[A/N: So I didn't really have such an idea that sprang up like in some odd hour as most of my ideas do generally but I wanted to really challenge myself to write a short story for a contest and time-travel being one of my favorite classic theme naturally attracted me.

Prompt : The protagonist goes back in time to fix something but at what consequences.]

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'Past is unchangeable, Future is unpredictable, Only Present is under your control'

You must have heard of this line a thousand times whether it served as ointment in time of blues or warning when your life was filled with too many wholesome hues of joy. Growing up in Minnesota, I had a likewise experience with my old woman always nudging me to not pay too much attention to bullies- to look past their teasing and casual violent fits and find in my heart some undeserved forgiveness.

'All for sake of being at ease with conscience' - She would mumble it repeatedly , whenever I would register my complaints. It was only when I myself graduated from high school that I was able to recall the the strange gleam that rested in her eyes when she would urge so. Those unmistakable eyes of hope wishing to avoid all things of agony as her words reached my ears.

True enough! She had never expressly clarified that it was for sake of my own conscience . 

Either way, I wasn't some petty kid to hold grudge over couple of selfish fears harbored by my her. Being a widowed mom at such young age, she had done her best to raise me up to the man I was today - the head of a successful conglomerate. 

That in itself was more than enough of a debt I could ever get wiped off by few indiscretions on her motherly duties.

But over the course of my three decades of my life, far too many things of guilt and regret had piled up. It tends to happen way more when most of the work under your command is delegated mechanically to your subordinates , half of whom faces you haven't even seen once.

To the outside world and my mother, I was a rising star , with a little too wise head and filthy charm, ever engaged in planning to sweep new bussiness opportunities off my competitors. But only I knew how internally screwed my situation was.

The initial debts were yet to be paid off , the long-backing investors who had started to pry enough had reserved their promise to continue and the tax returns were just mammothlike large and growing. Now had I told this to any of my few bussiness friends , they would have laughed it off regarding it as part of trade. But they don't know the kind of accounting error and hidden records we have lying around.

In any case, I was simply waiting for it stocks to come crashing down any day , and for once , being reeled in by the sweet words my mother had left for me : to just enjoy the present without a damn about the future.

I had to accept the inevitable fall to relish the joys of present for that was all I believed to be my under control.

Oh.! How wrong I was? How sorry I was? 

It all changed when particular unremarkable day when the rain came down too hard that I rushed into my office leaving my young secretary , fresh out of her four year-university course, outside. 

What I found instead of my polished -clean white room was an old wooden-flooring and ceiling structured room, used by campers- something I had only seen in National Geographic. I rubbed my eyes confounded and perplexed by the sight. When I opened the door again, I found nothing outside except for a dark black void outside. There was something so eerie about it that I was prompted to quickly close the door and rescue myself to the corner of room.

I brought my drenched sleeves close to my nose, which gave a normal smell of rain. 

There seems to be no olfactory hallucinogen at least.

Just what the heck was going on? I pondered on that question for nearly two hours, walking to and fro, in the desolate room , hardly furnished with anything but a small bed and a table on which some kind of six metallic opaque glasses rested turned upside down. The wall clock was broken for it continued to rest at 3'o clock.

After two hours of no help coming to save me as expected and my phone being out of network, I decided to check out the room to pass the time. The very first thing that drew my attention were glasses and the moment I lifted one of them up, it all became clear.

Under it, there rested a red button with a date. At first, I couldn't understand what the heck was use of a date being etched onto a button but the moment I uplifted all six glasses, the realization hit me.

All six dates were directly related to my life- all those times when I had felt the strongest regret in life, wishing to do it all over. I doubt anyone else could have ever grasped this information so accurately beside me which only left the possibility of God.

Was God giving me a chance to do it all over? But why? It wasn't like I had done anything particularly noble or virtuous or even held faith in him. Oh well! What did it really matter?

The fates were giving me a chance and I wasn't the one to waste it. I immediately pressed onto the first button and I felt myself being pulled two decades earlier in the school playground. I could still see bullies trying to hurt me.

The fates were giving me a chance, and I wasn't about to waste it. My heart pounded in my chest as I stared at the buttons before me. Six dates, each tied to a moment in my life that haunted me, each representing a decision I regretted or a pain I wished to erase. This wasn't just a random opportunity; it was a gift, a way to rewrite my past and, perhaps, my future.

I hesitated for only a second before pressing the first button. The sensation was immediate and overwhelming, like being pulled through a vortex of memories. The world around me dissolved, replaced by a familiar scene—two decades earlier, in the school playground. I was there again, a helpless teenager facing the bullies who had tormented me.

But this time, I was different. I wasn't a scared kid anymore. I was a man with the power to change what had been. Rage surged through me as I advanced on them. I didn't just fight back—I unleashed years of suppressed anger, leaving them bloodied and broken on the ground. The feeling of power, of taking control, was intoxicating.

I returned to the present, expecting to feel a sense of triumph. But instead of the relief I sought, I was met with a cold, harsh reality. The authorities were waiting. Somehow, they had tracked me down. DNA evidence had linked me to the assault—a crime committed by a younger version of myself, but unmistakably tied to the man I had become. I hadn't thought about the consequences of leaving traces of myself in the past, how those actions could ripple forward, unspooling the very fabric of my existence. As the date on the button disintegrated into ash, the weight of my mistake settled heavily on me.

But I couldn't stop now. There were still five more buttons, five more chances to make things right. I moved on to the next one—the date etched in my memory as the day my mother was brutally murdered.

This time, I found myself standing outside our old house. The night was eerily quiet, just as I remembered. I waited in the shadows until I saw the figure approach, the man who would take everything from me. My heart pounded as I ambushed him, knocking him unconscious before he could even step foot inside. I felt a rush of victory, a sense of having saved her, of having rewritten the most painful chapter of my life.

But when I returned to the present, my mother was still gone. The newspapers told a different story this time—she had died in a car accident on her way to meet me, her only son. The killer's blade had been replaced by twisted metal and shattered glass. It was as if fate had found a way to correct itself, to ensure that the outcome remained unchanged, no matter my intervention.

Desperation gripped me as I moved to the third button. Then the fourth. The fifth. With each press, I was hurled back into moments I longed to change. I tried to fix the mistakes I'd made in my business, to salvage deals that had gone sour, to avoid the pitfalls that had led to my impending ruin. But every time I returned, the world was more twisted than before. New problems emerged, consequences I hadn't foreseen. My company crumbled faster, relationships I had thought to mend were irreparably damaged, and people I had tried to protect ended up hurt in new and unexpected ways.

I began to see that time was not a simple thread to be unraveled and re-woven at will. It was a web, intricate and interconnected, where each strand I tugged pulled others into chaos. The more I tampered, the more tangled it became, until I could no longer see the pattern, only the destruction I had caused.

The final button loomed before me, a last chance to undo the damage I had wrought. I pressed it with trembling hands, hoping against hope that this time, I could make things right. But as I was pulled through time once more, I felt something different—something wrong. The past was no longer welcoming me; it was rejecting me. The scenes blurred, twisted, and then shattered like glass, leaving me suspended in a void.

When I opened my eyes, I was back in that strange room, but everything was different. The walls were cracked and decaying, the air thick with the scent of rot. The buttons were gone, burned away, leaving only blackened marks where they had once been. And as I looked down at my hands, I saw them begin to fade, dissolving into nothingness.

I understood then. In my arrogance, I had thought I could control time, rewrite my story to suit my desires. But time was not mine to command. Every change I had made had rippled forward, unraveling the very essence of who I was. The person who had stood in that room, desperate to fix his past, no longer existed. I had erased myself, one reckless decision at a time.

In the end, life might be a series of pre-destined events, moments that shape us whether we like it or not. The past is immutable, the future unpredictable, and the present? The present is all we truly have. But in my quest to change what had been, I had lost even that, leaving nothing behind but a ghost of what could have been.

And as I faded into oblivion, I realized the cruel irony: the past may be untouchable, but by trying to control it, I had destroyed any chance I had to live in the present. Now, there was nothing left but the void.