Prose choice
Previous prose
Joel Shelley
Loop
Dr Summers presses the ignition and the machine whirs to life.
Its enveloping metal arches bristle with electricity around him, humming with a new energy that has the platform beneath his feet trembling. The fluorescent lights of his windowless workshop flicker as a tear meanders down his cheek.
It works. It actually works. As the doctor waits, feeling the machine’s sound and energy rattle through the cage-like mesh encircling him, he pictures everything he has given up for this beautiful, incredible, mess of wires and metal: his marriage with Susan; a relationship with his children, whose faces have become like strangers; and the years of his life seemingly going nowhere on this project. But, he decides, none of that matters now. He has finally achieved success.
The machine seems to cough and splutter. It sighs with a rasping death rattle. Then it dies. Silence fills the workshop. The lights overhead stop flickering, glowing their usual putrescent yellow as if completely unfazed by what is happening below.
Dr Summers presses the ignition and the machine whirs to life. It tremors and buzzes again. Although, for the doctor, it is his first time witnessing it come to life. Because somewhere, deep within the entanglement of wires and circuitboards, he has made a mistake. The machine worked as programmed, but not as he had intended. Maybe, if he had not fallen out with his long-time lab partner, they might have spotted the error.
Summers had tried many times to explain the design to a layman, his wife: the machine would have the effect of rewinding time around it, whilst itself and anyone on the central platform stood unaffected. So, in theory, he could spend an entire day planning and experimenting on his next project and then jump back and spend the same day with her and the kids.
Except, unbeknownst to him, his mistake means that the reverse happened. As the machine winds down again, the only thing it has impacted is Summers. Every part of him – his body, memory, and thoughts – has been yanked back one minute to the moment he went to activate his life’s work. Meanwhile, the world around him has moved on. His wedding band collects dust where he has left it on a nearby desk. A cobweb in the corner of the room behind him grows thread by thread. Outside the workshop, the sun swings across the sky, dips into the west, and peers back over in the east.
Perhaps there is a flicker of recognition behind his eyes each time he moves his hand towards the control panel, an instinct that this action is familiar in some way. But, any doubt about his talent is quickly pushed aside by the thought of his wife, his kids, and the years he has already lost – it couldn’t be for nothing.
Dr Summers presses the ignition and the machine whirs to life.
Joel Shelley is a UK-based writer and blogger with an MA in Literature. He shares writing advice, resources, and book reviews on his website, Digital Burrow, while also experimenting with writing his own prose fiction.
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