“Oh, ha, ha,” I said.

Cece put a hand on my shoulder, “Timmy, I’m being serious. I could conquer this whole State with that kind of money.”

I had a laugh, half-cocked and ready to go, for when she broke and gave me a grin and a playful slap. But between the hand on the shoulder, the eye contact, and her use of my real name, I had a dawning realization of horror: She was serious. Deadly serious. Who talks like this? Conquer the state? For a moment, I was genuinely curious.

Truth be known, if I had the winning Powerball numbers, I probably would have given them to her. I wouldn't mind knowing a modern world conqueror. If I had ever met anyone in my short life that I would believe was actually capable of pulling off such grotesquely grandiose claims as to conquer a state, Cece would have had my vote. In the short time I had known her, she had proven to be the most open-mindedly effective person I'd ever met.

Let me qualify that. I'd met school teachers, I'd met state employees, I'd met government officials— once, okay? I can count it— And I'd met Cece. I had never seen her boast that she could do a thing and not then go get it done. Which is why I chose to come to her with my clearly paranormal problem.

So, all this to say, if I had the winning Powerball numbers, I would have spilled them right then and there. Perhaps I am a bad person. Maybe this is where my future self came into things. Partnering up with Cece for a life of crime. Me, the genius inventor behind the scenes. Her, the criminal mastermind who will stop at nothing to get what she wants. Again, Saturday morning cartoon land.

I shook my head, all of this going through my mind and me zoning out for a minute before looking her in the eye and answering honestly, "I'm not old enough to play the Powerball. And," I said to her, "I didn't live all the way through my previous day. So I have no idea what the Powerball numbers are."

Cece nodded. I swear I saw a tear in her eye before she put on her regular chipper demeanor. "That's okay, freak," she said. "If we don't get you out of this first try, you can make it up to me. You bring me those Powerball numbers. I'm telling you, we're going to do great things. Great things," she shook her head.

"Look, this is all very well and good," I said. Cece made a scoffing sound at my language choice. "But, I've got a serious problem and you're not really helping. Instead, you're focused on conquering the state and money.” I paused for a second. “Actually, last loop you went on about crime and romance.”

Cece looked at me. "Other me sounds wise beyond her years.” She grew serious. “All right, freak. I'll level with you. This is a lot to take in. You clearly have some voodoo gift to be able to know things that you shouldn't know, including what appears to be the future. But I'm a big girl. I'm not just on board with everything that you told me."

I deflated. This was what I was afraid of. I would tell the only person that I could talk to, and she would shoot me down.

Cece seemed to catch on to my look. "Hey, hang on. I didn't say I wasn't going to help you. I said, I'm not on board with the idea that you're caught in some sort of time paradox. Is yesterday or today in a different reality?" She shook her head. "Whatever. I'm not saying that I believe you, but I'm not saying I don't believe you either. What we need is an expert," she said.

"An expert?" I asked. "You mean like one of the characters from the TV shows you're always having me watch?"

Cece shook her head. "No, those are make-believe. I mean a real expert. I told you, you need a priest."

I looked at her like she’d actually lost her mind. "A priest,” I had never— in our illustrious two-week relationship— heard Cece profess anything that seemed to be a sign of faith. I quirked an eyebrow at her. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah," Cece said. "Serious as cancer. I know a guy. Well, gal, actually. But,” she hesitated, “you know what, never mind. You'll see when you meet her."

***

Yet again, I found myself in CeCe's car doing 80 down the freeway, wondering how it was she lived through driving this thing every day. Being in the same place, at the same time, on the same day, brought with it a strong sense of unreality. I'd been here before, and last time, it had not turned out well.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

A knot of tension began to tighten in my gut as the memories, still too fresh to really contemplate, were brought sharply to the surface.

We went downtown again, but this time we took a different exit. As the new scenery unfolded before me, the tension I was feeling relaxed just a little bit. My sense of déjà vu, which yesterday had so strongly been pushing me towards something I couldn't identify, was now completely absent.

I realized, as we pulled into a different district and a memory of the blue Volkswagen flashed through my mind, that I'd either lost the ability to experience the déjà vu or I had wandered off the path. I was fairly certain that past me had not gone with CeCe this day to see a priest. The most likely set of events in my mind was that I was close to the original set of events in my first run-through, the irony being that my future self's presence was the thing that had derailed me from following the path he wanted me to follow.

I decided there was something truly transcendent about nearly dying every time I stepped into Cece's Mazda. Because once we were finally moving slowly enough that I wasn't afraid the car would fall apart underneath us, I found the courage that I hadn't been able to find since I walked in my front door.

Looking over at her, with her usual casual grace at the steering wheel, pretending as if she was driving a reliable machine instead of a demolition derby reject, I asked her, "Cece, what kind of drugs are you dealing?"

In response to my question, she hit the brakes hard enough to throw me against my seatbelt. She looked over at me with a glare. "Are you wearing a wire?"

Stunned, I shook my head slowly. She burst out laughing and resumed driving. “Don’t be so gullible,” she scolded.

I rubbed my sore chest and gave her my best scowl. "Ass," I said, trying out cursing. Seemed like the occasion deserved it.

Cece looked over at me. "Ass?" She asked. “I think what you're searching for is, fuck you.”

I made a rude gesture in her direction.

"All right, good enough, Freak," she said. "You want to know what kind of drugs I'm dealing," she said, "because you want to know what kind of person is about to take you to church."

I bobbed my head side to side. She had more or less nailed it in one.

"Well, Freak, you can relax. It's not cocaine or methamphetamine. I got in on some next-gen new-wave stuff. Dealing it before it becomes legal. When it does, I'm gonna have my foot in the door."

I looked over at her. "What is it?" I asked.

"Let's just call it a sleep aid," Cece said. "But the side effects are self-confidence and peace of mind. Besides, I've seen the health of everyone I prescribe to improve."

I gave her a dubious look. That sounded like a line if I ever heard one.

"Don't worry about it right now," she said. "You and I, we got bigger fish to fry."

She pulled to a stop, again much harder than necessary. I really wished that I could hurry up and learn how to drive. We'd been driving through a rough neighborhood for the last four or five minutes, long enough for our awkward conversation and her impromptu hard breaking.

We pulled up in front of what I can best describe as a house right out of a Halloween horror movie. It was tall, it was old, it had gables and structures that loomed, and it looked dilapidated enough to be haunted. My eyebrows climbed up my forehead as I gazed at the thing.

"Is the priest we're going to see still among the living?" I asked.

"Very funny," Cece said. "Yes, she just so happens to be. Get out of the car."

Cece hopped out with her usual exuberance. I followed as she skipped up the walk, then cut across the yard and opened the gate beside the house.

Cece got well ahead of me, as I was neither in the mood to jog nor to make it to the back of, and perhaps inside of, this super creepy house. Seriously, when Cece had said we were off to see a priest, I thought we were headed for a Catholic church. Instead of waiting for me or knocking, Cece disappeared through a side door before I got there. The screen door slammed, and I then heard what sounded like gunshots and someone began screaming. I couldn't tell who was screaming, but it was definitely a woman's voice.

"Come on," I said, "I just want to live through the afternoon," and I broke into a run.

***

I skated to a stop in front of the screen door, snagging its handle and yanking it open, not really sure what I was going to do when I got inside with apparent gunfire and screaming, only to discover nothing was what it seemed. My brain stuttered to a stop as I stared into what was apparently a kitchen. I say apparently, because inside this kitchen was an explosion of chaos.

The first thing I was able to discern, staring into it, was that CeCe was not, in fact, being murdered. The banging I heard was none other than a large string of firecrackers exploding, their fuse slowly burning up the wall, leaving a trail of floating paper shrapnel and smoke. In the middle of the room, there was a woman. That's about all I could process of her because she had her hands up in the air and she was screaming like she was being murdered, but there was no one touching her and the only things around her were paper shrapnel, smoke, and chicken feathers.

That was the other thing—there were chicken feathers everywhere. At first, I didn't notice them because the room was not set up like any sort of normal kitchen I had ever encountered. The walls, the cabinets, the countertops, and the people inside of it were covered with more baubles, knickknacks, bric-a-brac, and colorful ornamentation than I think I've ever seen outside of a National Geographic special. There were painted wooden and plastic beads everywhere. Amongst the bead tangles, like explorers of some multicolored jungle, peeked photographs, exotic bird feathers, wooden carvings of every sort, and street vendor paraphernalia from at least twelve different religions, and that was just at a glance.

The colors were mind-jarring, but the thing that really stood out as I stood there, mouth agape, screen door hanging open, and CeCe standing just to the side of the entrance, her being the most normal and muted colors in the whole place—which is not typical for her—was the old woman holding a chicken by its neck, apparently using it as a very active feather duster to beat something out of the air around the screaming woman.

I opened my mouth, not sure why, couldn't find anything to say, closed my mouth again and then, because I didn't know what else to do, I opened it once more. The woman in the middle of the kitchen continued to scream, and the old woman with the chicken continued to walk in circles around the woman on the floor, beating something I couldn’t see out of the air with the flapping, clucking, protesting chicken. I thought to myself, the chicken was the real victim of this whole situation.

Then, as abruptly as everything had started for me, all noise and motion stopped, with the exception of the floating paper bits, smoke, and feathers. The woman in the middle of the room collapsed into a fetal position, head down on the floor. The old woman in the colorful dress and what must have been a good ten to fifteen pounds of ornaments and beads, proceeded to use her teeth and other hand to tear the chicken's head off and draw a circle on the ground around the prone woman with the bird’s blood. At this point, the old woman closed her eyes and began to mutter under her breath, and everything in the room slowly settled.

I closed the screen door as quietly as I could and took three massive steps back so I could no longer see into the room. Shaking my head, I muttered to myself, "What the actual..."

***