Swimming In the Deep End in the Pool of Regret

“Jimmy?”

The voice was distant and familiar. He wondered if he was dreaming it.

“Jimmy? Wake up. Wake up now.”

In his dream the sun had gone nova and his eyes were melting.

“For Chissakes! Turn off the fucking light.”

He blinked and tried to make sense of where he was. The light made his eyes water, and he could see a blurry figure sitting on a chair next to the bed.

“You awake now? Good. We haven’t much time.”

Jimmy lifted his hand to shield his eyes. He was awake now, and he was getting pissed that some guy was here in his bedroom. Where was Robin?

“She’s working over, Jimmy.”

Jimmy was instantly alert.

“Wait a minute. How the fuck–”

The man put a hand on Jimmy’s arm. “Shhh. I’ll explain.”

Jimmy’s eyes were adjusting to the light and he saw a liver-spotted hand, which was missing the first knuckle of the little finger. He held up his own hand and wiggled the same butchered digit.

“Jimmy, look at me.”

The old man was slumped over in the chair. His bad posture made it seems as if his head sprouted from the center of his chest. Liver spots covered the bald scalp. The man’s ears were large, and tufts of white hair sprouted from within them. The eyes were ancient and nearly colorless, the pupils yellow, streaked with tiny red veins.

The same tired, unhappy eyes he saw in the mirror every morning.

Jimmy’s stomach clenched up, and the room began to spin.

The old man slapped him across the face, the hand as hard as a piece of oak.

Jimmy took in a deep breath and regained a small measure of composure.

“I don’t...who...no, how...”

“Time travel,” the man said. “We have it on my end of the lifeline. But it’s not perfect and it doesn’t last long.”

“You...you’re me,” Jimmy said.

“Can’t put anything past you, boy.”

“But...” Jimmy swallowed while he tried to wrap his thoughts around the situation. “Why?”

“Why?” The old man laughed. It was a wet, wheezing sound that quickly turned into a hacking cough. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with the same hand that had slapped Jimmy. “Because I fucked up everything in my–our–life, and I’ve got this one chance to change things.”

Jimmy stood up. He felt dizzy again, but it soon passed.

“Okay, let’s say I believe you, that you’re me from the end of my life, and not some lunatic who broke into my house–hey, how did you get in, anyway?”

“I remembered the key under the porch mat.”

“Oh. So you’re like the Ghost of Christmas Future or something, here to warn me about the screw ups I’m gonna make?”

“Yep.” The old man stood up, too, his knees popping somebody walkin’ on he peanut-littered floor down at the Sizzlin’ Steakhouse. He sighed. “Let’s start with the biggie, the mess you’re going to make today.”

“What mess?”

“The one you create when you murder Robin.”

Jimmy must have had a funny expression on his face because the old man smiled. It was a frightening sight. The flabby jowls jumped and danced, new wrinkles popped into existence around the mouth and the eyes, and Jimmy saw stained teeth too large and too straight to be genuine.

“Yeah, I know what you’ve been thinking. You’re going to do it today.”

“What, you can read minds now, too?”

“No, dumbass.” The old man wasn’t smiling anymore. “Because I did it. I killed my wife in this room. On this day. And nothing was ever the same.”

It can’t be true, Jimmy thought. I mean, sure, I’ve thought about it, but never seriously. Never for real.

The old man looked around the bedroom. His eyes fixed on the small table by the window, where Robin had set up her computer.

“In a little while you’ll go over there and start checking out porn online, and you’ll remember the way it used to be, when she couldn’t get enough of you. Then you’ll start drinking. From that.” He nodded to the nearly full bottle of Jim Beam on the table, the one Jimmy had opened the night before.

Jimmy stared at the bottle. He smacked his lips, anticipating the thick taste of the whiskey, the way it always burned his tongue.

“And while you drink, you’ll dwell on how she ignores you now, how you never make love anymore, not since you lost your job at the mill. Hell, it wasn’t your fault. It was that bunch of pussies at the union. But Robin doesn’t understand that, doesn’t understand that you were a machinist–a damned fine one–and you can’t go flipping burgers at Mickey D’s for minimum wage. You’d rather starve. But she doesn’t get it. She just knows she has to work double shifts at the hospital and she’s tired all the time and she sees you sleeping till noon ever day. She can’t see how lousy you feel, how helpless. How out of control.”

Jimmy found himself nodding. The old guy was putting into words everything he’d been feeling. The pain, the anger, the humiliation.

“In a little while she’ll get home, exhausted as usual. And she’ll start her bitching. And you’ll snap. You’ll pick up that bottle of booze and cave her skull in with it. There won’t even be any blood. Just wham–” The old man slammed his fist into his palm. “And she’s gone.”

Jimmy could see it–hell, he could feel it. The rage, like a furnace. The impact of the bottle against that bitch’s skull. The sweet relief of finally doing something.

“Did you–did we get away with it?” Jimmy said.

The old man chuckled. “If you want to call it that. I left her on the floor until night, certain that the cops were going to break down the door at any moment. Finally I wrapped her in a sheet and drove out to Barry’s farm.”

Jimmy nodded again, following the old man’s thoughts. His brother was in Florida on vacation. He would have all the time he needed.

“I buried her in the woods, past the corn field. I buried her deep. That’s where you normally screw up. Most people, they’re trying to hide a body, they just dig deep enough to cover it up. But I went down nearly eight feet. Then I dumped her in and covered her up. They never found her. When I finished it was still dark–thank God for January, right?–so I went home, cleaned up, then drove her car to the hospital and caught the bus back here. I reported her missing the next morning. The cops figured she’d been abducted from the hospital parking lot.”

“Didn’t they suspect you?”

“Of course. They always look at the husband when a wife disappears. My grief was very convincing. And you want to know why? Because it was real. When the anger and the adrenalin were gone, I realized that I’d killed the only person I’d ever loved. And it ruined the rest of my life.”

“What do you mean?”

“I started drinking more. I couldn’t find another good job. Robin’s insurance kept me going for a while, but that ran out. I ended up as a janitor.” He held up his gnarled, liver-spotted hands. “I use these to clean toilets. I live in a one room dump and spend every night alone. It wasn’t until I got the janitor’s job at the lab that I saw the possibility that I could change things. Not for me, but at least for some version of me.”

Tears ran down the old man’s cheeks. “I know it hurts, Jimmy. But don’t give in to your anger. Work it out. She’s the best thing that ever happened to you. Things will turn around if you give it time. Please.”

Jimmy walked over to the desk. “ Let me get this straight. This has already happened, right? So what difference does it make what I do?”

The older version of Jimmy shook his head. “No. You can change things. I heard some of the eggheads here at work talking about it. They think the past can be altered. Time will branch off, creating a new past where Robin lives.” He pounded his fist into his palm again. “It has to work.”

“Wait a minute,” Jimmy said. “Do you remember this day when an older version of yourself showed up and told you all this stuff?”

“No.”

“Then it has worked. Don’t you see?”

The old man’s face brightened. “You’re right. It’s working!” The tears started flowing again. Form happiness this time, Jimmy figured.

“So the past can be changed.”

“Yes!”

“Good.”

Jimmy grabbed the whiskey bottle and smashed it against the elderly man’s head. Old Jimmy made a gurgling sound and fell to the bedroom floor. He twitched for a minute then grew still.

A nimbus of yellow light formed around the body. Jimmy took a step back.

The light grew in intensity until the old man’s body was no longer visible. The light broke up into a million shining particles that quickly faded away, leaving after-images like tiny fireflies in Jimmy’s vision.

The old man was gone.

Jimmy examined the whiskey bottle. It hadn’t broken. He liked the heft of it in his hand, even more than he liked drinking from it.

He hadn’t even thought about Robin’s insurance.

She had insisted they both take out hefty policies right after they were married. That kind of money could buy a man a long vacation down south.

Jimmy sat down at the desk and waited for his wife to come home.


Originally appeared in 2005 at The Dark Krypt.
Revised version © 2007 Mark Justice