Erasure Point

I learned to travel time the way you learn to blink — by wanting it badly enough.
No machine, no portal, no ritual. Just focus until the air gives up.

The first time was an accident.
The second was practice.
The third was the plan.

I prepared my apartment for a guest who had my face — four years old, stolen out of history.
I hunted down the relics of my only safe world: a Star Wars X-Wing with one wing taped, Luke and Vader with the paint rubbed from their faces, Chewie with a glued-on arm, a squad of G.I. Joes with loose knees, a silver Battlestar Galactica Viper, two dented Cylons, a Godzilla with his tail taped, and an Ultraman forever frozen mid-strike.

They weren’t toys anymore. They were proof that once, I believed heroes could win.

The apartment was stripped bare except for the bed, the starship blanket, and the silence I’d been saving for him.

Then I thought Go.

The world folded.

The duplex cabin was still there on the edge of Lake Huron in Oscoda, Michigan — a half-rotted box leaning toward the water.
The air was thick with old smoke.
Ashtrays overflowed — cigarettes crushed into half-empty beer cans, lipstick-stained butts drowned in cheap wine.
Empty wine bottles and Budweiser cans leaned on each other like drunks; the whole place smelled like sour drink and burned filters.
The floorboards carried sand from the shore and the mildew that never left.
That smell never really left me; it just waited.

The TV flickered snowlight across the living room.
He was there — me, four years old — curled on the couch under a cigarette-yellow blanket, tiny and defenseless, the whole world too big for him.

I lifted him. He murmured something — a small sound that cracked me — and then he was still.
We vanished before the house could breathe.

2025 took us in without protest.
I laid him on the bed and tucked the starship blanket under his chin. Godzilla went beside him like a guard dog.

He woke to sunlight and the kingdom of my childhood spread across the floor.
He touched everything gently — like he was afraid it might all disappear.
Chewie fought Ultraman. Vader was good this time. The Viper dove across the couch.
He laughed, and it was a sound I hadn’t heard since before I learned what fear was.

For a few days, it almost felt like redemption.

But time doesn’t let you steal from it.

The mirror began lying — two faces looking back, one scarred, one smooth.
The air turned sour, reeking again of smoke and old beer, like Oscoda had followed us.
The boy would cough in his sleep, whisper through dreams I couldn’t hear.
The apartment lights flickered whenever he smiled.

By the seventh day, the shimmer around him was visible — reality starting to correct itself.
The universe doesn’t tolerate contradictions, especially ones made out of love.

He drew on printer paper with a red pen — the lake, the cabin, and Ultraman standing between the waves and a small stick figure.
Then he circled it, hard, tearing the paper.
“This is where the bad stuff can’t get in,” he said.

That’s when I understood what had to happen.

That night, he slept clutching Ultraman, Godzilla at his feet, Luke and Vader lying side by side like brothers who finally stopped fighting.
I sat beside the bed, the refrigerator humming like a heartbeat.

I brushed the hair from his forehead and whispered,
“I am so sorry, baby. You didn’t deserve the world that made me.”

The air brightened.
The hum rose until it was everything.
And then it was still.

There was no sound, no flash — just balance.
The kind that feels like forgiveness if you let it.

Morning came somewhere else. Not here.

In the apartment, the toys stayed where he left them.
Ultraman still stood guard.
Godzilla still faced the window.
Luke and Vader leaned together in quiet truce.
The ashtray from the duplex haunted the back of my mind — smoke, sour wine, and memory that refused to die.

On the counter sat a note in my handwriting:
I kept my promise.

Maybe I did.
Maybe mercy just looks like a cleaner universe.

If there’s an afterplace, I hope it looks like Lake Huron on a calm day — clean air, soft waves, no bottles, no shouting.
Just a kid on the shore with Ultraman in one hand and Godzilla in the other, deciding which one saves the world today.
A kid who never learns what fear is.
A kid who never has to become me.

Until then, I listen to the hum of the refrigerator and pretend it’s the tide, still rolling against that broken shore, washing it all away.

(end)