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Chapter 1: Tick

time travel story (Draft. Please give feedback if you can. Thanks!)
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The box hit the floor with a loud thud.
"Shit!, Shouted Peter letting out an exasperated sigh.
Yet another thing to repack and get out of the way before unpacking again. He bent down slowly halfway to pick up the now scattered contents, then decidingly plopped to the wood floor and rested his back against the wall. He was tired. Not just from the unpacking, or the cleaning. He was tired of everything. Tired of how things were, tired of getting his hopes up that something good may finally happen, tired of nothing changing, tired of constantly being let down, tired of things never working out, tired of these old reminders, and tired of people. It had been like this for years, but recently it had been getting worse.

He tilted his head back and stared at the popcorn ceiling of his room. How long has it been, he wondered. He thought back to years before. It felt like it was yesterday and a centuries ago at the same time. He began to wonder what Kate was doing now. If she even wondered about him anymore. Whether she ever thought about him at the same time he thought about her, or maybe if she was with someone else right now laughing, and smiling, and having the time of her life. His brow furrowed and clenched instinctively at the thought.

He still felt it. That empty pit in his stomach that made breathing hard and made normal everyday activities seem like the most daunting tasks.
Why she had left him, he knew. He understood the reasons and the cause, but still it hurt. It never stopped. When did life become so complicated? He found himself wishing for things to be easy again like when he was a kid. Simple and easy. Back when the biggest problem was something as stupid as getting home in time to watch cartoons.
But she was gone and that's just how things were now, and that's how they had been for the past while. He stared at the boxes he had piled up. All things Peter had to find a place for.

There seemed like too much to keep in his new unspacious apartment. He knew he needed to change. Things couldn't keep going on like this. She left years ago, and what friends he had back then were gone now as well. They had moved on with their lives. He was acutely aware of this fact. All the time he had been keeping to himself and distracted with one new hobby after another that now filled the boxes, they had been living their lives, moving on, and going forward while he had remained stagnant in memories of the past, hoarding old relics of better times, and drinking to forget. His life was undeniably not where he wanted it to be.

Being alone for so long had finally taken its toll. If only things could go back to the way they were before when everything was easy he thought again. Those thoughts had now become a daily recurrence and he knew he had to do something. He knew he had to make a new life. Cleaning out the old from his room in this new place seemed like a good place to start as a first step.

Peter looked back at the mess on the ground feeling a lack of will to pick it up at all. His eyes drifted anywhere else in the room they could go until they reached the clock on the nightstand. 8:05AM. It was time to head to work.

He found his name badge on the dresser top, put on his coat, and headed out the door. Just another day blanketed by grey clouds outside. He hated when the sky was grey. It always seemed to zap the energy out of him. Same old, same old.

On the bus he watched the cars go by, and on the subway he observed the people going on with their daily routine of heading to work, or school, or whatever it was people with social lives do. It was a long travel. An hour to get there, and an hour to get back to his new home, but that's exactly what he wanted. It had been the whole reason why he had chosen to stick with a job smack-dab in the middle of the city. Living on the outskirts felt too secluded. It gave him a feeling of claustrophobic anxiety being so trapped.