I Can't Wait To Hear What You Have To Say This Time

 

One of my favorite things about Anne was she let me tag along with her, no questions asked. That was rare these days. In general, most people seemed to only want to look after themselves, but even if they were game for a little company, I wasn’t the type of company they were looking for. Not Anne though. Sure, she thought I was on drugs. She never came out and said it, but she called me Druggie Dave, so I had my suspicions. I’ll admit, the rhyme was kinda cute, except my name wasn’t even Dave. I could see how someone might make that mistake though. Not that my name was Dave, but that I was on drugs. The truth was exactly the opposite. It was the lack of drugs that caused me to act this way.

When I was a kid, my mom thought I had an overactive imagination, but when I failed to grow out of my imaginary friends, my mom decided I needed help. It turns out I have a dash of schizophrenia. Not enough to make me dangerous, just enough to occasionally have solo-conversations on street corners. A little bit of medication went a long way, though, and as long as I took my daily pill, I was a-okay.

Like everyone else, I raided every drug store I came upon, you know, after the world ended, but of course the drugs were all gone. Fucking idiots using them to get high, oblivious to the needs of people like me. So now I talk to myself, so what? At least the voices kept me company when no one else would. But then one day Anne showed up, an angle rising out of the winter muck. We made a good team, and for a little more than a year we were inseparable, wandering from little town to little town in the Central Valley. I never asked her why, it didn’t matter to me, being with her was all I wanted.

Sure, in the beginning I thought maybe, just maybe, we could become more than friends, but that ended about the 5,000^th time she called me Druggie Dave. Oh well, a friend who calls you names is better then no friend at all. Or at least that’s how I used to think.

We’d spent the winter in Bakersfield. It was a lovely, small, close-knit community now. Much nicer than it had been before the world ended. All winter long I had asked myself what I would do when Anne decided to move on. The people of Bako had just been starting to warm up to me, and I liked it here.

I think I followed her out of habit. Like a dog I was loyal, even though she kept kicking me. So as the winter warmed to spring I found myself following her along the trail, back up the Central Valley again. It wasn’t long before I realized I’d made a mistake. I tried to tough it out, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. The name calling, the looking down on me, but it wasn’t until we were just outside of Kings City that I finally decided enough was enough. She was singing, a song from the Wizard of Oz, and it made me laugh. She turned to look at me, and the expression on her face, like I was a child.

I screamed, something weird from my schizophrenic brain about the police, and I turned and ran back from where we’d come, trying to get as much distance between us as possible before I could second guess my decision. I just hoped the people in Bako would accept me back.

Come Alone, No Police

 

 Its moments like these I forget that anything has changed at all. The sky is bright blue, the clouds lazy puffs of white, the grass is electric green and the dirt path cuts a seductive trail through it, to the infinite horizon. I’m out for a hike. A vacation. One of the many backpacking trips written in dry erase marker on the whiteboard stuck on my fridge. Then Druggie Dave starts muttering to his hallucinations behind me, and I snap out of my daydream. This isn’t a bucket list trip; this is life. Just me and Dave and an eternity of endless roads, shuffling from town to town, looking for fuck knows what. At least that was my story. Dave was looking for drugs, always. Addicts didn’t stop being addicts just because the world ends.

It was springtime though, which was lovely. There was nothing like velvet hills covered in a watercolor pallet of wildflowers to rekindle my love for meandering. During the dark days of winter, I’d almost considered settling down. The only thing that stopped me was where I’d found myself, Bakersfield, or at least what had once been Bakersfield. Of course it was much nicer now the smog fog of the Central Valley had dissipated with the death of the combustion engine, but it was still Bakersfield. So, I moved on

We were now just passing through King City, and the earth was in bloom. It was like that moment in the Wizard of Oz, suddenly everything was in color.

“Follow the yellow brick road!” I sang, a spring in my step.

Dave giggled behind me

“You remember that movie, Dave?”

He didn’t respond. I snuck a peek over my shoulder to see if he was still with me, or if he had been distracted by one of his hallucinations. He found some mushrooms a couple of days ago, and had been living off a steady diet of them ever since.

I saw he was still shuffling along behind me, neck craned back, staring at the sky. Probably seeing flying monkeys or something. I shrugged to myself, and continued walking. Around the next bend in the road a field of poppies spread out in front of me, a million golden heads bobbing in the breeze. I bent to pick one and when a did I heard a screech behind me. It was Dave, face white as a ghost.

“Now you’ve done it” his voice was deep with fear, “the police, that’s illegal, the police!” he turned and ran faster than I would have believed he could, back towards where we came. I didn’t bother going after him. I could do with some time by myself again. Perhaps I would head to the coast, get out of the Central Valley before the summer heat set in. The last time I’d been near the ocean it was obscured by the smoke of the city burning to the ground, but the fires were most certainly out now. Who knows, perhaps my house was still standing. I thought again of my whiteboard, my bucket list, on my fridge, and I started walking towards home.

I Swear It's Not My Fault

 

I realized I forgot my headphones about ten steps from my house, but I couldn’t be bothered to go back. It was only a few blocks to the bus stop. It was a beautiful morning, the air tinged warm with the promise of spring, and the blue-black sky was just beginning to blush. I figured I could use a little time with the morning birdsong and my own thoughts.

Have you ever been waking down the street when suddenly a childhood rhyme about mothers with broken backs pops into your head? Of course it makes you realize, right at that moment. That you’ve just stepped on a crack, so you do the only sensible thing. You perform an elaborate dance-hop-skip-over-the-cracks, sing song rhyme, ending with a kiss blown to the universe to save your mother, only to have all hell break loose because as it turns out, the superstition was actually true, only you mis-remembered the words, or the dance sequence, or something, and instead of un-breaking your mother’s back, you accidently opened a portal into another timeline? Have you ever had that happen? No? Just me then?

Well, I still maintain it might not have been me. There are nearly 8 billion people on the world, who knows what they were all up to at that exact moment in time. And the portal opening in my town, just a block away from where I was dancing around like I had ants in my pants in the early dawn light, well that was a just a coincidence.

They say it was a magic spell, an ancient one. Of course, before that day magic was something that existed only in children’s books and angsty teen's bedrooms. But since then, many more magic spells have been discovered, or uncovered, or rediscovered, or whatever. Now people are running around curing cancer, or summoning lightening bolts from the sky to vanquish their enemy’s, or eradicating their acne. No one has figured out a love spell yet, which sucks because I really wish the guy who drives the Jetta and lives in the apartment on the corner would finally notice me, but its probably for the best. The world is in enough chaos as it is, without having to deal with the messy moral implications that would come from making whoever you like fall in love with you.

Now, you may be wondering about what happened with that portal into the other timeline. Well, nothing bad really came from it. The earth in that timeline didn’t exist, probably obliterated by an asteroid or something. Mrs. McClatchy’s cat fell into the portal, but some orange cones were erected around it to keep that from happening again, and after a few days the spell to close it was discovered, so that was good. And I’ve sworn off magic since then. I’ve seen what it does to people, to your friends, and family, and those you love. I can screw up my personal relationships well enough on my own, I don’t need magic’s help.

Consider This A Warning

 

Photo by ArrImAPirate (that's me!)

They say “red sky at night, sailors delight”, so as I munched my fresh from the ocean sushi and watched the sky turn more shades of red then there are probably names for, I felt relaxed knowing I had a night of gentle winds and calm seas ahead of me.  That was my first mistake.

My second was being lax on my watch schedule. Normally I’d set my alarm to wake me every 15 minutes, so I could pop my head out of the hatch and scan the horizon to make sure I wasn’t about to careen bow first into a giant oil tanker, but I was out in the middle of the Pacific now, half way between California and French Polynesia, and far from any shipping lanes, so I decided to let myself sleep for a full 60 minutes at a time. I’d been out at sea for 13 days; I needed the extra z’s.

I think I rested too much though, and I missed my alarm. Instead, what woke me was a bucket of water to my face. At first, I was confused. I was alone, so who could be throwing buckets of water? Sure, the hatch was open. I’d left it open so I could pop my head out and look around between naps. It wasn’t the hatch being open that concerned me, it was the change in the view from my bunk. When I’d fallen asleep, I was under a blanket of stars so thick it was nearly impossible to tell where one star ended, and the next began. But now, all I saw was black. The kind of black that makes you dizzy to look at.

I threw the sopping wet blankets off and dropped down from my mattress, into a pool of water. Apparently, the wave that woke me up wasn’t the first to make it in my cabin. Or at least I hoped that’s where the water came from.

“Curse that red sky at night saying”, I muttered to myself as I waded through knee deep water. My mind grasped at straws as if I could collect enough of them that I could drain all the water from my bilge.

I grabbed my life vest and flew up the three wooden steps into my cockpit. Outside, I found it wasn’t raining, at least not yet, but the seas were confused. The wind was howling through my rigging, but something was wrong, the sails were flogging wildly. Just as my eyes were adjusting to the blackness, a flash of lighting illuminated the night, and on the horizon, I saw a great bulk of a ship. The next second the thunder rolled, but there was another noise, my radio. I could just make out a staticky voice over the rumble of the thunder, “small sailboat” it said, “we may have collided with you,” crackle crackle, “changing course,” crackle crackle, “coming back to get you”

Well, that explains it, I thought, and I grabbed my ditch bag to await rescue.

I've Never Done This Before

 

I’m an avid listener of beeps; the pling-plongy ones that periodically sound over the announcement system on an airplane. My underlying fear of flying, coupled with far too much air travel means I’ve deciphered the secret code used by the pilot to communicate with the crew. I know how many plongs signal it’s safe for the flight attendants to get up; I know how many plongs signal it’s safe to begin the beverage service, and I know the sequence of plongs I just heard probably means there’s something wrong, because I’ve never heard that many plongs, in that sequence, before. The other clue, of course, was the rather panicked look on the flight attendant’s face when as she talked on the galley phone that connects to the cockpit. Sure enough, the fasten seatbelt sign came on, another plong.

Next came the announcement over the intercom, totally vague of course. There was something wrong with the plane, we were going to make an emergency landing. Everyone make sure your seatbelt is fastened tight and all your stuff is stowed away so it doesn’t fly about the cabin and take off the head of the lady in 14 B.

I wondered if the oxygen masks would drop down. And if they did, would I remember how to put mine on? How many times had I ignored that demonstration? And what about the life vest? Was it under my seat? Oh wait, we weren’t flying over water. I couldn’t remember where we were going, but it defiantly wasn’t over water.

Time seemed to be passing incredibly slowly, but the plane still felt normal, so far. Finally, I mustered the courage to look out the window, past the woman whimpering in the seat next to me. It appeared that the ground was still the appropriate distance away. I began to breathe a sigh of relief, but of course, right at that moment, the plane tilted alarmingly forward. I looked down the aisle, toward the cockpit, which now seemed to be downhill from my seat. I turned away quickly, and met the eyes of the older lady sitting across from me. Not the whimpering one, but the one on the other side. This one was not whimpering. In fact, she looked impossibly calm. As our eyes met, she gave me a warm smile, and said “Is this your first plane crash, dear?”

“What?” I responded, but my reply was drowned out by a new, loud beeping. Another one I’d never heard before. Only I had heard it before. It was the sound of my alarm. I looked back towards the whimpering woman, but instead of her crumpling face I saw my bedside table. I flailed my arms out and smacked the alarm. I couldn’t see what time it was, because my vision was blurry, my eyes still focused inward on the ground drawing ever closer out the airplane window in my dream, but that was okay, because it was just a dream. Oh thanks goodness, it was just a dream. 

I Told You So

 

Photo by ArrImAPirate (that's me!)

The door slammed and I counted. One, two three steps across the hollow wooden landing, five down the first flight of stairs, and five more down the second. It should have been six, but the last step was concrete and didn’t make a sound when size thirteen shoes stomped down in anger.

Next was the car door, another slam. He must've really been made because he babied that car. A second later the engine roared to life, and with a squeal of the tires he was gone. Part of me thought he would just circle the building and come back, but a few minutes later the only sound I heard was the chirping of the birds singing summer’s song, and I knew he wouldn’t. Not for a while at least.

Okay, so I had to know though. For when he got back. I had to prove I was right. I sprung up from my moon and star blanket draped futon and strode across the tiny living room of our brand-new apartment, and into the bedroom, where the computer sat on a thrifted flat pack desk, shoved in the corner. I shimmied around the bed and slid into the dining room chair that had been repurposed as a computer chair. It didn’t matter, my dining table only had space enough for two. And for those that are counting, that meant I still had one extra dining room chair. It sat on the front porch, next to the camping chair that had a rip in it’s nylon seat. The same front porch he had just stomped across to leave after our first big fight. The same front porch we had been enjoying every balmy Colorado summer evening for the first week after we’d moved into our first apartment together.

I wondered if we’d be sitting out there again tonight, sipping our sun tea and laughing about this incident. Oh, or maybe he would get one of his friends to buy a six pack of beer for us. Maybe that's what he was out doing, as a peace offering. I wondered when he would come back.

I shrugged away the thought, turned on the monitor, and waited for the computer screen to flicker to life. After it did it lit up the dark cave of our bedroom, and I clicked the icon for Internet Explorer. I was so glad the apartment had Ethernet, and I didn’t have to wait for the computer to dial up to get online. Next, I typed: https://www.askjeeves.com. The familiar yellow screen loaded, and I entered my question “Is the Great Wall of China the only man made object you can see from outer space?”

I clicked on the first website, read a few sentences, and shit, I pressed the back button and went to the next website, then the next, and the next. Well fuck, they all said the same thing!

With a sigh, I closed the web browser, turned off the computer screen, and slunk back to the futon to wait for him to return. I couldn’t believe it, our first real fight, and I was wrong.

It's Happening Again

 

Photo by ArrImAPirate (that's me!)

It’s sunny in the kitchen, too sunny. The pleasant warm glow of my vision begins to redden and I realize too late that I don’t have enough time to make it to the couch. The best I can do is try and sit down on the wooden floor so I don’t hit my head on the sharp corner of my fake granite countertop again.

The first thing I noticed after I woke up was the pleasant warm glow of late afternoon sunlight had been replaced by a harsh glare. Overhead neon lights. Gingerly I turned my head to the side, checking for any signs of injury. I seemed to be fine, but the crowd of beeping machines that entered my field of vision told me I was in the hospital. The next step was to try and sit up, to try and further assess what had landed me here, but as I did a familiar voice came from the other side of my bed, and a hand, big, warm, gentle, urged me to stay laying down.

“Hi Charlie” I whispered, “am I okay?”

“Well, nothings broken.”

The room was silent for a moment, aside from the rhythmic beeping that let me know my heart was still doing its job.

“I went time traveling again.” I said finally.

“Yes, I found you on the kitchen floor.”

“Mmm,” I paused for a moment, trying to catch my breath, “it came on too quickly. Sure would be nice if I could learn to control it.”

“Yes, well.”

“I don’t remember where I went yet, but I’m sure it’ll come to me.”

“Don’t push it, you should try and rest.”

“You’re right, it takes a lot out of me.”

I don’t know how long my eyes had been closed, but I was still awake when the doctor came in the room. They obviously thought I was asleep, though. I wasn’t, I heard everything. My husband reassuring the doctor I wasn’t in need of a psych evaluation after the nurse I wasn’t aware of was in the room and overheard our time travel conversation. The doctor reassuring my husband that my little kitchen tumble hadn’t done any permanent damage. And of course, that other thing.

I opened my eyes after the doctor left, and found Charlie staring at my face, his big blue eyes shadowed by worry.

He opened his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it. “I still can’t remember where I traveled to this time,” I tried to force a smile.

“Sarah?”

“Yes”

“Can you please just stop? Didn’t you hear the doctor?”

“Yes” I whispered.

“So you know, there is nothing else they can do. You have to start taking this seriously Sarah.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t!”

“But Sarah, you have cancer.”

“No, I’m a time traveler, now leave me alone!”

I turned away, so Charlie couldn’t see the tears threatening to betray me, and waited for the sound of the door clicking shut to let me know I was alone.

 

 

You Promised You Wouldn't Tell

 

Photo by ArrImAPirate (that's me!)

I met the man of my dreams at a malt shop. And no, it wasn’t 1965, the Malt Shop was a speakeasy at the back of this bar, but that doesn’t matter. What matters was how perfect he was. Perfect hair, the color of molten honey, beautiful blue eyes, an enchanting smile, and he could run really fast. That last part I wished wasn’t true.

Mr. Perfect asked me out to dinner and a movie. I know, a bit of cliché, but we did meet in a malt shop. It was a perfect spring night. The air was kissed with the promise of the summer to come, the kind of evening meant for a stroll, which we did, because the movie theater was only two blocks from the restaurant.

At the theatre we decided to share a large popcorn and a box of M&Ms, which I thought was a good sign. We each got our own drink though. Apparently, we had meandered a bit too slowly, because when we got into the theatre, the movie had already started. Luckily it was nearly empty inside, finding seats wasn’t a problem. I scootched as close as I could to my date, without it looking like I was trying to be as close as I could to him.

The first thing I saw when I looked at the screen, in big yellow letters, like ten stories tall, was my ex’s name. With the words “directed by” hovering ominously just above. It couldn’t have actually been my ex though, right? Sure, he was a movie buff, but there were probably a lot of Beauregard Trascruxes in the world. The very next thing that came up was the name of the movie, “Surviving Sarah Stevenson.”

I must have made a noise, because Mr. Perfect was asking me what was wrong.

“Nothing, it’s just, that’s my name”

“Sarah, yeah, I know”

“No, my full name is Sarah Stevenson, and the director, Beauregard Trascrux, that’s my ex.”

It was at that moment I regretted not asking ahead of time what movie we were going to see.

Mr. Perfect started to respond, but then, the movie started, and the massive screen filled with the massive face of a woman who looked remarkably like me. Mr. Perfect gave me a half smile, and then he grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze, so that was something at least.

He let go of my hand when movie Sarah had a bit too much to drink and woke up with the fire department knocking down her door and a forgotten pizza smoldering in the oven. He moved as far away from me as he could in his seat when movie Sarah broke her potential future mother-in-law’s heirloom vase, and then tried to blame it on the dog. And he left when movie Sarah confessed that she still had naughty dreams about her high school boyfriend. Mr. Perfect didn’t come back, which was probably for the best, because I had no good way to explain all the things movie Sarah did.

I, of, course stayed until the end. I had to know just how much of our relationship was immortalized on film. I have an appointment with a judge to change my name next week. I never heard from Mr. Perfect again.