Tales From the Gas Station 2

by Jack Townsend

  “I didn’t talk to him. He called and left a message with Calvin. Told him to tell me he’s back in town, and he’s going to see me soon.”

  “Why didn’t you call me right away?”

  “I didn’t want to be a burden.”

  “You need to get over that. Understand?” I nodded. “Let me be real for a second, if you end up dying all because you were too scared to bother me, I’m going to kick your ass.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She put the car in gear and pulled back onto the street, adding, “For the record, the reason they couldn’t kill baby frog-nose is because time-turners don’t work like that. The books were very clear. They only work on a closed time loop. You can’t change the past, only experience it from a different perspective.”

  My jaw nearly hit my lap. “What?”

  “Besides,” she continued. “The time-turners were all effectively destroyed during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries in ‘Order of the Phoenix,’ so there wouldn’t have been any left for the Ministry of Magic to use during ‘Deathly Hallows’ anyway.”

  I just got schooled in Harry Potter trivia by Deputy Amelia “kick your ass for looking at her wrong” O’Brien.

  “Did that really just happen?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Limpy. But if you tell anybody what you think you heard, I will kill you.”

  As we reached the end of Main Street, another thought hit me. “Hey, I have a small favor to ask. You know, just to prove that I no longer worry about being a burden.”

  The corner of her mouth curled into an almost smile.

  “What do you want?”

  “Would you mind if we made a quick pit stop?”

  After a few seconds, she answered, “Where to?”

  Chapter Four

  Brother Riley was sitting behind the counter, eating a bag of M&M’s and bobbing his head along with the song in his ears while the overweight store cat, Gunther, sprawled out in front of him and shamelessly licked his own butthole. A pair of large headphones connected Brother Riley to the record player sitting atop the display case. When he saw me walk in, his eyes lit up and he yelled a little too loudly, “Hey man!”

  Gunther immediately reacted to the noise by darting off the counter and disappearing into the back room. Brother Riley lowered his voice a couple notches before adding, “Long time no see. I was starting to think something happened to you.”

  Brother Riley wasn’t from around here, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what made him stay in this half-a-horse town. He grew up in the seventies, and a big part of him never left. These days, his long hair was just as much gray as brown, and his growing potbelly had stretched out all of his old rock concert t-shirts. If you ever got him on a roll, he’d tell you all about his old friends from way back when, before they all passed away or—even worse—gave into “the man.” (I tried not to ever get him on a roll.)

  He was the owner, operator, and sole employee of New Pages, the town’s only book and music shop (and, depending on who you asked, the best place to buy weed). I could tell the moment he realized something was different about me. Although I’d been living with my cast and crutches for over a month now, this was his first time to see me since the attack. The smile on his face switched over to a mix of concern and confusion (confurnsion?), and he pulled off his headphones.

  “You alright, kid? What happened?” He came around the counter towards me, but only made it a few steps before freezing in place. The look of confurnsion turned into a look of unbridled nervousness, like a cobra at a mongoose party. He tried to play it cool as he offered an innocent, “Hello there, Officer.”

  Deputy O’Brien walked in behind me and scoped the place out before focusing on Brother Riley. She spoke slowly, deliberately. “Smells like you have a skunk problem.”

  Brother Riley laughed and said, “Yeah, we got one of them pole cats stuck in the vents last week, and he made a real stink of things before old Gunther chased him off. Afraid we can’t do much about the smell but wait it out.”

  I looked at her, then at him. It hadn’t even occurred to me that there might be any kind of problem when I asked her to bring me here. She gave him a solid stare, then tapped a spot behind her right ear. When I looked back to Brother Riley, I saw him frantically grab the joint tucked behind his ear and stuff it into his jacket pocket before giving her prayer hands and offering a desperate smile.

  “Relax, Woodstock. I’m not here to bust your balls.”

  He exhaled loudly. “Then what brings you into my fine establishment on a brisk winter morning such as this?”

  I answered for her. “She’s with me.”

  More confurnsion.

  “Alright then,” he said, backing away and returning to his spot behind the counter, “Let me know if you need help finding anything.” He put his headphones back on and left us to shop in peace.

  O’Brien gave the place a quick once-over. Then, to my disappointment, said, “I’ll be waiting in the car.” Her hint came through loud and clear: make it quick.

  It had been too long since I’d picked out a new book. I’ve never particularly enjoyed shopping for most things. Buying groceries was a necessary evil. Selecting new clothes always felt like a chore. When it came to furniture, I normally got whatever was closest to the front of the thrift store. But searching for my next read at New Pages was different. I found it to be relaxing, therapeutic, meditative even. The bookstore was my mental safe place, and after everything I’d been through, I needed it.

  I started up and down the rows, waiting for a good title (or sale price) to call to me. I didn’t have anything specific in mind, but I trusted that I would know it when I saw it. Browsing was an important part of the process, and probably the closest thing I’d ever do to hunting.

  I was so deep in the mental exercise that I didn’t even realize I wasn’t alone until a voice behind me asked, “Find something?”

  I jumped so fast I almost fell off my crutches. O’Brien laughed.

  “Jeez,” I said to her, “You scared the crap out of me.”

  “You really need to pay more attention. At least until we catch the guy trying to kill you.”

  “I thought you were going to wait in the car.”

  “I did. I’ve been out there for twenty minutes.”

  “What? That can’t be right.” I looked at my surroundings and realized that I was all the way on the opposite side of the bookstore from where I thought I was. In my hands was an old paperback Western about a corrupt mayor in a frontier railroad town. It was opened to chapter four, but I had no memory of ever picking it up.

  “I’m gonna have to cut our little escort mission short. Today’s been a busy one for the crazies and the sheriff needs all hands on deck.”

  I tried to act cool and play off my confusion, closing the book and placing it back on the shelf, but as I did, I took in the title and cover and noticed that neither looked the least bit familiar. So how the heck did I know what this book was about?

  She snapped her fingers.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “You still with me? I said we gotta go. Duty calls.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead without me? I’ll be fine here.”

  She literally scoffed. “I don’t know how long this call is going to take, but from the sound of it, there’s a lot of blood involved. You’d be stuck here with Jeff Bridges and Fatter Garfield until I’m done, and this place ain’t exactly a daycare.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I’m not a child.” She raised her brows at me, but I persisted. “Besides, it’s not like I’d be any safer at my house.”

  She relented. “Okay, Crutches, you’re an adult. But please be careful and try not to get into any trouble before I get back.”

  I gestured around us at the small store and asked, “What kind of trouble could I possibly get into?”

  ***

  I tried to shake my sense of foreboding and slide back into the groove of
the book hunt, but the mood was all but ruined. Whatever that was just now had left me shaken. Twenty minutes of my already shorter-than-average lifespan had disappeared without warning, and it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

  It was once a common occurrence. One minute, I’d be sitting behind the counter at work, and then time would skip forward, and I’d find myself standing knee-deep in a hole out back with a shovel in my hands and no idea how I got there. I thought all of that was behind me. Was this another isolated outlier? Or was it the dead canary in the coal mine?

  I took a seat on the beanbag chair in the corner and pulled the journal out of my backpack. On a new page, I made a note of my new old symptom. “Lost time.”

  I had to wonder who I was really keeping these notes for. Was I ever going to look back and read anything in this journal? Or was it all going to be collected and studied by the doctors and mad scientists long after I died? Were these thoughts going to end up in a textbook one day? Was some poor medical assistant going to have to go through and decipher my handwriting? Should I leave that person a nice little message of encouragement or joke to brighten their day?

  The lights overhead dimmed and flickered. I held my breath and waited to see if the power was about to go out for good, but then everything returned to normal.

  That’s when I heard something peculiar on the other side of a bookshelf. It was a strong, full-bodied hiss, like the sound of a hundred soda bottles opening at the same time. I looked in Brother Riley’s direction to see if he heard it too, but he was buried in a manga with his noise-canceling headphones doing what they do best. The sound grew louder, then louder, then—all at once—it went away completely, and I was left to wonder if it was even real, or if my hallucinations were turning much more abstract and boring.

  Only one way to find out. I set the journal aside and got to my feet.

  I didn’t know what to expect on the other side of the bookshelf. Maybe some kind of broken water pipe letting off hot steam or a rice cooker that just finished its cycle or a punctured car tire. Of course, none of those things would have made any sense to find in the middle of a bookstore, but neither did a perfect circle of swirling green and black hovering in the air at chest level. I’ll let you guess which of those I found when I turned the corner.

  It was about the size of a hula hoop, with a miniature lightning storm of green squiggles silently lighting up the center in pulsating bursts. Although the ring stayed in place like it had been securely fastened to an invisible wall, the interior was anything and everything but solid.

  “Uh, Brother Riley?” I called out, hoping he’d hear me over his record. “I think you have a wormhole or something opened up over here.”

  There was a small part of me that wanted to know what it was. Where it came from. What would happen if I were to touch it. That infinitesimal piece of my subconscious where curiosity resides was whispering its temptation. Let’s go investigate...

  But there’s a good reason I don’t let that guy steer the ship.

  Once I was confident the mystery circle wasn’t planning to jump me the second I took my eyes off of it, I turned around. My plan was to go get Brother Riley and let him deal with it. This was his shop, after all. His problem.

  I didn’t even make it a single step before I saw the creatures standing there, blocking my path.

  That’s when I understood exactly what was going on… is an expression I hope to be able to honestly say one day. In an act of total desperation, I closed and rubbed my eyes hoping to pull off some sort of mental soft-reboot, but when I opened them again, the pair of familiar-looking creatures were still there, standing side by side at the edge of the row of books, smiling (I think) and staring at me with giant black eyes.

  “Hello,” I said. “Is this your portal?”

  The slightly bigger of the two creatures took a step forward. His skin was dark grey and wrapped tightly around his muscular frame. His pointy ears aimed backwards. Saliva hovered at the edge of his lips as he opened his mouth to show off the rows of triangular teeth, sharp enough to shred flesh. And then, he began to speak.

  “Akyak! Akyaka! Aka yak yak! Akyakakayakyak!”

  The words were shrill and high-pitched. Their meaning was blunt. For no conceivable reason, I understood exactly what the creature was saying. We have found you. You will not escape justice.

  “Who, me?” I asked.

  The designated speaker continued, “AK! Akyaka yak ak yak yak… etc.” (You get the point.) “We have searched for many years, and at long last, we have found you. The stories did not do you justice. You’re even uglier than we could have ever imagined.”

  “I think you have the wrong guy,” I said.

  “Are you not the one they call…” (He legitimately tried to pronounce the name ‘Jack,’ and got pretty close.)

  “Nope,” I said.

  The creature who, up until now, had been standing silently by jumped into the conversation. “This one is very good at deception, but his identifying markers are identical to the one who selfishly murdered our great leader.”

  “Hey! I got these identifying markers from a secondhand shop,” I said. “And what great leader? You mean Kieffer? That was an accident!”

  The one closer to me had a harder time keeping his emotions in check. He took another step forward, pointed a skinny finger at me, and screamed, “You slew the great Akyak, son of Akyak!”

  “Really? I’m pretty sure I’d remember something like that. Who are you supposed to be, anyway?”

  The creature angrily scratched at one of his own teeth before answering, “I am Akyak the Brave. This is Akayak the Wise. You will come with us now to face the Ak Yak tribunal. They will find you guilty of your crimes, and you will be killed.”

  “Okay.”

  “And then... You will be eaten!”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “Now, step through the portal, where judgment awaits.”

  “No, that’s okay. I’m good.”

  “He refuses?” asked Akyak the Brave. “He cannot refuse.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Akayak the Wise. “We are not giving you a choice. You must go through the portal.”

  “Or else what?” I asked.

  Akyak the Brave screamed, “Or else we cannot judge you in front of the Ak Yak tribunal!”

  Akayak the Wise laughed obnoxiously, “Come on, human. Surely you don’t expect us to bring the entire tribunal all the way here to judge you. That would be far too impractical. Now stop making this hard for everyone and go through the portal already.”

  “Look, guys, I’m not trying to be mean or difficult or anything. I just don’t see any kind of incentive for me to leave this bookstore. Surely you can understand where I’m coming from.”

  Akyak the Brave slashed his talons at the air in front of him. “We can make things very unpleasant for you here if you don’t go through the portal.”

  “See, that’s the other thing. I didn’t want to bring this up earlier because I didn’t want to be rude, but you two don’t exactly look like the others of your kind that I’ve met.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Akyak the Brave.

  “Well, how do I put this delicately? The other Akyaks were both…” I held my hand in front of me at about belly-button level.

  They looked at one another, then back at me. Akayak the Wise stated, “I don’t understand.”

  “They were both about this tall. You know? In the Danny Devito range. What I’m trying to say is that they were short by human standards.”

  “Yes?” asked Akayak the Wise. “What does that have to do with us?”

  “Yeah,” chimed in the other one. “What are you implying?”

  “Well, you two both appear to be about four inches tall.”

  They looked at each other again. Then, Akayak the Wise began to cackle. “Oh, I understand now. How hilarious! Your misunderstanding of interdimensional physics is absolutely precious. I forget how stupid humans ca
n sometimes be.” Akyak the Brave started nervously laughing along with him, but I got the feeling he was waiting for an explanation, just like me. “We had to go to great lengths to find a door to your world that still worked. All of the easy connections were already sealed in preparation for your universe’s imminent destruction.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “But we couldn’t allow you to die in agony with the rest of your world until after you had answered for your high crimes. Which is why we conjured a more complicated dimensional access point. Yes, it may appear to you that we are only—how do you put it—four inches tall. But from our perspective, you’re the one who is only four inches tall.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. We can’t both be smaller than each other.”

  “Silly human, if you look across the road at a friend on the other side, does he not look smaller because he is further away? Isn’t it true that, from his point of view, you also look much smaller? This is a basic concept of dimensional relativity. Do you understand? Of course you don’t! Once we go through the portal, we will all be the same relative height once again.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You sound confident, and you’re using some big words, but that doesn’t sound right to me.”

  The wise one laughed, "You are much stupider than they led us to believe."

  “Enough of this!” screamed Akyak the Brave. “If the human refuses to come willingly, I say we bite off his limbs and genitals until he changes his mind!”

  “Hey, come on,” I said. “That’s not cool.”

  Akayak the Brave took another step closer. It probably wasn’t as intimidating as he’d intended, considering how tiny his legs were. He would need to take at least another twenty steps before he was close enough for me to knock him away with my crutch. But he never made it that far, because in an unexpected flash of fur and blood, Gunther the store cat pounced on top of the brave creature and started shaking him viciously in his teeth.