All In Your Head

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When John awoke, it was not in the present. Several times after that attempt, it still wasn't. Something horribly wrong had happened.

He checked his phone. No missed calls, but his battery was about to die. He had forgotten to charge it yesterday while visiting the present.

John walked blindly to the living room where his food had been put on a plate for him. Seeing her husband was awake, Althea rose to meet him. She hugged him, and he stood there. He felt her embrace, but was too numb to return it. She pulled away, tried to hide the pain in her eyes, and faced him.

"John, I feel like you don't love me."

He blinked. "Yes, I do love you. Very much."

"Then why won't you talk to me?" she exclaimed. "I want to know what's going on in that head of yours! Something isn't right. I found this. . ." She held up in her hand a collection of papers. John followed her gaze and immediately grabbed the papers from her. She flinched.

"Where did you find these?" he demanded.

Althea looked down at her feet, sullen and remorseful. When she didn't reply, John said, "Answer me. Tell me what you know."

"John. . ." Althea whispered, still not meeting his gaze. "Who is Megan?"

Surprised, John couldn't help but laugh. "Out of everything I've written here," he said, gesturing to the papers in his hand, "that's your concern?"

Althea looked at him like he was a madman. John registered the fear on her face and sighed. "Megan is my ex-wife."

Althea stumbled back and looked into his eyes, as if for some confirmation of the truth. "Why, John." she said. "That's sin."

"It's not like that." John sat down and began to tell her everything, hoping that the truth would set him free at last.

When he had finished, he pushed himself to meet her gaze. And he saw what he had been most afraid to find. Althea didn't appear thoughtful, attempting to take everything in. She didn't even appear confused. She looked angry.

Althea stood up suddenly. "What do you take me for. . ." she began. John rose from his chair. He would convince her that what he was saying was true. John reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and held it out to her.

Althea screamed. She screamed and screamed.

John approached, as gently as he could, so as not to scare her. "In the future, we have these devices, and we can call and talk to anyone in the world—"

"No! Monster!" Althea shouted as she pushed him away. She bolted for the door as John made one final attempt to reach for her arm. She hit him across the face just as he did so. Stunned, he fell backwards. They locked eyes as she stood in the doorway, Althea staring back at him.

Deep in her eyes, amongst the shock and disbelief, John thought he saw love. And regret. For a moment, he thought he had her. But then, her back turned to him, Althea murmured, "You aren't my husband." And she was gone.

And it was just like when Megan had left him.

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Althea eventually returned, and when she did it was in the company of two policemen. They wrestled John to the floor of the sitting room and handcuffed him. Althea stood in the doorway, silently observing everything.

One of the policemen held a mirror up to John. "Do you see this?" the policeman said to him. "Your wife tells me you're thirty-five. That she married you not even a month ago, and since then you've been sick and done nothing but sleep and scribble little fantasies in that journal of yours. Does this look like the face of a thirty-five-year-old man to you? Does it? I'd say you look at least fifteen years older. . ." John couldn't believe what he saw. He could tell it was him all right, but this person that stared back at him had aged, and aged terribly at that.

John could see that he now had deep-set wrinkles and gray hairs all over his head and face. It appeared as though time in the past was trying to catch up to time in the present, meaning that for John to have been alive in both the years 1813 and 2013, he would need to be 200 years old!

John had no idea just how much time had passed in the present, and this realization scared him; he thought of Ryan, how he had left him all alone. Had Ryan called his mother on the house phone when he hadn't woken up, and did she come to get him? Where was John's present body now? Still asleep, back at the house?

Althea finally spoke. "Make him show you that thing he showed me. It looked like a weapon of some kind. It's in his pocket."

At the word, "weapon", the two policemen exchanged weary glances. One of them reached into John's pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Immediately he dropped it, as though it had scalded his skin.

"Let's go," the other policeman said. As they led John through the front door, one of the policemen lagged behind and John heard him say "I'd like to read what he's written in that journal," and his wife say, "I think it's witchcraft."

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With nothing else to do in a cold jail cell by himself, John slept, trying everything to return to the present. He only slept for a few hours before he was awakened to the sound of keys rattling just outside his cell. He didn't awake to being in his room back in the present. But thanks to a dream John had while incarcerated, he knew he wasn't back at home, anyway.

If the dream had been correct, John was in the hospital, attached to a machine that was keeping him alive. Megan had come over to check on him when Ryan called, crying that Daddy wouldn't wake up. And once at the hospital, the doctors had confirmed that that was because Daddy was in a coma. Not only that, but 5 years had passed quickly while all this was going on. Ryan now would have been ten-years-old. Five birthdays John had missed of his son's. And five or more of himself. John had no concept of time anymore, it seemed.

But what troubled John the most perhaps was the fact that in the dream, five years had gone by while John was in a coma. And Megan was making the final arrangements. They were preparing to pull the plug.

John's thoughts were interrupted as a man he didn't recognize opened the lock to his cell. "They've asked me to prepare you for the gallows," the man said.

It took a minute for John to realize what the man was saying. "I beg your pardon?"

"They's saying you're a witch."

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The air was freezing. John stood up on a platform by himself, a noose tied tightly around his neck, his hands bound behind him with a coarse rope.

If he timed everything just right, John felt he could break this spell he was under, of having to travel between the years 1813 and 2013. The hospital was preparing to move John off of life support. John was about to be hung for witchcraft.

John hadn't even bothered asking for a fair trial. He knew that people who pulled weird, shiny mechanical gadgets out of their pockets (stupid, stupid, he thought) and aged by five years each time they slept were most definitely witches. John could only hope that he would awake back at home where he belonged. In the present. Switching back and forth between the two had become rather exhausting.

John felt the ground give away beneath him as the executioner pulled the lever. The noose around his neck tightened.

Back in the present, a well-meaning nurse passed through the room where John remained in a coma, pushing a trolley carrying fresh sheets and little Dixie cups of pills. One of the wheels caught on the power cord which John's life solely depended on. It pulled, and came free of the wall. The nurse didn't notice.