“Make it didn’t happen.” This is the cry of a child when something bad occurs. Fix it! Do over! Make it all better!

And like the wish of any child, it’s primal. Undeniable. We want it so hard to be true.

Throughout history, human beings have often wanted for nothing more than a second chance. A hope that this spin of the wheel, they’ll get it right. This time, there won’t be any screw ups. Paying anything to roll the dice just one more time.

Don’t deny it. You’ve prayed for it, too.

And every once in a while, people get lucky. They get that shot at redemption. And some of them pull it off. They get to make right what once went wrong.

But oh so many fail. Given a chance to correct things, they make the same mistakes again. And if they had yet another chance, they make the same mistakes yet again.

You have to start to wonder if it’s fate.

Lots of stories make us wonder that all the time, and have been doing so ever since Oedipus started dating. Where all the efforts of good men and bad men, their hopes and their dreams, really don’t matter for much in an uncaring universe. And you start to wonder whether it’s fate, destiny, random chance, or if the fault truly is not in the stars, but in ourselves.

Time travel stories live and die on that same dilemma. Can you really go back and change things? Or is your very attempt to change things because of what you’re trying to prevent in the first place? And even if you know what supposed to happen to you in the future… can you change events? Can you change yourself? Or are you damned to do the same thing over and over again, because you can’t change yourself?

In my story, ‘Make It Didn’t Happen,” — appearing in the Crazy 8 Press anthology Love, Murder & Mayhem — we explore some of those ramifications. You may have your own beliefs about predestination versus free will. I have them myself. But you’re never really going to know which is right until you get the chance.

And the real hell of it is… you’re never really going to know whether it was a real chance to change over, or that you were going to do it all along.

Love, Murder & Mayhem is now available for sale both in print and ebook formats.

Glenn Hauman is uniquely qualified to be in this book, as his love life is mayhem and he’s soon to be murdered.

A founding member of Crazy 8 Press, he also writes, edits, colors comics, designs websites, designs books, performs marriages, reaches things on high shelves, changes lightbulbs, bats right, sings baritenor, snores loud, draws to inside straights, drinks too much DMD, and stays up way too late at night. Having come to the grisly realization that the New York Observer called him a “young Turk of publishing”  two decades ago, he now patiently awaits the sweet embrace of death. He is looking ahead to being killed by many contributors to this book with a candlestick, knife, lead pipe, revolver, rope, and wrench.

You can find out more at Glennhauman.com or by looking at his Wikipedia page. No, really, someone wrote up an entry for him. He can’t believe it either.