https://soundcloud.com/sierra-tom-darby/afm-10
As I awoke, only my left eye would open. The right was swollen shut.
“Ah, I let the Devil out of the bottle and he kicked my ass again.”
I heard her as she squeezed water from a cloth. The smell was familiar, but I could not place it.
“Eucalyptus? Mint?”
The instant it graced my face, its warmth relieved my pain. Neither of those…chloroform.
In the U.S., the NSA is the only government agency that actually listens to you. They even have their own pick-up lines:
“Did you fall from heaven? Because there’s no tracking data on how you arrived at this location.”
“I’d tap that.”
“I know exactly where you have been all my life.”
But then…
A woman goes on a date with an NSA agent, and says, “So, tell me about myself.”
And yet, the date didn’t go well — because at the NSA, everything is done through the ‘backdoor.’
The Afghan girl touches the uniform’s caduceus.
“Baxsi.”
“Witch doctor.”
“Whatever makes her less afraid.”
“Do you have any anesthetic?”
“No.”
“Here.”
“Good, now lets get that piece shrapnel out of her lung.”
“Aye, aye, Doc.”
‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’
So I cupped her baby-blues in my hand.
They’re correct: I felt truly beautiful.
“Now remember, Lieutenant, you’ll only have three minutes to accomplish your goal,” the doctor said as she injected him with jus’ enough narcotic to help him relax through the transition.
Davis instantly felt himself relax as he heard the canopy on the time machine close and latch. He hid it well, the trepidation he felt of time-casting into the past in order to see how the future would be changed. However, he was a US Army officer and he knew he had to obey regardless, thus were the rules for having volunteered for duty at Area 51.
The proton collider could be heard whining as it increased in speed. He closed his eyes for a second as a static charge of electricity coursed through his body, growing to a painful vibration. Then he recalled that he must keep them open for the coming trip.
The thin snap of a crackle slipped through the capsule and with a crashing pop, he felt himself slip apart, as if he’d fallen into a million, million pieces. Yet, he could still hear his heart beating, his breathe drawing in and blowing out and his own swirling thoughts. He crashed onto the wooden floor of the highly ornate room, stunned.
Over him, stood a man, frightened and looking as confused as Lt. Davis. He was holding an object in his hand, perhaps the knob from the nearby four-poster bed. At the sight of Davis, the man threw the thing at the newcomers head.
The object, glanced off of Davis’ head and the Army officer rolled, scrambling to his feet. The timing of the transition was almost too perfect, Davis thought, as he drew his knife and thrust it deep into the man’s chest. As the man relaxed in death, Davis lifted and then pushed the dead body away from himself.
Looking about the room, he found a letter opener on a nearby table and quickly inserted it into the wound. “After all,” he thought, “Gotta make it look like a part of this time period.”
In the hallway came the sound of heels, a woman’s heels. Davis knew he had to hide and wait for the three minute jump-period to reverse itself. He stepped into the ward robe closet and pulled the door closed behind himself.
When he awoke, he was in the base infirmary. His head hurt, he felt dizzy and was extremely sick to his stomach. Try as hard as he wished, he had no recollection of his return trip.
Hours later he was summoned for a debriefing, where he would detail his actions on the late night of January 19, 1867 in Virginia City, Nevada. In turn, he was told that the experiment had been a success as the time line of history had been altered, but with a twist.
“You see,” Doctor Gladys Ames stated, “You were assigned the task of killing John Millain before he murdered Juliette Bulette.”
“I see,” Davis responded, “So, it was Bulette’s room I jumped into and it was Millain that I stabbed?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“So, what’s the twist?” Davis asked.
“In the previous timeline, Millain was tried and hanged for her murder. In the new timeline, Bulette was hanged for Millain’s murder.”
Davis was stunned, “So nothing really changed, save for the order of those who were either murdered or executed.
“Correct,” the doctor said.
Later at the base library, Davis looked up the brief history of the Millain/Bulette case and learned that the Comstock’s favorite author, Mark Twain had written, “I can see that stiff, straight corpse hanging there yet, with its black pillow-cased head turned rigidly to one side, and the purple streaks creeping through the hands and driving the fleshy hue of life before them. Ugh!”
Davis felt sick to his stomach, “Oh, dear god.”
The story of the ‘two me’s’ goes like this:
Cuts arm, bleeds profusely.
“Tis but a scratch.”
Stubs toe.
“So this is how I die.”
Nothing in between shall do.
https://soundcloud.com/sierra-tom-darby/afm-9
He sat quietly next to the hospital bed, holding the hand of his dying mother. The thump-hiss of the ventilator and steady high pitch beep of the heart monitor, with its neon green peaks, plateaus and valleys, slowly hypnotized his emotionally-fatigued mind and he lightly closed his eyes.
“Do you hear the sleigh bells, son?” she asked.
He opened his eyes and strained against the quietude, “No, Mama, I don’t.”
“Well listen – they’re there.”
“I can’t hear them, Mama”
Again he allowed his eye-lids to gently fall together.
“There, right there,” she said again, adding, “Can’t you hear them?”
He turned his head and cocked it upward slightly, “No, Mama, I can’t hear them. I think you’ve been dreaming.”
As silence fell between mother and son, she cried out, “Don’t tell me you can’t hear them now. They’re so close!”
Patiently he listened. Then much to his surprise he heard the faint jangle and jingle of sleigh bells as the horses’ high stepped along their way.
“I can hear them, Mama,” he smiled.
She smiled too, and allowed her grown child to rest his eyes once more. Soon the gentle ringing of the dainty bells came to an abrupt stop.
“I’m going for a ride, son. Wanna come along?”
He watched as her frail body slipped from the bed and crossed the floor. The sight warmed his heart.
“No, Mama. You go and I’ll join you when you come back ’round.”
“Okay,” she called out, “Love you, son. See real you soon.”
He listened as the bells faded from his hearing. They were quickly replaced by the maddening peel of beeps, buzzes and high pitched whining.
He opened his eyes to a room that was a swirling mass of movement; nurses rushed to begin chest compressions, turning off noise-making machines and emergency calls for the doctor. He released her hand and step back towards the corner of the room near the window.
As he watched the scene unfold before him, he heard the soft chatter of sleigh bells chiming somewhere off in the distance. It was then that he felt the stinging burn of tears and the sudden salty taste as they spilled from his eyes, raced down his cheeks, finding their way to his lips, chin and eventually the floor.
The Old Blog in the Desert 