The Time Traveller

Chapter One

Two years had passed since that night in January. In that short span of time, they'd gotten married and had a kid, a boy named J.J. DeLoupe. Now at this point, he was almost a year old.
They had moved into a house in the suburbs, after Rome's parents were "highly disappointed in him for falling for a woman on the first date". They had promptly kicked him out of the house. Julie, who still lived with her mom and dad while she went to college, decided that she needed a fresh start, too. She switched to online courses so she could be a full-time parent, and they moved out to a small gated community 3 towns over.
"Isn't it just perfect, Rome?" Julie beamed, smiling from ear to ear. "The house, I mean." She held J.J. in her arms as Rome followed behind her into the house with a cardboard box.
"Yeah," he replied, "but nothing compared to you." Julie blushed and sat J.J. down on the couch, which was, at the moment, the only thing in their new living room. Light came pouring through the single curtain-less window and into the tiny living room, illuminating the otherwise dark room. The stone fireplace remained unlit, and would probably stay that way until J.J. was a little older.
Together, Julie and Rome spent the next half hour unloading boxes from moving trucks, one parked in the driveway and one parked on the side of the road. When the grandfather clock in the living room struck 5:00, Julie decided to go pick up supper from the nearest pizza place. She left in their red Toyota, and left J.J. with Rome.
As J.J. sat at the kitchen counter, Rome unloaded the plates, silverware, and glasses from the boxes labelled kitchen. J.J. chewed on one of his toys and occasionally took small sips from a blue and green plastic sippy cup. He placed the last plate in the cabinet and pushed the empty boxes up against the wall.
Suddenly, Rome heard a banging coming from upstairs. It was like someone was jumping up and down on the floorboards, or knocking hard on a door. Rome snapped his head around, looking up the staircase and listening to the banging noise.
"Hey little buddy," Rome smiled nervously at J.J., and picked him up by his underarms. "You wanna go play with your toys?" J.J. giggled.
Rome sat him down in a gated play area in the middle of the living room. J.J. was immediately distracted by the wide assortment of everything from giant Legos to a phone that played the ABC song every time you pressed a button.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
With J.J. distracted, Rome made a quick getaway upstairs.
The upstairs had a balcony that overlooked the living room on one side and the front door on the other. Hallways split off in both directions. The one to the right led to J.J.'s room, his bathroom, and a guest bedroom. On the left, there was Julie and Rome's bedroom, along with a closet that they were going to use as a medicine cabinet. Rome quickly identified the source of the banging. The medicine closet. As Rome stepped closer to the closet, the door was physically shaking with every blow to it. The old wood looked like it could splinter any second. He creeped closer, until he was finally within arms reach.
Rome anxiously grabbed hold of the door handle and yanked it towards him, the door swinging out. An old man with a single white tuft of hair on the top of his head came tumbling out and fell onto the ground. The old man weakly stood up on his knees.
"I was told," he said, his voice raspy. He was interrupted by a set of coughs only caused by smoking. "I was told to deliver something to Rome DeLoupe." He stopped again to take a breath. "Do you know him?"
"It's...its me," Rome fumbled, "I'm him."
The man pulled a crumpled up letter out of his back pocket. It was curled up on three of the edges and the corner where the stamp would have gone had worn down so that you could see the paper inside.
"I must be leaving," the man said, wheezing. "My health can't get much worse, but you know what they say. Grass is always greener, huh?"
And with that, still on the ground, the old man scrunched back up into the tiny medicine cabinet and slammed the door shut behind him.
"Wait!" Rome called after him. He threw open the medicine cabinet.
The man was gone.