Adventures of Elegy Flynn

by Chambers, V. J.

  The Adventures of Elegy Flynn

  by V. J. Chambers

  Elegy Flynn serves drinks in a time-traveling bar. A rebellious Goddess of Fate, she's been sentenced to travel through time and correct the time paradoxes created by wayward time travelers. Maybe she should take her job a little more seriously. But Elegy didn't get stuck doing this because she was especially good at following destiny to the letter, and sometimes she has trouble weighing the good of the universe against the good of the moment.

  With her sidekick Catherine, she saves Hitler, scrambles Shakespeare's mind, and raises her glass to her own personal philosophy, "There's nothing a good drink can't fix."

  This is a series of seven short stories, originally published serially. This “Complete Series” edition includes an afterword, tying up any loose arcs left at the end of the last story.

  THE ADVENTURES OF ELEGY FLYNN

  © copyright 2012 by V. J. Chambers

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  Smashwords Edition

  Please do not copy or post this book in its entirety or in parts anywhere. You may, however, share the entire book with a friend by forwarding the entire file to them. (And I won't get mad.)

  Table of Contents

  1: You Can’t Kill Hitler

  2: Will Shakesprick

  3: The One that Got Away

  4: The Electric Mind

  5: Redux

  6: Midnight Rambler

  7: By the Time We Got to Woodstock

  Afterword

  More fiction on Smashwords

  1: You Can’t Kill Hitler

  I was inside the bathroom in my apartment. My boyfriend Richard was pounding on the door. “You better come out of there, Cathy.”

  It was early evening, but Richard was already drunk. Back when we first started dating three years ago, he never got this drunk. Now it seemed like he was drunk all the time. Sometimes when he got like this, I could talk him down.

  “I’m trying to pee, Rich. All that pounding isn’t helping.” I wasn’t trying to pee at all. In fact, I was standing next to the sink, hugging myself, staring at myself in the mirror and wondering if he was going to hit me again. There were still traces of a bruise on my cheekbone from last week. “Why don’t you just go into the living room and wait for me? I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Do you think I’m a fucking idiot? I know you’re just hiding in there from me.”

  It would have been hard to explain away the bruises, but Richard made pretty sure that I never saw much of anybody these days. I supposed that was something, anyway. “Richie,” I said in my most calming, sweet voice, “you’re overreacting.”

  “I know what I heard. Don’t tell me I’m overreacting, you lying, cheating bitch.”

  Sweet voice, bad idea, apparently. I tried to remember how all this had started. I’d been on the phone with someone from customer service, because our internet was down. Richard had been slamming whiskey. Suddenly, he’d ripped the phone out of my hands and started screaming at me. According to Richard, the tone I’d been using with the customer service representative had let him know that I was only pretending to call about the internet and that I actually had a secret boyfriend who I was flirting with.

  “You were coming onto him right in front of my face.” There was another slam on the door. He was going to break the damned thing down, wasn’t he? “I heard you, you bitch. Now come out of there and take your licks.”

  That’s what Richard called it. Licks. Take your licks. Like I was some snot-nosed kid, and he had to teach me a lesson. “I’m really just trying to pee,” I said. How much more time could I buy in here?

  Richard’s voice was ugly. “Stop lying to me.” Another crash against the door. He must have used his whole body. The bathroom door strained against its hinges.

  I cringed, thinking of our security deposit if I didn’t come out. I tried my best to keep Richard from completely destroying our apartment, but it generally meant that I ended up distracting him with wailing on me instead. I didn’t know how things had gotten this way. Things hadn’t been this way in the beginning. I wouldn’t have ever moved in with Richard if things had been like this back then. But now Richard was all I had. My only family—my brother Reese—had disappeared earlier this year. Richard didn’t let me work anymore. I was trapped.

  I flushed the toilet. “Okay, I’m coming out. But let’s try to talk about this for a little bit, please.” I opened the door.

  Richard snatched me by the hair and dragged me out of the bathroom.

  Pain shot through my skull. I bit my lip to keep from crying out. If I made noise, Richard just got angrier. “I swear to God, I was only talking to customer service.” I sounded whiny and high-pitched from the pain. I knew my tone would just piss Richard off worse.

  Richard slammed me up against the wall in the hallway outside the bathroom. “Stop lying to me. I know what I heard.”

  The phone started ringing.

  “Let the machine get it,” Richard snarled. “You’ve got licks to take. I’m going to make sure you understand never to run around on me again.”

  The phone was still ringing. “How could I be messing around? I never leave this house. I never talk to anyone—”

  “Shut up!” Richard pulled back his fist.

  I cowered, bracing myself for the blow.

  The machine picked up. “This is Cathy and Rich. Leave a message,” said my cheery recorded voice.

  “Catherine?” said a female voice that I’d never heard before on the machine. “Duck!”

  Duck?

  Richard’s fist hurtled through the air towards my face.

  I ducked. I wrenched my shoulder out of his grip and dropped to my knees.

  “That’s a good girl,” said the voice on the machine. “Now run! Run for the door.”

  Richard shot a funny look at the answering machine. “Who the hell is that?”

  “Never you mind who it is,” said the machine.

  Both of us froze then, staring at it.

  “Stop wasting time, Catherine!” snapped the voice on the machine. “Run! Get to the door. Do you want him to beat you senseless again?”

  “Who the fuck is that?” roared Richard.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He grabbed at me. But for some reason it seemed like the voice on the machine was talking sense. Sense for once. I didn’t want him to beat me again. I didn’t want anything to do with him, drunk, angry man that he was. I looked up at him, and instead of my boyfriend, he looked like a monster from slasher movie or something, his face contorted, his eyes burning.

  I dove out of his reach, still on my hands and knees.

  “Cathy, stand still and take your licks,” said Richard.

  “Catherine,” said the machine, “by all means, do not stand still. Get the hell out of there. Now!”

  I stumbled to my feet and raced for the door.

  Richard lumbered after me, but he was drunk, and his reaction time wasn’t great.

  I made it there without his hands on me. I flung the door open and sprinted outside.

  Across the street from the apartment, there was a woman in an open doorway. She waved at me. “Catherine, in here!”

  She had the voice from the answering machine.

  I shot a glance over my shoulder. Richard was right behind me. “Get back here, you fucking bitch!”

  I ran for the open doorway.

  The woman moved out of my way as I streaked inside. She pulled the door closed after me.

  Out of breath, I surveyed my surroundings. I was in an empty pub. A long bar ran along one wall, complete with swivel stools. Behind the bar, I could see an assortment of bot
tles of liquor. This was strange. Richard and I had lived in our apartment for two years. There was no bar across the street. I looked up at the suspended lights that hung from the ceiling and then over at the pool table in one corner. What was this place? What was it doing here?

  The woman from the doorway was leaning against the closed door. She had short-cropped curly hair, bright eyes, and she wore an oversized pink t-shirt over bright green leggings. “You’re welcome,” she said.

  I gazed around the bar again warily. “Thank you.” At least I thought I wanted to thank her. “Did you just open this bar?”

  “Nope.” She crossed the room and settled behind the bar. She gestured in front of her at the empty bar stools. “Have a seat.”

  I didn’t move. “Because I’ve never seen this place before.”

  “Of course you haven’t. Usually it’s not here,” she said. “Would you like a drink? After that, I think you’d like a drink.”

  I folded my arms over my chest. “Did you call my answering machine?”

  “Yep.” She grinned. She turned to her vast liquor collection. “What’ll it be? Something stiff? Bourbon on the rocks?” She turned back to me to gauge my reaction. “No? Maybe something fruity, like a rum runner? I make pretty excellent rum runners if I do say so myself.”

  I walked over to the door of the bar. I started to open it. I wanted to know if Richard was outside, following me.

  “Don’t do that!” She was out from behind the bar and beside me in seconds. She wedged herself between me and the door. “You really can’t go back out there.”

  “But what if he’s outside? What if he comes in?” Really, we were just two women. Maybe Richard would decide the kooky bartender wasn’t much of a threat.

  “He won’t,” she said. “He can’t. Not anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” I was beginning to feel very, very confused.

  “Just sit down and let me make you a drink, please.” She gestured at the bar. She’d already gotten out a carton of pineapple juice. It was sitting unopened in front of a stool.

  I did like rum runners. I chewed on my lip. “I don’t have any money with me.” I’d kind of run out in a hurry.

  “On the house, of course,” she said. She smiled again.

  I looked back at the door. I looked at the pineapple juice. “Okay, I guess so.” I went to the bar and sat down.

  The bartender returned to behind the bar and began to mix together various juices and rum. “I’m Elegy Flynn,” she told me brightly. “And I think I got to you just in time.”

  “How did you...” I didn’t know how to frame the question. She’d talked to me on my answering machine. “Could you hear Richard talking from over here?” Of course, that wouldn’t explain how she’d seen what was going on. She’d told me to duck.

  “Oh, all of that kind of stuff about me is just a lot to take in. Let’s get to that to that in a little bit, shall we? Calm your nerves. Have a drink.” She set a tall glass in front of me, complete with a paper umbrella and a straw.

  I leaned forward and took a hesitant sip through the straw. It was hands-down the best rum runner I’d ever tasted. “That’s good.” Wait. Everything was extremely strange right now. “What do you mean, just in time?”

  She leaned over the bar and caught my chin with one hand. She turned my face from side to side, looking me over. “Ooh! That’s a nasty bruise you’ve got there. But don’t worry. It’ll heal.”

  I ducked away, embarrassed.

  “He hit you a lot, didn’t he?”

  “N-no,” I said. I didn’t want to tell my troubles to this stranger, even if she was a bartender. “I ran into something. I fell down—”

  “Please.” She waved her hand in the air to stop me. “He’s a jackass. He was going to kill you. You’re going to be okay now, though. You’ll see.”

  Kill me? “Sometimes Richard just gets drunk. He gets a little out of control. But he’s not a bad guy. He takes care of me. He makes good money. We’re happy most of the time.”

  “Sure.” She began putting the juices she’d used to make my rum runner under the counter. “As long as he doesn’t decide out of the blue that you’re cheating on him for no reason, he’s a prince.”

  I took another drink of my rum runner. “How do you know that?” I was beyond denying it as this point. This was all too weird. What the hell was going on here?

  “I know lots of things,” said Elegy. “But we don’t have to dwell on unpleasantness. You’ll never see him again, so we don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want.”

  Never see him again? “I’m sure he’ll be there when I go home.”

  Elegy made a face. “Home. Right.” She took a deep breath. “Listen, I guess I should explain something. When I stopped you from going out the door, it was because you really can’t leave this bar. Ever.”

  I got off the stool. “What are you talking about?” I suddenly wasn’t sure that dealing with Richard beating me wasn’t better than this place, where I was completely confused.

  The door to the bar swung open. A man walked in. He looked to be in his late twenties. He had a Mohawk and wore a beat up leather jacket over shredded jeans. A cigarette dangled out of his mouth. “Jesus Christ, Elegy, where have you been?” He had a British accent. “I’ve been stuck in the Middle Ages for weeks. Do you have any idea how dirty those people are?” He sat down next to me on a stool. “Oh, hello, Catherine.”

  I took a step backwards. “How do you know my name?”

  He gave me a funny look. “Well, you’re Catherine, aren’t you? You travel around in the bar with Elegy. You’re like her sidekick.”

  Elegy put an ashtray on the bar in front of the man. “Timelines are different for us. I’ve just met Catherine, actually. Just picked her up.”

  The man stubbed out his cigarette, raising his eyebrows. “Oh. It’s your first time here, then?”

  I put my hands on my head, grasping at my hair. “I have no idea what’s going on here!”

  The man approached me, hand outstretched to shake. “I’m Kellen Henley. I’m a volur. I travel through time and fix mistakes, stop paradoxes from happening and the like.”

  I glared at his hand. “Travel through time?!” This was ridiculous. One second I was waiting for Richard to hit me, the next everything wasn’t making sense. I was getting out of here. I ran to the door the bar and threw it open.

  “No!” yelled Elegy.

  I stopped short. Outside the bar, instead of the street to my house, was a dirt road and a bunch of dilapidated little houses. There were chickens wandering through the street. Women in long dresses carried baskets of vegetables.

  Elegy slammed the door shut. “I thought I told you that you couldn’t go out there.”

  “What happened to my apartment?” I said.

  Elegy put her arm around me. “Nothing happened to your apartment. It’s still right where you left it.” She led me back to the bar. “It’s just that the bar moved. Have some more of your rum runner, why don’t you?”

  “How does a bar move?” I put my hands on my hips and refused to sit back down at the bar.

  “Well, it’s not really a bar, of course,” said Elegy. “It just looks like a bar. It can look like whatever it wants. It’s actually a praxidikai.” She patted the bar. “It’s alive.”

  “Take me home,” I said.

  “I can’t,” said Elegy, looking apologetic. “You don’t want to go back there anyway, not really.”

  Kellen was back beside me at the bar as well. He was studying my face. “Where’d you get that nasty bruise?”

  I touched it. I didn’t want to go back to Richard’s fists. But all of this was too much to take in. I felt like I was going absolutely insane.

  “Her boyfriend did it,” said Elegy to Kellen. “He was about to start hitting her again when I intervened.”

  “So that’s why you picked up Catherine?” Kellen said. “I always wondered why.” He considered for a moment. “Actually, Elegy
, that’s not like you at all. Didn’t you just change fate there? Isn’t that, you know, bad?”

  Elegy glared at him. “You want a drink?”

  “Sure. Double screwdriver,” said Kellen. “If you keep her in the bar, what happens to the rest of her life? All the things she’s supposed to do in the world?”

  “You can’t keep me here for the rest of my life,” I said.

  Elegy went behind the bar. “Maybe we should just start from the beginning.” She got out a glass and filled it with ice. “In the late twenty-first century, humanity discovers the time portals.”

  “The what?” I said.

  “Time portals,” said Elegy, grabbing a bottle of vodka from the shelf behind the bar. “They are rips in the fabric of time. If you go into one, you can travel in time. They’ll take you wherever you want to go. Well, whenever you want to go, more accurately, I suppose.”

  I sat down heavily on the stool. “Time portals.”

  Elegy poured vodka over the ice. “At first, they set the time portals up as some kind of amusement park. A tourist attraction. But then the governments wise up in about fifty years and they regulate them and only let people use them for research. Still, you’ve got people who still find ways to break into them to go back in time and mess things up. They do it for fun, or because it’s illegal or because they’re insane. And they create all kinds of nasty issues.”

  I took a gulp of my rum runner, not even bothering with the straw.

  “That’s where I come in,” said Elegy. “I’m a goddess of Fate.”

  “What?” I nearly spit out my rum runner.

  “Fate,” said Elegy. “You’ve heard of us, right? We’re all over mythology. In the Greek stuff, with the spinning and the one eye and the Norse stuff too? Come on. Moira? Norns?”

  “But that’s all mythology. It’s not real.”

  “Well, they’ve got a whole bunch of it wrong, of course,” said Elegy. “But there are Fates. And I’m one of them.”

  I snorted. “So instead of spinning threads of life, you’re tending bar?”

  Elegy splashed orange juice into Kellen’s drink. “I sort of got demoted.” She gave the drink a stir and then slid it across the bar to Kellen. “So instead of making fate, I just correct it now.”