by Mark Tufo
“Too late?” Lori asked resignedly.
“End of times is coming, Lori. I’m doing you a favor here today. A pretty, stupid little thing like yourself wouldn’t make it a day in the new world that’s about to come.”
Lori’s face began to wrinkle up in confusion.
“Oh, I just can’t take that look of ignorance anymore.” Mrs. Deneaux said as she grabbed a pillow and blew a large hole through it, the exiting bullet leaving the sobakowa-filled pillow and perforating Lori’s slender neck. Her hands did not even have a chance to stem the flow of blood before she fell over, her head hitting the coffee table.
“Do you have any Fresca?” Mrs. Deneaux asked, going into the rapidly cooling woman’s kitchen. “Should have known.” Mrs. Deneaux said, staring into a fridge full of bottled water and vegetable juices. “Oh ho! What do we have here?” Mrs. Deneaux said gleefully as she moved some bottles out of the way. “Glen Livet? That has to be for the nights you expect Winston over.”
Mrs. Deneaux spun the top off and took a large swallow. She took two more swigs before she put the bottle on the counter and walked out, never once glancing at the body of her victim.
She was in one of the best moods she could recall as she pulled into her complex. Usually just pulling into the sub-standard housing area was enough to dampen her mood; not today, though. As she turned the corner to the straightaway that led to her townhome, she had to slam on her brakes, causing the heavy car to leave a skid mark. She had almost taken out her third and fourth casualties of the day. A man had been walking some sort of animal on the back roadway.
“There are laws about having livestock within the city limits!” she shouted at the man once she opened her window.
“Yeah, we’re fine thanks for asking,” the man said, looking at his knees and how very close the car had been to making them bend the opposite way that God had intended. “And for your information Henry here is an English Bulldog.”
“Looks like a pig. Now get the hell out of my way,” Mrs. Deneaux said as she drove past.
For two days she had sat in her apartment drinking expensive wine and listening to music, expecting a heavy rapping on her door at any moment. Even if she had performed a professional hit and left not a trace of evidence at her husband’s, her image would show up extremely well in a half dozen of the high-definition video cameras he’d had installed a few years previous.
Maybe it would take longer if Lori was discovered first to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. But Winston was extremely rich and perceived as powerful. His absence would not go unnoticed for long.
“I wonder if I should have hidden his body?” Mrs. Deneaux said as she took a sip of her wine. “No, that would have looked premeditated, I suppose.”
It was on the third day that she heard the plethora of sirens approaching. “Are they really going to make a spectacle of this?” she asked, looking through her window.
It was then that she noticed the shuffling abomination directly across from her house. She grabbed her pistol, which she had unloaded so as not to appear as a threat to the police, she grabbed it and reloaded. Then she closed her curtains and shut off all the lights, dimming the music until it was barely audible. The wine and the gun she kept close to her.
“So it has started.” She took a swig directly from the bottle.
Epilogue 2
“Will, have you ever stopped and wondered why we’re doing this?” June the biochemist asked as she peered into the heavy glass cage that housed their latest experiment.
“June, you think too much. We’re some of the last humans left on the planet and we’re absolutely safe in this underground bunker with enough supplies to grow old with. We get to do our work without any governmental agencies auditing us or some watch group raising the alarm.”
“Just because we can do a thing doesn’t mean we should,” she said, still peering into the cage.
“That’s not what you said last night. Sorry, sorry,” he said, placating her when she turned an angry eye on him. “You’re forgetting something, June. We do what they ask because if we don’t we become just another expendable mouth to feed.”
June had turned back to the cage and the grotesque animals within. The ashen gray-skinned monkeys looked at the pair; gray, intelligent eyes peered at the humans in a longingly hungry way.
“No good can come from creating zombie animals, Will. You have to see that don’t you?”
“I see scientific advancement!” Will exclaimed, slamming the side of the case, causing a microscopic fracture to form. The bigger monkey in the front licked his lips as the man’s hand came in contact with their enclosure. June shuddered.
Epilogue 3
“It’s been too long, my friend,” my best friend Paul of close to thirty years said as we sat on the couch.
My wife Tracy and Paul’s wife Erin had gone into the kitchen, to get more wine. It was my birthday and the missus had invited some friends over. It was a nice, quiet, subdued sort of party; nothing like the wild ones of my youth. Oh how I missed those! Being an adult had its perks, but if there was one thing I yearned for in regards to the past, a party was probably the biggest; the unknown of what the night was going to bring. Each one a blank slate in my mind, waiting for a memory to be indelibly carved into my ripples.
“It has been,” I said to Paul. “How is it that we live ten miles apart and we never see each other?”
He shrugged. “Come on, man, want to go outside for a second? I could use some air.”
“Sounds good…me too. Henry, hold my spot,” I said as I nearly tripped over the big dog.
“Don’t know what it is about you and dogs, Mike. Cats are so much easier to deal with.”
I didn’t answer. We’d been having this debate for years. I’d tell him how loyal dogs were and he’d tell me how independent cats were.
“How’s work going?” I asked as we stepped out onto my back patio.
“It’s work. Want a hit?” he asked as he produced a marijuana filled bowl.
“Man, I really don’t smoke anymore. This new shit they have out is so friggin’ potent, I have a hard time finding my feet after taking a toke.”
Paul laughed; he’d gotten his medicinal marijuana card some six months previous and had been telling me I should get mine as well. When we’d been in college, one of our biggest fantasies had revolved around the ability to walk into a store and choose from all different types of weed like someone would a pack of smokes. And now that it was a reality, I wasn’t grasping at it.
“This stuff’s not bad,” Paul said as he exhaled a large plume of sweet smelling smoke.
“You smoke nearly every day, man. I haven’t touched it since last June when Widespread was in town…and even then I thought I’d gone for a rocket ride.”
“It’s your birthday, man.” Paul placed the bowl in my hand.
“Fucking peer pressure,” I told him as I brought the bowl to my lips. I took a larger hit than was wise for someone who rarely partook.
“Shit’s called Time Traveler.”
“What?” I asked, coughing out a plume of smoke.
Paul’s words stretched and elongated as he spoke, almost like he was saying them in a car that was racing by. I felt a fundamental shift in my reality, like it had been knocked askew. My eyes rolled back in my head momentarily.
“Oh shit, dude.” Paul laughed. “You look fucked up!” He helped me to sit down.
Henry had come out to investigate. He was looking up at me; his barks also had that in-out, in-out reverberation.
My eyes were spinning like I was a slot machine at a Vegas casino.
“Oh, Paul, please tell him you didn’t have him try the Time Traveler,” Erin said as she came out back.
“Whoa.” I tried to steady my movement despite the fact that I was sitting still in a chair.
“Talbot, your eyes are shining,” Tracy said as she came out; she was smiling.
“I freel frunny.”
“Yeah, w
ell you sound funny too, buddy.” Paul took another drag and then handed the bowl over to his wife.
And then, like an elastic band that has snapped back into place, I felt fine…like whatever had been sent out had now come home. “That was intense,” I said as I looked around.
“You good now?” Paul once again had the bowl and was attempting to hand it to me.
“Fuck no, man, I’d rather give myself a root canal. Now my mouth is as dry as sand. Tracy, do we have any more beer up here?”
“I don’t think so. Want me to go down into the basement and get you some?”
“No, no, stay here I’ll grab them. Paul, you want one.”
“What do you think?” He asked taking the last sip off of his.
I walked back into the house, the brightness of the lights had me grab on to the counter for a moment as I reestablished equilibrium. It was like my left and right eye were working independent of each other, each absorbing an image and attempting to overlap them; the effect was disconcerting. One was always slightly behind the other.
“That is the last fucking time I smoke.”
I used the counter as a handrail. I smiled because I knew it for the lie it was. I just wished that they still had the ragweed of my youth. Not this super-hybrid high TCH stuff. I reached my hand out, having to wave it around a few times until it collided with the basement door handle.
“Stereographic vision would be spectacular right now,” I said aloud; I guess asking the patron saint of vision…if there was such a person.
I was halfway down the steps when the change took place. The sixth step from the top was the plush, brownish cut-Berber rug of my home, and the seventh from the top was unadorned wood—and not finished wood, but rather, utilitarian plywood.
“What the…”
I took another step down; both my feet now on the new rug-less stairs and then I began to hear noise—and not the soft scurrying sound of mice, this was a full-blown party, loud music and raucous laughter. Smoke swirled around my eyes.
“What the…” I started again.
Most of the people Tracy invited had already filed out for the evening. This had to be my kids, but none of them were home…unless one of them snuck back in. But to what purpose? To have a raging party right under my feet? Did they think I wouldn’t find out?
I hastily went down the rest of the steps to put the kibosh on it. I got to the landing expecting kids to go scurrying like mice caught on the open floor when the lights go on. Nothing.
“Hey, man, what took you so long? You got the beer?” Paul asked.
He was about ten feet away sitting at a table that I’d last seen in my parent’s basement. A small glass was in the middle of the table and he was holding a quarter getting ready to shoot it in. He looked a good twenty pounds lighter and twenty-five years younger.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked softly.
“Hey, babe. You alright?”
“Be-Beth? What are you doing here?”
Her eyebrows furrowed as she looked at me. “Did you take mescaline without me?” she asked, grabbing my hand.
“I loved you once,” I told her as I pulled our co-joined hands up to look at them. With my free hand I touched them. “Is this real?” I asked her.
“You loved me once? Mike, are you alright?”
“Do I look alright? Do I look older to you?”
“You just turned nineteen not forty,” she said.
“I just came down here to get beer. Wait…what? I’m nineteen? My oldest child Nicole is twenty-two.”
“You have kids now? And somehow one of them is older than you. What’s going on upstairs? Maybe I should go check it out,” she said, making a move for the basement steps.
I got in front of her. “Um…no that would be a bad idea…my w-wine is up there.” I’d nearly said wife, I wonder how that would have gone?
“Wine? You don’t drink wine.”
“I’m nineteen now, I want to become more sophisticated.”
“Mike, get over here, I’m on fire. I want to kick your ass,” Paul shouted from the quarters table.
“Come on, let’s get some air.” Beth led me to the bulkhead that went outside.
“This is my folks’ house,” I said as I really started to take a look at my surroundings.
“Yeah, Mike, remember? They left for the weekend. We came home to watch Dusty for them.”
“Dusty’s alive! I loved that dog! Where is she!”
“Again with the past tense. Dusty’s fine, she’s sleeping up in your folks’ bedroom. Don’t you remember?”
We went outside; the cool night air was invigorating. “It was warmer upstairs.”
“What do you expect for October in New England?”
“It’s March in Colorado,” I whispered.
Beth wrapped her jacket tighter around herself. “Don’t you want to keep me warm?” she said as she pulled me in close.
“Uh…” I was turned so that I could see the side of my townhome out of my peripheral vision. Tracy walked by the window. I quickly stepped back from Beth. “Did you see that?” I asked, pointing to the window.
“Are you just messing with me now, Mike?”
I turned to look at her. “Once upon a time, I was head over heels for you…couldn’t think of much else as a matter of fact. Then, slowly but surely, I began to see what others did.”
“Oh? And what’s that?” she said as she released my hand.
“That you’re a very selfish person.”
“Why are you saying such hurtful things?”
“I got my first true indication when my sister was working at that travel agency. I told you that she could get us two tickets anywhere in the Continental US or one ticket anywhere in the world. My first and only thought was where would we like to go. I remember you said to me before you had a chance to think about it that you always wanted to visit Egypt. If it had been your sister I’m convinced you would have gone to the Pyramids by yourself.”
“That never happened,” she said indignantly.
“It will,” I told her. “The kicker, though…the real kicker is that next year you are going to get an internship with an ABC affiliate and then you’re going to cheat on me with one of the producers. And not because you have any true feelings for him, but rather as a way to get your foot in the door regardless of the devastation it is going to cause me. I’m going to try and drown my liver in alcohol after you do that. I join the Marines to dry out. Do you believe that shit? Me in the Corps.”
“I’m going to get going, Mike. Whatever you took tonight, I’m just going to wait until it has run its course.”
“Okay,” I told her, not even watching as she walked away.
Tracy was staring out the window in my general direction, but I’m pretty sure I could have had a roman candle shooting from my ass and she wouldn’t have seen it…or me. I went back into my parents’ basement; the same cellar that had seen so many get-togethers.
“Where’s Beth?” Dennis asked, coming up to me. He was holding a cold beer that he handed to me.
“Dennis, you’re alive! I’ve missed you, man.” I hugged him fiercely.
“Dude, people are going to talk,” he said, looking around like he was hoping no one was witnessing the event. Odds were none of them would remember it the next day anyway.
“Dennis,” I gripped each shoulder hard, “you need to listen to me, man. You are one of my best friends.”
“Is this drunk talk, Mike? I love you too, man,” he said uncomfortably as he continued to look around.
“Dude, yes I am fucking wasted beyond comprehension, but you need to fucking listen to me. Write this shit down if you have to.”
“Mike, I didn’t carry a pen and paper in high school, what makes you think I’m going to have one now?”
“Fine, fine…are you paying the fuck attention.”
“Listen, man, you’re like five inches from my face, I promise I’m paying attention.”
“How eff�
�d up are you?”
“Not too bad. Stomach has been a little iffy, so I’ve only been smoking mostly.”
“Alright, man, in your thirties—”
He interrupted me. “My thirties? What the fuck are you talking about? I’m eighteen.”
“Just shut up and listen, for some reason I’ll probably never figure out, I was given a chance here to change some shit. In your thirties you are going to get diagnosed with diabetes, and like the asshole that you are, you aren’t going to do anything about it, and it’s going to kill you.”
“Diabetes?”
“Yes! Now fucking promise me when you get that news that you will do everything in your power to live a long and normal life.”
“Dude, you’re freaking me out,” he said as he tried to pull away.
I gripped him tighter. “Promise me, man, and I’ll let you go.” I was staring at him intensely.
He dropped his gaze and promised.
“No, man, look me in the eye when you promise. Swear on your mother this time.” He was getting angry. “Do it,” I said, pulling him in closer.
Through gritted teeth he spoke. “I promise, now let me the fuck go.” He shrugged me away.
“One more thing,” I said to his retreating back, “invest in Microsoft.”
“Hey, buddy,” Paul said as I approached the quarters table.
“Want to see something crazy?” I asked him.
“Love to,” he replied as he followed me to the basement stairs.
He was a step below me, I had one foot on the plywood and the other on carpet. For the briefest of moments the older Paul was above me looking down and the younger Paul was below me looking up. Both versions of Paul had their mouths agape as they stared at who they once were and who they were to become.
