Monday 12/03/18, 11:15pm. "Fuck..." John said as he paced back and forth in his room. He hadn't been able to get Amy off his mind. Ever since he fucked her and left her he had this nagging fear in the back of his mind. Why had he done that? It had felt great at first. Dominating her and doing what he wanted. But that feeling had faded pretty quickly as the hours had passed.
Two days had gone by and he couldn't get over it. It felt... wrong... Sure, it wasn't technically any worse than what he had been doing for over a month... He'd been stopping time and having his way with women without them knowing. Honestly, if there was some cosmic judge out there that was probably worse than what he did to Amy... But it didn't feel worse to him... With those other women he could justify his actions. What he was doing wasn't really hurting them. They didn't even know it was happening. But with Amy? He had hurt her... And he had only meant to help her at first...
Back on the beach with the surfer chick he had though he had needed to fuck Amy. But that wasn't right at all. His mind had been distorted by all the fucking he was doing. He didn't need to fuck her. He just needed her. There was something about her that made him... like her. Not just for her body. Not just to use. He liked her as a person. That glimmer she had in her eyes. Her smile. The fact she was working so hard in a dead-end job. He had bought her trust and then abused it. And that was eating him up inside.
John flicked the watch. Stupid thing. It had caused all these problems... None of this would have happened without it. He tugged at it, trying to get it off. "Fuck!" he screamed as he ripped at the straps. It was not working. It wouldn't unbuckle. He tried to slide it off. He pushed hard on the side of it, causing the front of the watch to dig into his wrist. It was lifting. Turning. He kept forcing it and finally... it... flipped over. The face of the watch was now facing his skin and the backplate was pointing up.
John fell to the floor in a huff. It hadn't moved up his wrist. He'd just flipped it... He sighed. Then he looked at the backplate and froze. There was a small little screw in the backplate. The screw was near the button he used to pause time. "What the..." he mused to himself.
John rummaged around in his room and finally found his old glasses case. In it was a small screwdriver. What the hell would be inside a magic watch? He slumped down on the floor at the foot of his bed. He bit his lip and made up his mind. He wasn't sure what he was doing but for some reason it felt right. John began to unscrew the little screw in the back of the watch. It was very tight and took some effort to get it started. Finally he got it going and it began to unscrew.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you..." a familiar voice said from behind his ear. John must have jumped three feet in the air in terror. He sprawled across the floor in panic and then looked up at his bed.
His dead grandfather Gregory, the man who had given him the watch as his last act before fading into dust, was laying on his bed. Gregory was on his stomach, lazily kicking his feet back and forth and propping his head up with both hands.
"Hey Johnny boy!" he laughed, wiping a tear out of his eye.
"Y-you're dead!" John gasped in a horrified voice, pointing up at his grandfather and worming his way further away on his back.
"Well isn't everyone eventually?" Gregory said in a musing voice.
John stared back blankly, utterly horrified and utterly dumbfounded.
"Oh what's the matter boy?" Gregory said in a dismissive voice as he sat up and swung his legs over the foot of the bed. "Cat got your tongue?"
"How-" John stammered.
"Wellllll... It's all quite complicated. Needless to say I never expected to see you again after that disappearing act."
"Dis... What?! You died! The clock said you were out of time and you died!" John sputtered.
"Oh. That. No, well, you see, that's what we in the business call... a bold faced lie." Gregory gave a sheepish smile and shrugged. "You see... the date and time on the watch isn't the date and time of your death. It's the date and time of your next jump." Gregory looked at John as if this was supposed to explain everything.
"...What?..." John said blankly.
"Ohhhhh alright... I see you haven't picked up on any of this yourself. Well... I suppose you wouldn't with what I did to the watch..." Gregory stood up and tugged at this shirt, straightening it out. "You see boy, that watch does a lot more than stop time. A lot more boy... But... well... I wanted to hide that from you."
"What? Why? What does it do?" John said as he began to regain some of his composure.
Gregory sighed and suddenly looked very old and weary indeed. "Look... I don't want to tell you about all this. It's better off if you don't know. And don't go messing around with that watch. Bad things will happen if you open it... Well see you-"
"No!" John shouted as he grabbed his grandfather's wrist. "No! Don't you dare disappear again. How do you have this when I have it?" John pointed at the watch on his grandfather's wrist. A perfect copy of the one John wore. "You gave this to me when you turned to dust. How do you have another? And no more games, because if this is dangerous, you better tell me because I'm opening it."
Gregory looked genuinely shocked. "And why would you do a thing like that boy? Aren't you happy with the great gift I gave you?"
"Gift?!" John shouted in disbelief. "Gift?! This thing is messing with my head! Do you know what I did? I purposefully came in a girl without her permission without time paused! Damn't Greg fuck you! Why would you give me this thing?" John tossed his grandfather's arm aside and paced away.
When Gregory spoke again it was in a softer and more serious tone. "So you found someone you care about so quickly did ya?" He sighed. "Screw it up because of the power the watch gave you?"
John shrugged, his back still turned to his grandfather.
"I did too you know... Your grandmother was a wonderful woman." Gregory laughed, a wistful tone in his voice. "Something very similar happened between me and her back in the day.
"What?" John said turning back around.
"Oh, it's true..." Gregory said with a far off look in his eyes. "Found a woman I wanted to be with without time stopped. Had been using women for so long I had forgotten how to do that. Knocked her up. I laughed at her and ran away the first time... I bet I looked a lot like you look right now. Wanting to find a way to go back and fix things..." Gregory sighed. "Alright John, I'll level with you. I didn't lie about everything. I did get the watch from an old war fried when he died. His name was Adam Sabal. He pulled the same thing on me I pulled on you. Said he'd die when the time on the watch came. Vanished in a puff of dust when it did. Just like you I believed him for a while. Then I met your grandmother. Screwed things up. Tried to open the watch just like you are now." He laughed a pitying laugh. "Oh I understand now Adam... Oh how I understand now..."
"Gramps!" John said snapping his fingers in front of Gregory's face.
