Weekly Short Story Experiment 1 - Pieces
May. 13th, 2009 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
major_kerinaExperimental story written in just a couple of days to be finished on this Wednesday. I don't know if I'll be able to manage one every Wed. But I'll try to shoot for it and put a couple out. As a forewarning, this isn't a zappy story. It is a sci-fi...kinda pulpy story.
I cursed the broken self-service lines. I’d just come in to the supermarket for a bottle of salad dressing. I usually got the store generic brand of Italian but this time one of the regular brands was discounted. I wanted to be quick about it. I still had an errand to run on 12th street.
My salad dressing rode its way to the front of the moving belt. I took out my credit card and glanced over at the register clerk. She looked about in her teens with a nice shape in her uniform, short brown hair, and far too heavy eyeliner. I’d never seen her before.
I tapped my card on a little area for writing checks. She paused and looked at the salad dressing. She brought a hand under her nose and looked to me. With a firm voice, she said, “No no no. This is all wrong. You’re not supposed to get this brand.”
I could only bring myself to answer, “Excuse me…?”
She said swiftly, “You don’t get this brand. You buy the other one. Then you leave and head to 12th street. You do this because you’re supposed to do this. If you don’t do this…” She wobbled then her eyes took on a strange look. “Then every single human being IS…GONE!”
She collapsed on her feet. The people around me murmured a bit. I was at a complete loss for words. Some store workers swarmed around her.
After a minute, someone came around with smelling salts. I noticed her left nostril was bleeding pretty heavily.
I was quite stunned by what the clerk told me but figured she was just ill or something like that. The manager, in a suit and tie, came over. He apologized in a rather practiced manner. Then he offered me, of all things, a free bottle of the store Italian dressing.
I coughed and shook my head. “Sir, I thank you for your offer but I’d please like to just pay for my purchase and be done with all this.”
The manager touched his nose and massaged his tie a bit. He looked nervous as he urged, “It’s by way of an apology. And I’d like to throw in a free twenty-five dollar gift certificate.”
The clerk was beginning to stagger to her feet. She coughed a little and touched copious amounts of tissue to her oozing nostril. I shook my head again. “Sir, I’m feeling rather unsettled by all this and I’d just like to finish my business so I can get out of here and get on with my day. Please, just the one dressing. That’s all.”
I wasn’t sure why I refused the offer of the free gift card but I stuck to it. The manager leaned his head back and said, “Sir, I’m not sure I can let you leave without the store dressing…”
My head shook slowly as I muttered, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Another clerk passed a bottle to the manager and he held it out to me. It was the same one I’d bought all those times before. Perhaps a moment before, I would’ve taken it from him without a question, but I shook my head again and said, “I’m leaving…”
The manager put himself in my way no matter where I moved. All rational thought left my body. Short of a massive prank, I couldn’t think of a single reason for why any of this was happening. I had to be losing my mind.
I somehow pulled my slack jaw up and reached out for the dressing. The manager passed it to me calmly and all the tension in him and the crowd seemed to vanish. He flashed a polite little smile and said, “Glad to have your business. Please come again soon.”
I walked around him. I could feel the eyes of everyone on me. When I looked at them, they all seemed to glance away. But I could feel them. I had to be going mad.
I walked out the sliding door. I kept a careful grip on the dressing. I made sure I didn’t leave my credit card behind in the confusion. My car was parked near to the front. I slipped inside, still holding the dressing in my lap.
I looked it over. It was the same, damn dressing as always. There was not a single thing special about it.
My hand twitching, I pressed my key into my lock. I set the dressing beside my seat. Looking all around, I backed out of the parking spot and pulled away from the main complex.
I weaved my way around the light traffic and glanced at the truck access area behind the shopping complex. I spied an open trash bin. I looked over at the dressing. A service door slammed open and a burly-looking cook came out with a cigarette and a lighter in his hands. I paused. He didn’t seem interested in me.
Carefully, I picked up the bottle of salad dressing and aimed it to chuck at the open bin. The cook looked down to light his cigarette. I made a throw. As soon as the bottle was airborne, the cook sprinted towards me, the lighter and cigarette flying from his arms.
His face clenched. I stepped on the gas. He lunged for my car and somehow vaulted his way onto the roof. I swerved. I could hear him thumping on the roof of my car as his arms tried to claw their way onto my windshield. I could hear him screaming, “You’re gonna kill us all!”
I swerved and tried to throw him off my roof like I’d seen in movies. But he just clung too tightly. I figured if I could make it onto the streets, I could find a way to throw him.
I pressed down on the accelerator to make it through the exit but a car moved right in front of the opening. Its horn blared and the driver stepped out. I slammed on my brakes and the man on my windshield finally cascaded over the hood and onto the ground.
I mashed the controls into reverse and gunned it the way I’d come. Despite rolling over my windshield and hood, the man was immediately on his feet with the driver running right behind. I couldn’t believe how fast the man was sprinting with his size.
I swerved around for a moment and shifted to drive. The men were gaining on me. I pressed on the accelerator. I could see my way through. It was clear. My heart was finally beginning to slow when a little kid stepped in front of me. He had his arms out like he meant to catch my car. I slammed on the brakes. I stopped three feet in front of him with a squealing trail of rubber behind me.
I watched as the little kid screamed, “It’s him!”
I dug my nails into the steering wheel and I swerved my way around the kid. I just managed to avoid him as I heard the cook and driver sprinting right behind my car. The kid did manage to dash his arm onto my window. I shot out of the delivery area and vaulted over an unbroken curb.
My car thrashed up and down. I tried not to look back. I could see throngs of people running after me. It was like a marathon. If not for the sickly terror in my heart, I could’ve laughed at the absurdity of it all.
I burst out of the side street and merged onto road. The car in front of me suddenly stopped. The car in the next lane also stopped beside me. Soon, I was blocked in on all sides. I could hear the thunder of the sprinters. They soon surrounded me.
I covered my eyes, my car parked in the middle of the street. A hand rapped on my window. There was a murmur. I looked over and I saw a little girl, who looked about age four, cradling my salad dressing in her arms.
With a ragged sigh, I rolled down my window slowly. The little girl held out the dressing for me. She said, “You forgot this. Without it, we’re all fucked.”
I watched her as she held it. Her nose oozed a little red. I reached my arm out and finally accepted the bottle. As soon as I’d taken the bottle, the cars drove away. The crowd dispersed as quickly as it’d formed. Cars soon beeped at me for blocking traffic. I clutched the bottle tightly in my fingers and cursed at it.
I considered a plan of losing it somewhere more desolate. I checked my watch. I had to be at 12th street in twenty minutes. I had to be at the doctor’s office to refill a prescription before the doctor left for the day. But then I wouldn’t have figured on all this shit over a single bottle of dressing.
I drove off and made a left onto one of the major avenues. The cars seemed to abide me on my way. They all seemed to be turning off onto side streets.
I thought. I considered that my sister’s place of work wasn’t far away. I didn’t know if stopping was “allowed” but I needed a voice of sanity in all this and my sister was definitely the most level-headed person I knew.
I pulled into the parking lot and found a spot near the frozen yogurt shop. Angela was manning the main register. She looked right at me as I walked in. I folded my hands in front of me.
Before I could offer her greeting, she winced and touched her head. I took a step back. Angela leaned her head towards me and said, “You. Me. In private. Now!”
A nervous-looking Korean boy took over the register for her as I followed her around a door into a back room with a service door. Angela paced in her white uniform and shook her head. She asked, “What are you doing here, bro? You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Angie…I’m sorry. I’ve just had a really weird day…”
She interrupted me, “I know. I know you had a clerk tell you something strange. I know the manager wouldn’t let you leave. I know there was a weird-ass car chase.”
I gripped my head out of fear it was about to fall off. “Angie…how could you possibly know?”
She clenched her eyes a little and pressed the bridge of her nose. “You already told me in the future.”
My knees felt weak. “How…What…?”
She laughed and said in the direction of the wall, “Because I just said you would.”
I leaned against a counter but Angie came quickly to my side. “We don’t have time. You have no idea how important the next few minutes are to everything. You have the dressing, right?”
I looked at her, crouching in front of me, with a pleading look on her face. I slowly nodded and uttered, “Yes. I have it.”
She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “You have to go and do just what you were going to do originally. I mean…you should’ve just done it. I have no idea why you showed up here.”
I grimaced and said tentatively, “I’m…sorry?”
Angela shook her head and began to pace the room. I started to reach out and touch her on the shoulder, like I always did when she was upset as a kid. But she maneuvered out of my touch. Then, she stopped and looked up at me, “Something’s changed…no…someone’s changed it.”
Angela swallowed roughly. Her gaze pierced me. “I need to make sure you get to where you need to go, even if that means me going with you.”
I felt incredibly lost. I had no idea what she was talking about but I asked her, “If I do what you want me to…then this is over?”
She took a few quick steps towards the door. “Nothing is ever really over but…except for what you need to tell me …that’s all you need to do.”
Angela moved past me and to the service door. “And we need to move…now!”
She hustled me out the door and we quickly made it to my car.
I heard wheels squeal and rumble as soon as we got inside. I turned to look and Angie turned the key in my ignition. She yelled, “Go! Now!”
I accelerated out of the spot, narrowly avoiding a truck vaulting over the curb.
Angie reached over me to yank the wheel and screech the car around. We bumped over an island and clipped a tree. The trunk was right behind us. Angie picked up the bottle of dressing and cradled it like a baby.
The truck kept going over everything in its way. I yelled at Angie, “What the hell is going on?!”
She pressed a few fingers to her head. “You’re better off not knowing. Get to 12th!”
Traffic tried to block the truck but it kept gaining on us. Even when we got to the main street, the cars only tried to slow the truck down. They didn’t close around it like they did to me before.
I went faster. The most of the cars cleared to the side like I was an emergency vehicle. The truck roared behind and pressed against my bumper.
Angie looked behind and yelled, “I need to leave you for a moment. You’re gonna have to deal with present me. Try to keep me calm!”
Suddenly, her head drooped and lolled around. Dodging the truck as best I could, I tried to shake her shoulder. I swerved and her head bounced up, as though waking from a dream.
She looked up, her eyes wide. She immediately screamed at the top of her lungs. I tried to find words to calm her down. She yelled right at me, “Michael!? What the hell happened?” She looked back at the truck grill sparking against my bumper.
She shook her head. “We need to call the police!” She dug into her pants for her phone and looked at her uniform in confusion.
I said, above the roar, “Angie! It’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna take care of everything.”
I saw the street which led to 12th street. I gunned the turn at the highest speed I could manage. I was scared the car would fly off its wheels.
The truck roared right through the intersection like an unrelenting beast.
Angie stared at me in terror and asked, “What did you do?!”
I shook my head. “I can’t really explain it now. Seriously. I don’t understand it. But I guess it’s very important that I get somewhere right now. Hold on!”
There was a blockage up ahead. The cars weren’t moving aside. I didn’t know what that meant but people in passenger seats were flailing for the wheel from the drivers.
I swerved onto the other side of the street. My sister started screaming at me and yelled, “ARE YOU INSANE?!”
I muttered to myself. “Probably…” She beat at my shoulders and tried to grab at the wheel too. The truck burst through a small tree on the median, cracking its windshield. As soon as I cleared the obstruction, I swerved back on the right side of the street. I pushed Angie off me.
12th street was coming up but so was the truck. Angie leaned towards the window and clutched her head. She grunted and looked up. She turned to me. Her nose was oozing blood. With a pant, she asked, “Did I miss anything?”
I merged onto 12th street right as the truck loomed on my bumper. I clutched the wheel and said, “Just you…angry.”
Angie looked back and said, “I’ll get over it.”
I looked back too. “Is this guy trying to kill us?”
Angie bit her lip. “Probably. But he can’t kill us. Temporality won’t allow it.”
“Why?”
“You already told me that message in the future. It means we both survived long enough for it to be told.”
At that moment, what she said actually made sense to me. Sortof. I looked ahead at the doctor’s office entrance. Our father was standing in the way. My mind froze.
Angie cursed and muttered, “I knew it…” Then, she yelled, “Gun it!”
I hesitated. She slammed down on my foot and yelled, “Go through! The bastard will survive!”
We vaulted over the curb. My father dived away at the last moment. I stopped across two spots in the parking lot but it was near to the office. Angie threw the dressing at me and yelled, “Go!”
I ran from the car. I could hear my father yelling after me, “Don’t do it!” Angie yelled, just as loud, “Don’t stop!”
So there I was, running at top speed up a flight of stairs to a doctor’s office. I was being chased by a wild truck and my father, while holding a bottle of generic Italian salad dressing.
I considered for half a step chucking the damn bottle over the edge to shatter on the pavement. But Angie’s words, replaying in my brain but not quite making sense, gave me a clear sense of foreboding.
I reached for the door and yanked it open. I vaulted through the threshold and slammed the door behind me. I panted and looked around.
The waiting room had five people. There were a couple of older women who looked at me with confusion. A man in a suit talked on a cell phone. And a young mother made her child sit away from where I was standing with my salad dressing.
I took a moment of quiet musak and catching my breath before I approached nurse’s desk. She also flashed me a peculiar look before asking, “Can I help you?”
I blanked for a moment on what I was originally supposed to come here for…”Oh!...uh…refill?” I smiled at her. She narrowed her eyes at me and glanced at the bottle of dressing in my hand before answering, “I’ll talk to the doctor. Please have a seat.”
I couldn’t help but look at the door leading out. I expected a swarm of people to flood it in a moment. I expected the worst. All I got was the last bars of an old pop tune wafting in the air.
The man on the cell phone near me finished his call and gave me a glance. He turned his head and asked, “Could I see that moment?” He gestured to the bottle.
At first, I clutched my hand a little tighter, worried that this was something subtle to get the item away from me. But I also wondered if this was what was “supposed” to happen. Keeping my eye on the item, I carefully passed it to him.
He turned it around a few times and said to himself, “My wife has been looking for this brand for a while. She loves it. Where did you get it?”
I told him the supermarket that sold it. He nodded and looked it over before passing it back to me. Then, he made a call. “…Honey? You there? Guess not…Well I’m just leaving you a message that I’ll be a little late because I am going to pick up the dressing you’ve been looking for. Don’t wait up. Love ya.”
I waited till the doctor visited me a moment and then the nurse brought over the paperwork for the refill. I considered waiting longer but I figured it wouldn’t fit with a normal day to linger.
Carefully, I pushed open the door and looked out. Angie was seated on the landing of the steps. The truck was nowhere to be seen, nor was our father.
Angie pressed on her forehead. She turned slowly when I got close to her. She coughed and noted, “It worked.”
“How do you know?”
“We’re all still around.” She winced.
I asked, “What’s wrong?”
She grunted and wiped away a dab of blood from her nose, “Time traveling is a painful bitch. I can’t stay for long or I risk a fucking aneurism. But I figured…I owed you something for all this. Remember to tell me about what happened only up until you met me today when present me returns. But…you have questions. Ask while I can hold on.”
I asked, “Why all this? What did I do?”
“You kept a temporal loop going which is responsible for the existence of human life. Your part was critical but small overall.”
“Human life? What?”
“Too much to explain. Wormholes. Mind-jumping. Lots of crazy shit. Trust me…”
I sighed and asked, “Why didn’t I…jump?”
“Some people are…unreachable for various reasons.” She looked away from me.
“What about dad and that truck?”
She sighed. “Dad disagrees that keeping things the same is…was the right thing to do. Don’t worry, his present self left already. He’ll be fine. Until he becomes a jerk in a few decades.”
“What do I do now?”
She shrugged. “After you tell me what you need to, then that’s it. You’ve moved the pieces across the board. No more excitement. No more time loops. Life goes on as normal in our little part of the universe.”
I had so many other questions but I could see Angie was in a lot of pain, so I just told her, “Thanks, sis. I love you.”
She smiled a bit, despite the pain on her features. She said, with a slightly gasp, “I know…thanks, bro. It was good to see you again.” I wondered on what she meant but she suddenly slumped back. I caught her before her head hit pavement. I cradled her in my arms.
After a moment, she coughed and looked up at me with wide eyes. She blinked a few times. She tightened. “Bro!...uh…wha…oh my…gosh…”
“Are you okay, Angie?”
She rubbed her forehead. “I have such a damn headache. What happened? I had the weirdest dream…”
I looked down at her. I thought about what she told me before. I thought about every word in my mind. And I thought about holding my tongue. I had a choice. But I had no choice.
I opened my mouth.
“Angie…there’s something very important I need to tell you…”
I cursed the broken self-service lines. I’d just come in to the supermarket for a bottle of salad dressing. I usually got the store generic brand of Italian but this time one of the regular brands was discounted. I wanted to be quick about it. I still had an errand to run on 12th street.
My salad dressing rode its way to the front of the moving belt. I took out my credit card and glanced over at the register clerk. She looked about in her teens with a nice shape in her uniform, short brown hair, and far too heavy eyeliner. I’d never seen her before.
I tapped my card on a little area for writing checks. She paused and looked at the salad dressing. She brought a hand under her nose and looked to me. With a firm voice, she said, “No no no. This is all wrong. You’re not supposed to get this brand.”
I could only bring myself to answer, “Excuse me…?”
She said swiftly, “You don’t get this brand. You buy the other one. Then you leave and head to 12th street. You do this because you’re supposed to do this. If you don’t do this…” She wobbled then her eyes took on a strange look. “Then every single human being IS…GONE!”
She collapsed on her feet. The people around me murmured a bit. I was at a complete loss for words. Some store workers swarmed around her.
After a minute, someone came around with smelling salts. I noticed her left nostril was bleeding pretty heavily.
I was quite stunned by what the clerk told me but figured she was just ill or something like that. The manager, in a suit and tie, came over. He apologized in a rather practiced manner. Then he offered me, of all things, a free bottle of the store Italian dressing.
I coughed and shook my head. “Sir, I thank you for your offer but I’d please like to just pay for my purchase and be done with all this.”
The manager touched his nose and massaged his tie a bit. He looked nervous as he urged, “It’s by way of an apology. And I’d like to throw in a free twenty-five dollar gift certificate.”
The clerk was beginning to stagger to her feet. She coughed a little and touched copious amounts of tissue to her oozing nostril. I shook my head again. “Sir, I’m feeling rather unsettled by all this and I’d just like to finish my business so I can get out of here and get on with my day. Please, just the one dressing. That’s all.”
I wasn’t sure why I refused the offer of the free gift card but I stuck to it. The manager leaned his head back and said, “Sir, I’m not sure I can let you leave without the store dressing…”
My head shook slowly as I muttered, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Another clerk passed a bottle to the manager and he held it out to me. It was the same one I’d bought all those times before. Perhaps a moment before, I would’ve taken it from him without a question, but I shook my head again and said, “I’m leaving…”
The manager put himself in my way no matter where I moved. All rational thought left my body. Short of a massive prank, I couldn’t think of a single reason for why any of this was happening. I had to be losing my mind.
I somehow pulled my slack jaw up and reached out for the dressing. The manager passed it to me calmly and all the tension in him and the crowd seemed to vanish. He flashed a polite little smile and said, “Glad to have your business. Please come again soon.”
I walked around him. I could feel the eyes of everyone on me. When I looked at them, they all seemed to glance away. But I could feel them. I had to be going mad.
I walked out the sliding door. I kept a careful grip on the dressing. I made sure I didn’t leave my credit card behind in the confusion. My car was parked near to the front. I slipped inside, still holding the dressing in my lap.
I looked it over. It was the same, damn dressing as always. There was not a single thing special about it.
My hand twitching, I pressed my key into my lock. I set the dressing beside my seat. Looking all around, I backed out of the parking spot and pulled away from the main complex.
I weaved my way around the light traffic and glanced at the truck access area behind the shopping complex. I spied an open trash bin. I looked over at the dressing. A service door slammed open and a burly-looking cook came out with a cigarette and a lighter in his hands. I paused. He didn’t seem interested in me.
Carefully, I picked up the bottle of salad dressing and aimed it to chuck at the open bin. The cook looked down to light his cigarette. I made a throw. As soon as the bottle was airborne, the cook sprinted towards me, the lighter and cigarette flying from his arms.
His face clenched. I stepped on the gas. He lunged for my car and somehow vaulted his way onto the roof. I swerved. I could hear him thumping on the roof of my car as his arms tried to claw their way onto my windshield. I could hear him screaming, “You’re gonna kill us all!”
I swerved and tried to throw him off my roof like I’d seen in movies. But he just clung too tightly. I figured if I could make it onto the streets, I could find a way to throw him.
I pressed down on the accelerator to make it through the exit but a car moved right in front of the opening. Its horn blared and the driver stepped out. I slammed on my brakes and the man on my windshield finally cascaded over the hood and onto the ground.
I mashed the controls into reverse and gunned it the way I’d come. Despite rolling over my windshield and hood, the man was immediately on his feet with the driver running right behind. I couldn’t believe how fast the man was sprinting with his size.
I swerved around for a moment and shifted to drive. The men were gaining on me. I pressed on the accelerator. I could see my way through. It was clear. My heart was finally beginning to slow when a little kid stepped in front of me. He had his arms out like he meant to catch my car. I slammed on the brakes. I stopped three feet in front of him with a squealing trail of rubber behind me.
I watched as the little kid screamed, “It’s him!”
I dug my nails into the steering wheel and I swerved my way around the kid. I just managed to avoid him as I heard the cook and driver sprinting right behind my car. The kid did manage to dash his arm onto my window. I shot out of the delivery area and vaulted over an unbroken curb.
My car thrashed up and down. I tried not to look back. I could see throngs of people running after me. It was like a marathon. If not for the sickly terror in my heart, I could’ve laughed at the absurdity of it all.
I burst out of the side street and merged onto road. The car in front of me suddenly stopped. The car in the next lane also stopped beside me. Soon, I was blocked in on all sides. I could hear the thunder of the sprinters. They soon surrounded me.
I covered my eyes, my car parked in the middle of the street. A hand rapped on my window. There was a murmur. I looked over and I saw a little girl, who looked about age four, cradling my salad dressing in her arms.
With a ragged sigh, I rolled down my window slowly. The little girl held out the dressing for me. She said, “You forgot this. Without it, we’re all fucked.”
I watched her as she held it. Her nose oozed a little red. I reached my arm out and finally accepted the bottle. As soon as I’d taken the bottle, the cars drove away. The crowd dispersed as quickly as it’d formed. Cars soon beeped at me for blocking traffic. I clutched the bottle tightly in my fingers and cursed at it.
I considered a plan of losing it somewhere more desolate. I checked my watch. I had to be at 12th street in twenty minutes. I had to be at the doctor’s office to refill a prescription before the doctor left for the day. But then I wouldn’t have figured on all this shit over a single bottle of dressing.
I drove off and made a left onto one of the major avenues. The cars seemed to abide me on my way. They all seemed to be turning off onto side streets.
I thought. I considered that my sister’s place of work wasn’t far away. I didn’t know if stopping was “allowed” but I needed a voice of sanity in all this and my sister was definitely the most level-headed person I knew.
I pulled into the parking lot and found a spot near the frozen yogurt shop. Angela was manning the main register. She looked right at me as I walked in. I folded my hands in front of me.
Before I could offer her greeting, she winced and touched her head. I took a step back. Angela leaned her head towards me and said, “You. Me. In private. Now!”
A nervous-looking Korean boy took over the register for her as I followed her around a door into a back room with a service door. Angela paced in her white uniform and shook her head. She asked, “What are you doing here, bro? You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Angie…I’m sorry. I’ve just had a really weird day…”
She interrupted me, “I know. I know you had a clerk tell you something strange. I know the manager wouldn’t let you leave. I know there was a weird-ass car chase.”
I gripped my head out of fear it was about to fall off. “Angie…how could you possibly know?”
She clenched her eyes a little and pressed the bridge of her nose. “You already told me in the future.”
My knees felt weak. “How…What…?”
She laughed and said in the direction of the wall, “Because I just said you would.”
I leaned against a counter but Angie came quickly to my side. “We don’t have time. You have no idea how important the next few minutes are to everything. You have the dressing, right?”
I looked at her, crouching in front of me, with a pleading look on her face. I slowly nodded and uttered, “Yes. I have it.”
She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “You have to go and do just what you were going to do originally. I mean…you should’ve just done it. I have no idea why you showed up here.”
I grimaced and said tentatively, “I’m…sorry?”
Angela shook her head and began to pace the room. I started to reach out and touch her on the shoulder, like I always did when she was upset as a kid. But she maneuvered out of my touch. Then, she stopped and looked up at me, “Something’s changed…no…someone’s changed it.”
Angela swallowed roughly. Her gaze pierced me. “I need to make sure you get to where you need to go, even if that means me going with you.”
I felt incredibly lost. I had no idea what she was talking about but I asked her, “If I do what you want me to…then this is over?”
She took a few quick steps towards the door. “Nothing is ever really over but…except for what you need to tell me …that’s all you need to do.”
Angela moved past me and to the service door. “And we need to move…now!”
She hustled me out the door and we quickly made it to my car.
I heard wheels squeal and rumble as soon as we got inside. I turned to look and Angie turned the key in my ignition. She yelled, “Go! Now!”
I accelerated out of the spot, narrowly avoiding a truck vaulting over the curb.
Angie reached over me to yank the wheel and screech the car around. We bumped over an island and clipped a tree. The trunk was right behind us. Angie picked up the bottle of dressing and cradled it like a baby.
The truck kept going over everything in its way. I yelled at Angie, “What the hell is going on?!”
She pressed a few fingers to her head. “You’re better off not knowing. Get to 12th!”
Traffic tried to block the truck but it kept gaining on us. Even when we got to the main street, the cars only tried to slow the truck down. They didn’t close around it like they did to me before.
I went faster. The most of the cars cleared to the side like I was an emergency vehicle. The truck roared behind and pressed against my bumper.
Angie looked behind and yelled, “I need to leave you for a moment. You’re gonna have to deal with present me. Try to keep me calm!”
Suddenly, her head drooped and lolled around. Dodging the truck as best I could, I tried to shake her shoulder. I swerved and her head bounced up, as though waking from a dream.
She looked up, her eyes wide. She immediately screamed at the top of her lungs. I tried to find words to calm her down. She yelled right at me, “Michael!? What the hell happened?” She looked back at the truck grill sparking against my bumper.
She shook her head. “We need to call the police!” She dug into her pants for her phone and looked at her uniform in confusion.
I said, above the roar, “Angie! It’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna take care of everything.”
I saw the street which led to 12th street. I gunned the turn at the highest speed I could manage. I was scared the car would fly off its wheels.
The truck roared right through the intersection like an unrelenting beast.
Angie stared at me in terror and asked, “What did you do?!”
I shook my head. “I can’t really explain it now. Seriously. I don’t understand it. But I guess it’s very important that I get somewhere right now. Hold on!”
There was a blockage up ahead. The cars weren’t moving aside. I didn’t know what that meant but people in passenger seats were flailing for the wheel from the drivers.
I swerved onto the other side of the street. My sister started screaming at me and yelled, “ARE YOU INSANE?!”
I muttered to myself. “Probably…” She beat at my shoulders and tried to grab at the wheel too. The truck burst through a small tree on the median, cracking its windshield. As soon as I cleared the obstruction, I swerved back on the right side of the street. I pushed Angie off me.
12th street was coming up but so was the truck. Angie leaned towards the window and clutched her head. She grunted and looked up. She turned to me. Her nose was oozing blood. With a pant, she asked, “Did I miss anything?”
I merged onto 12th street right as the truck loomed on my bumper. I clutched the wheel and said, “Just you…angry.”
Angie looked back and said, “I’ll get over it.”
I looked back too. “Is this guy trying to kill us?”
Angie bit her lip. “Probably. But he can’t kill us. Temporality won’t allow it.”
“Why?”
“You already told me that message in the future. It means we both survived long enough for it to be told.”
At that moment, what she said actually made sense to me. Sortof. I looked ahead at the doctor’s office entrance. Our father was standing in the way. My mind froze.
Angie cursed and muttered, “I knew it…” Then, she yelled, “Gun it!”
I hesitated. She slammed down on my foot and yelled, “Go through! The bastard will survive!”
We vaulted over the curb. My father dived away at the last moment. I stopped across two spots in the parking lot but it was near to the office. Angie threw the dressing at me and yelled, “Go!”
I ran from the car. I could hear my father yelling after me, “Don’t do it!” Angie yelled, just as loud, “Don’t stop!”
So there I was, running at top speed up a flight of stairs to a doctor’s office. I was being chased by a wild truck and my father, while holding a bottle of generic Italian salad dressing.
I considered for half a step chucking the damn bottle over the edge to shatter on the pavement. But Angie’s words, replaying in my brain but not quite making sense, gave me a clear sense of foreboding.
I reached for the door and yanked it open. I vaulted through the threshold and slammed the door behind me. I panted and looked around.
The waiting room had five people. There were a couple of older women who looked at me with confusion. A man in a suit talked on a cell phone. And a young mother made her child sit away from where I was standing with my salad dressing.
I took a moment of quiet musak and catching my breath before I approached nurse’s desk. She also flashed me a peculiar look before asking, “Can I help you?”
I blanked for a moment on what I was originally supposed to come here for…”Oh!...uh…refill?” I smiled at her. She narrowed her eyes at me and glanced at the bottle of dressing in my hand before answering, “I’ll talk to the doctor. Please have a seat.”
I couldn’t help but look at the door leading out. I expected a swarm of people to flood it in a moment. I expected the worst. All I got was the last bars of an old pop tune wafting in the air.
The man on the cell phone near me finished his call and gave me a glance. He turned his head and asked, “Could I see that moment?” He gestured to the bottle.
At first, I clutched my hand a little tighter, worried that this was something subtle to get the item away from me. But I also wondered if this was what was “supposed” to happen. Keeping my eye on the item, I carefully passed it to him.
He turned it around a few times and said to himself, “My wife has been looking for this brand for a while. She loves it. Where did you get it?”
I told him the supermarket that sold it. He nodded and looked it over before passing it back to me. Then, he made a call. “…Honey? You there? Guess not…Well I’m just leaving you a message that I’ll be a little late because I am going to pick up the dressing you’ve been looking for. Don’t wait up. Love ya.”
I waited till the doctor visited me a moment and then the nurse brought over the paperwork for the refill. I considered waiting longer but I figured it wouldn’t fit with a normal day to linger.
Carefully, I pushed open the door and looked out. Angie was seated on the landing of the steps. The truck was nowhere to be seen, nor was our father.
Angie pressed on her forehead. She turned slowly when I got close to her. She coughed and noted, “It worked.”
“How do you know?”
“We’re all still around.” She winced.
I asked, “What’s wrong?”
She grunted and wiped away a dab of blood from her nose, “Time traveling is a painful bitch. I can’t stay for long or I risk a fucking aneurism. But I figured…I owed you something for all this. Remember to tell me about what happened only up until you met me today when present me returns. But…you have questions. Ask while I can hold on.”
I asked, “Why all this? What did I do?”
“You kept a temporal loop going which is responsible for the existence of human life. Your part was critical but small overall.”
“Human life? What?”
“Too much to explain. Wormholes. Mind-jumping. Lots of crazy shit. Trust me…”
I sighed and asked, “Why didn’t I…jump?”
“Some people are…unreachable for various reasons.” She looked away from me.
“What about dad and that truck?”
She sighed. “Dad disagrees that keeping things the same is…was the right thing to do. Don’t worry, his present self left already. He’ll be fine. Until he becomes a jerk in a few decades.”
“What do I do now?”
She shrugged. “After you tell me what you need to, then that’s it. You’ve moved the pieces across the board. No more excitement. No more time loops. Life goes on as normal in our little part of the universe.”
I had so many other questions but I could see Angie was in a lot of pain, so I just told her, “Thanks, sis. I love you.”
She smiled a bit, despite the pain on her features. She said, with a slightly gasp, “I know…thanks, bro. It was good to see you again.” I wondered on what she meant but she suddenly slumped back. I caught her before her head hit pavement. I cradled her in my arms.
After a moment, she coughed and looked up at me with wide eyes. She blinked a few times. She tightened. “Bro!...uh…wha…oh my…gosh…”
“Are you okay, Angie?”
She rubbed her forehead. “I have such a damn headache. What happened? I had the weirdest dream…”
I looked down at her. I thought about what she told me before. I thought about every word in my mind. And I thought about holding my tongue. I had a choice. But I had no choice.
I opened my mouth.
“Angie…there’s something very important I need to tell you…”
