Slaughterhouse 20

START TIME: 9:46 PM
END TIME: 11:14 PM
WORD COUNT: 1,138

Write a piece of fiction that starts with "There was a knock at the door."

There was a knock at the door.

I was right in the middle of typing and I had to have this thing finished by midnight, and the usual accouterments were there; ice water with a squirt of lime, ITunes, and the lemongrass and mint candle that my brain now associated with immediate creative thought.

I opened the door and my jaw dropped. The resemblance was more than uncanny, it was an exact match. The black shorts, the black basketball shoes, the glasses. All of them were sitting in their respective places in this apartment right now-what were they doing on this guy? I knew the answer. They say your past can catch up with you, but this wasn’t what I was expecting, and I can’t say I was happy about it. I certainly wasn't ready to welcome me in.

“What do you want?”
“I’m here to take you back.”

I looked around the apartment complex parking lot furtively, wondering if anyone else was seeing this. I’d read that B12 vitamins can give you really screwed up dreams-was that what this was?

“Back to what?”

“This isn’t your life and you know it. You drove past this apartment complex thousands of times on your way home and never thought you’d live here. You never thought you’d be divorced. You looked at the apartment on the day you moved out of Crystal Creek and never though you’d be in an apartment for the rest of your life. You’ve had diagnoses and theories and medication and all manner of people trying to tell you you’re crazy. Well, you’re not. It’s time to wake up. It’s not real. You’re only 26. Come on home.”

“Wait a second.” I’d had a few moments to contemplate time travel. “Is it going back and knowing everything I know, or just some of it, or none of it? If this were a movie, are we rewinding without looking at the movie, or just without sound, or without picture?”

“I don’t get the metaphor. We’re going back.”

“No, because this part matters. If I say yes, does my hair grow out and I gain a hundred pounds and I forget everything?”

Another voice shouted, “Stop!”

We each looked over the railing. One of the neighbors had to hear this. Oh, God. Bounding up the stairs two at a time in jean shorts, purple mirrored sunglasses, black Chicago Bulls baseball cap with the letters in red script; compared to the two of us on the porch, this guy didn’t know anything.

“I don’t know who the hell this is, but you need to come with me.”

The first visitor appeared as stunned as I had been a few seconds ago, but I figured I’d been indulgent enough already. “How come?”

“You see, THIS guy, he doesn’t know what you and I know about what this morning was like.”

I smiled. The first visitor asked, “What are you talking about?”

I told him, “I went swimming this morning at the beach, got in some work in my wetsuit, and then rode 20 miles in the heat. And we both know that this guy in the Bulls-Phoenix NBA Champions shirt spent HIS mornings playing basketball…”

“…sixteen years ago!” The first visitor nodded slowly, and the second visitor was ready, as always, to start talking fast. “So let’s get back to it! I’ll take you back and you’ll be 18 years old! The trees are green, the court’s got that little bit of shade, Coke Classic’s on sale at the 7-Eleven, and Brian’s going to be by in two hours! You can get it back!”

The first visitor looked insulted. “Oh, don’t you pull that nonsense with ME. You can talk all about what those mornings were like. I know what the NIGHTS were like. I know who he was pining over, the one who all that writing was FOR, and you’re taking him back to enough misery and uncertainty that he’s got all sorted out with me. It works out. Didn’t you ever wonder why we’re meeting on his front porch in Las Vegas?”

The second visitor looked momentarily puzzled. “We are a little far from home.”

The first visitor snorted condescendingly. “And aren’t you late for your shift at the library?”

The second visitor looked at the ground, knowing he wouldn’t win an argument with someone who literally knew everything about him. But then something dawned on the kid, who wasn’t much for listening on a good day.

“So…it all worked out?”

I looked at the moon and chuckled a little bit. “Guys, it’s been a long day already and I’ve got stuff to do. If I invite you in it’ll wake up the kids.”

The first visitor reacted as if he had ordered the tilapia and been presented with lamb chops. “Kids?”
The second visitor was a little more taken aback, as if he had awakened in a classroom to take a final exam without having taken the course. “Kids?”

I laughed even harder. “Guys, you can’t ever go back. You both know it." I turned to the first visitor. "There’s moments you’re at the desk in the computer room, looking out past the Rolls Royces that get parked up top, watching how the sun hits the front courtyard and wondering if you’re going to have a morning like he’s having right now ever again. You will. I promise. And you…” I tried hard not to laugh at the shock on my second visitor’s face – “you need to have all the fun you can right now, because that’s what you’re there for. I need you to go back alone and do that because I need that right now. I need it to be even BETTER than you think it is. Good night, gentlemen.”

They looked at each other quickly, forgetting the earlier tension. “But it’s better! You KNOW it’s better than this! You don’t…”

“I am who I am, and where I am, because who and where else would I be? I’m you, and I’m you too. If I take your best moments I have to take the bad ones. I remember them both. If it makes you feel any better, when I get back in there and write you’ll be standing over my shoulders, but that’s how it works. You don’t get to look forward with absolute clarity, and I don’t ever get to go back. That’s life. Good night.”

I closed the door, and closed my eyes. I regretted not telling myself at 18 to stretch before playing basketball and to switch to diet soda. I regretted not telling myself at 26 that he should hit the pool the next morning, to give me a head start for a triathlon he’d never even dreamed of that was taking place next weekend.

I didn’t regret much else.