The Second Hand Man
July 19th, 2014

Dear God inheaven, Steve was right about the possibility that I could end up like Natty!

But it is nolonger just a possibility; I now know that it is an undeniable fact; acondition that will soon come to possess the mind and body of Cornelius Crane.

I wasrereading my entry of June 7th, 1996today when it hit me; a most frightening revelation. It was as if I hadbeen doused with a bucket of icy-cold water.

How I had notrealized it until this very moment is beyond me. Perhaps I had, but somehow mysubconscious had seen fit to bury it away where the terror could do no harm.

But now ithas emerged, not like some wondrous phoenix rising up from the ashes, but likeone of those disgusting undead creatures that crawl out of the earth to tormentand feed on the living.

At the time,neither Steve nor I had any explanation for Natty’s sudden regression. But nowI know exactly what happened to her.

You can’tscrew around with the natural order of things and not expect a bit of backlashfor your arrogance and selfish pride.

When myconsciousness punched through into the past it put a nasty kink into the cordof life. And now Time is gonna give it a hard flick to straighten it out.

That’s right,Time is gonna shake itself viciously like some large, soaking-wet, woolysheepdog and put everything back in the proper place where it belongs.

I knowexactly when it’s gonna happen too; at the exact point in time when my mind…myconsciousness tries to now, instead, punch its way into the future where it’snever been! It’s gonna fail, and it’s gonna fail miserably!

Yep, I’mgoing to experience the motherfucker of all reboots, and there ain’t agoddamned thing I can do about it!!!

Sure, Mel wasable to train Natty from scratch again, but who’s gonna teach me; who’s gonnahave the patience to educate the mind of a six-year-old child trapped insidethe body of a fifty five-year-old man?

It’ll be likeworking with a bloody retard!

I had felt mythroat go dry as I moved towards the calendar on the wall.

It is just lessthan a month before the consciousness in this body will try to move into afuture it has never known; the uncharted waters that I have been so excitedabout sailing.

Unfortunately,the boat will flounder at the very start of the journey; it will sink like abloody stone.

The date:August 17th, 2014 – The very same day I was sent back!!!

I even knowthe exact time that it will happen.

BesidesSteve’s distraught visage, the last other face that I had witnessed, before heslid me into the Consciousness Projector, was that of the large clock on thewall. It was at 22h45. I had told Steve to do it exactly at 23h00. And althoughit had felt like an eternity waiting inside that machine’s innards for it topower up to full strength, I know without a doubt that he had fired itprecisely at the time asked.

God, I justrealized, I won’t even be able to read!!!