It was 05:00 a.m. on a cold Monday morning and Jessica Eze needed to pee. Bad.

This was terrible for a number of reasons; first and foremost being that the seventeen-year-old was one of those people who took forever to get back to sleep after getting out of bed for any reason whatsoever, and, seeing as it was five o’clock on a Monday morning, odds were good that if she capitulated to her traitorous bladder’s demands, she would not be able to get back to sleep before having to prepare for school in about an hour.

To make matters worse, Jessica was also one of those people who slept best right in the predawn hours, so if she got out of bed to pee now, she would end up being sleep deprived for the rest of the day.

Finally, for the cherry on this shit sundae of a morning, Jessica was also one of those people who tended to break out when they didn’t get enough sleep, meaning that the simple act of needing to pee this one cold, Monday morning, could end up having days of consequences for her, a budding TikToker, to deal with.

Fuck her life.

Jessica fought her bladder’s demands, stubbornly holding out for up to a quarter of an hour.

Right up until she realized that she was spending so much effort trying to keep from peeing herself that she was already fully awake and fully fucked either way.

Might as well just save herself the pain (and potential embarrassment) and go pee.

Crawling out from under her warm, comfy blanket into the cold of her room, Jessica’s feet made contact with the cold as balls tiles on the floor (yet another reason why her bladder was an asshole for putting her through this) and rushed her way to the bathroom.

She did her business, flushed, washed her hands, and was trudging her way back to her bed with the annoyed pout of the severely irritated, when she heard squeaking coming from her younger brother’s room.

Jessica stopped and listened.

She knew what the squeaking was, it was her fourteen-year-old brother, Kenneth’s, bed; the joints had started loosening a few months back, and since their mother hadn’t gotten around to calling a carpenter to check it out just yet, the bed had gotten steadily worse, to the point where Jessica suspected that, very soon, Kenneth’s breathing will make it squeak.

So, the question was not what was squeaking, the question was why it was squeaking.

To put it politely, Kenneth was a heavy sleeper, and to put it not so politely, he quite literally slept like a corpse; still, quiet, and dead to the world.

Waking him up for school every morning was always half a battle that involved a decent amount of shoving.

Kenneth should not be awake at this time of day.

The continuous squeaking coming from the boy’s bed though, heavily implied that he was awake. It was too rhythmic to be otherwise, too steady and constant, and it actually kind of reminded Jessica of…

The seventeen-year-old’s face morphed into an expression of disgust and she felt a strong urge to bleach her brain white.

Oh, God, she thought, staring at the door to her brother’s room in unadulterated horror. Was he… he was, wasn’t he? That idiot was in there… touching himself.

Seriously!? Ew!!

Filled with the righteous fury of big sisters everywhere, Jessica kicked the door. Once, and softly enough to not risk being heard by their mother, but sufficient, she knew, to make that idiot stop being gross.

But Kenneth didn’t stop, and the bed kept on squeaking.

Jessica felt her anger rise.

She knocked on the door, barely restraining herself from pounding the damn thing. “Kenneth,” she whispered harshly, “quit being disgusting, you creep.”

Jessica expected to hear him jump, to hear him tell her off in anger from behind the door.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

She didn’t. All she heard was squeaking.

Jessica’s anger took a step back. Confusion stepped forward. Worry watched curiously from the corner.

She knocked again, properly this time. “Kenneth,” she called. No answer, just squeaking.

“Kenneth,” she called again, louder. “Kenneth, are you in there? It’s not funny, you idiot.”

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. The room replied.

Jessica opened the door.

The light from the hallway spilled into the dark bedroom, leaving huge swaths of dim shadows that added a visual element to the spookiness Jessica felt over this whole situation.

Due to its placement, Kenneth’s bed was in shadow, and it took Jessica’s eyes a moment to adjust.

When they did, she took in his seizing muscles, his rolled up eyes, his foaming mouth.

‘Ah,’ a small, detached part of her mind thought, ‘that’s why the bed is squeaking.’

The rest of her mind was consumed by a shrill ringing sound, almost like an alarm.

Their mother, Priscilla Eze, came bursting out of her room like the house was on fire, and it was only when the fat woman rushed to Jessica that the girl realized that the shrill, ringing sound in her head was her screaming for her mother.

“Mummy! Mummy!”

“What is it?” her mother asked, grabbing her, but even before Jessica could reply, whether by instinct honed from years of motherhood, or by picking up on the myriad little clues around the place, the woman turned to check on her son.

She paled.

“Jesus!” She paled, then she screamed; “Kenneth!” and rushed to the boy.

Now, Priscilla Eze was not a nurse. In fact, the woman barely had an understanding of basic first aid, and considering that the family lived in Enugu, in Nigeria, and not even one of the super posh parts, the idea of dialing 9-1-1 in the event of any emergency, and then expecting help to come, was laughable at best.

Simply put, if Kenneth’s life really was in danger right in that moment, he was pretty much dead. And both women knew this.

Death was not a stranger to the Eze family.

Twice it had visited them, the first almost twenty years ago, when Priscilla’s first child had died from heart complications at three months old, and, more recently, ten months prior, when it had claimed the life of the man of the house, Ebuka.

Suffice to say, both women were quite sick of death at this point, and when Kenneth suddenly stilled, they feared the worst.

But Kenneth wasn’t dead, nor was he unconscious.

The fourteen-year-old sat up and wiped his mouth, a complicated expression on his face as their mother hugged and fussed over him, asking him a barrage of questions as soon as she could find the breath to ask them.

“I’m fine,” Kenneth said, then looked shocked for a moment, like the sound of his own voice was strange to him.

“Are you sure? Are you okay? Are you sick? Have you been feeling strange at all?” their mother replied, the endless onslaught of questions continuing.

“Mummy, Mummy,” Kenneth said, holding the woman’s hands and meeting her eyes. “I’m fine,” he repeated.

Their mother looked at him for a moment, the understanding that her son was not about to meet his maker finally sinking in.

She hugged him.

Over their mother’s shoulder, Kenneth’s eyes met Jessica’s where she stood at the door, and though Jessica didn’t understand why or how, they were the eyes of a stranger.

It was some time before everyone (namely; Jessica and Priscilla) calmed down fully, and that’s when their morning got really weird.

“What’s the time?” Kenneth asked, looking to Jessica.

She blinked, surprised not by the question per se, but by the fact that Kenneth was the one asking it.

Like most boys his age, Kenneth had little love for school, and, after an episode like the one he just had, there was no conceivable way he would still want to go today, much less give a shit about whether he was running late or not.

Their mother did though, and Kenneth’s question had made her look to Jessica for an answer too.

Luckily, Jessica had her phone in hand.

“Twenty minutes past five,” she said.

“On Monday, 20th of May, 2024?” Kenneth inquired, and both women looked at him.

“Yes, John Connor,” Jessica said. “Welcome to the past.”

Kenneth frowned. “That’s Kyle Reese,” he said. “John Connor never time traveled.”

“He did in The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” Jessica pointed out.

“That was to the future,” Kenneth countered. “And The Sarah Connor Chronicles isn’t canon.”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “It’s the Terminator, barely anything is canon.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” their mother said, stepping in. “It’s still early, but the two of you should start getting ready.”

“We can’t go to school,” Kenneth said immediately.

Jessica rolled her eyes. So predictable.

“I’m not taking you to school,” their mother reassured the fourteen-year-old. “Jessica is going to school. I’m taking you to the doctor.”

That was smart, Jessica decided. Kenneth’s little episode this morning was definitely something that they should get ahead of.

Hopefully they won’t come back with a prognosis like brain cancer, or something.

That would just suck.

Knowing Kenneth though, the idiot would make noise about not needing to go to the hospital, or something.

Right on cue, Kenneth did exactly that.

“I don’t need to go to the hosp—”

“Shut up and go,” Jessica said, with more anger than she intended.

Her mother and brother stared at her in surprise, but she forced herself from backing down.

“You almost died this morning, Kenneth,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, and neither do you, so, just shut up and go see the doctor.”

Kenneth continued to stare at her as she finished speaking, and, for the second time in less than ten minutes, Jessica saw it; a stranger’s eyes in her brother’s head.

Their mother began to speak, but Kenneth cut in before she could.

“I didn’t almost die,” he said. “I think my brain was just rebooting.

“You were right when you said welcome to the past,” he continued. “I just traveled back in time from six years in the future. And the reason we can’t go to the hospital, is because the world ends in four hours.”