Someone bumped into me, breaking me from my thoughts. I readjusted my backpack and made my way down the hall, toward my locker. I felt like I had just woken up, stepping out of my dream, directly into my school day. What had I been thinking about?

I didn’t tend to forget things. The thought was troubling. Why didn’t I remember what I had been thinking about a moment before? It felt important, but I couldn’t lay hold of it. I stopped in front of my locker, my feet bringing me there without my input.

As I reached for the combination lock a gruff voice startled me,

“Hey kid! Wake up! We’re bleeding luck!”

I began to turn to see who had spoken when an impact from behind jolted me forward and my feet slipped out from under me, like I was standing on ice. My head hit the ground and then everything around me changed. I blinked, then shut my eyes to process.

The hallway had gone from packed, to empty, except for me and two arguing adults. A woman was standing with her arms folded, her back to me. In front of her loomed a man, who could only be Coach Pheizer. I kept my eyes shut. I had a monster of a headache and the adults were talking about me, so I wanted to listen.

“Sandra, I’m telling you, the boy’s fine,” Mr Pheizer was saying, “go back to your class and let me handle this.”

“Frank, this is not the military, I need to get this boy to the nurse, so she can check him for a concussion. I don’t appreciate you making me feel like I need to protect him from you.”

“The boy doesn’t need protection Sandra, he needs the opposite, in fact, or life will eat him up. Boys need to get into fights, otherwise they don’t grow up right. I get it, but if I don’t head off our new crackpot-in-residence and hand out punishment before he can, he’ll suspend Thomason. You know how he is with,” he made air quotes and made his voice mocking and nasal, “no tolerance.”

I cracked my eyes open to peek at the adults. I had to confirm this was really Mr Pheizer. He was on my side? I thought he hated me.

Sandra let out a deep sigh, “Yes, I do know how Principal Morrison is, but this boy might have a concussion, Frank. Are we putting policy above the safety of students now?”

“He doesn’t have a concussion—“

She jabbed him in the chest with a finger, “You don’t know that.”

It was his turn to sigh. “Yes, I do. And I can watch for signs of a concussion as well as anyone.”

“What you can do, is write him a day of detention and he can spend it in the nurse’s office, now. I’m not budging on this.”

“Sandra, George is struggling. You know that. If I don’t put them in a room together now, this will happen again. I’ve seen it a thousand times. If they share a punishment, they’ll bond. If not…” he trailed off.

Sandra shook her head. “Times are changing Frank, these kids are under more pressure now than ever. You can’t treat them like you were treated and expect them to thrive. You need to do better.”

Mr Pheizer threw his hands up in the air, “Fine! Coddle the boy, watch how it turns out for him. When this happens again, you can apologize.”

He walked away, his footsteps loud in the hall.

“Patriarchal old fool,” Sandra muttered.

She turned toward me and knelt, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Timothy?”

I opened my eyes slowly, trying to look like I had woken at her touch. How did people wake up, slow and blinky or—

“Ow,” I moaned, the overhead light hurt my eyes now that they were open all the way.

“I’m Miss Billings. Do you know where you are?”

“In purgatory?” I said, keeping my eyes shut. Getting shot had hurt less. “Do you think it would help if I told god I’m sorry?”

“Timothy, this is serious. Do you know where you are?”

I groaned, “In a strange and humorless land?”

“Timothy, do you know where you are?”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

I made a mental note to avoid trying to make Miss Billings laugh. “High school,” I muttered.

“Very good Timothy, do you know what day it is?”

My brain kicked out, ‘the first day of the rest of my life?’ But I stuck with the humorless truth, “Monday, November tenth. Want the year too? It’s twenty-one thirty-two.”

“Timothy,” Miss Billings frowned at me, “this is not an appropriate time for humor. I need you to take this seriously. You may have a concussion.”

I pushed her hand off my shoulder and sat up. This felt like being cared for by a disgruntled DMV receptionist. Moving sent shooting pain through my head, but I didn’t care.

“Ma’am,” I heard myself say, “I told you the date already. Now, if you please, I must see to more important things than this childish line of questioning.” My mouth was on autopilot. I hadn’t thought any of that before I said it.

“Timothy,” Miss Billings furrowed her brow, “Today is Friday, November tenth, and the year is twenty twenty-four.”

***

I sat in the nurse’s office, looking at her wall calendar. She had turned down the lights for me and given me some Tylenol. She was on the phone with someone now, discussing my symptoms. She said I didn’t have a concussion, then became confused when I answered her questions. She didn’t know what was wrong and wanted to speak with a doctor.

The date on the wall calendar was wrong. The year was wrong. I was thirsty.

I’d had three glasses of water, but they hadn’t touched my thirst. I was so thirsty.

I stood from the bed and went to the sink. The nurse had told me not to drink any more for a while, but I couldn’t take it. I turned on the tap and filled the paper cup she’d given me.

I drained it, then I filled it again. As I reached to turn off the faucet a voice startled me, “Tell me something, kid.” I froze, listening to the man behind me speaking. “If I put a big red button in front of you, and told you not to push it, you would push it, wouldn’t you?”

I turned to face the stranger, but the room was empty. I stared at the empty, quiet room for a long moment.

The hiss of water reminded me I’d left the faucet running. Frowning, I turned back to shut it off. Again, the voice spoke. “Your little stunt scrambled us up real good.”

I spun quickly around, but the room was still empty. All I accomplished was to refresh my headache.

“Who’s there?” I called.

The nurse leaned into the room and looked at me. She put the phone to her chest and mouthed, “No water.”

I held my hands up. “Ok,” I said.

I set the cup down and turned off the faucet.

“You’re not thirsty for water,” the voice said.

“I’m not?” I said, holding still.

“No. You’re thirsty for luck.”

It came back to me then, broken and disjointed. I remembered repeating this day, but I also remembered snippets of being older, like I had dreamed it.

“While you were busy testing the limits of how far you can stretch a temporal loop before it breaks, I was doing some thinking,” said the voice.

I knew that voice now. It was me, but also not me. I made a face as I remembered watching him fall apart in the mirror.

“What happened?” I asked. “I remember being in the bathroom—“

“You happened, kid. Like a tornado in a trailer park. First you had a great idea, which shouldn’t have worked, then you had a horrible idea, which we shouldn’t have survived.

“Tell me, why in the name of everything that’s holy, would you, upon learning you have the power to bend reality with a symbol, decide to see how many times you could draw that symbol on your own flesh before your soul exploded?”

“I…” I paused. Why had I done that? “I’m not sure. I wanted to draw two on each hand, then ask what happened, but after I started, I wasn’t able to stop.”

“Screwing with the occult is funny like that. Welp, I got good news and bad news, kid. The bad news is our luck has hit absolute zero. We are become anathema upon the fabric or reality, and every big-bad in existence will try to squash us the second they notice us. The good news is that you created a vortex with that stunt you pulled, creating movement where there should be none. Drowning yourself to avoid the feedback of your actions was brilliant. When we zeroed out, the vortex was still going. It’s now funneling into us.”

“You mean our luck is refilling itself?” I was ready to do a mental fist pump.

“No. We’re still at zero. You opened a channel into our spirit that didn’t exist before.”

“Why is this good news? Wait, our spirit has channels?”

“Yes, like waterways, not like radio or television. It’s good because that means maybe we can survive this mess. Help me test an idea. Draw the symbol again, backwards, on the palm of your hand. Just once. Then go set your hand on the nurse. Pretend you want something, doesn’t matter. See what happens.”

I frowned. “You want to do to someone else what happened to us?” A horrible thought occurred to me. “I’ve become a vampire?”

“No! Don’t be ridiculous. You’re a mosquito, not a vampire. If this works, she’ll never miss the luck you take. Or, would you prefer to find out how many different ways we can be killed in a day?”

“Ok,” I said, relenting. The idea of dying over and over was not appealing.

I found a pen and inked the symbol backwards onto my palm. Once I was happy with my work, I blew on my palm to dry the ink. My hand began to tingle. I wasn’t sure if I was feeling the magic, or vortex, or whatever, or if it was all in my head.

I felt sick to my stomach, nervous at what I was about to do. The nurse sat just on the other side of an opaque window. It was set in a metal frame with a door to the room beside it. She had her back to me, the door open a crack. I let out a shaky breath. I felt so thirsty.

I walked to the door before I could think anymore. I reached out and placed my hand on her shoulder.

“Miss?” I began to say, but I was startled by how my hand behaved.

I tried to set it on her shoulder, like a polite person would, but when it was close, it leapt toward the contact, like my hand and her shoulder were magnets. I cried out and stumbled, trying to pull away from the movement, but my shoelaces had come undone, and the foot I tried to lift was caught under the other.

My new human magnet hand saved me, as it didn’t slip and I caught myself. The nurse startled and turned toward me, looking concerned.

“Are you ok?” She asked me.

“Sorry,” I said and nodded, feeling suddenly lightheaded. I tried not to sway, and I tried to pull my hand away, but it was stuck.

“Hang on doctor,” she said into the phone, and set it down. “Yes Timmy? Did you need something?”

She didn’t seem bothered by my hand, but to me, it felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds. I felt sure Mr Pheizer couldn’t have ripped us apart.

“I just wanted to say,” I said, trying to think of what to say.

Maybe: April fools! I superglued my hand to your shoulder!

The feeling hit me before I could spit out my improv fail.

A rush of, something, filled me, like a desperate breath after breaking the surface of a pool. My thirst disappeared, along with my headache and fatigue. I felt better than I could remember feeling. Maybe ever.

I smiled at the nurse, feeling elated. She blinked, one slow, long blink, then her expression returned to normal. She cocked her head and prompted me, “Yes dear?”

My hand was my own again. I pulled it away, feeling guilty and embarrassed. The nurse looked fine, but I felt like I had picked her pocket.

“I…” I began. What could I say? I’m sorry! I just took your luck because I’m the world’s first luck vampire and a possibly evil version of my future self has possessed me and I’m stuck living this day over and over again…

“I’m feeling much better,” I said, being honest about something.

She looked me up and down, “Your color has returned. You do look much better. Let me finish up with the doctor and I’ll come take another look at you.”

I retreated to the bed and sat on the noisy paper. I kicked my feet, feeling like I could run a mile. My stomach twisted and I looked down at my palm.

The symbol was gone!

Alarmed, I jumped up and tiptoed to where I could see the nurse’s shoulder. I expected to see the ink staining her shirt, but it was as empty of the symbol as my hand was.

I checked my other hand, just to make sure I was not crazy. Both hands were symbol free. I realized this didn’t mean I wasn’t crazy.

***