Category: Writing

The darkness was pervasive. It was a living thing, oozing and sucking about among the trees, working its fingers through the underbrush and around the tree roots. It was also in the air, flicking and flying lightly around the boughs and in the crowns, silent birds nestled into their hallows paying the dark no mind. There was a dichotomy of the dark being both the tentacled monster of the ground, and the mist in the air, both present and harmonious, yet acting so different. They were the same.

I saw the dark for what it was. Not an absence of light, but a living thing.

As a child, the darkness would come every evening, and my father and mother would shutter the house, stir the hearth, and go about their business. In the winter, we were further removed from the dark, even though it lasted longer through the day and night. The house would stay shut, and I foolishly thought the dark ‘out there’ would have a harder time getting ‘in here’. The summer was scarier for me. My parents would keep the windows open long into the night, and the screens would only keep the bugs out. It would not keep the dark ‘out there’. My nightmares were always the worst in the summer.

When I went to camp as a preteen, I saw the darkness eat for the first time. I was at the camp fire with fifty of my classmates, and we sat laughing and talking in our ring of fire light. I was uncomfortable being out in the dark, and I thought I was outgrowing the fear of the dark. I thought I was finally maturing to the point where I would leave such childish things behind. But as I sat there, watching the sparks travel upwards in one of those inevitable lulls in conversation and carrying on, I saw an owl sitting on a branch watching me. Not the group. Me.

It’s eyes were tawny brown, nestled in the white and brown speckled feathers of the plumage of a common barn owl. Next to it, another owl, made of inky blackness. I thought at first it was the firelight shadow of the owl, but it was not. It was a simile of the owl… a shifted copy of it. As I watched, the brown owl faded, becoming less and less real. And the dark owl, the fake, it became all the more solid. It was but a shadow, but as it formed, it gained depth and mass, and its eyes went from an absence of dark to a deep black, reflecting the fire below.

I screamed in terror. My scream wrenched my throat, tearing at my vocal cords, my breath exploding out of me so fiercely that I was a bomb in detonation, my lungs felt near collapse with the violent expulsion.

My classmates startled and shrunk away, some falling off their perches on logs and timber, others standing, readying themselves for flight or fight. My mouth remained open as the scream faded to nothingness and my body finally remembered it could move. I shot upwards and ran like a lightening bolt to the cabins to cower under my covers fully clothed until morning.

Two things happened that night with the owl. My nickname became Screech, and my hair turned completely white. I was twelve when that happened, twelve. When my parents were called, I had to deal with years of therapy afterwards. Years of telling nodding old men and crotchety women what they wanted to hear.

I would like to say that was the last time I saw the darkness for what it was. Or I should say, see what hid in the darkness. As I got older, the therapy helped me realize I only had one chance in all this. Ironically, it was the therapist studying me that opened the realization to me. I could study the darkness, understand it, and perhaps fight it… or I could cower to nothingness. I could do something about it, or fail to do anything. I took the nickname as a reminder of what I was meant to do. It became a part of my identity.

I was Screech. My arms slowly became covered in tattoo sleeves of owls in all shapes and sizes. I never let my white hair grow out, keeping it closely cropped, the white stubble looking more blond than anything. Now being 24, and studying the darkness that I see, I can tell you what I have found.

The darkness is not some ancient evil. It is not a demon, or Satan, or some form of destruction and death. It is not an incomprehensible strangeness that would drive men mad. It is none of these things. It is in need of someone to understand it.

I was chosen to be that person. So I stand here, at the edge of my parent’s old cabin in the tangled old wood of British Columbia, watching the darkness approach between the trees. I extinguished all the lights long ago, waiting for the sun to set far behind me in the west. I stood a few paces from the porch, in the open area where we usually parked the family truck when we drove out here to vacation away from the hustle of Vancouver in the summers. I always was in fear of the darkness as it approached through the trees. Tonight, I stood before it.

I would like to say I was defiant or courageous. I was neither. I stood waiting my guest as a death row inmate would the executioner. I was resigned to it. After all my study, all my reading, and all of my thought about this, I knew that the confrontation was inevitable. I would have to not only face my fears, I would have to face the source of them as well.

The darkness was tentative, flicking in among the trees, running its fingers over the underbrush, moving from shadow to shadow, pushing itself towards my open area. It reached the edge of the grass and hung in the air like a curtain. Night within night. But the hesitation belied of something else, as it seemed that the fear may have been a two way street.

“I see you,” I called out.

“I see you,” the voice mimicked. It was soft, gentle, like a soft caress of a lover.

“I am not afraid,” I tried. It was…

“A lie,” the voice finished my internal thought for me.

“I am afraid. But I am not going to let that fear keep me from this,” I corrected.

The curtain waved lightly as if a breeze moved over it’s surface. There was no wind tonight, it was still. It was if the darkness regarded me. I smiled inwardly at the thought of it studying me.

“I am Screech,” I said.

“I want to know your real name,” the voice returned.

“Why?”

Silence.

“My name is Brian.”

“Why did you not like my owl, Brian? I made it for you.” The voice sounded sad.

“The owl that you killed?”

“I did not kill anything. That owl was my friend. Her name was Saskeneah. She died years later of old age, and I carried her to her ancestors on the highest branches of the forest.”

“I…” I did not understand. “Why did you make an owl?”

“I wanted to show you that I saw you, Brian.” The curtain lowered itself to the edge of the grass and folded around itself until a woman stood at the edge of the grass. Her skin was like moonlight, with hair of molten evening, stars dancing within it. Her eyes were luminous, with dark black irises that could see through anything. Including me.

And I realized that the thing that I had feared for most of my life was beautiful. She stood, draped in what was the curtain, only her hands, her bare feet, and her neck were visible from the shifting robes that adorned her lithe frame.

“You did not tell me your name,” I asked furtively. I ran a hand over my shaved head absentmindedly. I felt suddenly out of place, my feet shifting in the grass.

She grinned at my discomfort. “It is very long in my tribe’s mother tongue. But you can call me Unnuaq.”

“Unnakwok?”

“Close enough, Bareen.”

“You are teasing me,” I felt a smirk turn the corner of my mouth. “Say it again?”

Her voice was light, not a whisper, like the quiet slice of a wing on the air. “Unnuaq.”

“Unnuaq.”

She smiled widely at her name falling from my lips, her own parted to reveal perfect teeth. “Yes.”

“Why?” I finally asked. The question that I had held on to for fourteen years, and I was finally able to ask it.

“Why does the sun rise and the wind blow? Why do things grow and die?” She murmured. “I do not know. I know that I came to be, as you know you have come to be. We were birthed from parents who loved us, we were raised to observe and understand, so we can survive ourselves. We are no different from each other.”

“But I can see you, Unnuaq.”

“And I can see you,” she smiled gently. “Don’t ask why. Seeing is enough.”

I started to chuckle, and it shifted to a laugh. It surprised me. “All these years. All this time… I was afraid. I was… oh nevermind.”

“Me too.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I had a boy see me. See me! I… showed you a gift. An owl that I made from myself, a precious gift for my kind. And you screamed in fear. It broke my heart. I have been waiting all these years to ask you…” Unnuaq demurred.

“Why?” I finished for her.

“Yes,” her eyes focused on my face and she stepped closer, her bare feet barely touching the grass. She was not standing on the ground, she was deigning to alight her feet upon it.

“Don’t ask why,” I replied in kind, mirroring her own declaration. “I was a child that did not understand. And I will be honest, I still do not understand… this… but I would like to.”

“As would I,” she nodded, and her hair shifted forward, twinkling in the light. She raised a hand and pulled it behind her ear. Again, I suddenly felt very much out of place. “I, uh… would you like some tea?”

“I would love some tea,” Unnuaq laughed. She seemed as uncomfortable as I was.

I offered my hand.

Unnuaq took it.

As you know my father was a novelist. He called me into his study one day, it was raining, the air in the house smelled of cinnamon and walnuts. I had just come home from school, a typical Tuesday for a high school student. I had ran the mile in second period, so my clothes all had the latent stink hanging about them as if I had suddenly discovered homelessness that day. My girlfriend at the time was out of town with her parents for their Thanksgiving holiday already, and my best friend had marching band practice, so I had come home immediately after sixth period. There was no reason to stay at school hanging out in my own cloud of old perspiration fighting the mutually exhaustive battles of hormones and skin bacteria.

“Adam is that you?” My father yelled from his study. His voice carried a slight edge of panic. Just enough for me to notice.

“Hey, Dad. Yeah, just me.”

“What are you doing home?”

A scramble behind a closed door, papers shuffling, a hastily closed drawer. I set my bag down, oddly paying attention to my dad when a normal day would have me focused inwards, thinking about what snack to grab or what video game I should play as I ignored my homework.

“Are you ok?” I called out. Walking the stairs timidly. Would I find my father having a secret girlfriend over? My mom had died years ago, and as far as I knew, my dad did not date. Or would it be something worse? Drugs? Would I find my dad tripping balls or staring at invisible dragons only he could see? He was an artist after all. An artist of words, but an artist all the same. Creative people were known to do that sort of thing. I wasn’t creative myself, so I wouldn’t know how that felt.

“Oh, fine. Come in, come in. You just surprised me that’s all.” His voice was timid now, like he had made a decision that he was afraid of. Hindsight is 20/20. Now as I sit here, writing this down, I remember it so vividly. I remember the sounds, the smells, the touch of my fingers at his door, and his face. It was going to be the last time I would see his face that year, and I remember every detail of it. The harsh gray of his beard against the salt and pepper long hair that he would pull into a messy ponytail. His eyes lined and creased against the tops of his cheekbones, the hidden smile lines underneath belying of a life well lived and well loved. At least before mom died. I remember the cut on his hand, at the edge of this wrist. Not an attempt at suicide, just a clumsy fumble with the cheese grater on taco night. His shirt was plaid, under a light gray coat, lined with a contrary color that made him look like he was about to hop on a motorcycle at any moment and ride off. He looked at me over his glasses, still shuffling the papers back and forth, tossing them in drawers without really looking where they were landing. In front of his desk was a duffle bag, packed. The zipper was taut against the contents fighting to be free.

“Going on a trip?” I asked.

“Yes. You are going to stay with your Aunt Laurie for a while. I am going out of town.”

“Last minute book tour? I thought your agent promised not to do that anymore,” I sighed. Aunt Laurie was my dad’s sister and she was awesome. Some people say they had cool aunts, but I actually did. Probably what made me so accepting of my father’s erratic schedule.

“No… actually… something that I have been meaning to talk to you about,” he pushed his glasses up on his face and sniffed like he was about to cry. I had only seen him cry a couple times, and none of them were good.

“Uh… you ok?”

“I already said yes to that, son,” My dad said, grabbing a couple pens and a stack of moleskine field journals from his supply stash in the big folder drawer behind him.

“What’s going on then?” I felt a sense of exasperation already, and had only been in his office thirty seconds.

“So you have read my books right?”

That was the strangest question he had ever asked me. Ever. Like in my entire life, the strangest by far. “Of course I have. All of them. Not every kid has a bestselling fantasy author for a dad.”

He waved his hand. “Uh. So the first book… about Todd. The beginning with him falling into another world…”

“Yeah, Dad. I read it, as you know. You read it to me yourself when I was little.”

“What if I told you that it was all real?” He stopped, as if the world had shifted sideways, and everything was on pause. I felt like the rain outside the window had stopped falling, the drops hanging in the air around this moment. “All of it… all of it was real.”

My face scrunched up in response, my eyebrows meeting each other over the bridge of my nose in confusion. “What do you mean its real?”

My first thought was that my dad had finally hit the brilliant artist’s inevitable mental breakdown or he was having a crisis of another sort that I would not be able to understand.

“I mean it’s autobiographical, not fiction,” my Dad let his shoulders loosen, as if a great weight had just been released. His back looked straighter.

“Hold up. You are telling me that Mokokia the Wise, the greatest magician of the Esti tribes of Ux, transported YOU to their planet to counter the forces of evil that your father brought into their world accidentally?” I said incredulously. “Dad, I have met Pop-Pop. He is in a nursing home downtown, barely able to function since his stroke when I was little. I mean come on… What is really going on?”

My dad stood straighter, appearing to gain resolve in his words and his physical form at the same time. “It was all real. I came back for you and for your mom. I had to be a dad.”

“So Pop-Pop, my grandpa, is an evil villain?” I laughed at the thought of the infirm man in a wheelchair who had a hard time not drooling being an evil magician. In my dad’s bestselling debut, ‘The Tides of Ux’, a young man is transported to Ux to fight the Fury, a dark magician of woeful power and destruction seeking to dominate all intelligent life across the planet of Ux. The Fury is the villain of all villains, acting both in secret and in the open to control every aspect of life on the beautiful and amazing world of Ux. A world full of life, intelligent races, and magic. The magic was awe inspiring. The young hero learns this deep magic from the Esti wizard that brings him to the world, and uses it through trial and tribulation to unknowingly fight his father, and set everything right.

“Yes. I did that to your Pop-Pop. I… struck him down and made him that way. I brought him back to care for him… and you, and your mom. And I have done all that. You are graduating this year, I have set aside a trust fund for you, you are all set. I am proud of you, Adam.”

“Dad, where are you going?”

My father sighed and shoved his journals and pens into his messenger bag. “I am going back to Ux. They need me.”

“Bullshit!” I yelled. My anger came from nowhere.

My dad grabbed his floor lamp in the corner. It was a custom made lamp that looked like his main character’s staff of power, a limb of the Alltree, a branch of the cosmic force that held the universe together. In the story, the staff served as the focal point for a magician’s power. A person that was trained and could harness the raw power of the Alltree could manipulate space, time, and matter as long as they had the focus, the understanding, the will, and the energy to do so. My dad curled his hand around it, and yanked the lampshade from the top, pulling the cord and light bulb assembly from it. I had never noticed but the cord did not go up through the staff, it had been cleverly taped to be hidden behind. “Maybe in time, you can come visit. But you should finish your school first. Laurie will take care of you in the meantime.”

“Why do you think you can just leave!?” I continued, ignoring the weirdness unfolding as my dad picked the sticky tape dietrus that represented the real world off his staff.

A throat being cleared sounded from behind me. I turned my head in fear, coming to the realization that we were not alone. The door to the study swung shut slowly, the hinges creaking, squealing, as the door headed towards its frame. A small creature, which would not even reach my waist bowed carefully, keeping its large expressive purple eyes on me.

“Adam,” the creature said, it’s voice deeper than it should have been. “I am Mokokia, and I have been sent by the Council to bring your father back.”

My eyes were wider than saucers, and if my eyelids could go any higher, they would push my eyeballs clean out of their sockets. “Holy shit.”

Mokokia rose from his bow, placing his hands on his own diminutive Alltree staff that stood before him. “I need your father’s help.”

Nevermind. I thought at the time that this is where I suffer my mental breakdown and a crisis of a different sort myself. Mokokia approached me calmly, his bald head was the hue of a bluebird’s wing, shifting from blue at his ears to white around his mouth and nose. He simultaneously was entirely contrary to what I imagined the great Mokokia to look like, yet at the same time, matched my father’s description to the letter. He laid his blue three fingered hand on my shaking arm.

“Adam, you can visit. I will ensure you see your father again. Perhaps you will have his gifts for the Alltree Speech. Perhaps you can sing to the bones of the mountains and the wings of the sky, and come to know the spirit of Ux personally. Perhaps?”

“Your english is very good,” I squeaked.

“Much practice. But your father, is good teacher. Walter, are you ready to go?” Mokokia asked my father.

“So you were… you are… Todd the Worldbreaker?” I finally understood what my dad had been telling me.

He walked around the desk, tossing his duffle over one shoulder and his messenger over that. He grabbed his Alltree staff and laid a single hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye.

“Actually, the title is Walt the Worldbreaker. Be strong. I will send for you later.”

Mokokia touched his staff to the ground, said a word, and as if nothing had ever happened, I was standing alone in my dad’s study, with the destroyed bits of the corner lamp strewn across his desk.

---

“Wow that is quite the story, mister,” my girlfriend Amie laughed.

I shrugged, trying to keep the jest going. It was my nineteenth birthday and we were eating alone at my Aunt Laurie’s place on the west side.

“Your dad has been on his tour for a year now… he should be back any day,” Amie continued. “You should write that down and let him read it when he gets back.”

“Well that is why I wanted to have dinner with you actually,” I paused. I pulled an Alltree seed from my pocket and set it on the table.

Amie’s eyes sparkled with the light of the seed pulsing in the dim light of her dining room. “Wow. Did you get that at Comic-con? It looks just like what I imagined an Alltree seed would look like!”

“Uh. No. This was on my pillow went I got home from work.”

“I don’t understand.”

“And this.” I handed over the note.

“Prepare? Tomorrow.” Amie looked over the simple parchment and flipped it over in her hands to look at it from every direction. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that I think I am about to go on a trip,” I grinned.

“Oh my god. You are kidding right?”

I shook my head. “I have been packed for months…”

“And you have obsessed over rereading all your dad’s books… I thought you were just a loving son who missed his dad.”

I shrugged again, admitting it plainly. “I did. My dad is Todd! I can’t wait to see the Citadel of the Thousand Wings and the Water Spouts of the Arcan Sea. I can’t wait.”

“Wait,” Amie said deadpan.

“Yeah?” I responded.

“You wanted this dinner… not for your birthday… You are breaking up with me.”

“I figured I might not come back,” I nodded furtively. I took the Alltree seed and shoved it back in my pocket. “And it is not like I can email you from Ux.”

Amie crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. I could tell she was either deciding this was the most elaborate break-up ever imagined or that I was telling the truth.

From my bedroom, I heard the clearing of a throat and then a familiar voice ask, “Ready to go?”

Mokokia stepped out from the dark doorway of my bedroom.

And of course, Amie fainted.

“You know, I dream of dying,” the bleary-eyed stranger said, leaning over into the aisle between the seats. He had woken suddenly as if the plane had hit a pocket of turbulence, but so far the red-eye flight from Chicago had been a smooth flight.

Beverly held her folded magazine to her chest, smiling patiently at the strange little man. She had been a social worker and nurse for most of her career, so she intuitively knew how to talk to people. Especially people that carried a hint of instability about them, like a reek of body odor. “Oh do you now?”

The bald stranger ducked his quickly in a nod. “All the time. Just now in fact.”

“It was just a dream,” Beverly said in her best comforting tone.

The stranger shook his head slowly. “No, it is always the same. I have the dream about dying, wake up and tell someone. Then I fall back asleep again… somehow I avoid the death. I wake up somewhere else, in some other place, in some other time.”

“Time?” Beverly responded flatly, as she was only half listening, already focusing on the People article about Johnny Depp’s recent divorce.

“Yes. I think it is another timeline actually. I am not sure.”

Beverly was fully ignoring him now. “Oh, that’s nice dear.”

The stranger cocked his head listening for something. He touched Beverly’s armrest, but did not reach far enough to make contact with her directly. “Did you ever watch that movie Sliding Doors?”

“I’m sorry?” She replied.

“I think that was the name of it. Sliding Doors? Something like that. It was about how a single choice is made and completely changes a person’s life. They live this one life, and then see how this other life is better, and that is the moral of the movie. Bunch of movies have a similar premise. Exploring how a single choice affects everything.”

“I suppose I have seen something like that,” Beverly conceded. No one around them noticed the conversation, as almost all of them were sleeping.

“I will be honest with you, I think that is how my life is.”

Beverly folded her magazine into her lap. If this strange man wanted to have a conversation, there was no stopping him. “Why do you think that?”

The man leaned closer, whispering. “Did you hear about that railroad derailment in Jersey last year? That train took a curve and double the speed and everyone aboard died?”

“Yes, I remember something about that.”

“I was on that train. I fell asleep, had the dream, woke up to find everyone around me safe and sound. I fell back asleep, and then woke up in my bed. That version of me had not set the alarm, so I had accidentally slept in. But that is not what I remember. I remember getting a cab to the rail station, buying a ticket into the city, boarding the commuter, and the people around me. I remember my seat number, even.”

“That is a strange dream, I suppose. Have you seen a doctor?” Beverly tried.

“Like a therapist?” The man made a face.

“Maybe. It sounds like it was upsetting, perhaps talking to someone about it would help?”

“I have talked to people about it.”

“But not a therapist.”

The man shook his head. “No.”

Beverly looked at her lap, to the window with a black sky beyond, only the blinking glow of the wing light was visible. A thought popped into her head. “Why do you remember the seat number?”

“Because I remember looking at my ticket. The crazy thing is that when I did a bunch of digging with the transit authority, they had no record of selling that seat. It was empty.”

Beverly smiled. “That makes perfect sense though, since you never bought it. You weren’t there, and it only was a strange coincidence.”

“If the one time, maybe,” the man crossed his arms and tucked his hands against his sides. “But that is not the only time.”

Beverly felt a chill run up her arms. “How many times?”

“At least thirty that I can remember. I have started keeping a diary, but I cannot remember all of them. Some of the events happened inside of other events, so the choices I made to get to other choices were all negated. I remember a ferry sinking in the Sound, but that never happened, because the turnpike had a massive pile-up, but since I died in the pile-up too, I woke up at my kitchen table, a puddle of drool under my cheek. The pile-up happened, but the Ferry didn’t. I never found out why.”

“And in the ones that did happen in your real life?”

“I was supposed to be there, but I wasn’t. I was always in the time when I was late, or spilled something, or ran into an old friend. Sometimes being early saved me. I would wake up on the other side of the event, thinking I had died, but in reality, it happened afterwards.”

“You have the quite the imagination, Mister?”

“Jerry Katchowski.”

“Beverly Waterson. Nice to meet you Jerry.”

“Nice to meet you too.”

Beverly inwardly rolled a pair of imaginary eyes and went back to her magazine. Another hour passed before she looked over to see Mr. Katchowski sleeping soundly again, his head lolling downwards, chin pressed firmly against her chest.

“Hello everyone, this is the Captain,” the overhead PA stated calmly. “I just wanted to let you know that we have some turbulence coming up, so I am going to turn on the overhead signs to fasten your belt when you are sitting in your seats.”

The panels above made their ding noise, and Beverly looked back at Mr. Katchowski to make sure his seatbelt was fastened. He was no longer in his seat. Beverly bit her bottom lip, wondering how the gentleman could get up and go to the lavatory without her noticing. She felt her years, realizing that a man sneaking from his seat could go unnoticed.

The flight attendant pushed the drink cart past slowly, and Beverly made eye contact.

“Yes, Ma’am?” The attendant smiled graciously, albeit tiredly.

“The gentleman that was sitting here, did you happen to see him get up?”

The flight attendant tilted her head questioningly. “No, Ma’am. That seat has been empty. This was not a full flight.”

Beverly felt her stomach drop for a moment. Perhaps she was going senile after all. “I must have made a mistake.”

There was a pop from behind, and then the sound of a roar from a dinosaur, immediately all the pressure in the cabin was gone, and the floor buckled and tipped violently. Beverly put a hand to her bleeding head from the sharp impact against the now missing drink cart. As her head cleared of the flashing, Beverly realized the scream she had heard wasn’t her own voice but that of the young attendant being sucked out of the plane. The cockpit skewed wildly to left, as the roof tore above her like a giant was pulling it a part like a sandwich The air rushing around her was a malevolent, living thing, tearing at her face and her clothes and her hair, as her seat spun freely through the air, the burning chunks of her plane going brightly in all directions of the bottomless night sky.

Her last thought was of a strange little man waking up in his bed, safe and sound.

“Are you married?” Doctor Walden inquired. “Now that you are employed, I can actually ask that. As you know, we are colleagues and all.”

“She, uh… passed a while ago,” Gerald replied, using his carefully constructed response to such a question. He had designed it years ago to stay away from the pain.

“Ah. Well that is good, then. This place can suck up time, so to speak,” the Doctor explained, his face changing as he realized his mistake and attempted to backpedal. “Of course, I don’t mean it that…”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. So what are the current cases?” Gerald asked matter-of-factly, trying his hardest to shift the conversation.

“Good question… and a little difficult to answer here in my office,” Doctor Walden explained, a hand slowly unwinding the cellophane from his new package of cigarettes. “We should probably perform rounds and meet some of the, uh, guests we serve here. Shall we?”

“Yes sir… I am glad to have the opportunity and all, I just…” Gerald explained in a rush, hoping he did not offend the head doctor of the facility. It was hard for an ex-con to get a job, even if he did have his medical residency finished. Stupid mistakes made as a kid would take his entire adult life to fix.

“No, of course, Gerald. Curiosity is a good thing to have. It does not kill cats here at least,” the Doctor laughed heartily before it lead to a hacking cough. “My wife told me that I have to quit, but alas, I don’t have the time.”

Gerald smiled, understanding. “I was an addict myself when I was in high school, took my mom dying for me to ditch them.”

“At the time, you thought it wouldn’t catch up with you, right?”

Gerald nodded, remembering the day his mom had told him about the cancer.

“Irony, right? Death and cancer waving at you from another person’s eyes. I get it myself, although that has not reduced the amount I smoke at all. You should see my wife. Such looks of disapproval! Makes the milk curdle if it is on the counter behind me,” Dr. Walden laughed again, and again it carried over to a phlegmy cough. “Now. DR! Gerald. I should use the title in front of the staff and guests, shouldn’t I?”

Gerald smiled again, finding the old doctor’s manner pleasant even with the lung dropping coughing fits. Dr. Walden stood, grabbing a stack of clipboards from the nearby mail basket, its edges of folded plastic forming darker shadows within. Above it, a small double handled electronic device covered in ornate carvings hung from the wall, nestled within a gilded frame.

“These are the notes from the staff, updated twice a day. Part of your job is to interpret where necessary, and add your own notes for me to review. Since you and I will be working opposite shifts, your notes and my notes in these patient files is one of the primary ways we will communicate.”

“Of course,” Gerald nodded. He grabbed one of the offered clipboards from Walden’s hand and they both walked from the brightly lit office. “Is there anyone that dictates these into a computer somewhere?”

“No computers here. They don’t behave well,” Walden shrugged, leading Gerald down the hallway. “I am not sure if you have noticed, but everything here is analog. Clocks, locks, and pencils.”

Gerald thought about his time so far spent in the Bluejay Lane Memorial Hospital since his arrival. Mentally he had noted the lack of modern medical equipment and the unusual absence of the ubiquitous flat screened TVs found in so many places these days. But until it was pointed out explicitly, it didn’t register.

“Crazy huh?” Doctor Walden continued. “When I started the TVs were these massive tube monstrosities… huge! Like a TV would weigh a hundred pounds easy. Not like the little flatscreens these days. You pick them up with one hand! But even back then, with all the shielding, and all the insulation, even those big behemoths blew out. These little screens don’t stand a chance!”

“Bad wiring around here?” Gerald inquired.

“Uh, no, I don’t think so. Just the nature of the place.” Doctor Walden waved at the guard behind the multiple layers of bonded acrylic glass, and the barred prison gate buzzed open. “This right here is probably the highest tech thing we have in our little facility, and half the time, the buzzers fail. The doors get stuck in the locked position. Thankfully no fire marshal has stuck their heads in to question why our prisoners would burn to death in an emergency.”

“That sounds horrible,” Gerald grimaced.

“Yes it would be,” Doctor Walden smirked wryly.

They passed through the gates and entered the long white hallway of Section A. Gerald knew it was called that because of the full story height red letters painted on the far wall where the hallway opened into some sort of common room.

Doctor Walden continued, “This where the majority of our guests reside. We do have a Section B and C, but those wards are shut down for now. Not enough guests to fill the beds.”

“That is a bad thing?”

“It can be. So are you familiar with asymptomatic linear and nonlinear chronopathic disease?”

“I was with you up to asymptomatic…” Gerald admitted as they walked up to the first heavy metal door, inset with a glazed wire reinforced chunk of heavy acrylic glass. Behind it a young woman sat an easel painting a landscape. She appeared to be quite gifted from where Gerald was standing.

“Yes, yes… I understand that our course of study and treatment here is not well known, but as a lead physician, you will have to come up to speed quickly. First lets start with Chronopathy. Do you know what that is?”

“Time… an affliction with their sense of time?” Gerald tried.

“Yes, to an extent. Specifically, Chronopathy is a deep innate sense of time. All temporal things understand time, because we are in the flow of it. The river of time flows around us, if you will, and us with it,” Doctor Walden sounded excited to have a new listener in Gerald. “Human beings are especially prone to this sense of time. So having a disease or natural defect in that innate wiring causes a wide range of disorders on a spectrum, not unlike psychosis.”

“Interesting,” Gerald admitted as he watched the young lady make precise brushstrokes of oil on canvas. It was hypnotic almost.

“This patient is Moonstone. No last name. No documented birth record. She is one of our oldest patients… been here since the early 1970’s.”

“She doesn’t look a day over sixteen,” Gerald commented.

Doctor Walden agreed emphatically, “And she believes it is 1972. In fact, she believes it so fiercely that her body has not aged a single day since then. Her blood and marrow tests, spinal fluid and nervous system sampling all comes back with the same markers day after day for decades. She paints the same picture every day as well,” Doctor Walden sighed heavily. “We have to switch out the canvas and make every single thing the same in her room. She resets every night when she falls asleep.”

“Resets?”

“Just what it sounds like. I think Moonstone’s short term memory fails to be committed and her neural pathways reset to the morning of April 4th, 1972 every day. My predecessor believed a series of government-led drug testing resulted in her current condition, but we have no proof.”

“Every day?”

“Every day. Come, come. Next room,” Doctor Walden lead Gerald to the next door, again, inlaid with the heavy glass. “This is Bruno Viskolov, he is our chimera.”

Gerald peered into the glass to see a man sitting on a chair, watching his hands. Gerald leaned closer to get a better look, and the man grew hazy for a moment and then popped back into focus. He was no longer a man, but a small boy. In another moment, he grew hazy again and an elderly man sat stooped, ravaged by the affects of time. “What the hell?!”

“Bruno is physically manifesting within his own time stream. His corporeal and temporal forms are not aligned. We can control some of it with medication, but Bruno is clever. He is able to control his phasing to some extent, so he is able to flush anything we give him in moments. Thank god he is gentle. His adult form is very muscular and he could do some real damage during treatment.”

“My god, his right arm is that of a baby but it is attached to the body of a grown man,” Gerald exclaimed.

“That is the proof I have that he is in more control than he leads on… and why I call him our chimera. He is able to shift specific parts of his body to other points in his time stream. It is bizarre to see a grown man waddle around on baby legs, or a small child’s head attached to a muscle bound Russian. Ironically, the mental capacity is always there, and it does not affect his reasoning or emotional state. You can carry on a very lengthy complicated discussion with Bruno in the form of a baby and he will sound like the thirty eight year old he is. He is quite intelligent; loves to read.”

Doctor Walden strolled languidly on to the next door, as if surveying a sparse bookcase at the local library.

“… And this guest is our most recent addition and happens to be the star of the ward. Our very own Thomas Mayweather, a real bonafide Chronopath.”

“Chronopath?” Gerald raised his eyebrow.

“Colloquially known as a Time Traveler. The irony is he believes he is a scientist.”

“Why is that ironic?”

“Because, Mr. Mayweather here believes that he created a time machine to travel through time. When in reality, he didn’t use a machine at all. He is a Chronopath… he can travel through time, and space for that matter, at will. He just doesn’t believe it. He is so wrapped up in his delusion of being a mad scientist, that he is effectively stuck. He could literally pop out of here anytime he wanted, if would only accept the truth.”

Gerald nodded, trying to mentally accept the possibility of someone being able to travel through time anytime they wanted. It sounded like hogwash… but after seeing Bruno next door, his capability to accept the impossible seemed to have increased in a short amount of time. “So, where is his machine?”

“It’s in my office actually. I hung it on the wall.”

“Ah. I saw that,” Gerald recalled. “I wondered what it was.”

“Yes, it is a Time Machine,” Doctor Walden used air quotes. “Covered in dials and buttons and all sorts of other lights and batteries… all of it just a focal point for Mr. Mayweather to pour his mental energy into… and BAM!” Doctor Walden slapped his palm, “He is fifty years in the past to get caught by police for breaking and entering into a private residence, foolishly claimed he was a time traveler, and consequently, becoming our guest here.”

“Wait… he actually is from the future?”

“Yes, as far as I can tell medically. Higher amount of radio isotopes in his body. Some form of a nuclear event must occur between now and then… I rather not think about it. Quite well mentally, except for the delusion, of course.”

“You think he came back to avert a disaster or something?” Gerald tried.

“He won’t tell us. Claims he would corrupt the past or something silly like that. Very emphatic about it.”

Gerald looked in to see a mousy brown-haired man strapped to a bed, drooling.

“Drugged and restrained,” Doctor Walden observed. “Thorazine, if you were curious.”

“I wasn’t,” Gerald said, watching the mad scientist roll his head over sleepily.

“He is very agitated when he is not drugged. We keep him sedated for his own protection,” Doctor Walden concluded.

“Of course.”

“I have thought about it often, actually… what I would do if I could travel anywhere and anytime. The possibilities are endless right?” Doctor Walden mused.

Gerald thought of Mara and the night that led him to prison. “Yeah… I could think of a few things.”

“Well don’t. Not healthy to feed their delusions,” Doctor Walden replied as if he was closing a book. He turned on his heel and headed back the way they had come. “Let’s head to the Nurse’s station and I will introduce you.”

Gerald mentally filed it away anyway. Something to think about. The life he had built was a life, but it wasn’t the same life he could have had with Mara. He took one last lingering look into the Chronopath’s cell, and followed Doctor Walden with his mind swirling with all the potential futures and pasts.

All he had to do was be patient. And with a grin, he realized that here, he had all the time he would ever need to think it through.