Short Story Collection

The Final Push

   (Hello, this is the author, wow shocking. Anyways I just want to say to anyone that reads this, I'm sorry. It's a mess and a jumble of my thoughts because right now is my Final Push of the school year. I know that its weird, and it doesnt really follow any plot, but I would like to think that the end is something to look forward to in the real world and this has helped me realize what I need to do to prepare for the next few days, sorry its sloppy, and after the next few days I think there will be many more stories to come. Thank you for reading my work, i appreciate it, and best of luck with your exams too <3 )

Sitting at your table, eating lunch, you suddenly think of the future to come. In the next couple of weeks you will be submitted to the worst pain of your entire life before you are freed back into the world. Your job comes later, money comes after, and all that determines your true fate is the next weeks to come. As you remember what you need to do, your watch beeps, it proclaims 1400, and suddenly a vortex around you pulls you into a whirlwind of insanity.
    Welcome, you're now in the 1400s, the Middle Ages. With no control you are going to be pulled through the greatest events of history, and without the slightest clue why you really need to know these events, you will follow your watch through time. In the next 9 days all of history will be in and out of your mind. Then, it will all be over. There is no need to worry about what will happen to you, you're safe, unaffected really. Minus the sickening warps of time that will place you all over the world in seconds. Anyways, you should go. These 9 days will pass much quicker than you expect.
    As you know (and should really be able to see) you are in the Middle Ages. Look around, castles, knights, all that good stuff. Now, where shall you begin? Well all you really need to know is that there was a class system, all sorts of people were born into different ranks and it stayed that way until— a flash starts at your wrist and pulls you through time, as you are dragged you observe the tunnel of colors you float through.
    It's unpleasant and sickeningly fast as shades of yellow, pink, and red are whipped around you making screaming lines to your side. A hint of blue appears above as you view the sky and the tunnel whirls into nothing. — the Renaissance Period! Yes, here is where people opened up their ideas and expressed their creative ability. These shifts really were the best possible way this could go. You stare in awe at the many artists, poets, writers around you. They work, unknowing of your existence, they work like you aren't from the future. You are fascinated and as you explore more of the current works going on, time shifts again. Your inspiration pulled away by the tick of the clock. You have 7 days left already, it feels so slow to go through history as your real time is whipping by. The fascination you once had is replaced with a lackadaisical attitude as a new era surrounds you. This cycle repeats constantly, it's incredible and as you explore more of what really interest you, it's time to move on. Soon, theres only one day left, and as you experience this last day you're filled with panic, because tomorrow you'll be pulled back and fourth so many times over the course of two hours that it will be impossible to comprehend where you are in time. Those fascinating events will be nothing more than words on a paper as you walk into class the next day. At 8am sharp you sit yourself down on a righty-desk, half-asleep and unable to focus, you read the title of the papers before you: Global Studies Final Exam.
Your less-than-magical experience with history is over. Now there's no time to make things fun, to imagine what things were like. 9 days on full energy and you wasted it all on one subject. 9 days spent going through somewhat useless information and now you find yourself at a loss, because over the next 16 hours you will do every type of math problem that has been presented to you in your life. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, geometry, algebra, trig. The digits flow in and out of your mind as you try to process what is going on. This type of problem has 8 steps to complete, that one only has 6, and theres rules. So many rules. Attempting to comprehend all these in the next, oh God, 12 hours will be impossible, especially if you want to sleep. Racing through your head is bouts of panic and anxiety that fall into the shapes of mathematical terms as you write, and write, and write. Once again, the time passes faster than it needs to, and at 8am sharp, you're sitting down in a little tiny desk with a barely charged calculator (you had used most of the battery the night before) barely prepared to even think of something so simple as an addition problem. You try to complete the pages and pages of problems before the time is up, but with the focus you have given to the clock, you cannot remember how to complete the problems. The rules are jumbled into chains of letters and numbers that'd take hours to sort out. You try your best and do what you can. Your little tiny desk isn't helping. The tick of the clock and the clack of the door as people finish and leave fills your mind with echoes. How can they be done? They must have failed, right?
Math is over with, and you're finally onto a subject you genuinely enjoy, French. The exams are piled up, one after another. French is never at the top of your list of priorities, so you never do as well as you expect, because with what little breaks you get you take them in a heartbeat. The next exam is tomorrow, then you have the weekend to study for the last two. That weekend is your savior. Filled with anxiety about the next exams, having barely started on them, you work on memorizing the language. The sweet flow of the words fills your mind as you casually study for tomorrow morning. Tenses, irregulars, the vocab. It fills your head as you forget everything that had to do with history and math. The adventure through time was not a waste until now, as it has gotten in the way of studying for the exams that you actually need a good grade on. History isn't your future, science, french, math are your future.  Why did you waste so much time there, when its completely useless to the rest of your life. Because if you fail, you're a disappointment in the moment. That's all there is to it. So you spend the time of the present on the needs of the future, and you ignore tomorrow as you study for the day after. The never ending cycle of where to begin and where to end surrounds you. The weekend is here. French is over, because you know french fairly well, but you really don't. You'll get a 70% just wait.
The next 4 days are the process of the last energy and capacity you have left in your mind being burnt like coal. But, it gets over with. Quickly the days end and begin with jolting bumps as the limits you have known are stretched further than the previous years. You cannot even begin to go on about the rest of the exams because after your lengthy study period of history, and the slow collapse into nothing that came following math leaves you forgetting the entire school year. That's for later, the not-so-immediate future that you don't have any need to worry about. Finally, it's over. Chemistry was a bust, because after the weekend you're burnt out. English you can't even remember, but it was finally over.
Everything seemed to slow down as the soft heat of the summer hit your face as you float in the pool. Three months of absolutely nothing, now why wouldn't anyone want that. You reflect on your exams. History, it took so long but you probably did well, you had enough in your mind to make it fun, to make a story about it, but as you were drained the effort you put in matched the energy you had left, and as you await your final grades, you sit in the cool, crystal clear water, and relax for the first time since September. There is no more future, it is just you, and the water. You have once again survived the final push.