Time Loop

Day 1

"What?" he asked, setting the bottle down.

The girl crossed her arms across her chest and leaned back in her chair, seeming a little smug. She began to tap her fingers on her arms as if waiting for something.

"Shouldn't you be at school?" she asked, finally saying something.

"Shouldn't you?" he retorted.

She rolled her eyes. She squinted at the bottle that he had set on the table and frowned at it as if it were offending her somehow. She pulled out her phone and looked as if she were looking for something on it.

John sighed and rolled his eyes back at her, and turned to grab a sketchbook out of his bag. He placed it on the table along with a number two pencil that needed to be sharpened. He took another drink before he opened the sketchbook. It was nearly completely full. All of the pages were covered with small doodles to full detailed sketches of the very alcove they were sitting in. He had a few drawings of his father's house and the woods just outside the high school.

His flipping through the pages had caught the girl's attention. Her eyes looked up from her phone, widening in awe and surprise from what she saw. John stopped at a drawing of Mrs. Ghundly's grimace. The girl snorted, making John aware that she had seen his drawings. The faint reddening in his cheeks spoke more of his embarrassment than the scowl that splayed on his lips. He finished flipping to a blank page quickly, not wanting the girl to see what he had already done.

"Those are beautiful," she said after a minute of silence had stretched between them. John squinted at her, choosing not to respond. His mouth may get the best of him in most situations but not here. Not in this place of isolation where he had spent so many days and hours thinking and creating. In his sketchbook is not only the world that he knows, but the one he wants. The one he hungers for in his dreams where they can only exist for him. John shook his head and looked back down to the page where he had begun to draw the girl across from him.

Her slim face and high cheekbones made her seem older than her attitude portrayed. She wore dark colors that made her porcelain skin stand out, almost making her shine amidst the darkness that surrounded her. From an observant, platonic level he could say she was beautiful. She looked as if she could be of elvish decent, almost like she had hopped out of the pages of a book. Her face was thin and her skin almost porcelain.

They fell back into silence, letting them fall into their own minds. Both glancing up for separate reasons than the other.

"I'm Troy," she said after a while. She had been looking down at her phone but hadn't actually been doing anything except flipping through pictures she had downloaded a while ago.
John looked up, hardly realizing what had happened. He had resurfaced from the small world that revolved around his drawings. He spoke with a questioning lilt to his voice, as if he was unsure if he heard right, "Right. I'm...um, I'm John."

She smiled brightly at him when he said his name after she had introduced herself. She instantly sat up straighter and looked more ready to accept anything that John might want to say. John was confused by her change in demeanor. He placed the lid of his liquor on the bottle and put it away. He needed to not be drunk or even buzzed when it was time for him to leave the alcove of the library.

"Nice to meet you, John... Rough day?" Troy asked, looking increasingly interested in John. Her voice was soft yet sonorous, melting some of John's walls with the smoothness of her tone.

He squinted at her, skeptical of her presence here in his alcove. His mouth moved though, completely of its own accord instead of conscious effort. "For a Tuesday, I've had worse. But I've also had better. It's still too early in the day to say whether it's been a rough day or not."

Troy grinned at him with a short chuckle that sounded more like a snort than anything. He raised an eyebrow at her as his entire body began to relax and ease into her company. A loose smile appeared on his face. He wondered if the alcohol was giving him this effect rather than the girl. It seemed as if she had cast a spell upon him with just the sound of her voice and the few words she had spoken.
Troy smiled at John, a light in her eyes that he only ever saw in the eyes of someone who had found something of interest. John found it strange that this didn't cause him any alarm, but he brushed the thought away nearly as soon as it had entered his mind.

"I see. Do you think it will become a terrible Tuesday? Does it still have the potential to be worse today?" she asked.

There was a vicious smile on her face as he began to become too relaxed. His mouth was slack and he was slumped over in his chair. John could just barely see Troy . His mind was nearly as at ease as his body was, but not enough for him to not catch the predatory look on her face. He wanted to ask her who she was, what she was doing. Fear gripped his heart but he couldn't move his body anymore to show his fear. Only his eyes grew glassy with fear as if a mist had covered them, causing his heart to thunder and his breath to increase. His body would not move, though.

"I guess it can become more terrible. And it will only get worse." Troy said lightly, as if what she was saying wasn't terrifying John. He didn't understand why any of this was happening. Why she was here and doing this to him.

"John, I need you to listen very closely to me. I have something I need you to do. It's very important to me and no one else but you can do this for me. You are a very special person. Very special." Troy whispered, coming closer to him, "Something truly terrible will happen today. Something you will never be able to fix. This thing will happen unless you follow my directions precisely."

Troy stopped when she was inches from John's face. He didn't want to listen to her or what she wanted him to do. She gripped his face tightly between her two hands, digging her nails into his skin. He wanted to cry out but his body failed to react. Her voice became desperate as she continued to speak, talking like John's actions would be the beginning or end of the world. His choice would either destroy or fix something and she wanted him to follow along with her instructions in hopes of...of doing whatever it was that she wanted.

"There are things, John, about this world that I can't explain. Hopefully you will never need to know of these things. As long as you follow my instructions then everything should be fine for you. It will all go back to normal. Avoiding school and all those kids who couldn't possibly understand you. Waking each morning wondering if it's worth it to get out of bed. Staying where the world doesn't notice that you exist and you can remain safe with your mother in that tiny apartment.

"The point is, I just need you to do something for me. It won't take much time to do it. Once we're done here and you can find yourself able to move again, I'm going to need you to throw away that bottle. It's poisoned now and you would only be in the same spot you are now if you drank from it again."

Troy loosened her grip on his face before she continued to speak. She pet the sides of his face as if she just realized she had been hurting him. Troy took a deep breath and moved back an inch, taking a minute to collect herself.

"This is going to be difficult for you to do with how you've already done things today. But you must do what I ask as soon as you can. Once you leave this place, I need you to walk towards the hospital. No matter what you see or what happens, you must make it to the roof before nine o'clock tonight. By the time the poison wears off you will only have two hours. It seems like it will be plenty of time to get to the hospital, but there will be obstacles in the way."

She straightened herself out and looked around the small alcove they were in. A grimace came to her face as she looked over the books, "Lovely place to drink in. Very fitting for someone like you."
She had spit out the words as if they'd had a bitter taste in her mouth. Troy turned and left the alcove with a much different demeanor than when she had sat down. Her fast paced anger had turned into calm determination. John couldn't help but to think that Troy walked as if she had wings on her back.