Because Reasons

Horace Reaver’s mother burst through the screen door, hoping that her six-year-old son and his friend were just playing. She found what she had feared; little Dardan’s lifeless body lay motionless on the ground. “Oh my God. What happened?”

Horace simply shrugged. “I pushed him off jungle gym. I think he broke his neck.”

She started sobbing. “Do you understand what you’ve done?”

“I’m sorry,” Horace cried, unsure why she was so upset. “I didn’t know it would hurt him that bad. I’ll be more careful tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow‽” she screeched. “There is no tomorrow! He’s dead! People don’t come back from that! Don’t you understand?”

“I don’t mean tomorrow tomorrow,” Horace tried to explain. “I mean when I go back and do this day over again, I won’t kill him this time. He’ll be fine.”

She continued to cry. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The day. It’ll restart. This is only the practice day, so we can learn from our mistakes, and then go back and try it again.”

Mrs. Reaver tried inhaling to get the snot back in her nose, and then she took her son by the shoulders. “Now you listen to me, mister. You can’t go back in time. We only get one chance in this life, and you just took that one chance from that little boy.” She stood up and composed herself. “Now I am your mother, and I’m going to protect you, but you have to do exactly what I say. Do you understand me?”

“No, I don’t. I’ll just go back in time and do things differently. I don’t understand why you’re acting like that’s impossible. I’ve been doing it my whole life, haven’t you?”

She slapped him across the face hard enough to drop him to the ground, right on top of Dardan’s body. “Shut up! You shut up right now! You can’t! Travel! Through time, you little s**t!”

Horace deepened his eyes and wiped the blood off of his face. He took a stone as he was standing back up, bashing it against his mother’s knee. When she keeled over in pain, he swung back and then slammed it against her face. “If what you’re saying is true, mother...” He lifted the rock high over his head and prepared to drop it down. “...then you won’t have to worry about remembering this.”

That was the first Horace Reaver learned that people around him did not also have the ability to go back in time and relive each day once more.

Horace spent much of the next several years in boredom. Despite his best efforts, no one around him was even slightly aware that time reset at the end of every day. While everyone else had experienced ten years, he had lived through twenty, and there was nothing he could do to change that. He discovered a television series that ran before he was born about a medical student who shared his ability, and used it to prevent people from dying. He became obsessed with the show, and watched each episode several times. He wanted to understand every mistake the character made so that he would not do the same. But he also became convinced that, like the show’s main antagonist, he too would have some kind of counterpart; someone who could relive days, and would soon be working against him.

In order to garner the attention of this supposed enemy, Reaver grew violent. He went on murderous rampages; hosting public shootings, and blowing up buildings. He would always try to get caught and make sure his name was plastered all over the news. When the day restarted, he would be completely free. He carried out his plans across the entire country, and a few times in Canada, hoping that his counterpart would learn of the things he did only during Round One, and wonder why they did not happen the second time around. No such luck.

He moved out of his family’s home upon turning 18 and bought a new house. He didn’t feel the need to go to college, and he didn’t need a job. All he had to do was bet on sports competitions, and he would be right every time. One day, a high school girl who lived down the street offered him a lasagna her mother had made to welcome him to the neighborhood. The only thing was that this was the second time Horace was living through the day, and she had not offered the lasagna before. “Who are you?” he asked impolitely.

“My name is Ulinthra,” she answered impolitely.

He eyed her carefully, and was about to say more, but decided to wait. The next day, during Round One, he knocked on Ulinthra’s door and asked point blank if she was a time traveler.

“I am, yes,” she responded with less surprise than he would have thought.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“Why?”

“Well,” he was not expecting her to not feel the same way. “Well, so I wouldn’t be alone anymore.”

She shrugged, “I like being alone.”

“You like knowing everything that’s going to happen in the future, and having no one to relate to?”

“I’m going to live twice as long as everyone I know. I spend entire days doing whatever I want, and not worrying about the consequences. Who wouldn’t want to have my life?”

“Well now we get to do those things together.”

“I don’t even know you.” She smirked. “Creeper.”

“I could kill you right now, and literally no one would ever know.”

“Unless we’re not the only two.”

“What do you know?”

She ignored the question. “Besides, it might be fun to die.”

“I’ve done it a few times. It gets old real quick. Like, immediately.”

Having finally found someone like him, and unable to contain himself, Horace shoved his face into hers to kiss her. Though everyone appeared to be human, the two of them were something different; another species, and it felt like she was the last woman on Earth. Ulinthra did not push him away, and he thought he had made the right choice, but then he felt a sting in his throat. His neck was wet, and he was having trouble breathing. He slowly pulled away from her, letting the knife slide out of his body.

Ulinthra’s father ran up from the hallway upon hearing Horace fall to the floor. “What did you do?”

She dropped the knife by Horace’s head. “Don’t worry about it, dad.”

When Horace woke up the next morning, he instantly threw his hand up to his neck. It was, of course, perfectly fine. All the events of the day before had been negated. He was going to go back to Ulinthra’s house and give her a piece of his mind, but she was waiting for him in the chair on the other side of his room. “You were saying something about having fun together?” She leaned forward and smiled at him semi-seductively. “We can’t do anything today, but tomorrow I was thinking we could shoot down some security drones. Start small.”

A portal opened against the wall. On the other side of it was Stonehenge, but it looked like it was missing a few stones. A man was standing in the middle of it. “Get the hell out here, you two!”

They obliged. “Who are you?”

“Why have you people been running around, blowing things up, killing your father over and over again, like a freaking psycho?”

“Why not?”

The man was baffled. “Because it’s wrong!”

“No harm, no foul.”

“Have you ever stopped to think that you were given these gifts for a reason?”

“Sure but, how were we to know what that reason was?”

“Take a guess. Here’s a hint; it’s not to kill people!”

“Then what?”

The man tried to dumb it down for them. “Instead of being in the news, read the news, go back in time, and fix the problems before they happen.”

“Why did it take you so long to talk to us about this?”

“We were waiting for you two to meet semi-organically, and didn’t know it would start with yet another murder!”

Horace spread his wings and lowered his head. “That’s all ya had to say!”