Lost and Found (ONC2024)✅

Chapter 2

Jude

Somewhere in Time

Cowering in a dark alley, I held my knees to my chest, shivering. Snow dusted the cobblestone streets. Noises and whispers in the vicinity meant I wasn't alone. Trash littered the streets and the place stunk of raw sewage. A woman and two small sleeping children huddled together directly across from me. The woman stared at me, horror and shock strewn all over her face. With a look of sheer terror, she hugged her children tightly, as if she couldn't bear to let them go. Her long dress and bonnet made me think I was in the mid-1800s somewhere in either the industrial United States or the United Kingdom. Nearby, a man lay curled up in the fetal position using newspaper for a blanket. I couldn't tell if he was dead or alive. If he was dead, then I could easily steal his clothes and avoid freezing to death.

Further down the street, women in scantily clad clothes loitered the alley. They stood there, their bare legs exposed for all to see, as they eagerly awaited their next client. They must have been freezing, too. If I had to guess, I'd guess they were 'working girls' or 'women of the night,' whatever prostitutes were called in the Victorian era. I wished I paid more attention in history class. I'd learned so much over the past year, and it would have been helpful if I knew more than I did.

My clothes always stayed behind. They didn't come back with me, either. By now, I'd lost all sense of modesty, accustomed to being naked in places I never imagined. During my travels, I'd gotten arrested at least a dozen times for indecent exposure. I even got locked up in a mental hospital, barely escaping a lobotomy.

I fell asleep on my couch, binge-watching a docu-series about serial killers. I'd just finished the episode about Ed Gein, the serial killer who inspired the creations of Leatherface, the killer in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Buffalo Bill, Hannibal Lechter's former patient, in The Silence of the Lambs. In real life, Ed Gein was convicted and declared insane. He spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital. Anyway, the next episode was about Ted Bundy, but I'd have to watch it another time.

These journeys didn't just happen at night. It happened whenever I fell into a deep sleep. Exhausted all the time, I risked falling asleep any time of day; therefore, I worked from home. What would I do if I fell asleep in an office and returned butt naked?

I averaged about two to three hours' sleep before entering another realm. Those few hours of sleep allowed me to keep going in 2023.

Falling into a deep sleep was my only way back home. It was difficult to fall asleep in strange places. An alley, a jail cell, and barns were common places where I ended up crashing. Whenever I got arrested for indecent exposure, I usually fell asleep in the jail cell before anyone harmed me. Sometimes I found solace in jail as it gave me shelter, clothes, and food.

I didn't want to die, but I didn't want to live, either, not like this. Eventually, I expected someone to shoot me, hang me, or stab me to death. If that happened, I didn't know what would happen to my body. Would I just become a missing person in the present? Would that even matter? No one would miss me, anyway. I had no family to speak of. I hadn't seen my mother since my hospitalization.

I was so cold, my bones hurt. When it was this cold outside, I risked getting hypothermia. But if I stood up and walked down the alley, I risked being attacked. As my body trembled, I scanned the area, searching for something I could use as a weapon in case I needed it. A few feet away, I spotted a glass bottle and stretched my arm, reaching for it. In the past, I'd used homemade weapons to defend myself. Until this affliction, I was never a violent person nor a thief, but things had changed since the car accident.

Clutching the bottle with one hand, I picked up a piece of newspaper with the other, discovering it was the London Times, dated February 2, 1843. I then returned the newspaper to the man. Although he didn't budge, his chest heaved in and out subtly. He wasn't dead.