Excerpt from Time’s Up

I’m recording this because I have to. I have to finish the story. Then I have to destroy it. The recorder I mean. I have no choice. I can’t let it be found in the future. I could, of course, but it would create havoc. Maybe I shouldn’t care, but that’s just the way I am.

The Neanderthals will be on the prowl soon. They’ll find me, and they’ll kill me, just like they killed Barry. I can’t let that happen. I don’t want to go that way. I don’t want to be ripped into pieces. I am so fucking scared.

In a few minutes, I’m going to jump off a cliff about a hundred yards from here. At least that’s my plan. It’s gotta be better than being taken by the Neanderthals.

I don’t know if I can do it, though. Maybe I’ll just keep trying to survive.

No, that won’t work. I can’t take the chance. Who wants to live in these circumstances anyway?

I’ve smashed out all my teeth. I can’t let them be found, not with my fillings and all. Just imagine if some archaeologist in the future found a skull with fillings in some dig. Then they’d know. DNA, carbon dating, they’d know that someone from the twenty-first century died here thousands of years ago.

No, I can’t let that happen. No, I’m too – what – conscientious? I could say fuck the rules of time-travel, but I understand why—why I can’t leave anything behind that screams, someone from the future was here!

Anyway, it’s not like it was in that Tom Hanks movie – smashing a tooth, I mean. I didn’t pass out like the character in the movie did. It actually got easier after the first one.

So, now I have no teeth and I’m spitting blood all over my recorder. No matter. Thank God I don’t have an artificial limb or a plate in my head.

That’s funny – a plate in my head. I can almost laugh.

It isn’t pleasant spitting blood all over my recorder. Makes me want to cry.

As soon as I’m done – as soon as my catharsis is complete – I’ll smash the recorder into dust. Just like everything else.

Me included.

Fuck Barry anyway. FUCK YOU BARRY!

How did I ever let you talk me into this?

I miss Andréa. Oh, God, how I miss her. I wonder if she exists in the future. I mean – why wouldn’t she? It’s not like she’s descended from Neanderthals. Or maybe we all are. Who knows?

Well, I hope she’s going to be where she was when I left. I hope she’ll be happy.

I’m so scared.

Well, goodbye.

Time’s up.