1986: Hope Springs Eternal Part 1

1986: Hope Springs Eternal Part 1(Mark Simpson) I have lost the will to live, simply nothing more to give
There is nothing more for me, need the end to set me free
-Metallica


“You are… not the father!” The teen mom was shaking her head in disbelief. Steven, the man who had just been spared 18 years of child support, was exuberantly jumping up and down. You would have thought he’d just won the lottery and in his mind I guess he had. Though I did love the Maury show, I didn’t have time for it today, I turned the TV off. I needed to focus all my attention on the task at hand: killing myself. It was a Thursday, no better or worse than any other Thursday, but here I sat with a loaded; cocked, .357 Magnum in my mouth. I chose a gun because I never believed you 'tried' to kill yourself, that’s a cry for help; I was way past crying or helping. If you really want to kill yourself, put the gun in your mouth, followed by a hollow point bullet through your temporal and parietal lobes and, as Yoda told us, there is no try only do.

I certainly had not, as a child, laid in bed at night thinking, when I grow up I want to aimlessly drift through life, alone and unhappy, up until the age of 47 and then redecorate my living room wall with brain matter, but that’s exactly what’s about to happen. I’ve learned on this journey to suicide that it’s not a single event that causes you to wake up one day and kill yourself. I’ve found the journey to be like a pile of bricks, each day, week or month one, two maybe three new bricks are added to the pile, a Christmas alone, an empty apartment, or the daily grind of a job you hate. And then one day the last brick falls and it was no bigger or smaller than any other, but it tips the scale just enough. My final brick? This morning I stopped and wondered how many people would be at my funeral. I couldn’t think of a single person. I wondered how long it would be before anyone would even miss me. How long before my body was discovered? I imagined it would be the apartment manager when they arrived to evict me. I decided not to leave a suicide note, I knew why I was doing it and as far as I was concerned that was enough. I closed my eyes, sighed and prepared to squeeze. “Wait.” I was so unprepared for a human voice that it caused me to jump out of my chair. Standing about 10 feet away at the edge of my kitchen was a man. He appeared to be 200 years old and wasn’t aging gracefully, and though he looked to be all of 6’ tall and 110 pounds yet he still scared the hell out of me for some unknown reason, though I would soon find out why. Even his clothes were strange; they appeared to be more at home in the 1800’s than the 2000’s. But who was I to judge? I was currently wearing only underwear and a gun. “Woo da aw ohh?” I was quickly reminded of the gun in my mouth and promptly removed it. “Who are you?” I repeated. The gun was now pointing at the stranger instead of my cerebral cortex.

“My name is Augustine Octavious Dragonheart.” The stranger answered.
“How the hell did you get in here?"
“The front door.” He nonchalantly said. It was all so confusing that for a brief moment I thought I had pulled the trigger and he was either a demon or angel sent to guide me up or down and if I was a gambling man I would have bet it all on down.
“That’s not going to help you, the gun I mean. Can you put it down?” I nodded silently and lowered it.
“I’m keeping it right here, so nothing funny.” I finally managed.
“A man about to kill himself afraid of someone hurting him. That’s rich.” Augustine said.
“How the hell did you just appear? What do you want?” I had a thousand questions and was trying to ask them all at once.
“To offer you a once-in-a-lifetime, no, a once-in-1000-lifetimes opportunity.” He sounded like a late-night infomercial pitch man.
“And what opportunity is that?” I figured what the hell, I could get back to killing myself soon enough.
“The chance to travel back in time and get 15 minutes with your 19-year-old self, hopefully changing your life’s path. I’m going out on a limb and guessing your current ending isn’t how you planned it.”
I laughed out loud. “What nuthouse did you break out of?” I was seriously thinking about lifting the gun back up.
“What makes you think I believe you?” I asked.
“I don’t care if you believe me.”
“So for arguments sake let’s say this is real, why me?”
“Consider it your lucky day, like you just won the cosmic lottery.” He still hadn’t moved, just standing there smiling, like a used car salesman trying to get me into a Ford Pinto I didn’t really want.
”After all, what do you have to lose?” Augustine asked. “If I am lying it will only cost you 15 minutes of your life, but if I am telling the truth.” He paused as all good salesmen do. I stood silently. Still not sure what to make of the situation. “Let me ask you something Zack, are you happy?”
“Well considering you walked in on me with a loaded gun in my mouth, I guess we can surmise the answer to be no.” I was getting angry.
“Well then here’s your chance to set your life on a new course and thereby a new journey, and hopefully a new destination instead of your current ending, a hollow point bullet in your brain.”
“How does it work?” I asked.
“Tomorrow at 3 p.m. I will return, this time I’ll knock, if you say no I leave and you never see me again and you can get back to… well you know. If you say yes then you pick the date you want to return to in 1986. I give you an envelope that contains the when and where you are to meet you. I love the way that sounds.” This was all so weird, but I couldn’t stop thinking, what the hell do I have to lose?
“What if I’m ready to go now?” I asked.
“Not until tomorrow. The boss doesn’t like buyers regret so he gives everyone 24 hours. If you do decide to go then you’ll need to think long and hard about what you’re going to say, 15 minutes to convince a 19-year-old you to change paths won’t be easy.” He was right, I was thinking back to the 1986 me, I was headstrong and shortsighted; it had proven a lethal combination. He tipped his hat and headed for the door.
“Hey Augustine what does a gig like yours pay?”
He smiled, “Not enough.” He was gone as quickly as he’d appeared.

I immediately got to work.
What do I say to the 1986 me? How would I make him believe I had come from the future with a dire warning? And what would change my course? Was life’s path altered by a single choice or a series of bad decisions? Finishing college, marrying and having a family, would any of those set me on a different path and thereby a different destination? But there was one thing I was sure of, my greatest weapon, who knows me better than me? I was going to have to remember my 19 year old dreams and fears. The fear part would be easy, I was still carrying those, but the dreams... I had lost those long ago. Sleep was hard to find that night.

The knock on the door came at exactly 3 PM. I almost didn’t open it.
“What’s your answer?” Augustine obviously wasn’t one for small talk.
“When you’ve already lost everything what do you have left to lose? Let’s do this.” I answered. A smile erupted across his face. “What about the butterfly effect?” I blurted. Augustine just stared, waiting for me to continue. “I mean what if I do go back and I do change my life’s course, then when I get back to the present the Chinese have conquered America?”
“You’re not that important.” It was short, brutal and true.
“Why me? How do you make time travel possible, how long have you…?”
“The clock is ticking; I don’t have time to answer all your questions.”
Augustine interrupted. “And there are a few things we have to do before we send you off. First and foremost the rules, there are only two. If you break either one of them you will return to yesterday, exactly one minute before I walked in the door, but this time I won’t be here to stop you and I think we both know how that story ends.” He formed his fingers into the shape of a gun and put his index finger in his mouth. “The first is the prime directive, the Golden rule if you will: you can’t leave a 2014 footprint in 1986. Don’t try to warn your parents of their fate. Not that anyone is going to believe you’re really from the future in the short amount of time you’ll have. If you predicted the 1986 and 87 Super Bowl winners and exact scores, maybe you could start to convince people, but in a matter of a few hours, impossible. But don’t even try, the boss hates it.” His eyes glanced upward towards the sky and returned to mine. “The second rule, you cannot meet you until the exact moment on this piece of paper.” He waved an envelope in his hand. “If you talk to yourself 1 minute before you are supposed to or one minute more than the allotted time.”
“I know, I know.” It was my turn to interrupt. “I will be transported back to this very chair one minute before you arrived yesterday.” I finished for him. Augustine smiled.
”That said, nothing more nothing less.”
Two rules, I ought to be able to handle that, I thought.
“How do I know when in 1986 I’ll arrive?” My mind was racing with questions.
“We pick the year you pick the day.” Augustine said.
“Hell I can’t remember last week much less 1986.” It was true.
“Well then, sit back and enjoy the ride, while I take you back to 1986.”

The infomercial voice was back. My widescreen turned on, though neither of us had touched the remote. If he was about to show me my 1986, he would have started me down the path of believing that this was really going to happen. “Our journey begins January 1, at 12:01 AM, the start of a new year, 1986. New Year’s Eve has always been one of your favorite holidays right Zack?” I nodded yes. An image appeared on the TV, it was me sitting in my car in front of an apartment complex. It looked like an old 8mm home movie. A flood of memories washed over me so powerful I was grateful to be sitting.
“How did you get this movie?” I asked. I was sure I would have noticed someone standing beside my car filming me.
“The boss has his ways.” Augustine said. It was the second time he mentioned his boss and though I wanted to ask him who his boss was, I’ve learned there are some questions you don’t want the answers to.
”New Year’s Eve and you’re sitting outside Kristin’s apartment.” Augustine was now playing narrator. ”Her new boyfriend had arrived three hours earlier and here you sit.” I knew this particular memory was going to be hard to watch. I remembered it well, we had broken up less than two weeks earlier, we had dated 4 years prior, she had either moved on quickly or simply moved in what was already there. Instead of saying “I think I’ve got feelings for someone else Zack, and I need to explore them, I don’t want any regrets later in my life”, no she told me twice the day before she left how much she loved and needed me. I’d Facebooked her recently; she ended up married to a dentist, they have three kids and a vacation house on Kiawah Island. I ended broke and alone with a gun in my mouth. I suddenly realized that losing her and the recent discovery of her perfect life were two of the bricks on my suicide pile.

“Not such a great start to 1986.” I whispered. Unlocking this memory had allowed a deluge of pain to come pouring in. How I left her apartment complex and drove down Damn road and sat by the lake telling myself I was through with her, which I wasn’t. It would be another six months of pain before I totally let go, hell maybe a little piece of me never did. I was going to finish college, start my own business become rich and live happily ever after. That would show her what a mistake leaving me was. I was being painfully reminded that I’d done none of the above.

“You turned things around quickly though. You had a strong January through May. A 3.9 GPA at Winthrop headed in the right direction.” Augustine now sounded like the game show host on This Is Your Life. “It was a relatively uneventful five months, your dog Quark was killed on March 17 but that wasn’t a surprise was it?”
“No it wasn’t.” I said. Quark would run away for days at a time, I had always known he was either going to get run over or someone was going to steal him. It was the former. But something profound struck me. I’d forgotten all about Quark until this very moment, how could I have forgotten him? I loved that dog.
“And then during session B summer school…” Augustine continued, ”… on June 20 at 2:39 PM, as you’re walking to the library you crossed paths with Tommy Davis, your best friend from third to ninth grade”. In tenth grade Tommy had moved to a nearby town and a new school and like most 15 year olds in the pre Facebook era we drifted apart. I hadn’t seen him in 4 years until that fateful day. The previous six, I’d seen him every day.

The TV screen flashed to a video of me getting out of my car. It again appeared I was being videoed by some unseen voyeur. I was walking across the street, the memories flooding back yet again. The truck was stopped at a red light. Tommy and his roommate “Las Vegas” as he was known, to this day I still don’t know why, were sitting in the bed of the pickup truck keeping a mattress secure. I was jaywalking and just happened to glance to my right.
“Tommy?”
“Zack! Hey I just moved into a new house.” Tommy said pointing to a street just up the road; it held 12 houses, seven on the right, five on the left. “Third one on the right, the blue one.” The light turned green and the pickup took a left. ”Come by tonight we’re having…” he was too far away to hear the rest. But that night I did stop by, the row of cars on both sides of the street and the overflow crowd on the patio helped me finish his sentence, “…a party.”

“That night at the party you met your soon-to-be best friend Hassan.” Augustine continued. “It was the start of a 9 month drug and alcohol binge.” I needed no help with this memory, it was as clear as if it had happened yesterday, rather than 28 years ago. I had the time of my life at the party and was ready to move in before the night even ended.
“In less than a month you moved into the house.” A power struggle between Hassan and “Las Vegas” had ended in the eviction of said Mr. “Vegas”, resulting in the opening up of my new home the second bedroom on the right.

“On August 24 hurricane Lloyd made landfall leaving behind a swath of destruction across Florida 60 miles wide.” Augustine said. My TV was now showing a news channel from Florida. ”Breathe a little easier Miami.” The weatherman said. “The eye is going to make landfall just north of you. But, Dania Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Oakland Park batten down the hatches, you are in the direct path of the storm and this is one hell of a storm, probably the worst in 20 years.” A map behind him showed the projected path of Lloyd, the weather man faded away.

“That fall semester was a never ending party, between Tommy’s fledgling alcoholism and Hassan’s endless supply of drugs your GPA went from a 3.9 to a 0.0 in a matter of three months.” The TV screen was now filled by the image of me funneling a beer. “That’s number eight!” Tommy was announcing to all. I glanced at Augustine, then lowered my head in shame. The next scene I was eating a handful of Xanax followed by a line of blow, followed by another funneled beer. “You’re the man!” Some long ago forgotten blond girl screamed. Augustine said nothing, he didn’t have to. They say a picture is worth a 1000 words, this one was a million and counting. “Then on December 18 you and Tommy made that fateful decision.” The TV now showed the two of us on the sofa, sharing a joint and a 0.0 GPA.
“Are we going or not?” Tommy asked, exhaling his hit.
I had a friend, Chris, who was living just outside Miami, a 20 minute ride away from hurricane Lloyd’s path.
“There’s a fortune to be made.” Chris’s words echoed in my ears as if I still had the phone in my hand. “$500 just to cut a tree off a house, you don’t even have to haul it off.” His words were so tempting and with nothing but flunking out of school and moving back in with my parents awaiting me here, I thought, what the hell.

“What were you thinking?” I screamed at the TV. “You can’t even make it to class at college a quarter of mile away, do you think you’re going to be motivated enough to build a business empire? You dumb ass. Just say no.” Instead I helplessly watched the 1986 me answer, “Let’s do it.”
“Do you know what Augustine?” I asked. “I might just go back so I can kick my own ass.” He laughed.
“I think words will work better than fists.”
”Yeah I know but damn what a dumb ass I was”.

Augustine’s narration continued, “So after spending the night of your goodbye party tripping acid and drinking Tequila until 4 a.m., you left that night at 11 headed south, in more ways than one. I don’t think we need to see anymore.” Augustine was right. The TV gratefully cut off.
Some people get two or three chances at college. I would have only one and I had just watched myself blow it. I thought for a moment, “If I meet Tommy on June 20th I want to go back to June 13th.”
“One week before your fateful meeting, good choice. Not to mention a Friday the 13th.” Augustine said. ”And there’s one thing I failed to mention. You will actually be going back to June 12th the day before you are to meet you.”
”Why?” I asked.
“To enjoy 1986 one last time knowing it’s for the last time. And there’s no telling what you may find in 1986.” What’s he talking about? I thought. “Here’s $200 for expenses.” I stuck the money in my pocket. “Are you ready?” Augustine asked.
“More than you will ever know.” I had spent the prior night and earlier today deciding what I was going to say to the younger me. And now I had just been given an extra day. ”This envelope contains when and where you are to meet you. I love the way that’s sounds, always have.” He handed me the envelope.
“I can’t thank you enough Augustine.” I said
“The best way to thank me, is succeeding. Well then ladies and gentlemen please return your tray and seats to their upright position close your eyes, and prepare for take-off. Good luck.” It was the last time I ever saw him.


I opened my eyes. I was sitting in a 1984 Nissan 300ZX 50th anniversary car, the exact one I had owned in 1986. My heart skipped a beat, this was really happening! Just seeing my car again, reminded me just how much I had loved it, more than any other I’d ever owned, but I hadn’t even so much as thought about it in years. How can something that once meant so much to me, become something I barely remember? I was parked at a small gas station just down the road from my old house. It was owned by a Laotian family. We all called the owner “Johnny”, though I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the name his mother had given him at birth, but since he was ok with it and the gas station had no official name, everybody called it “Johnny’s”. His store sold everything from weed bowls, they were under the counter, you had to ask for those, and if Johnny didn’t know you he’d shake his head, “Nothing like that here,” I could still hear him saying, all the way to egg rolls homemade by his wife Susie, we didn’t know her real name either. I hadn’t seen “Johhny’s” in 17 years. I missed it. In 2014 it’s another cookie-cutter QT, like the other 4 within a 10 mile radius. I walked in and almost fell back out the door. There was Johnny, smiling, he’d seemed to always be smiling. You see his store was robbed on July 18th 1997, he’d been shot sometime after midnight. The next customer wouldn’t arrive for over an hour, Johnny was still alive, barely, but wouldn’t survive the ambulance ride. It wasn’t fair, I thought, the world lost a good man that day. And here I was a spoiled insecure miserable brat getting a second chance. A twinge of guilt gripped me, Johnny should be getting this chance not me, and if I could have given it to him I would have. The two perps got scared after the shooting and ran away, they didn’t get a single dollar, not even a pack of cigarettes, Johnny had died for absolutely nothing. They both received life without parole, again for nothing. His wife sold the place three months later, four after that it was leveled. On July 4, 1998, the grand opening of QT. My walk thru 1986 just a few moments ago in my living room had been a heavy rain, but seeing the car and Johnny again was a monsoon. “How you?” Johnny asked. I was gripped by a desire to tell him that his family was going to be okay, because I’m sure that while he lay there dying, he thought about his wife and kids and what would happen to them when he was gone. I’d run into Suzy several years after Johnny’s death. She was remarried and both kids were in college doing well, as well as could be expected. Instead I decided not to tempt fate. “Well, and yourself?" “Good. Good.” I smiled again, it was the way he always answered the question. I walked over to the newspaper stand. I needed to confirm the date and short of asking Johnny, “What’s the date?" “June 12th” Johnny would answer. “No, I mean what year is it?” Like some bad Terminator movie. There it was: a Charlotte Observer dated June 12, 1986, Augustine had hit a bulls eye. I immediately recognized the picture on the cover, the explosion cloud from the Challenger disaster. The headline: Challenger Investigation Committee Named. Below that picture the headline: Russia Denies Chernobyl Fallout in Ukraine. Wow, Challenger and Chernobyl, I had forgotten what a bad start 1986 was off to. I grabbed the paper and dropped a quarter on the counter. The image of the two men shooting Johnny chased away the smile I was wearing.
“You look familiar.” He said.
“I get that a lot. And don’t worry Johnny, no matter what happens everything is going to be okay.” I was shamed by my feeble attempt at consoling him. I hoped it helped, somehow. ”Good luck Johnny.” I headed out the door knowing luck wasn’t going to have anything to do with it.

I stepped into the arms of a beautiful day, popped out the T-tops, jumped in my car and headed towards my old house, which was less than 3 miles away. I turned the radio on, “And the first single off their debut album, its Poison’s Look What the Cat Dragged In.” Just an hour ago this would have only been playing on a classic rock station, now it’s brand new.
“I went to bed too late and got up too soon
My poor head still spinnin' from too much booze
I got a foot in the gutter a foot in the grave
I ain't seen home in the last three days.”
I’d loved this song back then, I still do. I was partying hard at the time and it was our defiant athem.

I was on my way into the neighborhood I’d grown up in when I almost ran off the road. They’re jogging towards me... my dad. He’d loved to run since my earliest memories; he’d even finished several marathons. You see it’s the first time I’ve seen him in 13 years before the murder-suicide. But here he was as I had spent the last 13 years trying to remember him, young, alive and doing what he loved most. I was gripped by the urge to stop, jump out of my car and ask him why it ended the way it did. But even though he’d destroyed everything I had there was still a small but powerful part of me that also wanted to run to him, hug him and tell him how much I loved and missed him. But I knew if I did that then both our demises would come at the hands of a bullet. His destiny was sealed. I still had a chance. I settled for driving by him several times. I then headed towards my old house. At this point in time our house was brand-new, we had moved in only three months earlier. I slowly drove by, another rush of memories poured over me; I was starting to like the feeling. And there, walking to her car, another face I hadn’t seen in 13 years, my mom’s. I stopped, our eyes met for but a brief moment but I’m sure she recognized me. I think a mother always knows her child even one she’s never met. The urge to jump out of my car and run to her and hug her gripped me even tighter than it had with dad. I wanted to warn her, “Dad loses everything in a pyramid scheme run by his supposed best friend, Tom, in 2000. On August 7 of that year he takes you out for what will be your last supper, shortly after you get home, he shoots you.” Her body was found beside their bed a single bullet wound to the back of her head. Dad then went to the kitchen, made a Jack and Coke, sat down at the kitchen table, drank it, then dialed 911. “911 what’s your emergency?” Then pulled the trigger. I guess it’s true, like father like son. I know all this from a combination of the police and autopsy report, it was no easy read. Instead, as I had with my father, I just drove off, who would have guessed, self-preservation from a man who 24 hours ago had a gun in his mouth.

“And now for the new Van Halen,” no one had yet coined the term Van Hagar, “…off of 5150, Why Can’t This Be Love.” It was another of my favorites; I cranked it up and tried to focus on the here and now, not the dark events of my future. On the way out I passed dad again and then watched him slowly disappear in my rearview mirror, “I love and miss you dad.” I whispered. A tear ran down my cheek, knowing it was the last time I would see my parents, in this world anyway.

I checked into the Rock Hill Inn. I needed a base of operation and at $22 a night, I love these 1986 prices, it was perfect. I turned on the TV, the hotel sign had proclaimed 26 channels of cable. It made me smile; my deluxe package has 336 channels. I pulled the envelope out of the inside pocket of my Member’s Only jacket and opened it.
Friday, June 13
8:15 PM
The Money.
I sat the letter and envelope on the bed. The Money, wow yet another lost memory. I know, I know it’s just a bar, but I had gone there damn near every Friday night for as long as I could remember, it was the only bar my fake ID worked. Not that it was a pivotal place in my life, but to have totally forgotten about it angered me. It’s like the bad memories of life had pushed the good ones out, or maybe we only have room for so many and all the recent ones have been bad. So, tomorrow, 8:15 PM, D-day. And even though I had a good idea of what I was going to say to me, doubts and new ideas kept tunneling their way in.

I hoped watching some TV would take my mind off tomorrow if only for a moment. The Sally Jessy Raphael show was on, Sally was talking to a group of out of control teens, I smiled. When Augustine had first appeared to me I was watching a Maury episode on a very similar subject. I guess the past and present are as different as we like to think. Sally was followed by Donahue. Is he still alive? I wondered. In my time I mean. The excitement of the day combined with my lack of sleep from the prior night caught up to me. Just as Phil was introducing his first guest, a white supremacist from Mississippi, I fell asleep.

I woke up at 7:30, dazed and confused. It’s been a long time since I’d woken up in a hotel room. “Dammit Mark.” I said to the empty room. I had just wasted 3 hours of 1986 not to mention I was starving. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten, I believe it was breakfast a few hours before Augustine appeared. I’d gone to Shoney’s all you can eat breakfast buffet, why not, I thought at the time, it was supposed to be my last meal and though quite the breakfast it had digested long ago. So, room service followed by going to bed early to get ready for tomorrow? Are you kidding? I was in Rock Hill South Carolina on a Thursday night less than two weeks after the end of school and the start of summer of 1986. It was time to buy a 12 pack of beer, cruise Cherry road with Motley Crue and Poison blaring from the speakers. I smiled, the 1986 me would have already had the beer and been cruising Cherry Road, the 2014 me knew the last thing I needed was a DUI and a night in jail. Who would I call to bail me out? Mom and dad? Yeah I can imagine that conversation: “Hey mom it’s your only child Zack…” and knowing my luck she would be standing in the kitchen looking at the 1986 me sitting at the kitchen table, ”…no, not the 1986 Zack mom, I’m the 2014 Zack and I’m in a little bit of trouble. Could you bail me out so I can meet myself tomorrow? Because you see mom, in 2014 I’m about to blow my brains out when a guy walks in and… Hello... Hello?” So the cruising part would have to suffice and as Augustine had so eloquently put it, “Enjoy 1986 one more time for the last time.” And that’s exactly what I was going to do.

If you could order a perfect summer night this is what you would ask for. I didn’t even put the T-tops back in. It was the best I’d felt in a long, long time, a sense that life had just begun and was so full of promise and potential, and in 1986 it had been. I thought about how different things are in 2014, how close I was to ending it all. Who knows, maybe you did and this is just some weird after death shit, I thought.

“And here’s a classic from a couple years back, crank it up and enjoy your summer ’Twisted Sisters Not Going to Take It.” I did as told, took a deep breath of 1986 air and drove into the night. If this was death, I thought, I should have done it a long time ago....


Continued and concluded in Part 2...
(Please click on the link below to read 'More stories by this author' to find Part II of this story. Thanks.)