Personally, I see nothing wrong with sex with a random stranger if it’s your last day on Earth.
How dare you? you may be thinking. Believe me, if you were in my shoes, sex with a random stranger is tamed compared to other things I’ve done.
What are those other things? you may be wondering.
I’ll get to that. What I’m focusing on right now is the woman I met at this exact diner last night. One of the lonelier souls in this town who would like nothing more than to be some man’s housewife. I’m somewhat worried that she took last night a little more seriously than me, but once I see the way she looks at Morris Peters in the corner booth, I get the sense that she used me last night just as much as I used her.
Over there, in that corner booth, tucked away from all other customers, Morris Peters is minding his own business.
That’s the man I want.
That’s the man I have to kill.
Time feels to be running out, but I know it’s not. Time has already happened––is already happening. For the first time in my life, I’m not bound by time.
Okay, that’s not entirely true, but true enough.
There Morris Peters sits. The man who I share my name with.
The waitress, the only other person who’s looking at him more than I am, comes back to the counter and asks, “Do you know him or something?”
What?
“You keep looking at Morris over there.” She refills my coffee, eyeing me, saying, “Do you know him?”
I shrug and take a sip of my coffee.
“Never seen him before in my life.”
“Listen.” She sets the coffee pot down and leans against the counter. “About last night…”
Don’t. I say, I think we’ve already reached a mutual understanding about it.
At this point in time, Morris Peters is unmarried, unattached, single. At this point in time, Morris Peters has done nothing with his life.
Not yet.
Soon, he will meet Katherine Stealmann. In time, Katherine Stealmann will become Katherine Peters. She’ll have a boy and will name Benjamin Peters. In time, Benjamin Peters will marry Dora Little, and she’ll give him a son, and they’ll name him Morris Peters, after Benjamin’s father.
That’s me.
Guilty, wretched, undeserving me.
In time, I will be born. In time, I will grow up to be a leading figure in this nation’s government. In time, I will be responsible for the deaths of one-hundred-and-fifteen school children.
“Okay,” the waitress says, still eyeing me. “You just have this look in your eye.”
I’m here, sipping coffee in a diner that will burn down in twenty years, to make sure that none of this happens.
I eye the waitress as she saunters away. I fold her tip and put it back in my pocket.
It’s more than wanting to kill myself to escape the guilt. I wish I’d never been born. I don’t want to exist. I don’t want my father to exist.
Morris Peters moves on to the sports section in the paper. He’s been here for fifteen minutes. Twenty more and he’ll be gone. If I go over to that table, I would find Morris Peters’s name carved into the top. If I stay where I’m sitting up at the counter, in sixteen years I would find Benjamin Peters’s name carved into that table.
I know this because my father told me this when I was a child. It was the story of the diner I’d never be able to make my mark in like my grandfather or my father, because my father burned it down before I had the chance.
That was the first time my father took something from me. Before I was even born. On the bright side, it’s a good thing I wasn’t born so he couldn’t blame it on me.
In time, though, if I let Morris Peters walk away, this place will burn down again and again and again, because I sat up here and did nothing.
It’s more than simply wanting to end my life. I don’t wan to exist anymore.
“I’m going to call the police if you don’t stop freaking me out.”
It’s the waitress again. By the look on her face, I know she’s not serious about calling the police, but she is serious about me freaking her out. In her bubblegum-pink button up shirt with red rim, she’s glaring at me. Her name tag reads “Kat.”
To ease her suspicions, I smile. I push my cup toward her for a refill and say, “I’m sorry.”
She fills my cup, still glaring at me.
“You do know him, don’t you?” she asks.
I nod. “Yes.”
“How do you know Morris?”
We have a history.
She gazes at Morris Peters the same way she’s been all evening. The corners of her mouth slightly pulled upward, a sigh wishing to escape her filled chest, staring at Morris Peters in his corner booth, syrup dripping from his chin. Dripping there over and over and over again.
“What kind of history?” She goes on before I can answer, “Morris is a sweetheart. I mean, he seems to be a sweetheart. I’ve only been here two months. He comes in almost every day.” A secret shows on her face and she looks at me. She whispers, “Did you know he carved his name into that very table he’s sitting at now?”
She turns back to Morris Peters. Morris Peters and his claimed table. Morris Peters and the food on his face.
Absently, she says, “How do you know him again?”
“He’s my grandfather.”
“What?” She looks back to me, that worried expression now in her coppery eyes. “Morris Peters is your grandfather?”
I know I shouldn’t be telling her this. I know I shouldn’t be talking to anyone. But I’m about to be wiped from existence. Don’t I deserve to tell someone my story, especially the last person on Earth I slept with?
I pull out my wallet, my ID, an old picture of my grandfather.
Kat’s eyes expand, they widen. Her throat constricts. A thin wad of saliva moves to the back of her mouth and slides down her throat. She looks from the picture of Morris Peters to me to the picture to me. She shakes her head.
“No,” she utters, “I don’t believe you.”
I move the picture closer to her face. Look closer.
She looks from the picture to me to the Morris Peters in the booth to me.
I am Morris Peters.
“No,” she says for the second time. “That isn’t possible. That means––”
I’m from the future.
I smile, but it only scares her more, as if I’m an alien from some other universe. What I really am is an alien from another part in time.
That’s how I’m here, I tell her.
“Y–You’re from the future? How? Why?”
Morris Peters sets down the paper. It’s been seventeen minutes. Once he finishes his coffee, he’s out.
I have only three minutes.
Kat is no longer looking at me like I’m an alien. She looks at me like I’m a god.
I tell her in the future I’m responsible for the deaths of one-hundred-and-fifteen children. I say, “My father––Morris Peters’s son––told me the school was empty, that it was full of terrorists. My father lied.”
Kat gasps.
Kat flinches.
Kat seizes my hand.
“Killing myself won’t make up for what I did, won’t make up for what my father did.”
I shouldn’t exist. My father shouldn’t exist.
At this Kat’s brow furrows. She doesn’t understand, and I’m not about to explain it all to her again. My three minutes are up.
Morris Peters has already left the building.
I take back out Kat’s tip and hand it over to her with an extra five.
“I have to go.”
“Wait.” Still holding onto my hand, she pleads, “Don’t leave.”
I can’t. I’m running out of time.
“What are you going to do?”
I get up, turning to the door.
Her nails dig into my arm. “What are you going to do?”
I wiggle out of her grasp and find that Morris Peters has already made it across the street. Jumping in front of an old Cadillac, I run across. Morris Peters senses nothing. He barely turns around when the driver of the Cadillac blares his horn and screams profanities at me.
Morris Peters doesn’t have a care in the world. At this point in time, he believes he will live a long and plentiful life. To him, he has all the time in the world.
Little does he know, his time is up.
I’m done existing. It’s more than a desire to die. I want to be obliterated, forgotten, never born.
I want to be nothing.
Morris Peters lives in a small one room, single garage home. At thirty-two, he’s doing pretty well for himself, considering that he owns a piece of land. At this point in his life, I’m sure he’s thinking that it’s time to find a wife to share the modest house with. He’s settled down for himself but now it’s time to settle down with someone else. The next logical step is marriage, then kids, then grandkids.
Little does he know, none of that is going to happen.
I watch Morris Peters go inside before I walk up to the house. Right now he’s probably changing out of his suit, taking off his tie, letting his feet breathe. The TV is already on, playing the evening news. Information he already read at the diner. It’s the noise he likes. It makes him comfortable, makes him feel less alone.
The kitchen window is propped open. I can faintly hear the anchorman’s monotone voice talking about some war without and end. A war that I personally ensured to continue for many years after my own generation, when it was supposed to be over generations before me.
There’s a sudden hiss. An opening of a beer. A beer to end a hard day’s work. With each gulp the stress of today melts away, trickling into his stomach as gold bubbles.
In an effort to not be too rude, before Morris Peters becomes too comfortable, I knock on the front door.
“Comin!”
I take out the gun.
There’s no need to worry about someone witnessing a murder if the murderer doesn’t exist.
I’m more than ready to die. I’m ready for absolutely nothing.
Morris Peters opens the door, looks at me, looks at the gun, looks back at me, says, “Look––”
My grandfather’s blood splashes onto my face.
My grandfather clutches his chest and topples backward onto the floor.
There’s no need to worry about someone witnessing the murder if the murderer doesn’t exist.
My ears ring, sending high-pitched vibrations throughout my skull. The hand that’s holding the gun goes limp and drops it. My heart skyrockets in my unbroken chest.
This is it.
This is me losing existence.
This is me becoming nothing.
Before the world gets darker, it grows brighter. Morris Peters is motionless on the floor. There are five clear red spots of blood on the hand that was holding the gun. Inside, the anchorman drones on about deaths and injuries.
“One-hundred-and-fifteen children,” the anchorman keeps saying, or at least I think that’s what he’s saying. “One-hundred-and-fifteen children.”
My heart beats one, two, three times faster than before, then it begins to slow. The world is still bright. A geyser of red pools from the middle of Morris Peters’s chest.
“One-hundred-and-fifteen children.”
He’s dead. No more. Nothing.
And me…I’m…
I’m alive.
I instantly think of Kat. Immediately, my thoughts turn toward the waitress in love with my grandfather.
My heartbeat returns to normal. My grandfather’s blood is drying on my face.
And I’m still here.
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