Sleep

So I've been laying here on my bed waiting for sleep to come. Waiting to close my eyes and open them in a different place, a different time. Perhaps I'll be pulled back to my time - plus a few days or weeks. Perhaps I'll be pushed back to some prior year, to barely miss another significant event. Perhaps I'll even see one of the Unchanging, like the Rawboned Man or Shivering Johnny or the Bloodletter.


Of course, none of that will happen unless I fall asleep. Which won't happen if Bally keeps asking me questions.


"So how was it?" she asked. "Thriller? I haven't seen it."


"It was fine," I said. "I liked Fantasia better though."


"Oh," she said.


We all changed our names when we became Pilgrims. Bally changed hers to "Ballerina." She thought it sounded beautiful. It did, but it also felt silly to call her that, so we just call her Bally. It would probably make more sense to call her "Rina," but when have we ever made sense?


"Is there," she started to say and then stopped. "Is there anything I should know? About the next year? Is anything bad going to happen?"


There was a long pause, since I didn't exactly know what to say.


"No," I said. "Nothing bad's going to happen."


"You swear?" Bally asked.


"I swear," I said. "Now be quiet, I'm tired and I want to get a good amount of sleep before I become unstuck again."


"Okay," she said. She went to leave, then turned back to me and whispered, "Thanks, A."


"You're welcome," I whispered back, then closed my eyes until she left. Then I got up from my bed and went to the computer as silently as a could and typed this entry. Because, before I go back, I just wanted to say one thing:


I'm sorry for lying to you, Bally.

Taking Stock

"I think I figured out when and where I am," I said.


"That's good," Roland said. "But first things first: do you have any new stock tips?"


The others - Roland, Mona, and Bally - all looked at me with anticipation. The stock market was how we made our money mostly. If we found ourselves in the past and we were able to scrounge up some cash, we could invest in stuff we remembered; most of the time, it wasn't very much, but sometimes we were lucky. Roland, early on, managed to get a tip from his future self that turned out to be very lucrative. We've basically been living off of that for a while.


"Sorry, guys," I said. "I'm only from about a year from now. And I actually came straight from 1983."


"Really?" Bally asked. "How was it?"


"All ponytails and legwarmers," I said. "I did get to see Thriller in theater, though."


"Fine, fine," Roland said. "So where are you now?"


"Los Angeles, 1968. The Ambassador Hotel."


"That's weird," Roland said. "Isn't that where Robert Kennedy was killed?"


"Not while I was there," I said. "Anyway, you guys go to LA. I think I'm due to show up there in a few days."


As Roland went to pack, Bally turned back to me. "Is there anything you can tell us about the future?" she asked.


I took a sip of coffee. "Yeah," I said. "Buy a new coffee maker."


"Is the old one going to break?"


"No," I said. "It just tastes like crap."

Something Strange

So here's something strange: today, I woke up in my own bed.


I got up, took a shower, walked downstairs, and started making coffee. And then I noticed I was using the old coffee machine, the one we had thrown out last year. So I looked around and noticed other small, subtle differences. The television in a different place. The stack of books we still hadn't unpacked.


I had woken up in the past, but in my own past. This hadn't happened to me before.


I mean, the other Pilgrims have met future versions of me, so I knew that it had to happen someday, but it hadn't happened yet.


I guess I have to figure out where the current me is and tell the others, so they can pick her up. Crap, I hate untangling timelines.


Well, at least she already created this blog. That should make it easier to pinpoint her.