Till The Clock Strikes Gone

30 | a christmas tale

"Fate is crazy. Ain't it? Charles and my mother got married and a few months later my mother was diagnosed with second stage breast cancer. Charles was once again devastated and a few years later, my mother was dead. Charles appeared distant for a while but then...he took particular interest in me.

"He saw me more invested in the subject of Science and since he himself was a researcher, he took it upon himself to educate me and fulfil my mother's dreams through mine. We spent lots of time in his laboratory where he taught me hundreds of theories and fascinated me with all kinds of stuff that was almost deemed impossible. However, the most particular of them was the subject of 'Time Travel' that gained my undivided attention. I used to spend hours and hours thinking about the topic. The only time my attention drifted a little was when Lorna Diaz, my classmate, would come to study with me. I had a thing for her, I won't lie, maybe I still do but now she is so far gone that I have lost her for good.

"Anyways, that's how I used to spend my day. When I turned twenty, I met your mother. Cassandra Jones was a law student. She had skipped two years of classes for she was so bright and went to college without attending high school. Ah! My lovely Cass, my heart and soul with bright grey eyes and a voice that demanded attention. I met her at an auction on our college campus and the moment I saw her, she became the first person to erase Lorna away from my mind and we became friends and soon...we were lovers. However, her parents loathed me because of my status. That wasn't their fault though. I wasn't a Darcy at that age.

"I loved my Cass. Talking about her aches me to this day. My sweetheart, the love of my life, gone at such a young age and all because of me.

"Charles died after he crashed his car, drunk in grief. He died on my twenty-first birthday and I was left without a family...again.

"Cass was always there during the times of my grief and she consoled me. I proposed to her that very night to marry me and she was so happy that she threw herself in my arms and cried and cried while I held her, promising to myself that I would never let her go.

"We got married a month later. My adoptive father had left me with quite a fortune and I was rich but all these riches made me feel sick so I donated them to charity in the name of my mother and got a job, in the very school where I was once a student. Cassandra had by now become an attorney. Three years after our marriage, we were happy and blessed with a nice home and enough money to survive. Cassandra earned more than me and sometimes we used to fight over that little fact but at the end of the day, all was fine.

"Yes. Fine. Everything was fine until Edmund Dawson showed up.

"No, Eliza, he wasn't related to James. He was my student, a boy of seventeen. He was a charming lad with kind, soft features. His green eyes always shone with curiosity and I saw myself in him. He was fascinated by the strange facts of Science like I had been and he would often ask me questions while the other students shrugged and mocked him. He was a calm and quiet boy, my favourite. One day, he came to me and told me about this theory he had been working on. He gave me his diary and asked me to take the time to read it. That night, I read it. Guess what his theory was? He deemed Time Travel possible and was asking me to help him test it. I agreed instantly and that Eliza, was the biggest and greatest mistake of my life.

"Over the next two years, we worked on our theory. Yes, 'our' for I had made some modifications to it. I was a little more focused by now and unknown to myself, had started neglecting my wife. She would often wait for me till late while I worked with Edmund in our school laboratory. I used to come home and find her asleep. The next morning, I would be gone early before she even woke up. Your mother once tried to convince me to have a baby for she thought that it would give me a sense of responsibility but I didn't listen to her nor did I tell her what I had been up-to.