He’s so gorgeous. He’s not the eighteen-year-old jock I met in the restroom earlier anymore; he’s a handsome grown-up man. He has kept his dreadlocks, which is cool, I’m used to them and I couldn’t imagine his hair looking any different. He even has some muscles; I could feel them when he was hugging me. And he smells so good…
There’s not even a bit of that Tom who died a month ago in him. In the end, he was just wasting away, slowly killing himself with alcohol. This Tom is really the most beautiful of all Toms I’ve seen in my life. I’ve really made the right choice. I adore him.
I have to find out fast what Sabine’s relation to both of us, but I think I already got it. From what she told me, she was acting as my official media girlfriend to cover up my true relationship with Tom. The kiss outside was obvious enough to make neighbours and other people lurking around think we’re together. Not a bad idea at all. And every time I pay for something in a shop, the clerk can see her picture in my wallet, so they think I must be madly in love with her. This means she knows about my real relationship with Tom; therefore we trust her as we trust our family which she’s sort of a member of. Sabine is our femme-fatale.
But how did Tom get here so quickly? It seems that he lives in the house as well, because he didn’t go through the garden, I would’ve seen him. Oh, it was that curtain movement on the first floor. He saw me and Sabine saying goodbye. We’ve always been telling everyone we would always live together. That’s the reason why there’s just a Kaulitz sign on the mailbox; we live here together so we share the house.
I can hear a familiar voice on the TV. I have a quick look at it and freeze, staring in disbelief. There’s my old grandpa Schultz in some kind of a talk-show. He looks better than he did before. He’s wearing a black suit, but it’s still the same old man I saw earlier today, leaving him alone in the lab.
„Could you turn the volume up, please?“ I ask Tom.
He glances at me strangely, turning it up. „You’re into such bullshit? It’s just some motherfucker claiming he has a time machine or whatever in his barn.“ Tom snorts and goes on watching the TV.
The presenter asks for further details about the engine and grandpa answers. At the end of the interview the presenter mentions the possibility of helping Mr. Schultz with monetary donations to finish his great machine. There is an information with a bank account number scrolling past the screen. I quickly lean for a marker on the table and because I can’t see a piece of paper nearby, I scribble down the number on my palm.
Tom stares at me with a ‚what the fuck‘ expression. „Don’t tell me you actually plan to send some money to that old dumb ass to finish his fiendish thing? I thought you had more brains in your head…“ He shakes his head, waiting for my response.
I hesitate what to say for a while, but then I realize I’m going to have to tell my brother the whole story, because without his help I can’t make it in my new life. But I will need to start slowly so I won’t scare him too much, otherwise he would send me to a nuthouse right away.
„I know this old man, you know?“ I say carefully. Tom opens his mouth and I have to go on talking, even though I don’t want to. I won’t get away with it as easily as I did before. „Thanks to him, I can be with you in this room right now. Him and his fiendish thing, it’s called Beda by the way,“ I say and wait for a reaction.
He seems to be shocked, but he doesn’t say anything.
I gaze down at the carpet and continue. „You know, Tom, without him you’d be dead now and I’d be mourning and boozing away my sorrow in my apartment in Hamburg.“ I look back up at him, hoping he would say something.
Tom only closes his mouth, sitting up and looking at me searchingly, and says slowly: „What the hell are you talking about? Me – dead? It’s true, you’re acting weird today, but it couldn’t have happened overnight, could it?“ He waits for me to respond.
„I didn’t go crazy, but something unbelievable happened to me and I need to tell you everything about it right here and now. Do you think you could just listen for a while, not saying anything? I think you’ll get what I am trying to tell you in a moment, but I need you to trust me. Really, Tom, I’m not a psycho, believe me.“ I pull my sad puppy face. „If you love me just a tiny little bit, you’ll let me speak, okay?“ I try to blackmail him a little to make sure he’ll listen to me.
He smiles like always and perches on the couch. „Ok. You talk, I listen,“ he answers, waiting for me to start. Suddenly I don’t know where to begin, everything seems so complicated. Well, I’d better start with this morning.
„This morning I woke up in my flat in Hamburg with much longer hair and a beard, living all alone. Now I call it the ‚old life‘, though I haven’t had any other lives. I was going through some pretty nasty stuff that month, because my brother died, my twin, Tom.“ I can see he wants to say something, but I stop him immediately. „You promised, Tom, just listen and don’t interrupt me, otherwise I won’t finish.“
I go on. „In my old life I’m going to speak about now, everything was different than it’s now and here. Everything you remember until our eighteenth birthday was the same, but everything changed at the party. I loved you, you loved me, but we never had told each other. We were both so afraid of that forbidden relationship and possible refusal that we had never spoken about it and lived on together just like normal brothers would do.“ I notice Tom disagrees with me, but remains silent as he promised. „We both had our own lives, we had girlfriends, the band was rocking the world, but we both lived with sorrow. When you were twenty-two, you met Sabine.“
His eyes almost pop out in disbelieve, but I signal to him not to care about it now. „You lived together for three years. We both had a normal brother-like relationship, you told me about everything that was going on between you two, but somehow you couldn’t handle the situation and began boozing. The alcohol drained your brains and you did some crazy stuff. Sabine suffered a lot, but she loved you too, so she tolerated your love affairs for a long time – besides, she wasn’t a saint either.
„Then there came the 13th of May 2014, the day on which everything changed. You came home drunk and brought some bitch with you. Sabine couldn’t take it anymore and began shouting at you, you slapped her, she slapped you back and in a minute it was a fight for life or death. And you didn’t survive. You fell on a knife when Sabine tried to stop you from beating her. You died quickly, the paramedics couldn’t help you. After a week, there was a funeral at the cemetery in Leipzig and I was left alone.“
Tom calmed down during my speech and I can see he was really listening. I have to continue quickly, before he starts asking questions.
„Then I received a letter. It was a letter for me from you and I didn’t know what secret was hidden inside. As I opened it, three envelopes fell out. The first one you wrote when you were eighteen years old, a day after our birthday party. You confessed you loved me. You wrote that you had decided to tell me at the party, but you had changed your mind because of my attitude and didn’t say anything. The letter would be sent to me after your death. It happened as such and I was very sad but also happy at the same time. I regretted a lot we hadn’t told each other. The other two letters only affirmed the first one, but they were even more desperate. You wrote them after a few years and it was clear you were drinking because you couldn’t deal with your emotions anymore.“ I took a deep breath and looked Tom in the eye. He was looking at me, but I couldn’t see anything in his eyes that would help me figure out what he was thinking about.
„And then the old Schultz man came with his fiendish thing. He included me in his plan, it was the only chance to see you once more and I suddenly hoped we hadn’t lost everything. Against the old man’s wishes I had made a plan on how to live the life I’d always wanted to live. With you as my boyfriend.
I gave the old bloke the money to finish the machine so I would be able to travel to the past. I was forbidden to change anything there, but my desire for your love was stronger than the fear of possible changes in time I could cause.
Just this morning I was again at our eighteenth birthday party in Hamburg. I took your letter and did what I had planned. I gave it to my younger self just before we got the cake and gifts. Since then, everything has happened as you remember it. Thanks to the letter I knew you loved me and I gave you a hug during the party. You will have to tell me what happened next, because I had to go back to the year 2014 then.
When I left grandpa’s lab I suddenly appeared here almost naked in the bathroom with a hair dryer and a comb in my hand, about an hour ago. I really don’t know how we have been living these seven years, because I still don’t have a new memory and until I have it back, I’m like a helpless kid. I don’t know where I live, who I am, nothing at all. I need your help, Tom, to be able to live this new life with you and to be able to love you finally,“ I end my long speech.
Tom’s just staring at the carpet. When he notices I have finished, he turns his eyes back towards me, saying nothing but: „How can I believe you all of this? Can you tell me? How can I believe you’re not nuts?“
