The cards kept coming in, piling up at the door, all saying the same thing. My father was a great man. I stood there alone in the doorway, waiting. For what? This guilt to kill me? I should’ve accepted his plea to come out to the farm two weeks ago. I would’ve been there when he had the heart attack.

Mom and Miranda are here at the funeral, but there isn’t a glimpse of affection in their eyes. Mom even brought her husband Tom. After their divorce, Dad was alone and I’d visit often, but over time the visits occurred less and less. Life moves fast in the city.

“That fucker should’ve given up on the farm long ago. I told him it was gonna kill him.” I turn to look at my mother standing next to Miranda, Miranda nodding and sipping her drink in agreement. I don’t know if it’s the guilt but that really hurt. I need some fresh air.

The sky is blue. Almost too blue. I’ve got some smokes in my car but it’s parked down the block, so I head out through the walkway and reach the street. I look both ways and there’s no oncoming traffic, but I can’t move. Tears start building up in my eyes. I need to run. From this place. From my life. From this guilt. I run.

A car speeds by out of nowhere. The side-mirror hits my arm and my body twists, falling backward on the sidewalk at the other side of the street. But I didn’t land on a sidewalk. The bright blue sky has suddenly dimmed. The wind stops blowing through the trees and the passing car is frozen in place before me, but half of it is missing.

I look to my left where the front of the car should be, but instead it’s the same section of street repeated, at night, with no car in it. Ahead of it is the same section of street repeating over and over again, but at different times of day, into infinity. They’re almost like cubes, separated into a table, and I’m laying in the dividers.

The ground feels like rubber. I have no idea what’s going on and panic. Where am I? I try to stand but the ground is soft and I fall backward into one of the cubes in the row behind me. I hit the sidewalk and feel the breeze again. I look around, and the cubes are gone. It’s night-time.

All of the guests have left the house and I look to the right at my car down the street. Somehow, I just fast forwarded past a few hours of my life. What the hell was that? This isn’t a dream as far as I can tell, but I have no idea what to make of it. It feels like forever until I wipe the tears off my face and stand, then wobble to my car and drive my way slowly home.

Normally the white noise of the ceiling fan puts me right to sleep, but the spinning blades grasp my wide-open stare. Am I going crazy? Did I pass out when I fell and nobody noticed me on the ground? Am I dead? What the hell was that room? How did I get there?

As I don’t feel like writing another ten pages on this phone, I’ll summarize the rest. Eventually he figures out how to initiate this time travel but starts seeing a strange figure in his dreams. The strange figure is an alien that eventually appears in real life and is able to chase him through these time jumps and tries to kill him. He’s able to escape by clever use of time travel.

He decides to go to his father’s farm, and is tempted to go back in time to save his father. He initiates the time jump but the alien is waiting for him there and an epic battle ensues. Blipping in and out of the past and the future they brawl around the first floor of the house. He makes his way upstairs, slowly to his father's bedroom where there’s a gun. (Visually this would be epic.) Eventually in the bedroom he grabs onto the alien, initiates the time jump, then pushes the alien into a cube that’s the future while he jumps into a cube that’s the past and has a few seconds to grab his fathers gun before the alien appears and he shoots it between the eyes, killing it.

Then he goes into the kitchen and initiates the time travel and starts running into the past. The cubes are laid out like a calendar, but instead of days and weeks it’s moments and hours. He keeps running until he sees his father being found dead on the floor. He keeps running and sees his father having the heart attack. He then keeps running to earlier that day when his father called him and he said he couldn’t make it out to the farm. He reaches into the cube and the story ends. (I’d like to think he’s able to save his dad.)

My writing skill is certainly lacking, but I know I’m not a great writer. This story was originally a short film concept of mine, but I never felt like finishing it, and this writing prompt is pretty much the same exact concept idea that started the story.