Timelines: Stories Inspired by H.G. Wells' the Time Machine (25 page)

These things must be impossibly fast in real time,
he thought.

As he reached the stairs again, his stomach wrenched and this time he threw up, each convulsion causing his head to erupt with blinding pain.

“
Power again,” said Brad. “It’s getting worse. I need you to stand still before I lose the connection completely.”

Aaron’s eyes refocused and he tried to move but his legs didn’t want to move. Behind him, inches away was one of the creatures, a half dozen barbed talons extending in the direction of his thighs. The shadowy haze surrounding it oozed over his legs and he could feel a numbness creeping up the small of his back.

He thrust himself away, muscles screaming.

“
What do I do, Brad?” He looked back at the advancing monsters. Doctor Heller kneeling before the machine. His temples throbbed and every muscle ached from the constant exertion of balance and movement. The creature with the package had moved two yards away toward the stairs, passing two more of the atrocities headed his way. “It took the package.”

Brad’s voice was quiet and measured. “Aaron, you have to leave the package for—”

“
I can’t leave the package,” Aaron yelled and then realized that he wasn’t yelling. He was laughing.

“
Just calm down.”

Aaron felt a tingle across his skin and a hum building deep in his bones. He took a step backwards and bumped into a large multi-layered circuit board extending from the console. His eyes widened. “That’s it. I’ve got to destroy the control. They can stop me, but there’s no way they can fix the machine.”

He knelt beside Heller, leaning against her rock steadiness for support and pulled at the largest of the circuit boards. It didn’t even flex.

“
You’re moving again,” said Brad. “Let me bring you back and I’ll give it a go.”

The icy blue light flickered and he doubled over, sharp stabs of pain in his gut. An icon in his visor blinked a warning. LOW POWER. He clutched his abdomen and forced himself upright.

Spiders surrounded him, the closest a yard away. More spilled in through the doors, slowly shifting blurs moving through people and equipment like arcane water flowing around rocks in a stream.

We’ve got to make this work. He wasn’t sure if Brad was speaking or he was remembering, but he was right.

He grabbed one of the corner posts of the control console and pulled himself up, using the extended electronics as footholds. His arms and shoulders protested, not even easing up as he began to climb with his legs as well. Resistance was impossible, growing, as if the universe was determined that he not ascend another inch. Something tore in his right calf and he drifted down toward the top of the enclosure, the last instant ripping by and knocking the breath from him.

He struggled into a standing position, wincing as he shifted his weight uneasily to spare his injured leg. Sweat dripped in slow motion from his face. A sea of blurs rippled outward across the floor beneath the icy blue light.

“
Aaron, just stay put. I’ve got you.”

Two of the creatures were beginning to climb to cabinet, one to each side of him. “Sorry, buddy.”

He looked straight down. And stepped off.

He drifted downward for a long moment and then crested whatever rollercoaster-like delay the physics of this bizarre reality required and hurtled toward the floor.

He locked his leg muscles as his feet hammered down like pile drivers, an inferno shooting up along his nerves.

He body crumpled and he rolled, waves of pain washing over him, threatening to snatch away consciousness.

Something shifted beneath him, slow and hard, like marbles and tree limbs poking and scraping at his skin. He opened his eyes and stretched out his hands. A wall of oily bristles surrounded him, tiny eyes still tracking his descent, unable to keep up. Needle-like pincers and claws stretched. At least one of the things lay mangled beneath him.

The circuit board he’d targeted lay in front of the console, snapped neatly in half, wires and electronic components broken and sticking out at odd angles. Like dead bugs with their disgusting little legs in the air.

“
Aaron, what’s happening? Your signal is getting weaker.”

He wanted to speak, to answer his friend but numbness spread through him, radiating out from the hundreds of tiny needle pricks dancing along his body. His eyelids were suddenly heavy and the crystal blue light was losing its color to growing grayness.

“
Aaron, do you read me? I think—oh, my God—the stars…”

He let his head rest on the slowly undulating floor. They were around him, on him. He knew now they were trapped here. Maybe they always had been. Hungering. Lonely, maybe. Unable to escape.

Just like him.

Everything was cold. He wanted to gasp for breath. The wind on his skin was gone and all he could hear was his own faint thoughts, far away in the black.

by Brandon Alspaugh

They were late to group. Angela blamed her mother, and her mother blamed Angela, but in the end, it was rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Group never started on time.

“
For heaven’s sake Angela, don’t dawdle,” her mother said. “We can’t have them starting without us.”

“
My feet hurt, Mom,” Angela said. “Can’t I…”

“
Absolutely
not
.”

By the door was a raggedy sign that read
Children of the Post-Contemporary – Thursday, 8 PM
. Under that, someone had scrawled in purple marker ‘
Doxies
’.

Inside, the rest of the group were already seated. Angela’s mother found a chair for herself and a stool for Angela.

Andrea’s shadow waved hello. Andrea often sent her shadow to group. The church basement only had fluorescent lights, which meant there were no other shadows for it to bump into.

Angela had shoes that flashed red whenever she walked. When she sat down, Ms. Greer
humphed
. Ms. Greer had a nose like a tree root and a gold filigree chain that let her wear her glasses like a necklace. To Angela, she looked like the sort of sour rat a witch might own, if witches owned sour rats.

“
And what, exactly, does a girl like you need shoes like that for?” Ms. Greer asked.

Angela ignored her. Ms. Greer didn’t really want an answer. So they got along fine.

The room was almost full. Angela never had any trouble remembering anyone in the group. At the beginning of a new school year, she knew every one of her classmates by lunchtime.

Besides Andrea and Ms. Greer, there was Yvonne, who had never eaten food. There was a girl who looked like a kitten but cringed like a bunny. There was Gary, whose smile looked like a smashed cockroach, and there was Oliver, who had a warm furry voice that was shiny green in the right light. He reached over and mussed her hair.

“
Hey kid,” he said. “Great shoes.”

Angela grinned, and kicked her shoes against the stool leg to show them off.

Ms. Greer
humphed
again, tapped her pencil on the badly-stained card table in the center of the room.

It was time for group.

Gary stood up. Gary had one normal arm. The other was not normal. It was fine until it got to the tricep, then it corkscrewed in on itself. His hand was a shiny knobby mass with no nails and a thumb as wide as a matchbook.

“
Last Monday I realized my girlfriend was cheating on me,” he said. Angela heard her mother snicker, inside.

“
All in all, it was a typical day. I was at the south-side Denny’s eating breakfast. Sent the meal back three times. Eggs too runny, too dry…and by the time they’d gotten the eggs right, the pancakes were cold. When no one was watching, I unscrewed the syrup caps at other tables. I did over half the restaurant before the manager came out. He had the picture of me from the north-side Denny’s, with a long list of reasons why I had been labeled a problem customer there. He threw me out. I didn’t even get to finish my eggs.”

“
Real nice, Gary,” muttered Oliver.

Smirking like a child who pulls the wings off baby birds, Gary continued. “Anyway, my girlfriend. That little slut. My antennae had been up for weeks. And I could smell the stink of the lawn boy in her hair. I had to open the windows to let it out. She’s allergic to bees, and our yard is full of them. So she would never have gone out to him. He had to come to her. I don’t blame her. She’s only human.”

“
That doesn’t
bug
you?” Oliver asked.

“
Hush, Mr. Spare,” snapped Ms. Grier. “This is a
support
group.”

Angela caught a waspish flare of anger from Gary, but he didn’t show it. “I wouldn’t blame any of you for being jealous. By any measure—population, adaptability, territories occupied—insects already control the world. I’m living proof that one day, hardy Coleopteroids like my father will take over. After the next war, it’s either us or Twinkies.”

“
On the drive to my bookstore, I took the route with as many right-turn-only lanes as possible. At the last moment, I’d cut from them to the left-most lane. Let me tell you, the horns are better than any early-morning radio show. I made sure they could all see me on my cell phone, ordering a dozen daisies for my girlfriend.”

The group was a yellow muddle of confusion. Angela blinked—it hurt her eyes.

“
That was very positive of you,” said Ms. Grier.

“
Hmm? Oh. Well, you see, bees love daisies,” said Gary. “And with all those open windows…well.”

Angela wasn’t sure why, but the group’s yellow muddle slurred away as if someone had spilt icy white paint into it.

“
When I got to the bookstore, I let Fenton out. He hurried out to wherever he goes during the day. As usual, he’d done a great job on the shelves, and made a beautiful pyramid of the new Caitlin R. Kiernan books. I don’t know how I got along before I started locking in an obsessive-compulsive at night.”

Through the yellow and white and ice, a crack in her mother’s mind, light from under a door, a seam in a folded-up memory. Angela tiptoed up to its edge, very slowly, and peeked inside…

Every so often, someone in the hotel ballroom would notice Bella. Most looked confused, but content to ignore her. A few crossed to her corner to peek at the canvas.

“
That’s wild,” one of the men said to her, almost tipping his Diet Coke over with the gesture towards the painting.

Bella peered at him as if trying to make him out through binoculars. “Thanks.” Curls of honey blonde hair framed her painter’s squint. She pushed them away with blue-stained fingers.

He wasn’t done. “It’s got some great color. Like it’s moving across the painting.” He glanced around, complete in his awkwardness, finally setting his drink down and wiping his hand before thrusting it at her like a yardstick. “I’m Jim,” he said.

Bella had already turned back to her canvas, but took two of his fingers in her left hand and waggled them. “Bella Dunleavy.”

“
Get you a drink, Bella?”

“
No thanks, um, John,” Bella said, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes as she arced a snatch of blue back onto itself. “I paint better with a clear head.”

The wedding had everything she was looking for: high energy and emotion, a large group of people she did not know, and an open bar to keep things interesting. The hotel manager had promised that if she stayed out of the way, Bella could paint it. So Bella stayed out of the way. She didn’t even laugh when the fat Italian uncle fell dead drunk into the piano.

The people that caught her eye she painted with slashes of color. The bride was three royal blue lines, looking like a slanting backwards
E
missing its middle stroke, waved in the center, while a curvier triple-helix of red burnt to her left, representing the groom.

Each person was a tiny live wire of color. Bella ignored the furniture and floor, penciling in only the barest rudiments of ballroom geography to keep the perspective straight in her own head.

Bella looked over to her left. Jim was still standing there, picking at the pocket flaps of his suit.

She sighed.

“
You’re a friend of the groom’s?” she said, daubing the words with fake interest before saying them.

Jim nodded, and his eyes perked. “Yeah. Yeah, Todd and I were in the same frat. I was telling that videographer guy walking around earlier…we actually met when he was going crazy at 2 AM on a Sunday morning, looking for some baby spinach…”

Bella let Jim’s voice fade into the vague susurrus of the ballroom’s background chatter. Across the room, she saw the photographer. When their eyes met, he glared at her like a cougar at the edge of his territory.

“…
so anyway, I’m always getting dinged for under-utilizing my decorating expense account, and love the use of color. Really juice up the whole brokerage. Do you have a dealer you work through, or…?” He left the question hanging.

Bella turned back to him and blinked. “I’m sorry?”

Jim already had out a gold-embossed checkbook. “Look, I’d hate to lose this to someone who just picks it out of a gallery. I mean, I was here for the birth, right?” He flashed her what she took to be his deal-closing smile. “I think that ought to earn me a few brownie points. Say four thousand?”