Woeful Tales of Women and Boys

There once was a boy.

The boy lusted after the women of his acquaintance. But he was timid, and shy; rarely did he muster the courage to approach, and he did not speak long even on those occasions. Such was his character at that time.

There came an event which brought this side of him to the fore. He encountered a woman wearing the livery of his own service; this would provide ample opportunity for the boy to speak with the chance-met woman; yet he did not. They together boarded the same aeroplane; the boy again spoke not a word, nor did he approach her. Several times more did the boy pass the woman, and then found himself entering the bus; and still he neither approached nor spoke to the woman. Together they went from the bus, and entered the same dorm; and here the boy, silent still, saw the woman speak to, then suddenly embrace, an older man. The boy entered his room; and there, bitterly, he wept.

He never saw the woman again.

This was the catalyst. He had squandered enough opportunity; there would be no more wastage! He focused his energies as he never had before. He studied; he practiced; he achieved. He became wise and learned, his hair greyed under the weight of years. At last he assembled the device of his own design and making; he stepped in, and found himself transported back to that fateful day.

Driven yet by the vows of so many years past, the once-boy made haste. He made entrance to the dormitories in which he had lived in his callow university days, set himself in readiness. The woman appeared; the once-boy spoke to her warmly, won her affection instantly with that charm that he had practised so hard to gain, and embraced her, as he had so long wished to do.

The once-boy led the charmed woman to his apparatus, there to bring her back to his own time. This he accomplished; the two vanished, air rushing in to fill the gap where they had stood. In the dorm they had just left, the boy wept bitterly, a new resolution forming...