If Tiger Could Tell the Time

Part 6 - Jester (Wednesday 7th December 2011)

In the cold light of morning, the events of the previous night all seemed to be rather childish and stupid and some sort of big complicated misunderstanding, which Jester sincerely hoped was the case. He switched on the television with the remote which he found on the pillow next to him. When he caught sight of the date, he started to feel the queasiness of dread again.

“Oh damn,” Jester muttered with disappointment and rolled his eyes. He had secretly been hoping that he had gone back to his proper present, with time having busily corrected itself while he slept.

The television was showing a morning breakfast-time programme and the date was displayed prominently in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Wednesday 7th December 2011. There was no escaping it. He thought about the receipts and tickets. Scraps of paper that cemented the reality of the situation further still. All proof that he had travelled back in time. Jester wondered what he was going to do. How on earth had he gone back in time in the first place? How was he going to return to his proper time of 21st December 2012?

He reluctantly crawled out of bed and saw that he was only wearing his underpants. He must have undressed himself at some point, stripping off his clothes, which were all over the floor, and climbing into the bed, either doing this in his sleep or while he was awake and half drunk. His back was still sore from the fight in the pub and he saw a large grey-red bruise in the mirror. His nose and face were also sore, but luckily there were no obvious bruises to be seen. Jester rubbed his eyes, his head hurt and seeing the half empty bottle of vodka he knew why. He had probably drunk far too much.

“Well that didn’t help matters, did it?” he told his reflection. “You’re still stuck in 2011 and now you have a hangover too.”

Drinking was a short-term fix, serving only to push this problem further under the rug so he could ignore it rather than facing up to it and dealing with it. Drinking could also potentially make things worse, he realised as he remembered making the phone calls and leaving messages. Luckily his friends hadn’t answered. He hoped that when they did get around to pick up their messages, they would assume that Jester had left them as a joke made in drunkenness. Out of character for him, but they all knew in 2011 he was out of work, so maybe it could be explained away.

Jester made himself a strong black coffee in the other cup wishing he had some pain killers for his banging head. He ate the biscuits to try and settle his stomach, which gurgled with hunger. He had not got around to eating yesterday after checking in. Emptying the rest of the vodka down the sink and dumping the bottle in the plastic bin, he decided that it would be better not to drink at all. A sober head would get him much further than one numbed by alcohol, no matter how much more an appealing state it seemed to be.

He packed away the discarded clothes from the gig the day before and after showering dressed in the jeans, shirt and jumper taken from the case. He picked up the watch from the tray. It glistened at him.

“I’m sorry. I’m doing my best,” and he slipped it into his trouser pocket. Taking his room key, a thick rectangular card, he went down to see about some breakfast. It was included in the price of the room and he was ravenous by now.

Breakfast was a self-service buffet affair. Stainless steel trolleys, with deep trays containing various items placed in them, had been wheeled into the dining room, the lights and heaters inside the hood keeping the contents warm. Jester took three sausages, two eggs and a spoonful of fried tomatoes and a rack of toast. He didn’t fancy the baked beans, they wore a ragged skin, covering them like a lumpy duvet that was beginning to harden in some places, turning his stomach. They had probably been sitting in the tray under the hot-light for a while.

He carried his plate to an empty table and sat down by the window, so he could look out into the morning. The hotel was situated on the side of a hill, offering a pleasant enough view. Everything looked quite normal. Cars were already queuing on the roads as people made their way to work, their wipers frantically waving backwards and forwards in the rain. He checked the date on the paper, Wednesday 7th December 2011.

“What was I doing this time last year?” Jester wondered, this was a new and unexplored territory for him.

The cash he had been paid for the gig plus what he already had in his wallet wouldn’t sustain him for a week let alone a year. He recalled that by sheer luck he had been - was going to be - taking temporary work as a lorry driver so he would be away from home far more than he was there.

At home he would have plenty of time to sort things out while his other self, Jester-from-the-future, was away so he didn’t need to worry about bumping into himself, at least he wouldn’t to start with. Plenty of time! And his stomach did a somersault at the idea. If it wasn’t so jaw-droppingly, bottom-clenchingly mad, it would have been quite amusing. Maybe it would be tomorrow, he thought optimistically, when things had got back to normal.

The driving work had only lasted some six months and then he was made redundant when the company went bankrupt. And if he hadn’t bounced back to the future by then, he would have to hang around somewhere else and make another plan.

After deciding that it would be better to head for home, Jester ate his breakfast trying not to think about anything at all, wanting instead just to enjoy the food and regain a sense of normality and chronological propriety. When he finished he got another coffee, drinking it while he risked scanning the papers again.

His stomach full and his head feeling better and in a lighter mood, he checked out of the hotel paying his bill with cash. Walking briskly to the railway station he bought a ticket home. His original ticket was dated a year in the future and he doubted that they would let him on the train with it.

The train entered the station with a rumble and a screech as the wheels slid on the tracks. It was nearly empty as Jester had purposefully avoided the rush hour, which had finished a while ago, not wanting to be surrounded by too many people. Because of this he easily found a seat, having an entire carriage to himself. He had left the newspapers in the restaurant and tired of reading the same front page articles over and over, had bought a motoring magazine at the station kiosk. He read this as the train moved out of the station and through the country.

The morning was turning out to be just like any other normal one, albeit a year earlier than it was supposed to be. Once they were out of the city, the sky got darker with grey clouds and the rain made a wavy curtain of mist which followed them all the way back to the valley.

It usually took about forty-five minutes, but the work on the line meant it was nearly an hour before the train slid into the station. If it had been a longer journey, he would have tried sleeping, just in case that did the trick.

“Well, I’m home at last.” Jester said as he got off onto the platform and then the world began to spin and he fell headlong into the vacant waiting room. “Oh no not again!”