The Jump

David takes a trip he didn't expect.

David never planned on breaking the timeline, but the last thing we did before the machine sparked to life was laugh about how “it probably won’t even work.”

Cassie could still hear it, the echo of our laughter rattling against the cold metal walls of the garage-turned-laboratory. The time machine was a mess of exposed wires and a humming copper ring, flickering with tiny blue sparks like fireflies caught in a jar. David’s glasses slid down his nose as he tapped in coordinates, and she watched the glow dance in the reflection of his determined eyes.

“This is it,” he said, giving me that sideways grin that always made me uneasy.

“Or it’s going to fry you like a cheap toaster,” Cassie muttered.

But David only laughed again, pulling the straps of the harness tight across his chest as the machine’s coils glowed brighter. She tried to say something, anything, but the words were drowned in the rising hum, the sound of the impossible about to become real.

And then he was gone.

For David, the end was in sight the moment he opened his eyes and found himself sprawled on a cold cobblestone street under a gray sky, rain dripping into his hair. Carriage wheels rattled past, and people in heavy coats and hats glanced at him like he was a stray dog. He pushed himself up, heart pounding, realizing he could smell coal, smoke, damp stone, and something sharp in the air that tasted like iron.

He stumbled toward a storefront, catching his reflection in a soot-stained window. Same dark hair, same wide brown eyes, but the world around him was wrong. A boy selling newspapers shouted headlines about a royal wedding, a horse whinnied as it clopped past, and a woman with a basket of bread gave him a suspicious glare.

And the machine was gone.

He tried to retrace how it happened, but in the middle of the process of locking the machine’s coordinates, he had felt the surge; a sharp, hot pull like a hook in his chest. One blink, and he was here, stranded in a century that wasn’t his, wearing jeans that drew curious stares, clutching a useless phone that had become nothing but a black mirror.

David walked for hours, pressing himself against brick walls when police officers strolled by, ducking into alleys to avoid questions. Hunger gnawed at him, and fear whispered that he might never find the right frequency to return, that the timelines were folding in on themselves because of him.

The first thing that happened when he finally stopped was silence. He found himself in a narrow alley where the rain pattered gently on wooden crates, and the world seemed to pause for a breath. He leaned against the bricks, chest heaving, and let himself slide to the damp ground.

Above him, the clouds broke just enough to let a shaft of pale light illuminate the fog. David closed his eyes, letting the cold rain tap against his skin, feeling it anchor him in this moment, in this place that should not be his home.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to no one.

David wasn’t sure how long he sat there in the rain before the world crept back in, the distant clip-clop of hooves and the hush of passing footsteps blending into the steady drip from the eaves above him.

The quiet was shattered by a sharp cry.

David’s head snapped up, blinking rain from his lashes as he saw movement at the mouth of the alley.

“Hand it over, Bertie,” one of the bigger boys sneered, pushing the smaller boy’s shoulder hard enough to make him slip on the wet stones.

“I told ya, I ain’t got nothin’!” Bertie’s voice cracked, fierce but afraid, his gray eyes darting around the alley for an escape.

The taller boy grabbed Bertie’s collar and raised a fist. “Don’t lie to us again.”

David didn’t think.

“Hey!” His voice rang out, sharp in the damp air, and for a second, the entire alley went still.

The boys turned, their eyes narrowing as they saw David step forward, jeans soaked and hair plastered to his forehead, his phone still clutched uselessly in one hand.

“Mind your business, tosser,” the shorter thug spat, but his gaze flicked uneasily over David’s strange clothes.

“I said, leave him alone,” David repeated, his voice steady even though his heart was hammering. His feet moved before he could second-guess himself, closing the distance as the bigger boy pulled Bertie closer, using him like a shield.

“Go on then, hero,” the taller boy mocked.

David’s body remembered every self-defense lesson Cassie had insisted he take before testing the machine, “just in case,” she’d said with a worried half-smile. He grabbed the taller boy’s wrist, twisting it sharply, forcing him to let go of Bertie with a yelp. The shorter thug lunged, but David stepped aside, pushing him into the crates with a crash.

The two boys glared at him, rain dripping from their caps, before spitting at the ground and turning to flee.

David exhaled, chest burning, and turned to see Bertie peeking around the corner, eyes wary.

“You daft or somethin’?” Bertie called, voice cracking again.

David let out a laugh, the sound surprising even himself. “Probably,” he said.

Bertie approached cautiously, his skinny frame shivering in the cold, clutching the cap like it was the last thing he owned.

“Why’d ya do that?” Bertie asked, studying David’s strange clothes, the glowing rectangle of his dead phone, the rain-soaked determination on his face.

“Because they were hurting you,” David said simply.

Bertie snorted, half a laugh, half a scoff. “Ain’t no one does somethin’ for nothin’, mister.”

“You’ve got a place to stay?” David asked.

Bertie’s gaze darted away. “Depends who’s askin’.”

David smiled, holding up his hands. “I’m David Griffin.”

A pause. Then, quietly, “Bertie. At least that's what the people that I know call me. It's really Herbert G. Wells.

Word Count: 995
Prompt: Write a story or poem using the following phrases, bolded and in the order they appear below:

The last thing we did
The end was in sight
In the middle of the process
The first thing that happened
Written for: "The Writer's Cramp"