Rewound

This is just the beggining. If enough people read I will release the next chapter that goes into detail as to why he keeps returning to the date of April 9, 1967 and more about how the pocket watch works. Any comments, critiques, or tips are highly encouraged!

****april 9, 2014****

The wind whipped past my head, and the rain soaked my clothes as I just stood there waiting for a wrinkly, crippled, garret to finish his rant. I had known garret all seventy-two years of our long lives. He and I grew up together, graduated high school and college together, and were there for each other every moment of our lives. I was there for his wedding, the birth of all four of his children that had all moved away by now, and when he was diagnosed with an Incurable form of lung cancer that left him with tubes sticking up his nostrils and a ventilator at his side. Now he sat on his porch sheltered from the stormy weather that I was being left victim to, carrying on about the inevitability of death. "It will catch up with us someday," he would cry. "It's gods plan for us," he would usually remark immediately after. I looked up at him, not really listening, but rather waiting. Slowly, I slipped an old pocket watch out of my waist coat pocket and began winding the little hands backwards, watching as they spun out of control.

"Every body dies Charles, it's just what people do!" I simply gave a shrug in response, watching the wheels turn in Garret's mind, already thinking of what he would say next. It was funny how he never anticipated what happened next. Over the sound of the thundering skies behind me I screamed,

"Not me garret!! Not me!" I looked up just in time to see Garret's confused expression before I locked the time into place.

****April 9, 1967***
My eyes snapped open and I jolted upright in my bed covered in a cold sweat. It was if I had just woke up from some terrible nightmare, except deep down I knew what I had just experienced was no conjecture of my imagination. No it was something much worse. My body shaking, I dragged myself out of bed and slowly made my way to the bathroom, my movements unfamiliarly steady. I was much more accustomed to wobbling slightly as I walked, being careful not to lose my balance. Faster than normal I made it into the bathroom and slammed the door behind me, before turning on the faucet and splashing ice cold water on my face. Blindly, I searched for a towel, quickly finding one and wiped my face dry. Just as I threw the towel Into a nearby hamper I caught I glance of myself in the mirror and was captivated by what I saw there. Then again I always was. My once wrinkled face was now perfectly smooth and flawless. My once silver and white hair was now a deep chestnut brown color. The only thing that failed to be rejuvenated was my eyes which people often told me looked like they harbored an old soul. I chuckled lightly to myself. If only they knew.
I looked up at the ceiling, trying to think. I had to be in my early 120's....easily. I frowned to myself. I had lost count how many times I had traveled back here, not that it really mattered. To every one that I encountered I was just another twenty something year old looking for his place in the world. They had no reason to think otherwise.

Finished with my reflection, I walked out of the bathroom and into my small living room that was divided from my kitchen only by a short wall. Through the walls I could hear the brand new Beatles album being played from a record player upstairs. I couldn't help but smile to myself. I loved the 1960's, despite the hippies, the violent civil rights movements, and the anti war movements, there was something that captivated me. Maybe it was because here I was only twenty-five, in the summer of my life, in the midst of troubles that I knew the ends to. When Nixon came around we'd pull out of the war in Vietnam. After Martin Luther king jr. Gets assassinated there will be, at least politically, equality for all American citizens. The Cold War would eventually end I'm a stalemate, with neither side implementing theirs
nuclear weapons that would of surely ripped apart the world at it's very seams. Maybe that's why I liked it here so much. Maybe it was because I knew the outcomes in a period riddled with problems. I only wish I could say the same for the time period I was meant to be in, or well should have been in.

My pocket watch was given to me as a gift many years ago when my father passed from a severe case of pneumonia. I as is eldest son was given it by him, as it was said in his will. There's no doubt in my mind that my father knew of the watch's powers and had simply circumed to death because he had finally learned to accept it after his numerous travels back to the past. I wished I possessed his wisdom, but deep down I knew I couldn't. Not yet at least.

Garret would die two days after our meeting from complications with his lungs. In 2017 scientist would come up with a cure for cancer that could be used to treat any form. If my memory served me correctly the cure came about purely by mistake, it was a mutation in a strain of bacteria scientists were testing to try to put an end Alzheimer's. It saved countless lives and reduced the amount of deaths caused by cancer dramatically within its first year of existence. In 2019, China would revolutionize biological warfare with a form of influenza that had been seemingly unheard of by mankind. 472,000,000 people world wide would die before scientists studying birds off the coast of Africa found a cure for it in 2021. I would die in 2023 from a degenerative muscle disease that was found too late to be cured. In the 81 long years I lived I had watch science and technology as well as warfare and politics advance in large bounds, but despite all the worlds advancements they still didn't find a way to harness the power my little pocket watch possessed. I came to the edge of death that fateful day in 2023. I had taken a turn for the worst that morning and doctors predicted I would be dead by nightfall. Sometime before midday I decided that I wasn't ready to die. That my old bones still had life in them and so I decided to use my watch for the very first time. The date I chose; April 9, 1967.

The watch worked in mysterious ways. I learned after about my fifth time around that the watch created some sort of loop. Time would not advance after the exact moment I pressed down the button that locked the time I wished to travel to in place. Instead we all moved back in time, I being the only one who remembered what still layed before us in the future. It was as if we were all reliving the same day over and over again, but instead on a much larger scale. No one else but me could tell the future. In a world where everyone lived in their present time I was a psychic. Take Garret for instance. Later today I would meet him at the same local diner I did the last time I traveled back. We would share the same conversation on how his oldest daughter, Danica, had just turned two and was already potty trained. We would part our ways the same way as we had before with a laugh and a promise from Garrett that he would find me the girl of my dreams. Of course not everything had to go the same way each time around. My actions influenced the future. I could assassinate the chancellor of Germany and have world war three break out tomorrow if that's what I chose to do. Of course that would be a radical situation, but nevertheless it heaved the same warning. I had to choose my words and actions carefully or else I risked changing the future as I once knew it.

Thanks for reading! Vote if you enjoyed it and feel free to leave a comment. Also I apologize for the abrupt ending. If you catch any mistakes please point them out so I can correct them! Sometimes, because I edit myself, I only read what I think I wrote and don't realize what it actually says is different from what it's meant to be.