Relativity

      

Relativity

     Thomas Enderflow was wearing his tuxedo, the one he only wore for very special occasions. This year was different than the rest, he wasn't alone. He had asked her on a date and she had said yes. Maggie Burton was a perfectly friendly, middle aged woman, nothing special or unique about her. She and Thomas had worked in the same building for years before they met officially. He would walk by her office whenever the opportunity would present itself. Sometimes it would add a minute or two to his walk, on the lucky days it would serve as a shortcut.

     He admired her, from afar, risking only the daily glance into her office. Each day he passed her head would be buried in work. Day in and day out he would pray for her to look up, for their eyes to meet. In all the years he had performed the ritual he could never quite recall exactly what color her eyes were.

The bright blue caught him off guard. For the first time in four and a half years she had looked up and, in that brief moment, their glances met. That was the first day that he had brought her tea. This, slowly, became the new ritual. He liked it better simply because it was one that they could both partake in. Now instead of nervously dashing by her office everyday he was walking in.

     Month after month passed and his feelings for her, he believed, were finally being requited. He made the first move and asked if she would be willing to attend the annual office Christmas party with him, she said yes. They attended the party together the following week. Aside from the newly formed office rumors all went well and a second date was planed. This time they would ring in the new year together. This would be Thomas' first new years spent with another since he was a teen.

     The day arrived and Thomas found himself opening the passenger side door for her and they were on their way. There were countless people gathered inside the tiny house, how it managed to hold that many they were not sure. They had to resort to shouting just to be heard. When their ears had had enough they escaped to the back deck. It was there that Thomas admitted his nerves and anxiousness to her, she replied with a sweet soft kiss. The conversation carried on.

The night began to slip by and Maggie and Thomas, now in a drunken stupor, began to confide in one another the things they could not admit while sober. She had come from a broken home and with it came the abuse that had led her to want a better life. Thomas told her of his white picket childhood and of his resentment for his workaholic father. They smiled and clasped hands. The conversation began to take a brighter tone and they spoke of their hopes and dreams.

     “You know,” said Thomas, “ sometimes I wish I could go back and try to fix it all, don't you?”

     “No,” replied maggie, “What's done is done. We have to live with what is dealt.”

     Upon the last of the words leaving her lips the people inside erupted into a deafening cheer. Thomas glanced at his watch, then back up to Maggie, “happy new year.” They kissed again.

     This was the last of the night that Thomas could remember. He had awoken early the next morning, cooked breakfast and spent the afternoon nursing his hangover. Nothing seemed strange until he returned to work. On his way in the door he had run into his boss.

     “Make sure that report is on my desk by noon,” the short well dressed bald man said angrily. The words caught Thomas off guard, he could have sworn that he had handed in the report before leaving the office for the holidays. Had he forgotten? No, he couldn't have, right?

     The day continued to pass and noon began to grow nearer. Before leaving for lunch Thomas made a pit stop to his bosses office. He knocked and was instructed by a cold voice to enter.

     “Um, Sir,” he began.

     “Oh, it's you, I assume that you are dropping off the report?”

     “About that Sir,” Thomas' voice cracked as he carried on, “I-I could have sworn that I dropped if off last Tuesday.”

     The man looked up from behind his large oak desk, his eyes narrow.

     “Do you take me for an Idiot Mr. Enderflow?”

     “I um, I don't understand Sir.”

     “Listen,” the man said sharply, “I don't have time for your little jokes. Your report was expected now, but tis' the season so, you now have until the end of the day. If I do not have it by then I'm afraid I will have to ask you to work on Christmas,”he looked down to his work, “and I'm sure neither of us would want that, now would we?”

     “Christmas Sir? But Christmas...”

     “I know,” the short man interrupted, “but I have no choice, now, I will see you later this afternoon. Good day.” He gestured towards the door cuing for Thomas to leave.

     “But Sir.”

     “Mr. Enderflow, I do not have time for this.”

     “I know Sir but I think you have your dates mixed up. Christmas was last week Sir, not this week.”

     “I believe this has gone on long enough, it's as simple as this. No report, no job. Now get out.”

     “But Sir...”

     “I said leave!”

     Thomas, fearing for his job, promptly turned around and left for lunch. He went to his favorite corner cafe and found, to his surprise, that they were still serving the holiday menu. He ordered his lunch and tried to clear his mind for the twenty minutes he had remaining. He paid for his bill, tipped, and headed back to his office.

     After an exhausting morning of not so exciting book keeping he sat down to return some emails. He started from the oldest and worked his way forward to the newest. He had finally caught up when. As if on cue, his computer gave two loud beeps signaling a brand new email. It was from Ted in accounting. The email explained how all overtime was to be dispersed at the end of the fiscal year. Thomas didn't particularly care. He was salary pay so overtime did not exist for him. The last part of the message however caught his eye. It read “ and to all of my friends and fellow workers happy holidays and stay safe. Ho Ho Ho!

     Thomas' head began to thump quite painfully, right beneath his temples. The office joke was beginning to wear thin. He did his part and played along signing his emails with “happy holidays” and even going so far as to re-right some holiday cards for his co-workers cubby holes. The rest of the day passed slowly but inevitably. It wasn't until the next day that he began to become scared. The daily paper was dated for the twenty-fourth of December, Christmas Eve. It settled slowly that his past few days had been stranger than he had realized, time was moving backwards now, just as he had wished.

Backwards time, as he was now discovering, did not flow as smoothly as that of regular time. It was sporadic at best. It would jump from time to time and place to place. Sometimes he would not remember that he was a part of it, some memories and moments played put just as the had the first time .          Other moments, mostly life changing ones, were different. They were more real; or rather he was more real within them. He could control his thoughts and actions, change the outcomes. None of it mattered however. If an event had now ended as he originally wished he could enjoy if for a moment or two before, knowingly or unknowingly, he was pushed back to an earlier date. It became an endless ruthless cycle.

     Days lasted years and years lasted days. He had lost so many things, he had lost maggie and the memory of her, he lost his job, his house, he was losing it all. His hair however seemed to be doing quite the opposite of the rest of his possessions. His once tired and weathered hands were now clean, and his skin stretched over them like a freshly made drum. He was growing younger, and, at the same time he was losing his life, everything that he had been, everything that he had become. He was growing younger yet he was dying all the same. His first beer, his first smoke, his first fuck they all came and went just as before, but this time they left him none the wiser.

     His teens were almost skipped entirely, save for his first day of high school, the first of many that would end with a bloody nose and empty pockets. And then, or rather again, he was a child. Listening to his mother hum his favorite lullaby as he gently drifted off to sleep.

     Time had taken him back as far as it could, or so it seemed. He could not, like the rest of us, remember his own birth, but now if you were to ask he could tell you all you wanted to know. Right up until the point that the darkness took him in once again and he became one with his mother. Anything before that can not be explained, not in a way that any adult could believe. The way your mother's body can sustain you and still be strong enough to sustain herself. This can not be explained, just as the feeling of conception cannot. The feeling of everything you are, every single cell being torn apart, the feeling of returning to your mother and your father, and the feeling of the nothingness that follows.