Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

Chapter 2

All evening as I made dinner and tidied, the book was playing on my mind, seemingly enticing me to my bag where it lay in wait. I tried to ignore it, but by the time I'd finished dinner, I couldn't wait any longer. I had to find out what was going on. Eagerly, I plopped down on the sofa with it in my hands, and turned the cover again to reveal the dates. They still made no sense whatsoever. However, this time, I took the time to read those instructions in great depth, though they sounded absolutely ridiculous to me. It appeared I was being told how to time travel.

It was so ridiculous that I didn't even try to suppress my snort. Time travel? Was this person insane? Somebody was having a laugh.

But despite the idiotic instructions, I still felt compelled to read on, and found the majority of the book to be filled with accounts of using these instructions. The consequences in some situations weren't great. Each story was hand-written in great detail, each about a different time period. Some told of love stories, some of great adventures, and other of sorrow and loss; not one of them was the same. Yet, there was one thing that connected them all - the experience was cut short by a time limit of one month. And every author has left the same message. Don't fall in love. Because you couldn't go back.

I knew exactly what was going on here. Somebody had been very bored one day and let their imagination run wild, creating a fantasy for themselves. I had to give it to them, though, the stories had a LOT of variety. But it wasn't difficult to forge different styles of handwriting, and switch between pens. The dog-eared look of the cover could be easily achieved by kicking the book about in the dust for a while. Anyone could see right through the piss-poor attempts at disguising it. Almost disgusted for being so intrigued, I chucked it onto the seat beside me and turned the TV on, hoping to be distracted from the slight embarrassment of falling for it.

But it didn't leave my mind.

I tried to ignore it, but by the time I got into bed, I'd convinced myself to try those instructions for a laugh, just in case. I didn't expect them to work at all. They were very vague, telling me to simply write my name and today's date on the inside cover and next clean page. That was it. Clearly there was no way to control what time period you ended up in, which made no sense to me, because that was the whole point of time travel, right? To go back and do what you wanted? It was yet another reason I was skeptical about the whole thing.

In fact, the very act of writing my name in the book helped me put it out of my mind, and after placing it on top of today's other purchases on my bedside table, I fell right asleep.

That was unusual for me, and should've been my first warning sign.