The boy who rewound time

 

Experimental Short Story Series #47
Title: The Boy Who Rewound Time
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

In a crumbling Karachi neighborhood where kites tangled in wires and time felt like a tired grandfather nodding off, there lived a boy named Samir who didn’t speak much. His mother said he was “born with old silence in his bones.” He liked broken things—cracked mirrors, rusted clocks, chipped radios—and believed they remembered more than they let on.

One day, behind a stack of cassette tapes in a junk shop that smelt of mothballs and memories, Samir found a dusty cassette player. It was silver. Heavy. With buttons like old typewriter keys. A hand-written label was taped to its back: “For Rewinding Time. Use Carefully.”

He thought it was a joke.

Until that night.

He rewound a tape he'd recorded of himself mumbling a poem. And when he pressed play, the room didn’t echo with the poem—it rewound the day. The spilled ink. The broken window. The fight with his uncle. All gone. Like a page erased.

He laughed for the first time in weeks.

The cassette player became his secret. A genie in plastic skin. He rewound arguments, test failures, embarrassing stutters. With each rewind, life became smoother. Sharper. Perfect.

But the player took something too.

First, he forgot the sound of his father’s voice. Then his birthday. Then how his sister’s laughter felt in his chest.

Every rewind cost him a memory.

Still, he kept going. Addicted. Chasing flawless moments. Until one morning, he woke up in a room he didn’t recognize. No photos. No books. No names in his head. Just the cassette player and one message blinking on its display: “Final rewind available.”

He pressed it.

And was never seen again.

But late at night, in the same junk shop, some say the cassette player is back on the shelf. Its buttons glow faintly. And if you press Play, you hear whispers. Not words. Moments. Spilled ink. Forgotten songs. The exact sound of a girl laughing like wind chimes.

They say the boy isn’t lost.

Just stuck in rewind.

Why We Tell These Stories
This is the 47th entry in our Experimental Short Story Series, a journey into the surreal and symbolic. Each week, we unlock a strange corridor of the imagination—where time loops, shadows speak, and wonder lives in cracked things. We believe stories aren't just escapes; they're mirrors. And sometimes, maps.

Thank you for walking this dreamlike path with us.

Stay tuned as we prepare our 60-story anthology—coming soon in both digital and print formats.

Read, Reflect, Rewind.
Because maybe, just maybe, your own cassette player is waiting somewhere, blinking silently in the dark.

farazparvez1.blogspot.com
dr-arshadafzal.blogspot.com

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