Crossing Worlds

Chapter 5

Time Free Journal: started six days after time frozen, on what was originally known as April 21, 201X

     I remember, once, that there used to be a show about one man who thought himself to be the last person on Earth. I never watched it because it seemed he did stupid things, but I recalled it now because it seemed oddly familiar.

     There was a reason why it was so familiar as I thought about it. It was because it felt like I was the last person alive.

     Day 6: I had been raving mad after staring at the sun for the previous whole of day five, pondering the meaning of life. I needed someone to talk to. I had decided to try any number of things, no matter what it took to bring back time. First, of course, I made sure that it wasn't all just a dream again and that I wasn't screaming in my sleep. It was most certainly real, I realized after feeling the pain that came with jumping off my roof. I had more than just bruises after that. My plans for the next day required that no one could hear me after all.

     Day 7: I was cursing at the sky with all the profanities I knew, which was probably enough to make Kenna keel over green and vomiting if she were here. At that point I had no shame. If there was someone who had made the space and was keeping me there, then maybe they might let me go if I horrified them enough. I also tried the "abracadabra" and many other things.

     They failed.

     Day 10: I had accidentally caught myself talking to a mirror and complementing my new hairstyle that I had learned and tried to do out of boredom. My mother never got to teach me, my aunt was not one for such things, and I had no sisters, so I tried all the fancy things I never knew on myself with hair and, somehow I didn't poke my eyes out, makeup. The makeup failed though and I looked like a clown. Probably because I used a substitute and didn't own any real makeup...

     After experiencing such a thing, however, I decided to learn things I had never been able to do before, besides improving the singing I loved.

     For instance, I took up martial arts. I had always wanted to do it but never had enough time, and now that I had more than enough of it, I decided to dedicate myself to something. After diligent training while watching YouTube videos and daringly going to the public library for two weeks straight, I became able to do a lot of things I hadn't been able to before. I was more lithe, was able to do some decent moves, and jump off of my roof and land easily, among other things. Too bad I didn't have a human opponent. Or an opponent at all.

     Day 25: After diligently practicing in many aspects, I felt I had become better in my school subjects. I had finished reading the textbooks I had been given as a freshman and continued my studies in the library. The French I had been wrestling with in school was almost perfectly fluent after practicing for many hours. I decided to learn Italian because I wanted to go to Italy someday, and what better time to learn it than now? After that would be Japanese, a whole other system in phonetics and etymology, so I was quite ecstatic. I'd wanted to learn Morse code because of how often it was used in my mystery books, so of course it became a side interest.

     Interlude: I recognize that, after so much time alone, my style of speech has changed after reading so many different books. Forgive me, future self as you are reading this and think I sound like a haughty robot. I think it was the factual type writing in the textbooks that changed my words to be so formal. Also, I stretched into other genres of books, specifically the ones that included the ones that had imagination enough to create something similar my situation, and now my creative thought process and vocabulary have increased many times over.

    I improved my repertoire of cooking skills after going through the cook books I never used before. Never again would I look at eggs in front of me and be limited to omelets, scrambled eggs, or sunny side ups. No, I was more adventurous now. I could make a whole bunch of different egg dishes!