Tempus Fugitive

by Nicola Rhodes

Bjorn gave him a sideways glance full of suspicion, ‘Hmm,’ he said, and added ‘The Masters, by which I assume you mean the gods, are in Valhalla as ever. And, if you do not wish to go and meet them soon, you will keep your tongue behind your teeth – understand?’

  Denny pulled a face to indicate that he did.

  * * *

  ‘Skol, Skol, Skol, Skol, Skol – Skol, Skol, Skol, Skol, Skol.’

  The Vikings were enjoying the new song that the skinny man had taught them, although Herger kept on forgetting the words, and Rethel kept on interrupting the second verse – ‘Skol, Skol, Skol, Skol’ – to belch loudly and disembowel the man next to him. But nobody really minded.

  ‘He’s big, he’s pissed, when he shot he never missed, Beowulf, Beowulf’

  ‘He killed, he died, his boots were all untied, his boots were all untied. All together now – ‘Beowulf, Beowulf, Beowulf - Beowulf, Beowulf, Beo wu-ulf.’

  Some old philosopher once said that mankind is only one meal away from the loss of civilisation – this is bollocks. Mankind, as personified here by Denny, is actually only a skin-full (of mead in this case) away from it, and he had not put up much of a fight either.

  Womankind, on the other hand, is only one sexist pig away from the end of her tether – civilisation had nothing to do with it, she left that behind the first time he left the toilet seat up, and was now heading toward total meltdown – accelerating fast.

  She was not sure how it had happened, one minute Denny had been acting perfectly normally – for him – and the next …

  Not that she had never seen him drunk before, but nothing on this scale. She had, she realised, underestimated the effects of mead on the uninitiated.

  For an intelligent woman, Tamar could be surprisingly dense at times. Even now, she failed to take into account the effects of a large group of men, doing their man thing and letting off steam, on a young man who had been spending too much time in recent years in the sole company of a woman. Denny was drunk and rowdy because he wanted to be.

  Also, he had never before experienced the feeling of being popular among other men; he was enjoying the experience immensely. These guys liked him.

  Tamar was forgotten. She was, after all, in this context a mere woman. How could she understand the need to bond with his peers, get drunk and rowdy and generally act like a prat in order to prove and validate his role as a man? He was, for the first time in his life, “one of the lads”, and it was great.

  Of course, Tamar was not just any mere woman; neither did she appreciate being forgotten about. Perhaps Denny should have taken these facts into account.

  There is nothing quite like seeing the man you love passed out on top of a heap of drunken Vikings with his pants on his head and drool encrusted on his chin, to cool the fires of passion – sometimes permanently.

  ‘Odin!’ she muttered crossly in reference to some earlier songs by the “boys” not all of which had been entirely reverential (downright dirty some of them had been.)

  ‘I’ll give them Odin.’ She raised an eyebrow a la evil plotter. ‘Hmm, not a bad idea …’

  The fact that she had now moved into talking to herself mode shows just how bad the night had been. She was, in fact, in that state of mind people get into after the boys next door have been playing heavy rock all night long at a decibel level better suited to the alarm system of a nuclear power station. Dawn is breaking, silence has descended, you have to be at work in an hour and your brain has been reduced to a kind of irradiated porridge. So naturally, it seems like a good idea to turn up your own stereo to maximum with a plentiful selection of CD’s programmed to play for at least six hours, open all the windows but not enough to allow entry (some people have been known to take the speakers outside, but this allows tampering) and leave the house. (It is at this stage that many people start to refer to themselves in the third person – evil laughter has been known)

  It was a variation on the “stereo at dawn” plan that Tamar had in mind.

  ‘Oh I’ll give them Odin all right, serve the bastards right. Tamar Black doesn’t put up with this shit lying down.’ (What did I tell you?)

  ‘Tamar is nobody’s doormat. Slave girl am I? Huh!’

  Denny, unfortunately, had not corrected this assumption on the part of his new friends and would pay for it later – and for the rest of his life, probably.

  She cracked her knuckles and settled down to summon Odin in her own inimitable style.

  ‘Odin, you drunken scuzz -bucket get your omnipotent arse down here and deal out some retribution.’

  She waited.

  ‘Come ON! I know you can hear me, did you hear those songs? Are you just going to let them get away with that?’

  ‘I’ll tell Freya about your Valkyrie Acceleration Programme,’ she added slyly.

  ‘All right, all right, I heard you, and there’s not a word of truth in those allegations, by the way.’

  Tamar grinned. ‘Does it matter?’ she said. ‘Mud sticks, I don’t think you want that particular story in the Sagas, or do you?’

  Odin’s beard twitched. ‘Damned reporters,’ he snarled. ‘They’ll write anything. All that bollocks about Thor’s appointment. Nepotism they said, they accused me –me! And all that guff about the Rheingold, never heard such a load of …’

  ‘Well, they don’t know any better do they?’ Tamar said soothingly. ‘Just look at it this way, in a hundred years, who’s going to care?’

  Odin stroked his beard. ‘Hmm, I suppose you’re right at that.’

  Tamar kept a creditably straight face and moved smoothly into top gear.

  ‘Freya will I suppose,’ she said musingly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’ll still care, about the Valkyries, I mean.’ She gave him a sly look. ‘How long do you think it would take her to forgive and forget?’

  ‘Odin shuddered. ‘You’ve made your point. What do you want anyway?’

  She gestured silently to the sleeping hordes, an evil grin on her face.

  ‘How about a fate worse than death?’

  Odin looked perplexed for a moment; then his face cleared. ‘Marriage?’ he said.

  * * *

  ‘Oh Lord,’ said Stiles as he realised what must be happening. ‘So … people from here must be getting moved into the other files of history, to make space for this lot?’

  ‘Of course they are not,’ said Hecaté, but she looked uncertain.

  ‘Uh huh,’ said Stiles sceptically. ‘Check the anomalies,’ he suggested. ‘See if it shows anything.’

  ‘But surely …’

  ‘Please, just check it,’ he begged. ‘I really don’t like this at all.’

  ‘There are no anomalies in the first file,’ said Hecaté in a relieved tone.

  ‘Well there wouldn’t be, would there?’ said Stiles discouragingly. ‘Lord Thingy got sent back there, so it’s all back to normal now. What about the next one?’

  Hecaté brought up the file. ‘Well, it looks … oh no!’ she turned to Stiles with a distraught face.

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Stiles. ‘I thought as much.’ He looked at the sleeping Priest, dog, children and huge Viking who had recently joined them. ‘You have to send them back,’ he said. ‘Whatever slight impact on history their little adventure here might have, it couldn’t be worse than the files of history being filled up with random people who don’t belong there surely?’

  Hecaté bowed her head. ‘You are right,’ she said. ‘I had not even considered … How do you do that?’ she said suddenly.

  Stiles shrugged. ‘Humans are just more used to thinking about the consequences I suppose,’ he said.

  Hecaté released the “captives” – for want of a better word, and they all vanished much like Sir Antoine had done.

  Stiles breathed a sigh of relief. ‘That’s that sorted then,’ he said. ‘Now we can …’

  ‘Jack!’ Hecaté tapped him nervously on the shoulder.

  Stiles turned. ‘Oh shit!’ he swore. ‘What the
hell went wrong?’

  ~ Chapter Eight ~

  ‘… Said I was sorry.’ Denny had gone past the pleading thing and was now into the “aren’t women unreasonable, what does she want – blood?” thing. The problem was of course, what it always is. He was not sorry; he would do it all again, and Tamar knew it. She pointed this out.

  Denny held up his hands in defeat. A girlfriend who knows you too well is bad enough, but one who can read your mind, albeit on a limited basis, is a never ending argument in the making. Surely every man’s nightmare.

  ‘Okay, Okay,’ he said. ‘I admit it, I had fun; I’ve never been one of the lads before, I don’t expect you to understand. It’s like you said to me once, people like you, but I’m not used to I, and it … Anyway, the thing is, you’re right, I’m not sorry for doing it. I reckon I needed it, it did me good. But, but – no hear me out. I am sorry that I upset you.’ He opened his mind. ‘Am I telling the truth?’

  Tamar gazed at him intently and eventually pronounced reluctantly ‘Yes, I guess you are. She still looked sulky.

  Denny gave her a sideways grin that made her thaw a little. ‘I suppose that’s why girls aren’t supposed to go on a lads night out,’ he said. ‘In case they never want to see you again.’

  She grinned back, ‘I guess Bjorn and the lads won’t be having that problem anyway,’ she said.

  Denny shook his head. Divine retribution in his opinion was an overreaction, but he did not dare say so, he contented himself with. ‘At least you didn’t make me marry you.’ Then he clapped a hand over his mouth. ‘I m-mean …’ he stammered, back pedalling rapidly, as the look on her face threatened to scorch the flesh off his face. ‘I just meant that if we did … if we were to get married, I would want it to be for better reasons than that, um. I mean it’s not very romantic is it? Er, ahem.’ He gazed at his feet in apparent deep fascination. ‘So, er where to next?’ he backed into a door nervously and scrabbled at the handle. (Tamar’s revenge should at this point be fairly obvious. Much more wondering just exactly what she would do to him and he would be a nervous wreck.)

  * * *

  It was dark and smoky; strange lights flashed overhead, and the room was filled with the rhythmic thumping of a drumbeat and pounding feet.

  Through the murky atmosphere, a hundred or more bodies could just be seen swaying or jumping to the beat like so many zombies surrendering their will to some unseen power. Some moved their heads like pecking vultures, in time to the beat. One came near and stared briefly though unseeing eyes, then moved away as if drawn by some hidden force. Tamar involuntarily drew closer to Denny.

  Then began a terrible wailing, which immediately sent the poor people into an appalling frenzy. ‘Take me,’ it shrieked, ‘into insanity.’ Tamar clutched at Denny.

  ‘What is it?’ she mouthed, her voice lost in the cacophony. Denny looked at her, his shoulders shaking.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ she admitted, but Denny was laughing out loud by now, and most disturbing of all, he was beginning to move like the rest of them, his head bobbing along to the beat. ‘Dream tripper – tripping on my dreams,’ he mouthed along with the wailing voice.

  ‘Oh no, I’ve lost him,’ she thought. ‘I’ve got to get him out of here.’

  She tried to drag him away from the dancers, as he tried to drag her toward them. She won, naturally.

  ‘We have to go,’ she mouthed at him. ‘It’s some kind of cult or demons or something.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ Denny looked surprised; ‘it’s just the nineties.*’

  * [We should not dismiss the possibility here that they were both right – remember in particular 1992]

  Tamar had spent most of the 1990s stuck in her bottle (As related in Djinnx’d) and had never been much of a night-clubber in any case due to her unusual circumstances. (She had attended a ball in 1873 – this was rather different). She was not one hundred percent convinced, that Denny was right, the nightclub still looked to her like a cavern of hell, and if these people were not under a powerful demonic influence then she did not know what. But if Denny was not worried … well, she was.

  They were over by the bar; Denny was jigging along as they were slyly informed – in ear-splitting tones – that, in fact, “E’s are good” – a euphemism completely lost on Tamar. She was just wondering why they could not simply leave – she was sure that these people would not notice if they grew elephant ears and flapped around the room with them. She was wrong about this, they would notice; they just would not be terribly surprised (E’s are good, after all – the power of suggestion is a wonderful thing.) But Denny seemed to want to stay, she wondered why – it seemed like a terrible place to her, and he was drinking again.

  One other thing was troubling her. If this was the 1990s, as Denny said, he was in danger of vanishing from existence. This was a period of time after his birth, and if he vanished, so would she, back into the bottle and Askphrit would win. She tried to explain this to him over the sound of a man telling everyone to take the “Last train to transcentral.” (Q. Were these subliminal messages?) but he did not seem to be able to hear her.

  ‘Come and dance,’ he mouthed to her as the song changed rather appositely to “Please don’t go”.

  Tamar found this suspicious. She shook her head firmly and tried to hold him back, but he swigged back the last of his beer and was gone. Tamar leaned against the bar for a few minutes deliberating what to do next. Maybe there was nothing to worry about, Denny seemed okay, apart from his bizarre behaviour, and at least he was still here, that was comforting. And, she supposed things could be worse – at least thus far, there had been no hint of Britney Spears (maybe this was not hell after all.) Then to her horror and disbelief she found her feet tapping along to “Rhythm is a dancer”. This would never do. She set her shoulders, downed the last of her Malibu and pineapple*, shuddered at the glass and set off toward the dance floor intending to drag Denny out of this evil place – by his shaggy hair if necessary.

  * [in the nineties all drinks ordered by women metamorphosed into a Malibu and pineapple – no one has ever been able to satisfactorily explain this. – Tamar, by the way, had not even ordered a drink]

  This place could get into your head if you were not careful. She could feel the beat pulsing through her bones, the desire to dance was overwhelming (More evidence, she felt, that all was not what it seemed) and Denny was already enmeshed in its iniquitous clutches. (Tamar had a tendency toward unnecessary drama. – she was also spiralling into paranoia)

  As for Denny, he was eighteen again. This is not a euphemism – at least not entirely. One problem that had not been foreseen by either of our errant time travellers, was that should Denny, being a mortal, find himself in a time period within his own lifetime, where he, in fact, already existed, he would become his former self from that period to avoid temporal anomalies, as two of one person cannot exist at the same time. (This rule does not apply to immortal beings and the supernatural in general – no one knows why, but it is probably a rule of narrative flow – the only exception being ghosts, have you ever heard of anyone being haunted by themselves?)

  What had happened was this. The present Denny had been drawn into the aura of the past Denny. This explained why he was having feelings of Déjà vu. He had indeed been here before, except he had not because he was only eighteen, and this was the first time he had been here. Following me so far? Denny was his twenty six year old self living the life of his eighteen year old self. Put in a nutshell, it was a classic case of knowing then what you know now.

  So far, his feelings of Déjà vu were vague at best, and he put it down to the fact that he had been in similar places in his past, maybe even this place, in other words, a coincidence. Things were about to get a lot more specific.

  ‘I thought I told you never to come here again.’ A large man, black greasy hair slicked back, hideous purple satin shirt stretched to straining point on overlarge shoulders was tapping Denny on the shoulder; Denny turned. Behind
the bully was a selection of giggling jackals, all similarly dressed in cheap black suits and obviously pretty pleased with themselves.

  One of them, with bleached spiky hair, and skinnier even than Denny himself, leaned over his mentor’s shoulder, his Adam’s apple bobbing excitedly. ‘Yeah, we told you never to come here again,’ he reiterated, somewhat unnecessarily in a high pitched voice.

  Denny’s head swam for a moment. The sense of Déjà vu overcame him so strongly that he could not focus for a moment.

  Denny stared at this former tormentor his mind racing through the possibilities. This had not happened yet, but still he had a clear memory of it. This was Andy Clay, a monolith from Denny’s teenage years and the author of an era of terror for Denny at secondary school. He experienced again (and also, conversely, for the first time) the feelings of injustice that had assailed him on this very occasion. He had thought he had left all this behind him, wasn’t he a grown up now? Apparently not, because, even though this had not happened yet, he could clearly remember what was going to happen. He would be sent away with a face full of broken beer bottle and a severe inferiority complex. So, why wasn’t he scared this time? ‘This time? – Aha!’ Denny did not really understand what had really happened here, but he did understand what he had now – A chance.

  He stared coolly at his former tormentor. ‘Hello Andy,’ he said.

  A breathless Tamar arrived behind him. ‘Denny …’ she began, then she took in the scene ‘Oh.’

  Denny did not even look round. ‘In a minute babe,’ he murmured. Oh, this was too good to be true. Not only did he have the chance to clean Andy Clay’s clocks once and for all. But also he, and all his cronies had now seen him with Tamar, the kind of woman they would never have a chance with even in their dreams. Brilliant!

  Andy shifted his gormless gaze over Denny’s shoulder and rather predictably said. ‘Hello darling.’

  Tamar, also rather predictably, bristled but said nothing. She had a weird feeling about this. ‘What’s going on?’ she hissed.