Living in the Past by Tony Domaille, rum and coke

The last thing I’d expected was to be run over by an Austin Allegro. That’s the trouble with time travel; you forget things were different in the past, and I’d forgotten the High Street wasn’t pedestrianised in 1986.

Anyway, after I tumbled over the bonnet and fell into the carriageway, I wasn’t just worried about broken bones. It was the timeline. What if a road accident happens in the past that was never supposed to happen? Will it change the future?

An ashen looking Allegro driver got out of his car. ‘Oh, my God. You walked straight out in front of me.’

Then a crowd gathered, with people saying someone should run to the telephone box and call for an ambulance. 

The next thing I knew, I was in A&E, going in and out of consciousness, worrying that they might do blood tests. Being full of statins and other drugs that hadn’t yet been invented might have complicated things. The other worry was the portal home to 2026. It would close in a little over an hour, but every time I tried to get off the hospital trolly someone pushed me back down, telling me to lie still. 

I prayed they would be done with me quickly. NHS waiting times were much shorter back in the eighties, and I mumbled about needing to leave but they ignored me.

Everything hurt. My back, my legs, my head. But for all that, the biggest pain was in my heart. I’d travelled back in time because I wanted to see the girl I fell in love with in 1986 just once more. But I hadn’t seen her and now I wouldn’t get the chance before the time portal closed. I’d been in love more than once in my life, but she was the one. Hannah. The girl I’d never forgotten and never stopped loving.

Lying there I was feeling the consequences of breaking Time Travel Agency rules. No using portals for personal reasons. They’re strictly for historical research and the very occasional intervention to stop something that would prevent a future good. Wanting to see your ex-girlfriend again doesn’t qualify. I’d tried to find her in the present and failed. I shouldn’t have done, but I then started searching for her across time, but she just seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth. No digital footprint, no records, not a thing. I often wondered if she ever thought about me. I also wondered if she’d ever tried to find me, but the agency keeps its operatives very much under the radar. I hoped she sometimes thought about that all too brief year we were together before life took us in different directions. Before I realised too late that she had been the one. 

I winced as I tried to sit up on the hospital trolly, as much because I knew I’d have to leave this time without finding Hannah as for my injuries. But then my chance came. The nurses rushed off to deal with something more serious than my bruises and concussion, so I limped away. My watch face was cracked but I could see I had less than fifteen minutes to reach the portal before it closed.

I stumbled out of the hospital and down the road, attracting curious looks because of my bandaged head. My vision was blurred. My ears rang and my head and limbs hurt but, if I could stay on my feet, there was still time. In the distance I could see the gates to the park where the portal would still be open, deep in the bushes near the bandstand. But as I got closer, and my vision cleared, I saw the park entrance had a barrier: Police Line. Do Not Cross. There were armed officers ensuring no one did, and a crowd had gathered. There were TV crews and reporters with cameras. I asked a man smoking a pipe what was going on.

‘They’ve found something weird in the park, but they won’t say what.’

‘But I have to get in there,’ I said, too loudly.

My informant shook his head. ‘You’ve got no chance, mate.’

Though I knew it was pointless, I tried to push my way through the cordon, but a police officer grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

‘Can’t you read?’ he asked. ‘Police line. Look!’

And that’s when I knew I wasn’t ever going to get back to my own time. In moments the portal would close. There would be no sign of the weird thing they’d found, and I would be trapped in 1986.

I was still in a concussed daze as I walked back toward the town centre. In truth there wasn’t much for me in my own time.  I was twice divorced – both good women, but they weren’t Hannah. I was living alone. I had few friends and no family to speak of. But how was I going to deal with being trapped in the eighties? Maybe I would find Hannah, but now I wondered what I’d been thinking? She was twenty-two in this time. I was sixty-two. Realistically, I could only gaze at her from afar. Even that felt wrong now.

I stopped to cross the road, checking more than carefully to make sure I didn’t walk in front of another car. And then I saw her. Bathed in the orange light of a streetlamp, I recognised her straight away. Hannah. But it wasn’t the Hannah of 1986. She was older. As old as me, though I could see through all the years.

She raised a hand in a familiar wave and I crossed the road.

‘Hello, John,’ she said, and her bright blue eyes shone as I’d always remembered them.’

My words caught in my throat.’ Is it really you?’

She nodded. ‘This may be the year we last saw each other, but it’s been a long time.’

‘I tried to find you,’ I said. ‘It’s like you disappeared.’

And then she was in my arms, and the years just melted away.

‘How?’ I asked. ‘How are you here, like this?’

‘You’re not the only time traveller,’ she whispered, and then I understood why I’d never been able to find her in my own time. 

‘Did they send you to find me?’ I asked.

‘They did.’

I sighed. ‘I suppose I’m in all kinds of trouble when you take me back.’

Hannah smiled. ‘If I take you back. But what if we just stayed here?’

All the years of wondering, searching, waiting, were over. People say we shouldn’t live in the past, but that’s what I’d been doing for forty years, whether I travelled in time or not. I didn’t know how it would work, but I didn’t care. I was with Hannah again. And as we walked hand in hand back into the town, just as we had done decades before, I knew we would never be apart again.

About the author

Tony is a playwright and his credits include the Derek Jacobi Award for New Playwriting and three-time winner of the UK CDFF Best Original Script Prize. He has also had many stories published in anthologies and magazines. You can follow him here -https://www.facebook.com/tonydomaillewriting/

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Options, Ken Poyner, rum and coke, specifically with Admiral Nelson 101 proof rum

When debating whether to send a mob after the werewolf, we realise there is a reason for our predicament. No one particularly useful has been removed by the werewolf. His slaughters may be startling, messy, at times inconvenient. But they really have not cost much in commerce or civic obligation. Some might consider his ministration to have public good. Likely, those he dispatches are less pleased than their neighbours, but balance that against establishing and maintaining a mob. For the unmolested, there are two sides to the story. Perhaps our sense of moral responsibility is outdated. Blame an unassailable moon.

 

About the auhtor

Ken Poyner’s four collections of flash, four of speculative poetry, and one mixed, can be found at the usual places. He is married to a world class female power lifter and lives with several cats and betta fish in a dreary townhome development. His is a retired information systems warrior. 

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The Night Mayor

 

by Bee Baumann

rum and coke

 

‘Make sure after you mop that you buff the floor, before morning.’ Mrs. Williams’s Junior Crowne’s direct supervisor led him into the staff lounge.

‘You can have some of Letty’s birthday cake, then please clean the dishes before the end of your shift.’

‘I will,’ Juni said and then followed her into her office.  She put her bag under her arm, locked her desk and put her key into her purse then marched Juni out to reception and left in a swarm as the building emptied.

Juni, at once, let out his belt, and exhaled a longwinded breath, went into the staff lounge and eyed the fluffy angel food cake with its white frosting and red lettering that now held a plate full of crumbs and a crumbling ‘y’.

The building which always felt like it was holding its breath too while the woman spoke began to whistle. Juni nudged the silver button for a cappuccino. The machine whirred into action whipping milk and grinding beans, it did everything but waited for a tip.

He took out his phone and called his Grandee, the one who had raised him. The phone rang for the eighth time, but he stayed patient imagining her shuffling across the room from her chair, checking the number and looking down the list of phone numbers and photos that matched the ones she kept in a plastic protector next to the landline. Satisfied, she knew who it was she picked up the receiver.

‘My Word! Hello Juni, how are you doing in Chicago?’

‘Grandee, they gave me a birthday party in the office and I’m eating my cake, now. They all said happy birthday.’

‘That’s wonderful Juni, happy birthday!  You come home this weekend to get your cake from me,’ Grandee said.

‘Of course, I’m coming home. You sound great Grandee, I’m glad you answered the phone,’ Juni said, to his grandmother who lived in Gary, Indiana.  He called her once a week, had scheduled it in his phone so that he would not forget. He missed her corn and hamburger meatloaf and row house that smelled of bacon and cheese sandwiches.

‘Juni, is that you?’ She screamed into the receiver. Juni held the phone away from his ear and answered.

‘Yes, Grandee, you said already… never mind anyway do you have another son calling you every Sunday at 8:00pm?’ Juni asked. She laughed deep in her belly. She sounded well, for which he thanked his stars every time he called-her being in her late eighties and all. This birthday in June she would be 89.

‘You are bad, you know I don’t answer the phone for strangers. I know it’s you I put your picture next to the phone with your number so I can look and see your face and number and know it’s you. It’s just that I get lost in my head.’

‘You know you could have a phone that does that, remembering names and numbers,’ Juni said, he was in his tiny cubicle, belly full from cake, the janitor’s station, unboxing the new delivery of scrub brushes, trash bags, paper towels.  The city hall yawned like a hallow cavity. He was handy man slash security although they didn’t give him anything more deadly than a badge. What was he supposed to do if he was threatened; use the shiny object to blind the guy?

‘Grandee, we can get you a tablet. You can use it to get on Facebook. Once you got Facebook, we can talk like we’re in the same room and I can see you.’

‘I see you now. I’m staring at your picture while I’m talking to you.’

‘Grandee, this will be like we’re in the same room,’

‘We are not in the same room. I see you now and I’m talking to you and imagining what you are doing. I don’t need you trapped in no box, that’s not good for your eyes or your brain.

‘You coming home is all I need. I’m making you a cake for your birthday, too. Remember too much staring into those microwaves will hurt you. You a big shot in Chicago?'

‘Grandee, we celebrated my birthday today and they also gave me a city pin. I’ll show you when I come this weekend,’ Juni said taking one of the city’s pins out of the supply closet and putting it in his pocket.

‘You smart Juni, you going to make them all take notice. You are going to take the world by storm. They won’t know what hit them, Juni, you are going to be in the paper, I’m sure of it.

‘Yep, Grandee, see you this weekend. I love you Grandee. ‘ Juni said, shining his flashlight through the empty corridor and with his right hand he put his phone into his breast pocked beneath the shield he wore. 

Nothing stirred in the hall.  He buffed the floor and dumped all of the trashcans. He stuck his hand in his pocket and the pen pricked his finger. He put the buffer back and walked the hall to the mayor's office.

He imagined an intruder breaking into the city hall and what he would have to do.  He would have to think fast, perhaps fight him off with a bucket and then he would call the police.  He would tell them what happened and he would be given the keys to the city. 

Juni went into the mayor’s office and tested his desk drawer to see if it would open. He wondered what the mayor kept in his drawer. Perhaps some secret about his involvement in business in the city. Juni could follow the clues and bring down a crime ring.

There was no alarm on the window and so Juni stuck his head out to shock his  face. It was already midnight and he was six hours into a twelve hour shift. He placed his flashlight on the window ledge then steeled his eyes to pierce the darkness. Someone might get in. Juni was alone. Perhaps, some drug addict might think there was something in the Mayor’s office to steal. 

What would Juni tell his grandmother about working for the Mayor’s office this week. He’d share that the mayor had attended his birthday party. He loved his Grandee and he wanted her to be proud of him. He played with the pin in his pocket.  That should have been enough, that really should have been enough.

About the author 

Annabelle Bee Baumann is a short story writer and humourist born in Indianapolis, Indiana. She is a communication trainer. She has been published in The Bombay Review, Andwerve Magazine, and Adelaide. She is a comedian and lives in Germany with her partner.

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The Most Important Thing

 

by T.C. Anderson

 a rum and coke on the rocks

 

The expanse of blues and greens and oranges lay before me beyond the window, a painting crafted by some worshipped artist with many forgotten names.

I didn’t see the beauty in it like the others did.

There were whoops and hollers resounding in every ear drum, a toothy grin splashed across every face, a chorus of congratulations and job-well-dones passed around like a hefty blunt. The stale lights of the ship flattened the colors of the balloons. The stoic speaker announcements for our upcoming landing were drowned out by the ambience of chatter.

This place was far from a home – we were mere test subjects in a floating hospital, sent with little more than a wish and a prayer to find the next generation’s safe haven. The palette of colors beneath us seemed to be what we were looking for. But nobody seemed to remember the most important thing.

We were the aliens.

 

About the author 

.C. Anderson is a Texas-based writer and artist with work published in Capsule Stories, Pages Penned in Pandemic, The Raven Review, and more. Her poetry collection, The Forest, was published by Riza Press in 2021. More of her work can be found on Instagram, instagram.com/thetcanderson, and her website, www.thetcanderson.com.