I shuffled awkwardly a moment. Then exhaling, I thrust out my hand. “Thanks for everything.”
He shook it firmly. I could sense he did care. “Michael, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” And I wasn’t. I started for the office door. I could feel Dinjis’s eyes following my every step.
“Michael, she was twenty-five. Today she’ll only be fifteen. She won’t know you,” he warned after me.
I didn’t respond as I walked out the door and down the stairs.
Michael Jenks had a plane to catch.
The entire flight I sat frozen in my seat wondering if this was the time. A fiery, terrifying plane crash. Or once on the ground, a car accident. But no. Southwest Airlines Flight 2995 touched down uneventfully at Dallas’s Love Field at 6:35 PM. I smiled ruefully at the airport’s name. Love. You bet, I was in love all right. I’d fallen so deeply, a bulldozer couldn’t have dug me out. And now I was traveling to see the woman I’d fallen so in love with ten years before I met her. Dinjis’s math had been correct.
Mia Lingo would be fifteen! A junior in high school. Her brother a star running back at JJ Pearce High School in a town named Richardson.
Time was crazy.
I was crazy. Crazy in love.
Even the taxi driver was spouting off about the big game. I recall Mia had been a cheerleader so figured this would be the first place to search.
The driver parked at the stadium. The parking lot was packed. As I paid my fare, he remarked. “Johnny Lingo’s supposed to get two hundred yards tonight.”
I smiled. I already knew he’d break that by a hundred. “Thanks,” I said, and started toward the gates. I only wanted to see her cheer, but the nearer I walked it felt as if an elastic band had connected us and I was being reeled in. A twinge of pain touched my chest. I attributed this discomfort to my anxiety. Hell, what would I do when I saw her? I couldn’t talk to her. She’d think I was nuts. Without me even being aware of my shift in direction, I was moving toward the girls’ restrooms. When I attempted to alter my course, my feet wouldn’t respond. That’s when I knew—I was getting close.
I heard some laughter off to my left. That giggle! Even before she nearly bumped into me, I knew it was her. A teenaged Mia Lingo, joking with another cheerleader over something I would never know about, walked past a concession stand, never recognizing me. I stopped where I stood, watching her, barely able to contain myself from rushing forward and embracing her. Hi, baby. It’s me, Michael. But I didn’t move. Without a doubt, I was looking at the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my universe, as a teenager. No facial scar! I waited until she’d disappeared in the girl’s restroom. Once she was out of my line of vision, my heart deflated like a balloon with a sudden leak. I was a human shell devoid of air. What had I expected? Dinjis’s words mocked me. She won’t know you. And of course, she hadn’t.
The scream was high pitched and echoed across the concrete. People froze staring at one another. Some laughed uneasily, assuming some sort of high school gag.
A second longer scream turned my blood to ice. I raced for the restrooms. I bumped into a female student jettisoning from the exit like she had rocket fuel in her shoes. “He’s going to kill her!” she screamed. “Help! Someone please help her!”
In a flash of glory, the only glory I ever exhibited, I raced inside. For a second I didn’t see her—them—and when I did, I didn’t think twice. Not even for an instant.
The psycho, as Mia would call him in ten years, had slashed the right side of her face wide open, from her right eye to her ear, revealing the underlying muscle and white I guessed was bone. Blood squirted from severed arteries, staining her uniform deep crimson. If I hadn’t seen with my own eyes the exemplary job the Dallas plastic surgeons would later perform, I would have thought she would die. And she would have died if I hadn’t wrenched the crazed addict’s arm away as he aimed for her throat. I didn’t see the pistol in his other hand.
I locked eyes with his. He pulled the trigger.
Real pain exploded in my left chest and I fell back, gasping, “Get the fuck away from her.”
He glanced crazily once at Mia, then me, then stumbled for the door into the sounds of the wailing sirens.
I wasn’t sure how long I lay on my back staring at the tile ceiling—couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds—when I felt a gentle hand take my wrist.
It was my Mia. God, even with gobs of blood all over her face, neck, in her eyes, she was everything I’d seen in the twenty-five year old woman I’d fallen in love with.
“You’re hurt,” she wept. “I’ll get help.”
I clutched for her. “No, I’ll be fine.”
“You saved my life. I’ll never be able to thank you.”
Oh yes you will. “Lay down, you’re bleeding. Put some pressure on your face,” I said weakly. I didn’t have long.
She tried unsuccessfully to clear her eyes. “I’m bleeding? You’ve been shot in the chest!”
I watched her, wanting to ask her so many questions—when did you move to Los Angeles? How did you become interested in finance? How many hearts did you break before meeting me? Her favorite color, hey, I knew that one, cerulean—but I simply stared. I’m glad I didn’t have the strength or I’m pretty sure I would have attempted to kiss her.
As the sirens grew louder, and panicked commotion filled the restroom, I heard her ask, “Mr. Savior, what’s your name?”
I almost said it, but caught myself. It would only confuse her.
It ended there.
I’d saved Mia Lingo’s life.
And ended my own.
I love you, Mia Lingo.
I was gone.
* * *
I stared up at the third floor window. Dinjis stood behind the pane, looking down on Sepulveda. I waved before realizing he couldn’t see me.
The fabric of time had pulled another fast one.
You see, Dinjis had it wrong, at least in my case. The paradox, that is. The paradox wasn’t if you died in your DU, you had no AU. The real time paradox was that if you died in your DU, all you had was your AU. Somehow I’d been transported back to my alternate universe. Popped back.
I had no idea how long I’d been away. After all, I’d been dead for ten years, maybe longer in my default universe. Time really was an enigma.
I took a taxi to the address I recalled. I had no idea what became of my black Ferrari. I didn’t care.
I strolled up to the house, wondering if she even lived there anymore. Had she grown old? Perhaps she’d moved into something far larger, more spacious, a lot richer. She could sure afford it. And what really unnerved me—would she take me back? The ornamental pear tree out front looked different somehow. Instead of one cerulean ribbon, four blew lightly in the warm breeze. The trunk was thicker no doubt and the canopy stretched higher into the sky. I noticed how the roses in her garden had bloomed. But those blooms could have been that spring or multiple springs from that day. I had no way of knowing except to…
I walked up to the front door and rang the bell.
Small footsteps raced from inside.
The door opened. “Hi,” a young boy said.
Something caught in my throat. “Hiya back.” The kid looked a little like me!
A woman’s voice came from where I knew the kitchen was. “Michael, how many times have I warned you, little man, never open the door to—”
Mia froze in her tracks behind the child. God, she hadn’t changed a bit. I took in her scar—damn right, those Texas surgeons had done a fantastic job. Still the most beautiful woman I’d ever held.
“Michael?” she said, confused, and much to my relief, there was a glow in her expression too, like a light had suddenly flicked on behind her eyes.
“Hello, Mia,” I said.
She placed her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God, Michael Jenks, it’s really you.”
Afraid my voice would fail me, I kept it to one word. “Yes.”
Watching her watching me, I realized another paradox. I’d missed so much by being gone. Yet I had so much.
Mia pulled the boy against her, a smile wider than the Pacific on her face. “Michael Jr., say hello to your father.” Then moving back, she asked, “Won’t you come in? I think you have some explaining to do.”
“I’d like nothing more, baby. And I’ll explain everything.”
I walked into my new alternate life.
#
If Alan Nayes was able to travel back in time, he would want to meet the last Neanderthal and ask, “What happened?”
Find him at his website anayes.com.com or follow him on Facebook
The Learner
If you enjoyed Alan’s story, check out his best-selling paranormal romance!
NayéLi has come from the dark side of the universe to learn as much as she can about the third planet from the sun, and to communicate her findings back to her home world. NayéLi is a Learner - and on Earth she assumes the form of a young human female of the indigenous host species.
NayéLi is bound by her rulers' strict laws of planetary exploration, which state that there can be no involvement with a member of the host species. But NayéLi is more human now than she realizes. And she is about to fall in love.
The Walking Tree
Tara West
Manuel’s breath hitched as the slightest displacement of air rustled the leaves on his branches.
The little sloth had fallen.
After he hit the soft ground, a hush fell about the jungle.
“Clumsy mother,” a mangrove whispered.
“He will die before nightfall,” the palm answered.
The babe cried below while overhead his mamá’s heartfelt moans pierced the warm, thick air.
She could not climb down to the jungle floor by nightfall. Manuel knew sleep would soon claim her.
The baby sloth’s cries grew louder.
A troop of monkeys gathered around Manuel’s branches, their howls blotting out all other sounds.
“Hush,” Manuel said. “You will bring The Gato.”
“Better the sloth than me,” a monkey answered before thrashing through the leaves.
Manuel was unhappy. Never had he known creatures more gentle than the sloth and child. Not since the woodpecker. But that was ages ago.
A monkey jumped violently onto Manuel’s branches. “Maybe the ants will get it before The Gato,” he taunted.
Manuel’s leaves shook with anger. “You should bring the sloth to his mother.”
The monkey answered with a laugh before swinging to the next tree.
“Manuel is going soft,” a mangrove snickered.
“Maybe his roots are rotting,” the palm answered.
Manuel refused to answer their taunts.
“We are not keepers of the jungle, Manuel. We are watchers.”
Manuel sighed. “I am tired of watching.”
Though his sight was limited to the small copse of jungle where he dwelled, like all trees, he could also ‘feel’ for miles. Every cell in his frame was so attuned to the earth, he could trace the flutter of a butterfly or the erratic pattern of an ant colony far below the incline where his roots had taken hold.
He could sense the approach of predatory animals, too. And, yet, it was not his duty to warn other animals. He was expected to watch and record, a keeper of time. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Remember the woodpecker,” the mangrove scolded. “Your limbs will go soft if you continue this foolishness.”
The babe’s cries dropped to a whimper.
Panic shot through Manuel’s limbs. “He will die if we do nothing.”
“It is the way of the jungle,” the monkeys resounded.
“It does not have to be.” Manuel said this to himself. He knew the other jungle creatures would not listen.
“Thank you, Manuel.”
The pain in the sloth’s low voice cloaked him like a shroud of heavy fog. Her large eyes filled with moisture as she clung to the nearby mangrove.
“Mamá,” Manuel whispered. “I thought you were sleeping.”
“Sleep eludes me now.”
Manuel’s roots tensed as currents of regret and sorrow pierced his trunk. “Can you not climb down to your child?”
“It will be past nightfall before I can get to him. I am only a sloth,” she spoke through a low sob.
“And I am only a tree. By the laws of nature, trees are not supposed to walk, but I do.”
“You are a special tree.”
“And you are a special sloth. Your child is special, too. Do not let him die.”
The sloth heaved a baleful sigh. “I do not know if I can do this.”
“I will help you.”
“How?”
“I will walk.”
“You are slower than I, Manuel.”
“I am, but I will do whatever I can to save your child. If you love him, you must do the same.”
Without another word, the sloth began her slow descent down the mangrove’s trunk.
“What are you two doing? Have you gone loco?” the mangrove scolded.
“We are saving the babe. What does it look like?”
“You cannot reach him without exposing all your roots.”
Manuel didn’t answer as he put all of his energy into pulling his roots free from the heavy soil.
“Manuel, do you hear me?”
“I hear,” he grumbled, “but I do not listen.”
“It is not the way of the trees. We are watchers,” another walking tree protested.
“Fool,” the trees echoed. “Stop!”
But Manuel could not stop. He could not watch another friend perish while he did nothing to prevent it. Their grief, their loss, he carried with him, down to the core of his decaying roots. He knew if he stood by this time and did not try to save the sloth, he would surely perish, too.
Manuel put more effort into pulling out his roots. He would not rest until he reached the babe.
Beneath the mangrove’s heavy branches, the sloth cried out. He felt her pain electrify the air around him after she’d scraped the soft padding of her foot on a spikey branch.
“I am sorry, Mamá,” Manuel said. He felt the ‘pop’ of the soil beneath one of his roots.
“Do not be sorry, Manuel. Not everything is your fault.”
Mamá sloth had said this to him once before, back when she still carried the babe within the safety of her womb. He remembered vividly the night she clung to his trunk and whispered soothing words against his shaking branches—the night he’d heard the distant cry of a bird whose fate had been so similar to the woodpecker, Pablo.
Manuel strained and tugged at another root until he felt it break beneath the weight of a rock. He repressed the urge to cry out. He knew there was no way he could pull so fast without pain. Below him, the babe resumed his soft whimpers.
“I am coming, niño.” Manuel forced himself to press on. He would not fail the child. Not like he’d failed Pablo.
Manuel had barely risen from a sapling and was still fighting for his share of the sun’s rays when Pablo had first flown onto his branches. He’d known from the start Pablo was a special woodpecker, not like the other birds in the jungle.
Pablo had no mate and had never expressed an interest in finding one.
“I am what I wish to be,” the little bird had said.
Pablo enjoyed his freedom too much. He would not be stuck to one tree or another when the open air beckoned him to take flight.
Manuel was envious. He was tethered to the jungle floor. And though walking trees had the special privilege of spreading their roots, so that they did, in fact, walk through the jungle, it took Manuel an entire cycle of seasons just to move the length of a puma.
Pablo flitted from tree to tree, never staying overly long in one spot or another, but for some reason, he always came back to rest his weary wings on Manuel’s branches. He would tell Manuel stor
ies about the sky and mountains beyond, about a vast body of water called the ocean where giant creatures would swim to the surface and blow huge columns of water from their spouts.
The light above the ocean, Pablo would say, was limitless.
Manuel dreamed of a world where he would not have to fight with one tree or another for a few rays of vitality, and one day he’d mistakenly spoken his dream aloud to Pablo.
The other trees around him hissed their disapproval.
Trees were not meant to have dreams, and if they did, they were not supposed to voice them. Trees were tasked to record the passage of time within their many layers. They were watchers. Nothing more, nothing less.
But that did not deter Pablo. At once he embarked on a quest to help Manuel. “I will find you some light,” he’d said.
“You need not bother yourself,” Manuel replied.
But Pablo would have none of it. He flew up into the sky and then circled for several breaths before landing back on Manuel’s branch. “I have found a spot in the jungle with more light. It is higher up the incline.”
“How far?” Manuel asked.
“At the rate you walk, amigo, it will take you twenty years to get there.”
Manuel’s leaves dropped. “Twenty years is a long time.”
“Not so long.” Pablo shook his feathers. “Not if we work together.”
And so they did work together. What should have taken an average walking tree twenty years, took Manuel only five. Each day, Pablo would fly down and coach Manuel to move a little further, a little faster.
“This way to the light. You are almost there,” he would say.
By the time Manuel had reached the crest on the top of the incline, his branches had nearly doubled in length. The light was so bountiful, he smiled within himself while basking in the sun’s replenishing rays.
Beside him, Pablo began pecking a hole in the trunk of a mangrove.
“What are you doing?” Manuel asked.
“Building a home,” Pablo answered. “It is time I settled down.”
“Are you sure?” asked Manuel.
“My wings are growing stiff. I cannot fly as I once did. I must leave my mark upon this earth before it is too late.”
Manuel sighed to himself, contented as he settled his roots deep into the thick soil. He would like Pablo to have a family. He knew the child of such a unique bird would grow up to be special as well.
The Eclective: Time Collection Page 8
