Twisted Timelines

Twisted Timelines

Stefon Mears

Contents

Foreword

The Face of Trouble

Forty Years Among the Elves

Frozen

If You Kill Hitler….

No Shortcuts to Fame

Reversing Ill Fortune

The Night of Absinthe and Regret

Trapped in Sepia

The Side-Effect Staircase

Paradox. Lost.

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About the Author

Also by Stefon Mears

Foreword

Growing up, I didn’t care for time travel stories. I never really got into Dr. Who, and the time travel episodes of Star Trek were pretty much always my least favorite.

Kind of weird, when I think about it. I didn’t mind them going to worlds that emulated, say 1920s gangsters, but if they went to the 1920s, I lost interest.

Then, when I was in my late teens, a movie came out that changed my mind about time travel. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. It was goofy. It made fun of itself, even as it was telling its story. They played games with time travel, even as they used it.

But it worked. For me, at least. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

But it got me thinking that if they could have fun with time travel, then so could I. And that’s what I did with the stories in this collection. I just let myself have fun, and write all kinds of stories, from the adventurous to the silly to the dramatic to the bizarre.

Some of the characters in this story travel time deliberately, some are yanked through time, and at least one may not have traveled at all. A couple of others find themselves outside of time, and have to get back.

So sit back and enjoy.

Oh, and be excellent to each other. And party on, dudes!

The Face of Trouble

The Face of Trouble

I never know which face is mine.

In the crowd. In the mirror. I could be any of them. I could be you. And I might never know it.

I wake in the morning. Already a change. Last I recall I was a hospital orderly working the night shift in Nineteen Eighty-Six. I was a big guy then. Hefty, but with at least as much muscle as fat. But it's morning this time, yellow sun high over the fir trees and snowy mountain peaks outside my cabin window.

The glass looks either cheap or old, little runnels of warp here and there.

Did I go backward again? No. I hear a heater click on, smell warmed dust entering the room. The window is caulked around the edges. The log cabin around me is façade.

The girl in the bed is real. Leggy. Dark skinned like me. Blonde. Probably not like me. Rare for this skin tone. She's still asleep, sprawled in a silk nightdress and a mess of plaid flannel sheets. For some reason I don't think she picked them out.

Did I?

I'm male this time, a wiry kind of skinny. And unlike the blonde, I sleep in the nude. Or at least I did last night. I dig through the chest of drawers (also faux log design) but no sign of a wallet. Not on the tree stump nightstand either. But I do find underwear, jeans and a plain white tee shirt that fit me. Plus some silkier underwear and shapelier clothes that probably fit her.

Frankly, I'd rather wear those. Men's clothing is so plain and stolid. Boring. But my body is male again and I need to blend in.

The girl is good and bad news. Good because we're obviously a couple. Neither of us cheating. Well, I suppose this could be a weekend away from our spouses or something, but at least neither of us is wearing a wedding ring. So probably not cheating.

That's good. A couple of wake-ups ago I found out I was cheating on my husband because he walked in at, shall we say, an inopportune moment?

Hard to apologize when you don't know the person yelling at you. Which is the bad part about the blonde. She's going to expect me to know who she is, and where we are, and probably what our plans are for the day. You know, the typical things that most people take for granted. The kinds of things I never know.

Like my face. I could go look in the mirror above the dresser right now, if I wanted, but it wouldn't do me any good. All I would see is my mission. And I'm not ready for that yet. Damn it, this time I want to get my legs under me before people start shooting at me.

Doesn't seem like a lot to ask, but you'd be surprised how rarely it works out that way.

I finally find my wallet and a room key in a light, tan jacket, hanging on a wire hook in a small armoire. Must be summer in the mountains, because even the purple jacket next to mine is light. Two small roller suitcases on the floor, next to hiking boots and tennis shoes. Guess that tells me what the plan is for today.

Good way to spend a vacation. Wonder if I'll ever get to find out.

Colorado driver's license says my name is Jason Ogilvie. It's got a birth date too, but that doesn't do me much good when I don't know what year it is. I do know that this guy was born after the last time I woke up. Which tells me nothing, really, but I always check.

You might think I could see my face in the driver's license picture. Doesn't work that way. I don't see my mission, because the surface isn't reflective, but all I do see where the face should be is what I call the Traveler haze. Like a cloud of green gas around the head of the host.

There's cash in the wallet too, and two types of credit cards. Seems Mr. Ogilvie does pretty well for himself. He also carries a gym card and a couple of others with store names on them, but they don't look like credit cards. Nothing that tells me who Mr. Ogilvie is. What he does. What his hobbies are.

Well, Mr. Ogilvie, I'll try to get your body back to you in one piece. If it works that way. I don't know what happens to the people who host me, after I leave.

Come back to bed, Jason. The blonde's voice is smooth, sultry. It's too early for breakfast.

Be there in a second. I pull on the sneakers and turn toward the front door. I just want to pick up a paper.

Come on, Baby. The words sound taunting more that teasing. They're followed by a distinctive click. The hammer pulled back on a pistol. I insist.

I close my eyes and curse whatever fates managed to arrange this arrival. I open my eyes before I turn around, but I might as well not have bothered. I already know what I'm going to see, and I'm not disappointed.

The blonde is sitting up in bed, holding a forty-four caliber revolver in a steady, two-handed grip. Physically she looks fetching, like the cover of some old detective pulp. I got to read dozens of those on one long assignment. She's even got a sinful smile going.

But none of that is the problem. The problem is the green haze of a Traveler I can see surrounding her head. The same way, no doubt, she can see it around mine. I can make out the smile, but that's about it.

Should have checked the mirror, says the blonde. Now you'll die without even knowing your mission. Talk about a black mark on your record.

You could let me check now. You could let me get next to that window too. Just because we're on opposite sides doesn't mean--

Yes it does.

She pulls the trigger.

I dive for the door. Too slow. The roar slams my eardrums. Bullet hits my shoulder like a meteorite. Spins me around. I hit the door jaw first, slide to the floor.

She's on her feet now. Setting for another shot.

Still holding my wallet. I throw it at her face. Scramble out the door into a disaster: crowd. People pour into the light wooden hall, not all of them dressed. Screaming. Shouting. Looking everywhere. Pointing at me.

I push through them. Good hand first. My shoulder on fire, each stiff-arm to clear my path gets me flares of pain.

I run down a wide sweep of stairs, carpeted now. More loud confusion. People with nametags trying to get control. Parents wrestling with children. Angry faces. Scared faces. Crying faces. But I'm the one with napalm in his shoulder.

Must be why I'm crying too.

Instinct screams at me to run and hide. Get out of the building and find a private place to deal with the wound and find out what the hell I'm doing here. But that's the wrong play. Blondie will be waiting outside. She didn't chase me, so she must have gone out the window. No crowd that way. No questions.

It's what I would have done.

She's got a gun and information. I don't even have a wallet.

I let some bald, obese manager lead me into a quiet room with a couch. The room smells like burnt coffee. I sit, trying not to jostle my arm while he hovers, bouncing foot to foot like he's going to spring into action anytime now. I have my doubts. He's sweating like this is the most action he's seen in a year, maybe longer. He's talking, but he's not saying anything worth hearing.

Looks like a break room, now that I can look around. Round Formica table with cheap plastic chairs, refrigerator in the corner, coffee pot, and ... is that a microwave? I think so. They've gotten small since my last wake-up.

Sitting still calls my attention to the lesser of my wounds: my jaw. Must have banged it pretty good on that door, because I can feel it now despite the burning pain from my left shoulder. I probably wrenched poor Jason's back when I fell, too, which means it's going to stiffen up the longer I'm sitting.

I have to get out of here.

The manager keeps chattering away, so I sigh and tune in, trying to ignore my pulsing pains, the blood all over my hands and arm and sticking my white shirt to my side.

...because if this is a drug thing I demand that you let me know right now.

Wait, what? Drugs? Is this guy serious?

Apparently.

I've already called nine-one-one, and they're sending the police as well as an ambulance. But I'm warning you right now, if this is about drugs or gangs--

Drugs? Gangs? I say. What, because I'm black?

That pokes a hole in him. He tries straightening his atrocious tie, and that seems to give him back some of his courage, even if he looks sweatier and clammier than I am.

I'm just saying that guests at Pinewood do not shoot one another. And that if you're involved in something illegal--

DO YOU HAVE ANY ASPIRIN?

Fat boy seems to remember I'm hurt and his bravado crumbles. I'm so sorry. Of course. You're the victim here. Just let me...

He scurries out of the room and I lock the door behind him, my back complaining now with each step. Idiot probably thought of his private stash of aspirin in his desk drawer or something, and forgot that hotel will likely have some in a central location. Like, say, the break room. Not that I need the aspirin anyway. What I need is a few minutes to myself.

I lean back on the couch. My back and jaw are easy enough to ignore right now, so I focus on the pain in my shoulder. Really get to know its character: hot, yes, but with an icy interior, pulsing, ever pulsing with each beat of my speeding heart.

But I can slow my heartbeat down. Oh, yes. Slow it from a race with just a little more focus and intention, just a chance for my breaths to get deeper. Almost like every breath is pulling in from somewhere way deep in my torso, and slithering back out past the pain, isolating the pain, sectioning it off behind a wall where it can't touch me.

My jaw unclenches.