To Zach's amazement, the Uno deck glimmered red in the lamplight. How? Acting without reservation, not taking a single moment to even question what such magic could do, he pulled the top card off of the deck - the all-powerful Reverse card. He held it with his right hand, putting his left out as he pretended to be the powerful mage Priestess Tolar said he would become. Best bitcoin ever spent.

"Reverse!" he said, flinging the card into the air. Pink and purple sparkles flew like confetti all around as it slung back into his hand like a boomerang. Woah!

"Never mind children, for what is and is to become is a fool's errand. How about what was and never will be?" the words of Tolar boomed out into the air. He retracted his left hand and then proceeded to put the card back on the deck.

He started to panic as he soon realized that instead of being in control, his body was moving by itself... backward. A few minutes later he was casting the spell on the deck all over again. "Tenus eekus, molus toolus, into this deck I give Tolar's imbrulus." Except he was saying the words backward and at the end, the deck stopped glimmering.

Stop! I'm ready for this to be over now.

Darkness slowly clouded his vision. His heart beat frantically as the terror of not being able to move sucked him in. Help! Help! I didn't mean to cast this spell. Really! When the black clouds in his sight coalesced, leaving him totally blind, he started to feel as if he were rising slowly out of his body. Then his vision instantly flipped to gray before clearing away all at once. For a brief moment it seemed like the spell stopped until it occurred to him that he was no longer staring out of his own eyes, but at his body from outside, as if he were watching a video of himself. Oh no! What's happening?

Almost thoughtlessly, he watched himself at the computer, using his Bitcoin wallet to purchase Tolar's magic book. What a stupid idea that was. Then he saw himself come in and browse Tiktok videos for a while on his phone before seeing the ad that led him down this rabbit hole. A picture of Tolar with her hands on a crystal ball, the caption above said "Lonely tonight? Need a girlfriend? Do it the magical way!" This was not the girlfriend you promised Tolar!

Maybe it would end at some point? He walked backward out of his apartment, down the stairs, and into the cafe on the lower level where he had eaten a sad plate of spaghetti for dinner. He sat back in the chair and the noodles began to come up from his stomach in bunches, sometimes one by one, wrangling themselves back onto his fork before he stabbed it into the plate. As his dinner reappeared, it started to look more and more organized. So weird.

Then he got up and went back to the library, where he had been studying for his history exam for most of the afternoon. Cars, bicycles, and people flew by as he backtracked his way down the sidewalk for the mile-long trek. When he got to the stone and marble building at the center of campus, he took the seat he had earlier, except this time he was flipping the pages backward.

While watching himself study, he tried to think of ways to try to break the spell. The reverse card - what does that do again? Oh right, it reverses gameplay such that turns happen in the opposite order. Of course. If only he had a card to make that go away somehow. Perhaps another reverse card? Was there some way, any way, he could break this video of his life playing backward to get back to Tolar?

He kept thinking, but found no answers, as he watched himself sit through his morning classes again. The only thing worse than going to class the first time was involuntarily doing it a second. It turns out that reverse time progression made it impossible to hear or understand anything that anyone was saying - voices just came out as a whinny sound, much like the one those old cassette tapes his parents had made when they were rewinding. He had only his thoughts as forty-two students watched a lecture on stoichiometry.

When he arrived back at his apartment for his morning cup of coffee, he thought for sure that the spell would end when he went back to sleep. It couldn't last more than a day. No, that would make no sense. Yet, that was exactly what happened when he crawled back into bed and fell back into his previous evening's sleep. Worse, he was stuck watching himself sleep. What kind of hell is this? How am I supposed to get out of here? Please, someone help! Help!

He started to yell for help without stopping. There was no fatigue or bodily consequences in this video-watching state that he was in. Yells turned to screams, screams turned to anger, anger turned to rage, rage turned to tears, and tears turned to begging. Anyone. His poor mother, his estranged father, the God that he had never believed in. He uttered words to any entity real or imagined that could break him out of this horrible state before he broke down. "Sorry, I'm so sorry. I should have never." Who the fuck trusts a priestess named Tolar? All because I wanted a girlfriend and was too pathetic to take control of my life, be confident, and talk to people.

Yesterday dawned black as he rose out of bed and immediately when to the bathroom to brush his teeth and take off his PJs. The sun rose in the west to greet him as he sat on his computer playing video games while dinking on his phone. God, how much time did I spend on my phone? What if I had done something else with that time? After what seemed like an eternity he put the phone down and went to the table... to eat dinner. Then he got up and went back to the library to study, and then to class again.

Despite his begging and pleas, his life did not start going forwards again as days became months, then years. Given a choice between insanity in his own mind and being a passive observer, he invented games in his thoughts to pass the time. He tried to predict things, like what he would eat for breakfast the day prior, how much homework he'd have, or if something special would happen that day. At night, he tried to predict how often he would snore, the number of times he would turn over, and how many times he'd scratch himself. Remembering Groundhog Day, he never gave up hope that one day for some reason the spell would end. Each time he saw the sunrise from the west, he made another mental tick mark. One day more.

PART II BELOW