The Rewind (Sci-Fi/Action)

 

In the bustling streets of Lagos, Nigeria, where the heat of the sun and the noise of the traffic never seemed to stop, Emmanuel Bassey was just an ordinary guy trying to make it through the day. At 28, he worked as a technician in a small electronics repair shop. His life was simple—fixing radios, televisions, and smartphones for people in his neighborhood. He loved his job and was known for being incredibly sharp with electronics. But nothing in his skillset could have prepared him for what was coming.

On one fateful afternoon, everything changed.

It was raining hard, the kind of rain that turns the busy streets into rivers of water and chaos. Emmanuel was on his way home, his head down as he rushed to catch a bus. He didn’t notice the truck barreling down the wet road until it was too late. The driver lost control, and in an instant, everything slowed down. Emmanuel saw the truck sliding toward him, but he couldn’t move fast enough. In the last second before impact, something strange happened—time seemed to bend, and in a flash, Emmanuel found himself standing on the sidewalk, unharmed, as if nothing had happened.

He blinked, confused. He looked around. The truck was gone, and people were walking as if nothing was wrong. Had it been a dream? A hallucination? He wasn’t sure, but one thing was clear: he had just experienced something that defied all logic.

That night, Emmanuel couldn’t sleep. The incident played over and over in his mind. He kept thinking, How did I survive that? Something felt off, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. The next morning, as he tinkered with a broken radio in his shop, his hands slipped, and he accidentally shocked himself with a live wire.

It wasn’t a big shock, just a jolt, but it happened again—time rewound itself. One moment, he was feeling the sting of the shock, and the next, he was back a few minutes before the accident. The radio wasn’t broken anymore, and his hands were steady. He realized what had happened: he had somehow rewound time.

Over the next few days, Emmanuel tested his newfound ability. At first, it was exciting. If he dropped something, he rewound. If he made a mistake on a customer’s gadget, he rewound. He learned that he could only rewind a few minutes, never more than five, but the power felt limitless. That is, until he started noticing the side effects.

Each time he rewound, something in his mind felt... wrong. He couldn’t place it at first, but little by little, he began losing pieces of his memory. Simple things—he forgot where he put his keys, or what he had for breakfast. But soon, the lapses became more significant. He forgot conversations with friends, details about his past, even his sister’s phone number. It was as though every time he rewound, he left a part of himself behind.

But the real test came when tragedy struck close to home.

One evening, Emmanuel’s younger sister, Amara, was involved in a hit-and-run accident. She was crossing the street on her way to visit him when a speeding car came out of nowhere and hit her. The doctors said there wasn’t much they could do. Emmanuel stood in the hospital hallway, numb with grief. And then he remembered—he could fix this. He could rewind.

Without thinking, he closed his eyes and willed himself back. The familiar sensation of time folding in on itself washed over him, and suddenly, he was back on the street, just minutes before the accident. He saw Amara, walking down the road, completely unaware of the danger coming. Emmanuel screamed for her to stop, to wait, but the car still hit her—only this time, she wasn’t as hurt. She was bruised and in shock, but alive.

Relief flooded him, but it was short-lived. The next morning, Emmanuel woke up with a splitting headache. He struggled to remember basic details about his own life—his mother’s face, his childhood home, even his first kiss. It was as if those memories had been erased, stolen by the power he had used to save Amara.

Days passed, and Emmanuel’s power became both a blessing and a curse. He saved lives, stopped accidents, and even helped people avoid disaster. But every time he did, his mind became foggier. He started forgetting names, places, moments that defined who he was. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t even remember his best friend Chidi’s birthday, or the fact that he and Amara had once planned to move out of Lagos together.

One day, as Emmanuel was trying to fix a power outage in his neighborhood, he realized that he had forgotten something crucial—the faces of his parents, who had passed away years ago. That was the breaking point. The power he had thought was a gift was robbing him of everything that made him who he was. He had saved so many, but at what cost? How much longer before he forgot Amara, too? Before he forgot himself?

But things took a darker turn when Amara got sick, struck by a rare illness that needed immediate surgery. The hospital said there was no time to waste, and Emmanuel panicked. Could he rewind enough times to find a way to save her? But each rewind was a risk. He knew that if he used his power again, it might erase the last memories he had of his sister, and he couldn’t bear the thought.

In his desperation, Emmanuel made a final decision. He would use his power one last time, rewinding far enough to stop Amara from getting sick in the first place. He closed his eyes and felt the familiar pull of time bending around him, stretching as far as it could. When he opened his eyes, he was back, months earlier, before Amara’s illness.

But as the world settled around him, Emmanuel realized he didn’t know where he was. The faces around him were strange, the streets unfamiliar. He had gone back, but at the cost of his memory. He didn’t know who he was, or why he was there. All he knew was a deep sense of loss, as if something precious had slipped through his fingers.

Amara was alive and healthy, but Emmanuel no longer knew her. His final rewind had taken the last piece of himself, leaving him a stranger in his own life.

The people of Lagos would remember Emmanuel as the man who seemed to be everywhere at once, always at the right place, at the right time, saving lives. But he would never remember them, or the sacrifices he made to keep them safe.