Emily Devenport: The Long Ride

Terry nudged Elayne. “I thought you said nineteen ninety-two.”

“I’ve lost two years,” she whispered back, then said, “Does that mean there are two just like you running around in my time?”

“Yes!” beamed Kal.

“And how did I get here?”

“Everything got all jumbled up,” said Ross, in an excited rush. “People got knocked out of their regular time lines and we had to recalibrate everything. But we must have missed you and your stupid little car. You were the anomaly, and when we tried to re-phase ourselves, your presence in this time knocked us away from our ship! We could find you, but not the damned ship!”

“But that’s okay,” said Kal. “Because you helped us find it again. Now you and Terry can go off and have a few days of fun together before the end. Before we make everything over the way we want it.”

Elayne took a step toward him. “You idiots! What do you think is going to happen when you catch up with yourselves in nineteen ninety-four?”

He took a step back, his face stubborn. “We won’t. We’re going to change things so drastically, the time line will simply split. You know, like the branch of a tree.”

“I’m going to have babies, ” gushed Ross, “thousands of them!”

“You’re female? ” asked Elayne.

Ross gave her a dimpled smile.

“We’re populators,” said Kal, gazing at Ross with adoration.

“And you’re has-beens!” snapped Ross.

“And you’re going to get a punch in the nose!” Elayne advanced on Ross, who skipped back screaming, “No! No, you’ll kill us both!”

“Don’t touch her!” Kal wrung his hands. “It’s true, you’ll both die! Horribly!”

Elayne stopped, wondering if it might be worth her life to save nineteen sixty-two. “Just by touching her?” she asked.

“This planet hates us,” said Kal. “That’s why we have to change it. And ourselves! We’re synched into this time and place very precariously, we can only touch nineteen sixty-two things!”

“That’s why we had Terry get rid of your clothes,” said Ross, gloating again. “So you couldn’t throw something at us and kill us. You’ll die horribly if you touch us! All inside out! And that ain’t hay!”

“Now buzz off,” said Kal. “We’ve got work to do.”

Terry put an arm around her and started to steer her away. “We’ve got a few days together, Elayne. Let’s make the best of them.”

“Wait.” She looked into his cynical face, hoping to draw strength from it. “I have to say one last thing.”

“Oh, now what?” said Ross, who had already started up the ramp.

“Kal, I thought you were my father.”

Kal gave her another one of those horrid, sympathetic looks. “Yes, child,” he said. “It was the one thing the box did right.”

“My dad gave me something when I was a little girl, and now I want to give it back.”

“What?” he said, and took a step back when he saw her tugging up the sleeve of her dress and unfastening the Mickey Mouse watch from around her wrist. “I thought you got rid of everything!” he screamed at Terry.

Terry shrugged. “She was stubborn. You said so yourself.”

“Stop!” Kal threw his hands up, but Elayne would not be stopped. She tossed the watch at him, almost casually. He tried to dodge out of the way, and the tip of the wristband brushed his arm.

The effect was immediate and awful. The space that Kal and the watch had shared became distorted, twisting like a whirlpool with Kal inside it.

Ross made a sickening sound, then began to scream like a siren. She started to run up the ramp, but the whirlpool reached out and snagged her too, twisting her into the vortex, snapping bone and tearing flesh as it went. The ship followed, making its own metallic shrieks while Elayne and Terry just stood there and gaped.

The vortex ground up ship and flesh and Mickey Mouse watch like a cosmic garbage disposal, then ate itself as well, disappearing in a flash of light and wind that sent the two humans tumbling to the ground.

Elayne blinked grit out of her eyes when the wind died. No trace remained of the ship or the monsters who had warped time in it. The smell of flowers drifted past her on a breeze, and damned if the birds didn’t start singing!

“Well, sweetheart, you got what you wanted.” Terry put his arms around her and kissed her ear. “You got away from the monsters. But you’re not about to get away from me.”

Elayne looked at him and almost smiled, but then cocked her ear at the sound of voices. “Do you hear that?” she asked.

“What? You mean the birds?” He nibbled her neck.

“No. Voices. Music, traffic— everything. ”

“No.” He leaned back and looked at her. She seemed very fragile, now. Almost insubstantial.

“My own time is calling,” she said. “Maybe Ross and Kal died in nineteen ninety-four, too!”

“And maybe not.” He reached out and put a hand right through her.

“Goodbye, Terry,” she said. “And remember, keep watching the skies!”

“You too,” he said, and watched her fade away.

Terry Cole got up and dusted the dirt from his good trousers. He looked around him, and was happy to see the sky-blue Chevy still parked there. The cash was still solid in his money belt, too. That made him smile. He put his hands in his pockets and strolled over to the car, half-hoping that he would hear Elayne’s voice calling him back. But she was really gone.

He would miss her bossiness. He would miss her fantastic body even more. Maybe he wouldn’t get himself killed in the next twenty years, and he could track her down. Beat her future husband to the punch.

He got into the car and reached for his cigarettes. He took one out of the package and hesitated, almost seeming to hear her voice again, warning him about lung cancer.

Thirty years was a long time. Twenty didn’t sound much better. But Elayne would be a full-grown woman in about fifteen…

Terry Cole threw the cigarettes out the window and drove his new Chevy off into the sunny morning, whistling happily as he went.