The Traveler

Jim Moore sighed in frustration as he sat in Los Angeles traffic on the I 605. Per usual the traffic was miserable and, of course, his air conditioning went out yesterday and he hadn't gotten it fixed yet. He took a deep drag from his Marlboro special blend and wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead. He looked at his speedometer which read 5mph. He shook his head and turned on the radio. Surfing through the stations until he landed on Cage The Elephant. He grunted approvingly.

He thought back to when he and his wife had gone to see them live in concert. They were playing with Taking Back Sunday and Blink 182 before Tom left to go find aliens. They listened to the band's songs on the way in. Why do we do that anyway? Such a strange tradition. He thought.

She looked absolutely stunning that day. She had curled her hair, and the way the summer sun hit, it looked redder and sexier than he had ever seen. She had on his favorite pair of blue jeans and had cut her blink shirt to make it a crop top. Her well worn converse was covered in dirt and scuff marks, just the way she liked them. She was rugged like that. She had just turned 35 but didn't look older than 28. He never knew how he got so lucky.

Jim slammed on his brakes, realizing he had completely zoned out while thinking about that beautiful day, "Oh shit!" He braced for impact only exhaling once he realized that he hadn't rear-ended the tesla in front of him. “Stupid Tesla.” He muttered as if it was actually the other person’s fault. He lit another cigarette.

He missed his wife today. Well, he missed his wife every day, but today was worse for whatever reason. The rest of his drive home, he couldn’t think about much other than the good, bad, and ugly times that they shared together. She had died in a car accident just over a year ago now, and he still felt the guilt of it all weighing down on him. He should have been in that car with her. They were supposed to go to the airport together, but he had to do some last-minute paperwork at the office before they could take their trip. He was supposed to meet her there, and she drove off the road and wrapped her car around a tree.

They were supposed to go to Europe for the month. It was going to be the most extravagant trip that they had ever taken. They were going to start in France and work their way to anywhere their hearts desired. That was definitely her idea. She was always better about being spontaneous and going with the flow. He missed that. He needed that.

These days he spent his time doing the same thing every day. Gym, work, home, dinner, TV, read, sleep and repeat. Maybe he would have a couple of drinks tonight. It had been a few nights. He had cut back when his family said they thought he was drinking too much and worried he was using it to cope.

He pulled into the driveway to his now oversized four bedroom home. They had planned to start a family when they got back from their trip. Or really on their trip, he supposed. One of the two porch lights was burned out. The windows held cobwebs like permanent Halloween decorations. The grass looked about to be half a foot tall, or are they considered weeds at this point? Either way, Amelia would probably be disappointed. He thought.

He parked his car and looked at his home before sighing again. He didn’t quite feel like going in yet, so instead, he sat on the hood of his car and smoked another cigarette.

He thought about his wife, and how much he missed her. He thought about how much he hated his work. He thought about how short life was and how he spent it doing nothing of importance. He felt unbelievably defeated. He had a purpose when he had his wife by his side, but now it all felt so pointless.

He shook his head as he realized how his thoughts were spiraling downward. He took the last drag of his cigarette, watching the sun set, and then stamped it out, and headed for his house. When he reached the door and went to put the key in, something made him pause. The neighborhood suddenly seemed eerily still. He had a strange feeling, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. He shook the strange thoughts that formed in his mind, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

It was as if he stepped off of a cliff. The door opened into what felt like nothingness and he was freefalling to an end he couldn’t even see yet. Colors like the northern lights surrounded him. Jim passed through vibrant colors and strange shapes. As his body accelerated, he felt as though he was being stretched. Eventually, the pain became so intense that he couldn’t help but cry out.

Suddenly, he was in his living room face down on the ground. He was pale, sweaty, and breathing as if he had just run a marathon. He looked around the large living room with its vaulted ceiling and wood floors head still spinning. He pushed himself up shakily. The entry room window to his right caught his attention first. It seemed to be getting brighter. Strange. He thought. His brows furrowed as he took a couple of steps toward the window to look out and see why it was getting brighter.

“Jim? Is that you?” Said a familiar voice.

His head whipped around and his eyes widened, “Hello?” He thought he might still be hallucinating.

And then his wife came down the hall with a look of concern on her face. She smiled. “Hey you. You okay? You look like you’re going to vomit. You want me to get you something?”

Jim’s jaw dropped. “Amelia? Is it really you?”

Her face scrunched up and she said, “Who else would it be? You’re kinda scaring me. What’s going on?”

“I… I… don’t… I am not really sure.”

“Okay weirdo.” She said with her million-dollar smile. “Dinner is almost ready.” She turned to walk away and the short flowered sundress she was wearing fluttered slightly before she stopped and looked over her shoulder, “By the way, Uncle Fin is here to join us for dinner as well! He’s just upstairs resting for a bit. The drive wore him out. He should be down soon enough though.” She continued down the hall and turned left into the kitchen.

Jim cocked his head and muttered, “Uncle Fin? Who’s that? Forget that… What is even happening right now? Am I dreaming? Did someone slip me something?”

Looking around the room more closely he could see that things weren’t exactly as he expected them to be. For one, the furniture in the room looked nothing like his typical entry room. They looked shiny, almost metallic. He ran his fingers along with the couch and it was as cool as gold, and when he sat down, it wasn’t stiff like he expected. It was this strange spongy sensation, almost like a tempurpedic, but the material wrapped itself around whatever touched it. As he pulled his hand back the material stretched like a piece of gum to the bottom of your shoe.

“Huh. That is really unpleasant. This has to be a dream. Did I fall asleep as soon as I got in?” He asked himself quietly..

The smells of the kitchen wafted into the entry room, but it wasn’t the normal smell he was accustomed to from his wife. Firstly, it smelled good. Secondly, it wasn’t a familiar smell that he had any memories tied to. New recipe? He wondered.

He continued looking around the room. The dining room table (or what he assumed was a table of sorts) was one solid piece of an unidentifiable material that didn’t have any legs holding it up. It seemed to just kind of float in the middle of the room. Even the chairs surrounding it didn’t have legs. They looked like the soup spoons you might see at a Chinese restaurant.

He approached it timidly, moving his hand back and forth underneath the table to see if his hand would hit anything, but it didn’t.

Another strange thing was the number of different colors in the room. The couch was gold, the table and chairs were blue, and the walls looked almost like a painter’s pallet. Not only was there a wide variety of colors throughout the walls, but they seemed to be moving outward from the center in a never-ending shift of color. Almost as if someone was on the other side continuously pouring different colors of paint.

He poked at it quickly, scared he might be sucked into the wall itself. When nothing happened, he slowly placed his entire palm on what he had expected to be a liquid, but it felt as normal as any other wall he had touched.

“Do you like it?” His wife asked from behind him.

He jumped “Like what?” He replied.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” She said chuckling. “The walls of course. I know that I didn’t talk to you about it first, but I promise I got a good deal. What do you think?”

“I… uh…”

“Oh, you hate it don’t you? I’m sorry. I’ll get it changed back tomorrow.”

“No, it’s fine. Really. It looks great, just caught me off guard is all.”

There was an awkward pause in the air as Amelia placed a strange-looking pile of food in the center of the table. Jim found his head cocking to the side yet again at the sight of it. He wasn’t really sure what to make of it.

“What’s wrong? It’s your favorite. I figured since we had company I would make something that everybody would enjoy.”

Jim forced a grin and said, “It looks great. Thank you so much.”

She smiled and returned to the kitchen.

Jim’s hands found his face and they slid down it with a long sigh. What is happening? I must be asleep. This is crazy. He thought. Jim started pinching his arms. No changes. Worth a shot, he thought. He marched his way down the hall to the kitchen.

“Amelia!” His head snapped back and he paused mid stride at the sight of the living room that was attached to their kitchen.

Where the television was normally, there was a wall of clocks, and instead of furniture, he found another one of the strange floating platforms, but much smaller. In the center of the clocks stood a very large grandfather clock. It looked like something you might find in the center of a town square. The clock was as tall as the room. The pole was thick at the base and narrowed as it reached the actual timepiece. The clock was rounded with a pointed top and intricate details surrounding the roman numerals. It was charcoal black with gold trim and absolutely did not have any relation with the surrounding clocks. Not only that, but all of them told a different time. Making Jim wonder how in the world anybody would know which time they should look for. To top it off, it was a bizarre culmination of timepieces that didn’t seem to have any kind of theme or pattern to it. There were as many shapes, sizes and colors of clocks as you could possibly envision and then some.

Amelia, confused by her husband’s behavior, said, “Jim? What’s going on with you? It’s like you’re a different person today.”

“Sorry, Amelia. I just don’t understand what is happening here. I just came home from work, and now everything is different.”

“Honey, it’s just one wall. If it really bothers you that much I’ll get it changed back. I already told you that. Full refund. No problem. Okay?” There was real concern in her voice at this point.

“Amelia, it isn’t about the wall. When I left this morning, you were…”

Jim was cut off by a loud voice at the top of the staircase, “Welcome home Jim.”