The October Amaryllis

Chapter 63 - May 21st, 2020 - 11:32 A.M.

"So how come you haven't spoken in all the time I knew you in Mrs. Reagan's class?" Madelynn asked Kimberly.

"I don't like most people; you guys seem okay, though."

"We're all cool here except for Morgan," I jested.

"Boy, if you don't," he said with an embarrassed look, shaking a fist at me and laughing.

As everyone talked about school and what they'd do once they came home, I zoned out and started focusing on the walls instead. At first, I thought it was my imagination, but I soon knew it wasn't when I saw past and future events playing out on the wall in no specific order. One precise moment that stood out to me was the Battle of the Somme; I knew that's what it was based on what they taught us in history class. I saw artillery firing at soldiers in trenches, and what appeared to be a British Mark I tank rolling around the battlefield. As the violence continued with the screams ringing around me, I became more and more desensitized. By that point, I had basically accepted that I screwed up time beyond the point of no return. A part of my personality had also changed then into a darker one. I would get these horrible violent thoughts rushing through my head, and I had to try my absolute hardest to ignore them. I feared what I was becoming at that moment.

"Yo, you cool man?" Morgan asked me.

"Yeah, why?" I lied.

"Your eyes are crazy wide like you just saw Satan."

In a way, I did...

"Sorry, I dissociated," I awkwardly laughed.

"It's okay. Can I just say how boring it is not to have the television?" he asked, sighing.

"For real, who would do such a thing?" Kimberly asked, shaking her head.

"I don't know, but have you guys ever played Portal?" Morgan asked out of nowhere.

"I have; you know what my favorite thing to do in it was?" I asked, laughing.

"What?" he asked while yawning.

"I would shoot up a portal at the ceiling and floor and just hop into a permanent fall. I'm not sure why, but that always amused me," I replied, chuckling, remembering when I used to play on Steam constantly and ignore pretty much everything and everyone. Those were fun times but rarely is something fun productive as well. Still, I miss those times when I was a beast at Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. I would play as the terrorists just so I could use the sawed-off shotgun, which, in my opinion, is way too overpowered. The only game I still play a lot is Undertale; I didn't have it in me to take the genocide route, though. Toriel is too nice for me to kill her. I killed Flowey, though; he deserved it, the bastard.

"You do that too?" he asked with a look of excitement, fist-bumping me.

"Yeah, and I would try to prevent the Companion Cube from being destroyed, but as far as I'm concerned, that's impossible," I said, sighing. If you played Portal, you know just how special that cube is.

"I have no idea what you two are talking about," Madelynn said, with a look of pure confusion.

"It's about part of the game," I replied before zoning out again. Once again, I witnessed historical events, this time from the future. This vision concerned Maynard and encompassed his entire life up to his rise in power. It played out like someone doing a biography of him as a disembodied female voice described everything that was happening.

In 2191, Maynard Bobby Conrad was born into exceeding wealth, having inherited wealth from his family who worked at CONIUM for countless decades. The company was founded in 2021 and struggled for years to make any significant profits until 2024 with the Recycle-O-Nator, the robot that my father had mentioned working on. After it came out, its sales blew up due to people being enamored by the unique invention. They quickly built up their wealth and became so big that they were a Fortune 500 company by 2030. In 2031, my father was fired from the company by Maynard Conrad, the First, over creative disagreements. After that, he stole all the credit that my father had given, and the company only grew from there. Over a century and a half later, Maynard Conrad, the Second, was born and at only nineteen took over the company, changing its focus to weaponry and war machines. This grew the companies' sales massively as the government contracted them. Eventually, Maynard ran for politics, winning the presidential elections with fraudulent votes. Anyone who questioned him mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again. Once in office, he ordered the entire town to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up, promising that it would be "better than before." What that really meant was that everyone's house would become a shanty except for his.

Additionally, he changed the law to allow for a legal loophole to effectively be in office for life.

He reminds me of a certain man from my history textbook... Except Maynard doesn't have a mustache.

After the vision of Maynard's life, I felt this massive sharp pain in my heart as if I had just been shot. It was so painful that it took everything for me not to scream. My heart hadn't been the same since I started time-traveling; it's like whenever I put the slightest effort into moving, I felt like I was on the verge of passing out. I would get these tiny black dots in my eyes, which I guess is what people mean when they say they're "seeing stars."

How did my life lead up to this point?

"So yeah, don't drink antifreeze," Kimberly said with an amused expression to Madelynn.

"I wasn't planning on it," she replied with a slight smile.

"Why are y'all talking about drinking antifreeze?" Morgan asked with a perplexed look on his face.

"I tried to kill myself with it. It was pretty sucky. I felt super drunk and kept having seizures," she said with a hollow look in her eyes.

At that moment, a nurse walked up to us and sat by us, asking if we wanted to listen to any music since the TV was screwed. I guess there really was no hiding that burned wire smell...

"Yeah, could you play A Teenager in Love by Dion and the Belmonts?" I asked, with the song playing all over in my head. When I was in my Freshman year, I listened to that song so much; you seriously have no idea. They don't make a lot of music like that anymore, unfortunately. Now it seems like people only make music for money instead of creating it because they have a genuine passion for it. Just listen to Songs About Jane by Maroon 5, and you'll see that the band actually cared about making good music at one point. Sunday Morning is still the best song they've ever put out. They're the only band I know that got wacker and wacker with each release; Red Pill Blues is the equivalent of drinking drain cleaner, an absolutely horrible experience. Speaking of drain cleaner, read about the Hi-Fi murders sometime; what a nightmare that was.

"Care for a dance?" Madelynn asked, giving me her hand. I looked at the nurse for approval, and she thankfully told us she didn't care if we danced, so we did just that. We were really into it, so much that for a moment, I forgot about all the time travel paradoxes I had created, and to me, nothing can be better than that.

Nothing.