I Guess I'm the Bad Guy

Nothing gets a person's attention better than a slap in the face. For me it was a wake-up call. Literally. “Wake up!”, said some strange female looking at me. I don't know what concerned me more if it was my blurred vision from not being able to focus on the woman standing over me or all of rocking back and forth. “Who are you?”, I asked still trying to focus on her face. At the point of focus I could see a young 20-year-old or so scoffing at me with disgust. “Oh my God. It's him again”, she said in a mean tone. Another voice overhead, this time of a male catches my attention. “Show him the phone.” said this strange man. The young girl helps me up off the floor. My balance is that of a newborn fawn. She sits me in the seat of what looks to be a train car. “Hurry up”, said the man, “we don't have much time”. They both were wearing black, like cat burglars. She hands me a cell phone and proceeds to baby talk me, “I'm Sam, short for Samantha, and the guy over there with the bags is Robert short for Robert.” I could tell she was a sarcastic kind of person, so I matched tone, “Well Sam, short for Samantha, what do you want me to do with this phone, order a pizza? And where am I? What am I doing here?”

In fact, the last thing I can remember was my high school prom. The Kool-Aid stain on my powder blue tuxedo pants and everyone laughing at me. It's kind of a hard thing to forget. “It's you!”, said Sam clutching my hand around the phone. “Just look at the video, okay sir?”. Calling me sir made me feel like we were supposed to have known each other. “Do we know each other?”, I asked the sarcastic young Sam. Though she was wearing all black and a long sleeve jacket I could see the tattoos on her neck, kind of suggesting that her whole body was tattooed. I don't know how I knew this, but I did. I couldn't see Sam's hairstyle because she was wearing a skull cap and so was Robert and in fact I was too.

“Can someone just tell me what's going on”, I asked, frustrated and Confused. I don't even remember boarding a train at all. It must have been the summer because it was so hot on the car. Sam reached down and pressed the button on the phone for me to start the video so I watched it and the two went on to unpacking the bags while I saw the most interesting thing a person can see.

I saw me. It's a video of me. I'm looking at myself smiling at…… me looking into the camera as if I was supposed to watch it.

“Hello me!”

Now I'm completely confused. I don't know what's going on. There was a bit of confidence in the look on my face in this video.

“Well, I bet you're wondering why you're staring at yourself on a video. I'm sure the explosion may have caught you off guard and brought you back, so allow me to explain who we are. You see I'm you. And you are me. You're a bad person. I can't speak for all bad people but the reason why you're bad has a lot to do with you and I. You see sometimes you're you. A boring, wimpy, soft, coward that can’t stand up to the school bully at his prom. And sometimes you're me. The guy who found the bully and threw him off a 10-story building.”

I was shocked to hear me say that with a smile on my face.

“But we made it look like he jumped. Any who, you don't have long before you have to get off that train, so I'll make this short and sweet. You don't remember me too much. Nor do you remember anything I do. But I remember everything you do. I remember every boring thing you do. Man, I wish you would grow some, so you wouldn't have to be me, but unfortunately, I'm here to make sure that you don't live your whole life a pathetic wimp. So do me a favor until I get back. You're running the show. Just do what Sam and Robert tells you to do and I'll explain things later. Chop Chop.”

Robert hands me a parachute. “Put this on”, he says throwing it into my chest. “What for”, I asked.

“Don't ask questions. Just put it. On we don't have much time. We're coming up on the tunnel.”

Rob looks clean cut even though he's wearing a skull cap. I didn’t see any tattoos, so I guess he's from a different side of the tracks than Sam is. “Get up.” Sam helps me put on my parachute and put Robert goes to the ceiling of a car and attaches a square bar on it.

“If this is some sort of a joke.......” “No, it's not a joke”, Sam interrupts, “in fact it's all your idea.”

My heart races as the sound of echoing from going into a tunnel gets louder and louder. Sam must raise her voice even more just to communicate with me further. “We're going through a tunnel now. At the end of the tunnel is a bridge that used to be there. Well according to your plan, the bridge is blown.” I turned around to head backwards to the next car to make sense of what's going on. Why are we the only ones jumping and the rest of the passengers not. though we were the only three in the car. I wanted to see more people, so I open the door to go to the next car only to see that there was no car. I almost fell on the tracks, but Sam grabbed me in time and pulled me back in. Then she closed the door behind me and put her hands on my shoulders.

“Look, boss. We don't have much time we're about to get out of this tunnel to a bridge that should no longer exist.” “Where's the rest of the train”, I asked. Sam smiled at me then she looked over my shoulder at Robert I look back to see him smiling too. I turn back to Sam, and she said something odd, “The reason why there is no more train is because when you threw the grenade in the last car it inadvertently uncoupled it from this car. There's nothing but the engine and this car. Do you understand?” I nodded my head. She turns me to Robert and Robert gives me the rest of the speech. After we come out from this tunnel we got about a mile before we hit the bridge. Or at least what used to be a bridge. We're going to climb onto the roof. And as soon as we get to the right point, we're going to jump and pull the rip cords…. just like you planned, sir.”

“Just like I planned?”

Sam talks behind my ear,” Your plans always work, sir. Now get down.” We hid behind some chairs while Robert attached a wire to the square bar in the ceiling. “Close your eyes!”, Robert yells. Then he presses a button, and a square bar explodes. “Shape charge”, Sam yells. Just like you designed. The explosion blew a perfect square in the roof of the car. “Why did you do that?”, I asked. “Because we can't just climb onto the roof “, Sam replied

Robert walked up to me and enter laced his fingers so I can climb up and we made our way to the roof. My head pokes out of the top the wind blowing, almost knocking my skull cap off my head. The darkness was interrupted by a slight light from the sunset in the horizon. Whatever we were doing, we were doing it late in the evening.

When we were fully out of the tunnel, we crawl to our knees to the front of the car. I could hear the engine of the locomotive screaming. Robert was behind us as Sam was by my side on top of the car

I yelled at her, “What about the engineer?” Sam looks at me and replies with a straight look on her face, “Oh you mean Thomas? He jumped a long time ago. there's nobody up there.” Robert taxed on our feet and pointed to the bridge. It looked like we were about a half mile away from it And then it explodes. A big fiery ball in the sky. It looked like a small nuke had gone

As we came to where the bridge used to be, I noticed that it was a very long drop to a river below. At least a couple of hundred feet. “I can't do this!”, I yelled. Sam crawls in front of me stands completely up facing me and falls back over the canyon into the empty space that used to be a bridge. The train races over the last of the tracks and the engine starts to drop. Robert then pulls my ripcord and gives me a salute as the parachute within pulls me away from the falling car. The jerking sensation made me a little light-headed. I thought I was going to throw up or something. Robert pulls his cord shortly after and we floated to the river. And then. It all went black. The whole experience seemed like a dream and yet as fast as it began it also ended. But like I said…… Nothing gets a person's attention better than a slap in the face.

I don't know maybe this was a ritual for me and Sam because the next thing I knew I'm in a bank boat holding bags of money looking around wondering how I got there. This time wearing clown outfits, but I could tell I'm with Robert and Sam in this metal box. “Oh my God. What's happening to me?” Sam stands up and Taps Robert on the back still trying to empty out safety deposit boxes into a bag. “Holy crap it's him again.” Robert looks at me and then looks at Sam.

“Hand him the phone again.”