Trapped in another reality

I stared at the timepiece in shock. It was 2006, mind you, and here I was worrying about 8 am, the way some people back in 2015 would have been worried about a lunch date with their 9/11 baby or a belated birthday thrown at them by the 2012 version of a former friend. As far as I could remember, I had never been younger than 19. I would have turned 16 in 2014, depending on which time zone you measured time from. So I wasn't even that old, in other words.

In any case, I was in it for the full ride. Or so, the old me thought, for a few seconds. Then I destroyed the watch, along with the armchair in which I was sitting, by smashing them against the wall with all my might.

If the old me was here, thinking, "Oh, it was a nice watch, so what if I broke it?" while the me of the future was thinking, "Oh, it was a nice chair, so what if I dropped it on the 99th floor of a highrise?"

In other words, how many floor would I have dropped to get it? The answer is obvious.

I grabbed the broken chair in both hands and swung it up like a weapon. Then I chased the old me, who was leading 'me' out the front door of my apartment and down the three flights of stairs.

The old me was moving much faster than I remembered I did in the past. And I remember I was pretty swift and agile, in general.

I tried to grab the old me, while the old me tried to grab me. When we were... well, let me check... yeah, pretty close to the front door of the apartment building, I really wanted to grab his shirt's collar. Instead, I grabbed the sleeves of his shirt, and he had grabbed some of the collar of mine.

"Run, you idiot old me. Run like you're in a marathon, in which the prize is your life." I shouted at the old me.

Both me's knew that he couldn't get far if he didn't listen to my advice. I had grown tired, while the old me was in a tolerable condition enough to run. So we were close to the door of the ground floor. I didn't feel I could chase him much longer, so I decided to take a risk.

I let go of the sleeve of his shirt, and released him. He ran, but his arc of running was going down and right. And so, he ran right into my fist.

I grabbed him by the shirt and caught him as he fell to the ground. Then, I flipped him over and picked him up.

"Don't you ever," I started spouting, "I'm not seven years old, don't you ever ignore me again." The old me simply stared at me.

I threw him over my shoulder like an old teddy bear, carried for the past thirty years. Every time I thought that he was a bit too heavy for me to carry, I would lift up a bit. He was like a loaded football, I realized.

I heard some people shouting, but I ignored them. They were late neighbors, who didn't know how to pick up their bags.

I had no idea how to bring the old me to a place where he could set up a time machine. I always said that I would fix one of these days. The first thing I thought when I heard I was five years old again, was, "I'll fix this."

So here we were, at the pool. There was a fresh case of plastic bubbles, first packaged for the launching of people's new-borns into their first weeks of life, floating in the clear blue water.

I took off my shirt and threw it on the ground. After I tossed the old me onto the water, I jumped in to the water.

My wet, curly long hair wasn't long enough to get wet, but the old me's long hair got wet. And his big belly, which I always thought was cute, was now grotesque.

He was floating like a large X. I approached the bubble, and tried to pick it up. It was soft, so I broke it with my hands. I carried the small piece of bubble on my arm, and as I swam to the old me, I broke the bubble into pieces, which I used to free the old me.

I knew that the old me was able to move the time machine under the water, but with all the weariness from my chase and my wet hair, I didn't care about anything and simply carried him. When I went down to the pool's bathtub and took an old-fashioned shower, I realized that the old me, who was taking off all his clothes, had also taken off his underwear for some strange reason.

I took all his clothes in my hands and threw them onto the floor. Then I took off all my own clothes. I was going to take a shower, but my clothes were floating in front of me, and they were too much of a hassle to wash. I walked over to the old me's clothes, and brought them to the laundry room.

The old me must have shouted out, "I'm going back to my time now." from behind me, so I didn't waste any time. I walked back to the pool, where the old me's clothes were floating, in no time. The old me was nowhere to be seen.

I used my hands to scoop the water away from the clothes, and then I ran over to the bathtub, which had the shower output. I turned on the shower, turned on the bathtub, and then I climbed in.

I guess it was around seven o'clock when I climbed into the bathtub. I'm not sure what happened to the old me, who went back about three hours into the past, for reasons that he never told me. But I definitely remember that he wasn't there.

I turned on the shower and the bathtub. Since it was the hot-water heater, the bathtub, or whatever the device was, heated up quickly. I turned around when I heard water splashing heavily on the tub's sides, and I saw water all around the bathtub, but nowhere near where I was sitting.

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