David Story Ms.

Gardner Honors English 0 Period 10 March 2014 Home Bound

I remember a certain Thursday, several months before my death, in September. It was the year 2083 and over sixty years since I had been home. Not that I wanted to go home for I had nothing there except possibly some useful possessions. I finally arrived home to what once was Northern California after living forty-five years in a labor camp in Lucerne where I sent to after serving during World War III. I remember it vividly as I walked up the rotten stairs that I had climbed up millions of times before. The paint mainly gone, having been eaten away by radiation. I never liked the paint color anyways, a strange aged vanilla color that was light and happy unlike most things in those days. I walked into what once had been my childhood room. I sat down on the moldy ruins of my bed and looked over, I noticed almost surprised to see an old battery powered CD player which I turned on. Suddenly in the air I heard lyrics: "Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way." Slowly I closed my eyes and let myself relax in a moment of nostalgia. "Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown, Waiting for someone or something to show me the way" I suddenly heard a young boy say. Instantly my eyes shot open to see a rather surprised young teenage boy who resembled my younger self staring back at me. "Who are you and what are you doing in here," I instantly snapped at the boy. "I am David Story and I am wondering why there is an old guy wearing a weird jumpsuit sitting on my bed!" What I now assume is my younger self shot back with a rather confused and shocked face. "Well what a coincidence I just happen to be David Story too so if I'm right that makes you younger me." I snorted "Well at least you have a better singing voice then I did, was that you singing Time by Pink Floyd?" "Yeah it was so strange I was listening to it and started singing and now your here!" my younger self said, "Wait are you some kind of time traveler?" I responded "I have no idea what you mean I'm just sitting here in my old room after finally returning after the War and player my, or in this case, our old CD player and

it was Time and then you appeared." "Wait there was a war?!" My young self yelled making me flinch where I was standing I suddenly realized that I had given my young self information about the future. I was never a father nor was I very good with children, but I tried awkwardly and calm and sat my younger self down in front of me on an old, rotten chair. "Listen to what I have to say carefully, if you even remember this after whatever is going on is down. Do not join that war." "Why not." My younger self stubbornly. I was about to tell myself why, fighting for a world that would lead to more tyranny and horrors, thinking that even if I did tell him it would be too late to change the inevitable. "Do you know of the book 1984?" I told my younger self. "I have heard of it." He said calmly "When you leave this place read it, you will learn what to fight for and what not to fight for. Who to fight for and who not to fight for" I said almost silently. He looked back with fearful eyes, starting to shake. I tried to be reassuring but the words didn't come out right. "It would be an easier and faster experience." We sat looking at each other for a while. I could tell his eyes were looking over my mismatched skin and many wrinkles and scars. He finally got a hold of himself and asked "Did you ever marry?" I didn't even wait to answer "No I never did, I found no use for it, I've never loved. Not after what I've seen" He sat there silently and looked around then he set his eyes upon something. "Didn't you ever love your guitars? Not even that Gibson Les Paul we bought that one December in Los Angeles?" He remarked. I turned away from him. "Why would I love a stupid piece of wood." His face was evidently shocked and he said silently to himself "I never imagined I would become this way." I glared and shot back "Well maybe you could have changed that."

My younger self only looked back and I detected what seemed to be almost a look of sadness and sympathy. We sat there looking back at each other, our eyes locked and almost engaged in a battle of emotion. Crows cried from the rafters above in the attic, where doves had lived before the destruction. My younger self looked again under the bed I was sitting on then looked back at me. "Even if you deny it I know you have loved and are in love, I know myself better then you think." I just looked back and gave him one last piece of advice "The less you become attached to someone the easier it is to accept its death." I paused and looked at the CD playing its last verse: "Call the faithful to their knees, To hear the softly spoken magic spell" The room went silent and I looked up at my younger self. He looked shortly back at me and was about to mouth something when he began to fade. I sat alone in that chair, my eyes fixed on where my other self had been sitting. I got up and sit where he had sat and tried to think as the younger me would have thought. I then looked under the bed where my younger self had been looking. My eyes widened and began to tear at what I saw. A dust laden yet elegant snakeskin leather case, shaped like that of a Gibson Les Paul.