Stuck in Time | #OpenNovellaContest2020 | Round Two

2.

There are several things people in the past have said about History.

James Baldwin: "People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them."

Marcus Garvey: "A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."

Martin Luther King Junior: "We are not makers of history. We are made by history."

All of these people are right in one way or another. And I know this because I am a historian by profession. To me, History belongs to the world and not just to an individual. That is why I keep my past at bay and not let it interfere with my duty.

Then again, ever since I discovered in middle school that I had a very special power, I knew it would be of good use. I'm not entirely sure how I got it and neither did my parents understand it. It was the summer before my parents died in a car crash and I was taken in by my mother's best friend and who lived in the street next to ours. But, when I hit twenty, I decided to move back to my parents' old bungalow that had been cared for ever since it was abandoned. I always wanted to move back and when I got the chance after graduation, I did it.

Like I said, I keep my past at a distance far, far away, so it won't mess up my work. But, ever since I discovered that I could travel back and forth from present to past if I just thought about a story or an event hard enough, my theses have become easier to write and more accurate. Suddenly, I had a wealth of information that I learnt to write down and compile, write what was needed and could be explained with concrete evidence and hint at what couldn't be.

In my secret travels, I saw the Buckingham Palace, the Tudors, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and the fall of Berlin Wall among many other events and personalities of yore.

Which brings us to what actually happened the previous night, the night of the murder of Donald MacDonald, respected employee of Lloyd Tourism & Lifestyle Incorporated.

I returned home just after dinnertime and entered through the main door. Naturally, I turned the lights on, snacked on some chips – we had dinner an hour ago and I was only mildly hungry – watched some television, and went upstairs to my room around ten o'clock.

What I did there was not sleep. My mind was far from it.

In fact, I was so excited about the portion of the movie I watched called "Adventures of Mark Twain" that, when I turned off the television, I at once decided to go back in time and watch the man myself!

And that's exactly what I did.

It was when I returned from the past and in my delirious state of mind, when I went downstairs for a glass of water, that I saw the body.

But, it wasn't until the next day that I actually informed the police about it. And this wasn't the secret that Markus Jefferson knew of.

~*~

Iris White came to pick me up at half-past nine, just like she promised me over the phone, and when I explained the truth – the whole truth – she couldn't believe her ears.

"But, really, how did it happen?! I mean, just last night it was all okay! What happened in under, like, five hours?!"

I sat in her light grey BMW as she drove us from the police station back to my house. We were going to pick up some of my stuff before going back to hers. She was curious about everything that had happened this morning, which, even I realised then, I'd have felt was far-fetched, had I not been in the thick of it myself.