The Second Hand Man

Dear God in heaven, Steve was right about the possibility that I could end up like Natty!

But it is no longer just a possibility; I now know that it is an undeniable fact; a condition that will soon come to possess the mind and body of Cornelius Crane.

I was rereading my entry of June 7th, 1996 today when it hit me; a most frightening revelation. It was as if I had been doused with a bucket of icy-cold water.

How I had not realized it until this very moment is beyond me. Perhaps I had, but somehow my subconscious had seen fit to bury it away where the terror could do no harm.

But now it has emerged, not like some wondrous phoenix rising up from the ashes, but like one of those disgusting undead creatures that crawl out of the earth to torment and feed on the living.

At the time, neither Steve nor I had any explanation for Natty’s sudden regression. But now I know exactly what happened to her.

You can’t screw around with the natural order of things and not expect a bit of backlash for your arrogance and selfish pride.

When my consciousness punched through into the past it put a nasty kink into the cord of life. And now Time is gonna give it a hard flick to straighten it out.

That’s right, Time is gonna shake itself viciously like some large, soaking-wet, wooly sheepdog and put everything back in the proper place where it belongs.

I know exactly when it’s gonna happen too; at the exact point in time when my mind…my consciousness tries to now, instead, punch its way into the future where it’s never been! It’s gonna fail, and it’s gonna fail miserably!

Yep, I’m going to experience the motherfucker of all reboots, and there ain’t a goddamned thing I can do about it!!!

Sure, Mel was able to train Natty from scratch again, but who’s gonna teach me; who’s gonna have the patience to educate the mind of a six-year-old child trapped inside the body of a fifty five-year-old man?

It’ll be like working with a bloody retard!

I had felt my throat go dry as I moved towards the calendar on the wall.

It is just less than a month before the consciousness in this body will try to move into a future it has never known; the uncharted waters that I have been so excited about sailing.

Unfortunately, the boat will flounder at the very start of the journey; it will sink like a bloody stone.

The date: August 17th, 2014 – The very same day I was sent back!!!

I even know the exact time that it will happen.

Besides Steve’s distraught visage, the last other face that I had witnessed, before he slid me into the Consciousness Projector, was that of the large clock on the wall. It was at 22h45. I had told Steve to do it exactly at 23h00. And although it had felt like an eternity waiting inside that machine’s innards for it to power up to full strength, I know without a doubt that he had fired it precisely at the time asked.

God, I just realized, I won’t even be able to read!!!