text: \*\*\*** **I originally posted this story in** r/Wholesomenosleep **but decided it was more appropriate to post here, since it's not really scary** **\*\*\*\*** &#x200B; Let me start off by telling you a little bit about myself. I am an only child and I have a mother who loves me more than life itself. I don’t know if this is a good thing or bad thing, only that I can’t always control it. Usually at night, when people go to sleep, they’ll have dreams, wake up, and then vaguely remember them. The same happens to me, only not quite. When I sleep, I travel into the past. Sounds cool, right? But here’s the thing, I can’t always control where and when I travel to. Sometimes I get nightmares, too. In these nightmares I involuntarily travel to the worst possible times and places to be. Let me tell you, waking up in a Nazi occupied Germany wasn’t fun in the least bit. Now that you know a little about me it’s time to get onto the reason I’m here. I feel that I’ve done a terrible thing and I have to get it off my chest. My father passed away earlier this year due to a heart attack. And to be honest, my mother hasn’t been taking it well at all. Ever since that day, she hasn’t been herself. She’s quieter, she likes to be alone, and she stopped doing the things she has always enjoyed such as gardening and holding her book club meetings. About a week ago, I knocked on her bedroom door, only to walk in on her sitting up in bed, just staring at the window. This is how most mornings have been for a while now. I was just checking in on her to tell her that I finished preparing breakfast and afterward decided to resume moving around a bunch of my father’s stuff around in the attic as we have been trying to organize some boxes. One thing you need to know about my father is that he was very old school. He saved newspapers, and kept a journal which he wrote in daily. So I went upstairs and starting moving boxes when I noticed one of them was slightly open with a piece of newspaper sticking out of it. Curious, I opened the box and pulled out the newspaper. The headline read: “October 9th, 1990: Plane Crash Kills All Passengers on Board”. “Jesus Christ” I thought to myself. I continued reading the article until I got to a list of confirmed deaths. What shocked me about this list was that among the deceased, there was someone named Elena who shared the same last name as me: Decker. My parents had never told me about any aunts or cousins who had passed away so I was surprised to see someone with my last name had died in a plane crash. What stuck out even more was that my father kept a copy of this newspaper. Inside the box was my father’s journal. He wrote A LOT and had a journal for every year. I grabbed his 1990 journal and flipped through the pages until I got to the date on the newspaper. I skimmed down the lines, tracing the words with my finger until I got to the middle of the page. “I wish I could have stopped her from getting on that plane. When Elena was packing up that morning she had misplaced her ticket and I helped her find it, just in time. A moment later and she would have missed her flight.” I flipped through the pages, skimming the lines for anything else about Elena, but I couldn’t find anything. Maybe there was more, but I wasn’t going to read through this monster of a journal to find it. At the very bottom of the box, I found a physical copy of Elena’s obituary. From it, I found out that at the time of the plane crash she was 17 years old. She was a senior in high school, a cheerleader, and one of the top of her class. I didn’t want to ask my mother about it, but I knew exactly where and when Elena could be found. I kept the newspaper article and later that night I was in bed, thinking about Elena. I leaned over to grab the article off my nightstand and read the date one more time. “October 9th, 1990” I thought to myself that if I could experience the American revolution to pass my history test, I could go meet this Elena girl, right? So I shut my eyes and focused on that date. I’m not good at focusing my travels, but I’ve been getting better at it lately. Honestly, it’s a hit or miss but there was no harm in trying. I cleared my mind and closed my eyes, patiently waiting to fall asleep. After I don’t know how much time, I woke up. It was day, and I was in the middle of a football field. There were guys running and cheerleaders practicing their routines. Cars were driving by on the street and I tried to take a moment to absorb in the scenery and where I was when suddenly, a football hit me in the back of the head. I fell to the ground and a big guy runs up to me, laughing. “You gotta keep your eyes open, you’re in the middle of a football field, man” he said “Maybe you should watch where you’re throwing the ball, Brad” said an unfamiliar female voice from behind me. I turned my head, only to see one of the cheerleaders there, she had her hands on her hips and seemed irritated, like this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. “Sorry Elena, Will and I were playing catch and it turns out Will only knows how to catch, not throw.” said Brad. Jackpot. Brad went back to playing football and Elena helped me up. “Are you from around here?” she asked “Nope, my family just moved here. I’m still trying to get used to the city.” I replied, trying my best to come up with a fake backstory. “Oh I see. So what’s your name?” she asked “Romeo, I think I got that your name was Ele-” as I tried to answer, I heard thunder. It was raining when I went to sleep and the thunder was literally ear shattering. As it continued, I began to pass in and out of this period in time. In order for me to stay in the current point in time, I have to remain asleep. I once was in Salem and my alarm went off. I was labeled as a male witch and I think you can infer how that went. Anyway, eventually the thunder stopped and I stopped slipping between the past and present. Elena however, gave me the most wide-eyed look I’ve ever seen in my life. Shit, I thought to myself. “You’re a time traveler” she exclaimed “What? How do you know?” I asked “Because I am too, and the same happens to me. Did your alarm clock go off?” she asked “Oh” I began to chuckle “nope, there’s just a lot of thunder” I explained For the rest of the day Elena and I just talked about our time adventures and she took me to one of the best burger places in the city. “So, when did you first find out about your powers?” Elena asked “I’ve known for a while. It’s so much of a big deal to me anymore. I haven’t told anybody.” I replied “Good, keep it that way. If people knew what we could do, then we wouldn’t be having adventures anymore. Everybody has regrets. If someone you loved died, and you knew your best friend could easily go back in time and save them but didn’t, how would you feel?” she said I looked out the window and a car pulled up, I looked through the tinted window to see the driver. It was my dad, but a lot younger. My heart skipped a beat to see him, so full of life. “Hey, that’s my dad. I gotta go.” she said. Suddenly all the pieces came together. Elena packed grabbed her things and was putting them into her backpack. My dad honked the car three times outside. “I’m running late to the airport. You should travel here more often, or maybe we could go somewhere else” she said I got butterflies. My first instinct was to tell her, and spare her a cruel fate. However, one rule I stick to when I travel is to not change anything too much. This was something more significant to me. If I saved her, I could change everything about my family, including my own existence. Would my parents still have me? Would my parents be different? Would it be for the better or for the worse? Either way, I stopped myself. My throat was in a knot. I just swallowed, looked her in the eye and said: “Yeah, see you around.” Elena left through the front door and I watched her through the window, getting into the car, and talking to my dad. He pulled away from the curb and as they drove off into the distance, my alarm went off. I woke up, it was morning the sun was up. My first thought: I just killed my sister. I don’t know how to feel. I keep telling myself that it was to ensure my own existence but at what cost? I got up to open the curtains slowly. “I love it when the sun shines after a thunderstorm” said a female voice behind me I turned around, to see Elena in the doorway. “Elena you shouldn’t be here” I started to say. She walked toward my bedside, and picked up the article. “Shit.” I thought to myself “Don’t worry, I’m asleep on the plane right now." she said. In this moment I really didn't know what to say to her. All I could do was look her in the eyes as they began to water. "I noticed you looked a lot like our dad. So I thought to myself, why would my brother from the future travel back in time to meet me, seemingly for the first time.” she explained, looking up at me. “I wanted to tell you, I really did.” I said Elena slowly put the newspaper article back on the nightstand. “The past is the past. If I can accept it, then so can you.” she said, tears beginning to flow down her cheeks. I walked up to her and gave her a hug, she hugged me back, a lot harder. As we embraced, she began to slowly fade from this point in time and I was left there, alone in my room.