Bent Time

Shining Faces

Bent Time - Shining Faces (originally written: 2013; revised: 2015)

"Are you going?" Douglas asked using the best pout he could muster.

"Doug, I already told you that I am staying home for the weekend like, six times today. Give it a rest." Carter was ready to explode. Doug had been asking him that question for the past hour.

"But it's so fun to tease you!" Doug punched his arm lightly. "I can't wait to see everyone's face when I arrive at the party with my Mech Soldier costume," he whispered into Carter's ear with an excited tone.

Carter finally smacked his head on the desk and cringed when he felt the eyes of Mr. Muller stabbing into him like daggers. This teacher could not accept even an unnecessary breath without having consequences.

"Sit up, Solis," barked Muller, and Carter begrudgingly sat up trying to hold back his fiercest scowl at his teacher's intolerance of him.

Now, as far as Carter was concerned, his own existence was unnecessary to Mr. Muller. Carter glanced at Doug, who was snickering silently into his binder. Carter rolled his eyes.

Doug seemed to react in a rather violent manner (whether positively or negatively) to anything unexpected or new that happened on any day. He wondered how they ever became friends. Carter was quiet, mild, and intelligent. Doug tended to be a rambunctious, obnoxious, and incorrigible young man.

Carter assumed since Doug had not even hit his growth spurt yet, that of course his behavior would be so off-the-wall. It was back in the sixth grade when they had become friends, but Carter had physically and mentally matured very quickly the prior year, and felt that Doug was like a younger brother at this point despite being the same age.

Carter looked at his old analog watch.

Is it already two-forty in the afternoon? He thought to himself. This day feels way too short, he thought, staring as the second hand ticked by. Tick-tick, it went. Carter wished it would just slow down or even go back. Relive the whole day over again, even. He could correct all of his mistakes.

Carter was shocked from his near-fantasy with a jolt. "Carter Solis!" Mr. Muller nearly shouted.

"If there's anything that I wish you would do in my class, it is to take notes. Do I have to tell you again, or is your need to write things down so dire that you'll forget everything I'm saying in seconds?" Carter hesitated and then glared at Mr. Muller for a moment before continuing to write down what was written on the whiteboard. He had just about nearly snapped his pen, his thoughts racing, but one curious thought surfaced in his head.

What if I could relive today?

It seemed to come out of nowhere, but the foreign thought was just as curious as one of his own thoughts. It was immediately shot down by words saying that he couldn't, he can't, that nobody can. However, more reasonable logic took over his experience (or lack thereof), and he reasoned to himself that there was no real reason why it can't happen. Sure, it only seemed to happen in movies, but maybe there were flaws in those movies, and obviously there were producers and interviews plainly explaining that from the beginning.

Maybe it wasn't something you could invent. Maybe it was genetic or something… something you're born with. Something that you're created with.

Carter looked at his watch again intently. He imagined the watch simply going in the opposite direction. He tried to imagine everything slowing down and going the other way, and he felt…

…absolutely nothing. He was rather disappointed, but he supposed it was worth a shot. He looked back down to write again and forget about his foolishness.

That was when he saw it. It looked like an electric arc passing from the pen to the paper - light blue and as clear as day. Carter felt a small burst of adrenaline, but quickly calmed himself down. "Just some static electricity," he thought to himself a little too loudly.

"Carter Solis, go stand in the hall immediately!"

In a flurry of thoughts, Carter felt, rather than real anger, frustration, or fear... he felt determination.

You know what? Since, brain, you're going to keep bothering me about this nonsense, let's go prove it right. Or wrong, he thought to himself with a smile.

He stood up and out of his chair, marched quickly toward the door and began to run the moment he turned the handle of the door. He passed through the doorway and started to jog down the hall, and started to run before he heard the door slam distantly behind him. Ignoring the sound of it re-opening and the noise of his teacher calling after him, his run broke into a sprint around the corner when he reached the boys' bathroom, and he nearly fell inside before slamming the door and locking it.

Slumping down onto the floor with his back against the wall, he looked at his watch and concentrated, but not on it moving. Concentration proved some results while he had been in class, and he couldn't believe that it had been just static electricity. It couldn't have been that. He had been sitting down the entire time and hardly moving in his desk; how could any have built up?

Carter concentrated as hard as he could, staring at his watch as the seconds ticked by. No results.

He groaned in frustration just before he heard the rapid knocking on the locked bathroom door.

"Carter, get out of there immediately!" Mr. Muller was right outside the bathroom, now. With a sudden burst of adrenaline and his mind already in a frustrated fritz, he found himself not concentrating, but focusing in inhuman clarity. It felt as though his sheer willpower was going to explode, and he immediately looked down at his watch again and took the opportunity to direct it. What else was going to work?

"Mr. Solis, I said…!"

Mr. Muller's words were cut off as everything became suddenly, sharply blurred, and Carter felt as though he was falling unbelievably fast through absolutely nothing. Nothing in his way, not even an atmosphere.

He began to wonder if he was having a seizure as his surroundings continued moving incredibly fast, and the moment he broke his short-lived concentration, as quickly as it began it ended in an explosion of bright electric arcs passing all over his body in an instant along with a wave of dizziness and pain, and he found himself in his desk again in the middle of Mr. Muller's class.

"Are you going?" Douglas asked using the best pout he could muster.

Carter's confusion could not have been surpassed by any other confusion in his life at that moment, and he looked at his watch in disbelief.

It read two thirty-nine, one minute before he last checked it.