To Catch A Mishap | a time travel story ©

Chapter Two

When I enter our apartment again and let the front door fall shut behind my back, I hear grunts and huffs from the living room. Did Kaya seriously bring someone again?
The living room door is open, how I left it when I left to go to Mister Cullivan. A large shadow of a shape is painted on the carpet - a shape I can spot from right where I’m standing, still at the front door, a manly shape.
Wait, what?
On my tiptoes, balancing around Kaya’s high heels, I hobble to the living room door and peek through the gap of the door. What I see makes my breath hitch.
No, I’m way too tired to deal with this.
A lanky man, dressed in a gray suit and black tie, with black slacks and a fedora atop his gray hair is pacing back and forth in the living room, occasionally glancing at the TV still playing the static image. He props his arm on the other and taps his gloved finger against his cheek, as if he is thinking.
How in the fuck did he get in here? Who is he anyway?
I shift my balance from one leg to the other and the living room door swings open a little wider.
Fuck.
The man abruptly stops in his tracks and his eyes shoot to the gap of the door - to where I’m hiding behind.
“Oh my fuck, are you shitting me?!” I curse at myself.
“Oh, Dear.” He clutches his chest in a gentle manner, as if it did skip a beat just from spotting me.
No point in hiding anymore - I push open the living room door, surprised why Kaya didn’t say anything to him before. But a glance at her tells me: she is knocked out.
“Get the fuck out before I load the shotgun in my room,” I say, dangerously low.
The man takes off his fedora and for the first time - as if the sight of a stranger in our living room wasn’t already confusing - my jaw almost drops.
Under the gray hair, the man is just as pale and white. Not as in a saying or in shock - literally gray skin frames his dark eyes.
The elegantly dressed man seems to have jumped right out of the set of a black-and-white movie from the early Seventies.
“I- Madam, I really wish I could, but y-your magical device does not want to let me back inside.” He nods to the TV.
What?
I frown at the stranger. “What the fucksicle are you saying?”
“Is- is that the name for the device?” The man bends forward to inspect the Samsung logo of the TV.
“No-” I rub my face in desperation, “Get out, for real, man.”
He straightens and presses his fedora close to his heart. “If you could perchance send be back through this… very very interesting portal-”
“Who are you?” I interrupt him.
“My name is Zain Mishap, I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Madam…?”
By no fucking way am I telling him my nam-
“Alice.”
“Alice, ah-” Zain places his hat back on his head and sways in something I would describe as nostalgia.
Still standing in the doorway, I focus on him. “What’s with all this… costume, the color?”
Opening his eyes, he looks almost caught off-guard.
Maybe my question confused him. “Why do you look like you look?” I try a better attempt.
“What year is this?” Zain asks in return, almost afraid.
I blink. “2024, what kind of a question is that even-”
“Oh, Dearest of all!” he exclaims but quickly clasps a pale hand on his mouth when he sees both the sleeping shape of Kaya on the sofa and my warning gaze. “A hundred years…”
Easing myself away from the doorframe after realizing Zain won’t instantly stab me, I march through the room, stopping a few safety meters in front of him. “Sorry, what?”
“I believe your magical device,” The man nods to the TV still buzzing in static, “has teleported me here, a hundred years into the future.” After he said that, he nods, satisfied, as if that would change anything positively in his case - if it was real.
“Yoo, what?” I mumble, thinking about his words. Do I doubt that he could be correct? Taking it from his appearance - no. Taking it from the connected logic - yes.
Because a grown adult man wearing a suit and fedora can’t just teleport through a Samsung TV.
“That explains a lot, why this interior looks so futuristic and why you, Madam, speak so wonderfully… twisted, I shall say,” Zain states and for the first time, he hesitantly smiles, baring his teeth - just as gray as the rest of his appearance.
Suddenly, I am very well aware of my own - my second-day greasy hair, my torn jeans and shabby Pickle Rick socks with holes in them - all the total opposite to this fine elegant Gentleman in front of me.
His eyes are indeed directed at my socks. “Such interesting drawings, and so bright with color. I suddenly seem to have lost all mi-” “Okay, Sir, I don’t know what to do besides telling you to leave,” I cut him off mid-sentence and hide my holey sock under my whole one, slightly embarrassed.
Caught in the bright light, Zain backs away and raises his hands as an apology. “Pardon my behavior, Madam.”
“Whatever.” I brush it off and walk over to Kaya to brush away the curls that have fallen into her face. The wine bottle has left a dark red circular stain on the coffee table and after a further glance, I notice that it is empty.
Good God, she is knocked out.
Suddenly, I’m torn out of my worries about her by the gray man shaking the TV. “Come, magical device, please open up for me again!” he wails, in a tone close to sounding like an injured animal. “I want to leave!” But of course, the TV doesn’t budge. Instead, the man has such a grip on it that the cables come loose from the back and the static screen goes black. 
“Stop it, you fucking idiot-” I hiss to him after seeing Kaya stir from the commotion. There is no way in hell that I will let her wake up to this image: A gray man from 1924 caught here in the present, dismantling the TV we both spent half-half on.
Zain abruptly lets go of the screen after it went black, clasping a hand over his mouth again. Seeing him like that from afar, he almost blends in with the ash-colored wall of the living room.
“Stop it, man,” I sigh again.
He does stop, gladly, but then drops down on the carpet, disregarding how wrinkled his dress pants would get, and buries his face in his hands. “I’m so colorless… so… dull… so gray!” he suddenly cries.
I groan. “No, come on, oh my fucking G-”
“I look so pale too.” He looks at the blank screen of the TV, seeing his reflection in it, and his eyes widen, more tears brimming. Yes, even his tears, when they fall, have a certain translucency to them - like very diluted black ink.
“I’ll get you home,” I suddenly suggest without thinking. “No, I mean- Fuck!”
“Really?” Zain looks up from his tear-stained hands and hope flickers in his dark eyes for a brief moment.
“Yes, my God.” I give in, struggle up from the crouched position next to Kaya on the sofa and walk over to the TV to plug the cables back in. “Let’s hope this situation solves itself fast.”
But after I plugged in the HDMI cable, the static image has vanished and I’m left staring at a cheap Rom-Com.
It is the same channel as before, and if any logic still exists right now, I’d believe Zain could only return through the same channel he - I still don’t know how - teleported through. Switching the channels with the remote, I feel my hope slipping away from my grasp.
There is only one thing I spontaneously can come up with.

“You again? Can’t an old man like me just get some peace away from you tyran?”
I shoot an apologetic smile to Mister Cullivan, internally being disgusted at myself. “Sorry, it seems like the cables aren’t connec-”
“Fine! One last time!” he barks and grabs the keys again. It’s still a mystery to me how he is the only one in the house to own these keys, even the janitor has to knock on his door.
With a snarl of disapproval - and I get him for being salty that I knocked on his door at the dawn of night - he pushes past me to the stairs.

Entering the apartment for the third time this evening, I stop in my tracks. What if that Zain-guy was only in my imagination, what if I am just really exhausted? Because so far, I don’t hear any noises.
But when I walk back into the living room, I see the gray man on the carpet, he has pulled his legs to his chest and wrapped his arms around his knees, slowly rocking back and forth.
And looking back at the TV, I get why he seems so utterly terrified. The static image still didn’t return, and what Zain is left staring at is a horror movie. A doll sitting on a crudely-made wooden chair while a music box plays in the background is truly something that causes shivers on my arms too.
“Don’t watch that,” I say quietly and switch the channels.
Kaya is still asleep, and I come to the conclusion that, in order to have a decent conversation about Zain’s situation, she needs to leave this room. Without hesitation, I reposition her that her head is leaning against my chest and I shove my hands under the back of her knees to lift her. Her being a lightweight is a blessing, although I still grind my teeth carrying her to her room.
After I placed Kaya down on her mattress and pulled her covers over her, I return to the living room, to Zain.
“Sorry, I- I fucking tried my best,” I mutter an apology and flop down in my usual spot on the sofa, like a fish on land. I'll have to worry about this shit tomorrow, I am too tired to care.
Zain slowly gets up from the ground, with weirdly graceful movements, until he straightens and brushes non-existent dirt off of his dress pants. His gaze is directed to the nature documentary playing on the TV, totally mesmerized.
“Yeah, don’t ask me how it works either…” I comment from the sofa when I can tell he’s about to ask me exactly that.
Why I’m suddenly so trusting to the man who just - not more than fifteen minutes ago - made an appearance in our living room, I am also not sure. Perhaps it is the way he stares at the lioness running across the screen, dexterous and agile, caught by the image in an almost solemn way. A way that reminds me too much of myself, sometimes.
Patting on the empty space on the sofa next to me, I offer for him to sit, which he hesitantly agrees to. Stiffly crossing his legs, Zain glances over to me. “Tell me about yourself,” I say, slowly feeling the exhaustion of the previous day wash over my body. Whatever I’m saying right now; I’m taking it with a grain of salt.
Uncertain, he takes off his fedora again and places it on his knee, balancing it upside down. “I am not partially fond of that idea…”
A sigh escapes my lips. “Fine, I will continue referring to you as the ‘gray man with a fedora’.”
“Please, Madam.” Zain almost jumps at my words. “You do not- please, I am willing to tell you anything.”
I cross my arms behind my neck and stare at the ceiling fan turning in the dim light of the living room lamp. “How old are you, Zain?”
“Me? Oh, Dear. I am almost at the ripe age of Thirty,” he quietly admits. I snort, “I’m twenty-six, so you’re not old.”
He dares to lean against the soft cushions on the sofa and I can tell how much effort it takes him not to sigh in comfort.
“So, you really are from… 1924?”
Zain nods. “I do not know how it could happen, I was working at this new machinery and suddenly, my vision… it went black and I regained my consciousness not only in a quite different location but also a decade later.”
It still feels odd to look at him, all in gray and black and white - it is as if all light in this room reflects right off of him or gets absorbed; it makes Zain look two-dimensional.
“You’ll get back to 1924, we will find a way,” I absentmindedly promise to him, already half-asleep.