"Time Traveling Diamond Cutter..."

The Beginning of The End

"3, 2, 1." they said for what felt like the hundredth time as they both placed the needle down on the records. The echoey sound of Arctic Monkeys' Star Treatment filling both rooms as they simultaneously turned to face the oh too familiar screens of their phones. The constant video calling had become second nature as the world faced a whole pandemic. As 2020 had come to an eventual close, the prospects of 2021 felt like a dream.

"What do you think life would be like right now if none of this past year had even happened?" Elle spoke up, snapping Ana out of her thoughts:

"I don't know....!" Ana mumbled in response.

"Imagine if we could just travel back in time to 2001 or summat." Elle joked.

"Haha, yeah and befriend Arctic Monkeys!" Ana joked sarcastically.

As the record seamlessly faded to One Point Perspective, they both felt as if they had slipped away from their consciousness as everything seemed to fade, not to black like in a film, but to images flashing so fast between their eyes that it was near impossible to distinguish a single one. One minute had never felt so slow and dragged out since some assembly in year 7.

Ana's eyes slowly opened as she noticed the dusk shining through an unfamiliar window. As she slowly got up she noticed a clock reading the time 5 past 5 in the evening. The room she was in certainly wasn't the one she was in last time she had her eyes open, it was a relatively small sitting room that seemed rather dated and was full of cardboard boxes.

"What the fuck?" Ana mumbled under her breath. Curiosity got the best of her and she decided to snoop around the rest of the mysterious house. Each room with yet more boxes stacked on top of each other. She tripped up some carpeted stairs checking each room more confused than ever, until she found Elle standing in the room furthest away from the stairs.

"Elle?" Ana questioned, convinced she was tripping.

"What the actual fuck is going on, and where are we?" Elle spoke up.

"I don't know....I've looked around and there's boxes everywhere!" Ana stated, mildly annoyed.

"Maybe if we look in the boxes it'll give us a clue as to what's going on."

"Alright Sherlock!" Ana joked as they stepped outside the room to search the boxes. As they stifled through the first box they noticed more and more of their belongings leaving them even more confused than they were before. A few hours later, they had almost unpacked every box and discovered each and every one of their belongings, however they were missing any "modern" items, things like laptops and phones and even some of their records...as Elle stood up and walked back to the kitchen, she spotted a calendar hung on the wall, out of curiosity, she looked at it.

"2001..." she read aloud, "Ana! I've found out what year it is!"

"Wait...what are you on about?" Ana shouted from the top of the stairs.

"Come here and see for yourself!" Elle yelled in response, not long after, she heard a clattering sound from the direction followed by Ana entering the kitchen. Ana grabbed the calendar and started flicking through checking all of the dates over and over again.

"Elle...there's one here that says 3rd January and going back to school!" Ana remarked, turning to face Elle.

"Wait but that's tomorr-" Elle stopped as she turned to notice two boxes sat on the table. They both headed towards the boxes and opened one each. This was the weirdest thing yet as in each box there was a school uniform, a school bag full of everything they'd need, school shoes and even a Nokia brick each.

"So I guess we have school tomorrow!" Ana stated.