Most people in Zossie’s club were younger and the few outliers had shown up either for nostalgia or a night with friends. If someone was forty five years old and in the club they typically had their shit together and were just letting loose. However one woman named McKenzie had caught Zossie’s eye for the last few night. She was forty eight and didn’t show up with anyone. She just came to the club, drank way too much, and much to Zossie’s grit teeth drove home at the end of the night. When Zossie shut down the booth for the night, helped with cleanup, and walked out the door with the bouncers and Bartenders talking about the shift she would find McKenzie slumped on the ground next to her vehicle smoking cigarette after cigarette and rambling about how she was so popular in high school. That’s exactly what McKenzie was, a woman who had peaked in grade twelve when she’d walked for ceremonies but actually failed the grade and then spent the next thirty years of her life acting like she was still in high school. She apparently had three daughters whom she’d neglected so much they didn’t talk to her and she still lived pay check to pay check and attached herself to sleezy men constantly. It was rather pathetic.
Seeing her in the club for a fifth night in a row, and on a Tuesday to boot was just pathetic and Zossie now knew what she needed to do. She’d spent the last few days fine tuning a new record. Remixing music and testing it on her sister Haley. Now it was ready, a new magic disc in a sleeve with arrows pointing downwards. She got to the club and like normal McKenzie was there way too early and was let in the second the bouncers opened the door. Zossie watched her walk straight to the bar buying cheap alcohol and swinging it back quickly and ordering a second. She then just waited while other people began to enter. The club’s floor was still empty and though Zossie was playing some sick beats most twenty to thirty year old office workers just showed up early to sit at the booths lining the wall and order some food before the night got going. Zossie understood them, working class people who enjoyed having their nights off. They would club for a few hours and call it a night around midnight. McKenzie however approached Zossie and with her smoke stained teeth and drink in hand grinned and requested a song to get some of the lame folk out on the dance floor.
Zossie stares at her and placed her disc down on the record table letting it play. McKenzie’s eyes dropped in a trance and she began to waver back and forth. Zossie watched as her skin began to lose wrinkles, her body fat began to vanish, and years of smoking damage erased themselves. McKenzie travelled back in time through her forties back through her thirties and finally ended in her twenties. Her age stopped ticking backwards as she hit the ripe age of twenty, ten years younger than her eldest daughter who she no longer recalled as her daughter.
McKenzie stumbled backwards and eventually sat at a booth near some people. She wavered a little before turning towards them and entering conversation with them. Zossie gave a sigh of relief upon realizing that McKenzie would be fine and she removed the record from the table in a rather happy manner.