by Vaughn Ashby
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
2014 Jason: More Macgruber Then Macgyver
Jason waited for his call to go through to Shane. It always took a long time for his phone to actually make phone calls. Each progressive OS update had made his phone slower and more painful to use. Finally, it connected and he listened to it ring.
The light above him flickered, the people lined up on the edge of the light stepped towards him then quickly back.
After two rings, a woman’s voice came over the phone. "I'm sorry you are currently outside the service area, please hang up and try again." Jason dropped his phone into his pocket. He hadn't really expected it to work. He'd seen enough movies to know cell phones never work when you are about to die. Was he about to die?
The light flickered again, and again without surprise, the people tried to move forward each time. Jason pressed his back against the light post. How was Shane going to help him anyway? It's not like he's Superman, his phone wasn't the bat signal and Shane wasn't about to give him some magical Harry Potter like forgeticus spell to get him out of here. He needed more light, and he needed to get into the house to find Jessica. He needed to know why he was here, and he needed to get back to his little girl.
He checked his pockets and other than his phone, badge, and gun he had nothing. He tried to imagine what kind of strange in contraption MacGyver might come up with, but nothing came to mind, he was always more MacGruber then MacGyver.
The light flickered again, only this time longer, definitely longer. The people stepped further but were forced back to the line again.
He considered using the flashlight on his phone, but the battery was already so low. His gun would flash brightly with each shot but he kind of wanted to keep these last few. So he waited, if the light went out maybe he would shoot as many of them as he could while running to the house, or he could just blow his own brains out, but he thought Anna, his daughter, wouldn’t approve of the latter.
The wooden light post was cold against his back, he sat himself down and examined the people around him. He guessed they were doing the same to him. If they were in fact thinking. No eyes, no mouth, no noses, basically no faces. He wished he was shocked about this but having spent so much time with Shane it was almost normal. And he was ok with that. Life before he met Shane, seemed too pedestrian. Other then the birth of his daughter and the divorce from his ex, life had gotten kind of boring. Being a cop was supposed to be car chases and shootouts, it wasn’t. Mostly he did paperwork, wrote up tickets and dealt with stupid complainants.
The ground was as cold as the light post, and his ass was getting colder. There was no way he was going to be able to sleep out here.
Two hours later he woke up. The people were still standing there watching him. He checked his face for drool and got to his feet.
“Who are you people?” he said to the crowd. No one answered, how could they without mouths. “You know I’ve actually seen a lot of strange shit; you aren’t the first or the weirdest.” Again no response. He approached the edge of the light and looked closer at one of them. It was a woman dressed like a normal early twenty-something, her pants hung low revealing pink lacy underwear. Jason wasn’t sure if he should be turned on or not. He looked back at her “face” and decided it was the not. Then he got brave and he slowly poked her with his finger. She moved with the push, then returned to her previous position.
Stepping to the next person he pressed him harder with an open hand. Again the person moved and returned.
He stepped again, this time he wound up and punched the man hard in the shoulder. He-man lost his footing and grabbed at Jason’s arm. He squeezed tight. Jason winced in pain, not at his arm but his head. He could feel the man in his brain. “Help us!” The man yelled in his head. Jason quickly unholstered his gun and fired a shot through the man’s arm. The man let go and Jason stumbled back.
The man stood there as if nothing happened, except for his arm, that was laying on the ground. No blood on the arm or the man. Jason approached the arm, it had fallen on his side of the light line. He couldn’t believe it had come off with one shot. His gun was still out and ready. He kicked the arm with his foot nothing happened. He dropped to a knee and looked closer. It was grey. He had assumed the people around him looked grey because of the dark but turns out they were actually that color. Well their skin was, the clothes were not, as he remembered the pink underwear. The woman sporting them was still over there watching him.
Jason turned to look at her, then back to the hand. It was turning blue, from the inside tiny blue lines criss crossed under the skin. They rippled to the surface and thousands of tiny blue fireflies exploded out of it. They lit the area up in blue light. The people began to move further back, Jason took off for the house. He brushed against a couple of them who were trying to get away from the blue light. He jumped up the steps and quickly turned the door handle. Well out of the protection of the light post he slammed the door behind him, and pressed his back to it. There was no pressure from the outside. No one turned the handle. He moved the curtains on the door to the side, and peeked out the window in the door. The sun was out, no one to be seen anywhere.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
2014 Ashley & Morgan: It’s Messing Up My Tummy
Ashley sipped his coffee, he really hated it, coffee that is. But it was mandatory in his line of work. Cops eat donuts and drink coffee. At least that’s what the research they did told them. To be fair most of the research was from old TV shows, so it was possible it could be wrong. He ripped open three sugar packs at once, and dumped them into his cup. Then he filled the cup to the top with cream and sipped it again. It was much better, even if by now it was mostly warm cream with sugar and a little coffee flavoring. He placed his cup down and grabbed his newspaper, he continued reading the article he’d been reading before his coffee had arrived.
It was a piece about how the town had recently been featured in the Guinness Book of World records for having the most churches per block. He tried to count in his head all the ones he knew about, inadvertently he’d started using his fingers. He was up to ten, and out of fingers when his partner Morgan returned from the bathroom.
“Feel better?” Ashley asked not taking his eyes from his paper.
Morgan shook his head, “I don’t know what the heck I ate but I’m tired of this food.”
“Really?” Ashley took another sip of his coffee, “It’s starting to grow on me.” It wasn’t, he didn’t know why he even bother to lie about something like that.
“Why do we even have to eat it, it’s not like we need it?”
Ashley put his paper down, “Why do we try to put our penis into all these women?” he paused, mainly for effect, that’s what they did on TV so that’s what he did. “It’s what you do to fit in.”
“You’re right,” Morgan’s stomach rumbled, “But it’s messing up my tummy and I just want to go home.”
Ashley sighed, “You signed on for this, you knew what it would be like.”
Morgan clenched his body unsure which end the food was going to try and force its way out of. “I know,” he said.
“Maybe if you tried to eat things other then candy,” Ashley said sipping his coffee, it left a creamy white mustache on top of his already cop stash.
“I just really want to go home, it’s worse here then I thought,” Morgan looked like he was about to cry.
“Pull yourself together.”
“I’m not a cop or soldier, I’m a darn janitor.” They both looked at each other, “I feel like there should be some kind of poop joke here,” Morgan said with a grin.
Ashley burst out with a laugh, “Poop, classic Morgan.”
“But really, this does suck, you know that right.”
“Yes I do, sucks shit,” Ashley said pulling cash out of his wallet, and placing it in the center of the table. He tried to slide it across, but to say the cleaning was low on the priority list for the diner, was an understatement. “Why do we come here a
gain?”
“Cops love diners right?”
“Well, technically we are state police. “Ashley said getting up.
“You mean provincial police,” Morgan corrected him.
“Whatever eh,” Ashley said in his most Canadian accent. “Let’s ride, cop style.”
Morgan flipped his sunglasses down, and grabbed his phone. It was night time but if there was one thing TV taught them was that police always have shades on while driving. They’d assumed it was in the police vehicular handbook of cop stuff. Morgan glanced at his phone, the screen was flashing red. He looked up at Ashley, then whipped his sunglasses off, “Looks like someone is dying to get a late night trailer hook up.”
Ashley laughed again, and the two took off across town. They arrived at Moe’s Trailers to find a group looking for their missing friend. They did their best cop impressions, and directed them to the shitist motel in town knowing full well they wouldn’t go there. They’d find the inn like everyone else, and stay there.
After the rather boring conversation, the two returned to their cruiser, and pretend to be doing cop stuff while they chatted.
“Do you think they are looking for the house?” Morgan asked stroking his beard.
“I think they are really looking for their friend, but I think they may have to find the house to find him,” Ashley replied holding a clipboard and drawing a picture of him and Morgan on it.
“So you think they’ll find Smith?”
“Maybe, it’s more likely he’ll find them if he’s interested in them.”
“I really want to kill him. Smith that is,” Morgan said with a grin.
“I want to kill all of them, but rules are rules.”
“Really you want to kill them?” Morgan said gesturing to Shane’s group. “That Pratt guy seemed cool.”
“No I mean the royal we,” said Ashley finishing his picture. He got the facial hair exactly right for both of them, everything else needed work. “Wait, did I use that right?”
“What?”
“Royal we.”
“I have no idea, my words understand is not so good.” Morgan glanced at Ashley’s picture, “Nice picture cop buddy.”
They pulled away in their car, and rounded the block, where they waited for the Shane and his group. Then they followed them with some amazing tailing skills all the way back to the inn. Morgan called ahead, he asked in his best cop bribe voice to assign Shane and friends to a certain room. The front desk clerk with the crappy values agreed and when they checked in, it was the room Morgan had requested.
They parked next to Shane’s car, and popped a standard Provincial cop tracker on the car. Then they pulled up the laptop in the car, and flipped to the video feed coming from the room. There was Kristen getting ready for a bath, she walked right in front of the camera bare breasts and all. Ashley and Morgan high fived, feeling the time, and breasts called for it, but really they had no idea.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
2014 Jason: He Hated Christopher Nolan Movies
The inside of the house was decorated in a medley of flower patterns, it reminded Jason of his aunt’s house when he was little. The way the flowers seemed to flow and change across the room made him feel as comfortable as a kid. As an adult, he remembered it as tacky and was pretty sure his Aunt had to be blind, or maybe a little troubled, no one picks that much flower pattern for their house.
He slid the little curtain across the door’s tiny window, somehow hoping it would make him forget what just happened out in the yard. The air was thick in the house, he watched as large dust particles moved around in the sunlight.
“Jessica!” he hollered into the empty house. “Jessica, time to go!”
There was no reply, slowly he moved through the house. Looking at everything, but touching nothing. It was a small place, much like his aunts. From the open kitchen, living room floor plan he could see there was a bedroom, bathroom, and what he guessed were stairs to the basement.
He peaked out the window near the kitchen sink. Nothing, and no one outside. He noticed the window frame was well worn, someone had brought something heavy through the window and really scratched it up. He leaned in close and could see burn marks on the window frame too. They were more subtle then the scraping but he knew exactly what those marks were. He’d seen them lots of times. Even in houses this old. Someone had rested a rather large gun there at one point. They fired a large amount of rounds, and didn’t even try to secure the gun down. The burn marks were from the gun overheating. He figured it must have been an older weapon, new ones are designed to avoid the heat build-up.
His interest peeked and he checked the other windows as well. They all had it. When he got to the bedroom he wasn’t overly surprised what he found. Guns, lots of them. The closet held the shells. He knew from the names on the sides of the boxes they were for the guns in the room. Most of the firearms were either laid out on the bed or resting against the walls.
Jason picked one up, it was a hunting rifle. He checked the chamber, it was loaded. If one was loaded chances are they all were. He checked the closet one more time for rounds that matched his gun. There were none. Everything looked to be much older then what he had.
“Jessica!” he yelled, again and again, there was no reply. Had she slipped out another door when it got dark outside? Fuck outside, he grabbed a shotgun from the bed, he checked that it was loaded, he grabbed a few more shells for it and shoved them into his pockets. If that happened again he was just going to use his newfound inventory to make himself feel safer. Was that why there were so many guns here? Did those people without faces attack the house?
He went back to the kitchen and peeked back out the door he’d come in through, still nothing outside. That didn’t stop him from holding the shotgun close.
His stomach rumbled, it had been forever since he’d eaten. Well before the whole fast food place incident. He scratched his head. Had that whole thing been a setup?
Ok hold on, Jason was never one for thinking that required too much well… thinking. He wasn’t his brother, Pratt but he still preferred to watch movies that were easy to follow. He hated Christopher Nolan movies for this reason. So right now, was basically his idea of hell, having to overthink things. Anyways.
Jessica had been able to get the parts for that trailer thing. Had the whole thing been to get him to come along with her? The fry bottom guy did help get the thing from the hospital. And it was easier for them both to get access since he was there. But they could have done all of that with out him tattooing his ass with the fry cooker thing. Why did she want him here so bad?
Fuck, that made him want to get the fuck out of there, and go see his little girl. Damn it, he’d forgotten all about her. Not that it wasn’t normal, it was actually very normal. His brain just wasn’t capable of holding too many things at once. And family often slipped through the cracks.
“Jessica, come on, let’s get out of here.” Again there was no response. “Damn it, this is stupid, why am I here? How…”
Sorry to interrupt. Do you remember that seen in Jurassic Park when the t-rex is coming and the kids watch the glass of water vibrate, showing just how big and powerful the thing coming at them was? Well imagine that but the glass of water is the house. Boom!
Jason felt like he was on some crappy space opera TV show, and had to fake each time his starship was hit, only it was fucking real, and no starship, probably. It was as if the house was hit by an earthquake.
Boom! Another one. Jason grabbed the kitchen counter for support.
Boom! It was getting closer. He looked out the window, and saw nothing.
Boom! No, it felt like it was in the house, whatever it was.
Boom! The stairwell, the sound, the impact was coming from the stairs to the basement. Jason held his shotgun tight and ran for them.
Boom! He rounded the corner to the stairs just in time to catch his balance and to see a toilet hopping up the stairs. Jason’s head fell to its side. Have you ever se
en a toilet hopping up a flight of stairs? No? it looks fucked up.
Boom! It was almost to the top. Jason waited for it to jump again. He pressed his free non-shotgun carrying hand against the wall for support, then when it jumped, he pushed it back with the heel of his boot and the toilet went flying down the stairs. It exploded into millions of tiny white chunks of porcelain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
1982 Moe: Winters In Alberta
Every step into the woods was a step closer to getting my little girl home. Nicole clutched around me as I carried her through the trees. Her shivering almost made it hard to carry her, but the chance of a father ever dropping his daughter was zero.
Winters in Alberta were cold, but I'd grown used to them. The dry air, and well below freezing temperature, kind of grew on you. But this cold was something else completely. I could feel the freezing air chilling my lungs and slowing me down. Maybe that was good for whatever the woman had done to my heart. I rubbed my chest, no flesh wounds but it hurt like nothing I'd felt before. I coughed and brought up more blood. It splattered the pristine white snow red. It was gross to me, even if it was my blood. But what surprised me more was the snow, and that I didn't notice it building up. At one point I'd noticed frost, now it was snow. How did I not notice?
The trees got closer and closer together, and the dense woods slowed our trek but I wasn't about to stop.
After what felt like forever we came to a clearing. I pushed through the trees, Nicole was so cold and tired that she had fallen asleep. My teeth were chattering now. As we crossed into the clearing I could see the sun coming up. Surely we hadn't been walking in the woods for no more than an hour. And it had been no more than two hours since the sun had gone down. My eyes adjusted to the rapidly rising sun and I squinted to see anything.
Finally, I made out the shape of a group of people maybe a hundred meters away. I tried to yell, but nothing happened. Either my lungs where freezing up or my heart was slowing, I was out of breath and couldn't speak. I waved at them but they didn't notice me.
