with his hands.
        But they just laughed.