Long road to go

Lost in his head

Hunter

"Time's up." Do I hear someone say as I stretch out in my bed? The bed was almost too small for me the day before, now it feels like a big cloud I'm floating on. I open my eyes and almost have a stroke, I'm home again. My dog jumps on my bed, licks my face, and starts asking for petting like he does every morning. "Big boy, let me stand up," I say with a smile that doesn't match the feeling I feel inside. Empty, that's how I feel. It used to feel great to be this big man in New York with my own company and girls enough to be with, instead of settling for one woman.

Now all I can think about are the times I used to have. My second chance in the past, the chance I still don't understand. All I know is that this life is not what I want anymore. For the first time, I admit that I don't want to be alone anymore. I want to feel everything. I want to feel love.

My morning routine happens to be the same before I am sent to the past. My daily cup, of coffee, and the toast that I take out of the toaster. That's it before I get in the car to go to work. Work, which feels like a struggle I don't want to face today, but I have to.

On the sidewalk in front of my building, I don't feel like the proud man I normally am. I even think about doing something else in my life. David stops me in the lobby and hands me a report with this month's numbers. "Another great month, Hunter," he says as he taps me on the shoulder. My gaze moves further into the building where I hear a voice. A familiar voice. My feet go to where I hear the voice, but when I step inside the room, it is empty, no one is there.

In the elevator, I press the button for the top floor where my office is. In my office is a stack of papers that I have to process today. Which meant I will have to work late hours. Before I realize it's eight o'clock, I hear a voice in my office. "Come on, Hunter. Join us for a drink." My head turns to Lucas, who smiles at me with his gleaming white teeth. This feels uncomfortable. Like, I've been in this situation before. Suddenly the evening in the bar flashes before me. As if I have stepped back into the past. "I have so much to do, Lucas, maybe another time."

Lucas almost drags me out of my seat when I keep insisting that I should stay. In the elevator, I feel this is a big mistake. I don't want to be sucked back into the past. The smell of that particular cab almost invades my nostrils as we near the bar. "Don't be a pussy, come on," Lucas motivates me with my good friend David. Which indeed works, stupid pressure. Now I'm sitting at the same table in the same bar on the same chair.

When booze got into the conversation, or rather into us. Get us caught up in a story from our high school that I don't remember. They took me back to the time we had fun, and I did forget the odd feeling from before. Suddenly, I hear a voice I know like no other. It is the voice of the woman with her red hair. No, not again, spins through my head. Making the odd tense feeling straight back in my veins.

I don't want to be here. That's all I can think of, even the hazy feeling of the drink can't make me stay. The blonde girl grabs my arms when she gets through that I want to flee. "Are you going already? Don't you want some fun?" Fun? Going back in time with a cab that can't tell me what I'm looking for in the past. "No, I'm not in the mood for that kind of fun." The woman laughs even more when she sees the look on my face and knows I remember everything. She even enjoys it as she caresses my arm until I push her hand away.

"Come on, Hunter, don't be a pussy." If he knew what I was going through, he would regret it too. Not that he would be, really. He had a great time with his parents always being sweet and warm and his popular playboy status at school. Then I see him kissing Stephanie, and a feeling of regret overwhelms me. It feels more like the regret of something I've lost. Something that could have been mine in the first place.

As the woman talks about the story of the legend, I almost roll my eyes, not this again. "Who believes in something so stupid," Lucas says with his head hammered from all the alcohol. Why can't he shut up before I have to go back? He has nothing he regrets, I suppose. No, he had everything from birth until now.

Later in the evening, I get the feeling of being manipulated into doing what the girls want. Like they're forcing me not to go home alone. "What are you doing to me?" I ask the woman, who once again touches my body with her hands. Only not my arm this time, but my leg. "What do you think I'm doing?" She asks me as if she is playing a game with me and enjoying it. "Oh, shit, it's already five o'clock. We have to be at the company in three hours. I better go to bed," Lucas says as he gets up and leaves us both with this woman. "I have to go too, nice to meet you, beautiful woman." Always the warm, charming guy, it makes me sick. Now I'm the only one at the table with them both by my side.

"Are you ready to go back?" The red-haired woman looks up. "No, I don't want these games anymore, do you understand?" They continue to look at me, waiting for me to say something else. "I can't, I really can't, I don't know what you want from me, but I don't want to play anymore." Again, they say nothing. What do they want to hear? Do they want my permission to get me back in the cab? Am I supposed to like this thing? I just want them to tell me what I had to find.

Instead, they act so seriously until they can no longer hold back their laughter, "Funny boy you are, you had your chance." My head was pounding from their laughter. Like my life is the funniest thing to them. "Have I found what I needed, but what? I still feel empty, more empty than I've ever felt." Their laughter dies away. "No, you failed," the woman with blond hair says as they both walk away from my table, leaving me alone with the doubts that continue to play in my head.

Before they could even leave the bar with another victim, I step behind them and search the street for the cab. When I see it, I run for it. Before I can get in, a man stops me, "You failed, you can't go back." The cab driver grabbed me by my shoulder and I look straight into his brown-gold eyes. "I don't want to go back, I want to know what I needed that took me to the past." The cab, meanwhile, disappears into thin air with the driver still beside me. My mouth falls open at the sight of the cab leaving without a driver.