“I know, but it’s real to me in that universe. When I saw my own eyes, the hate,” Mike paused, lower lip trembling.
Jason’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything else. In his co-worker’s eyes, Mike caught a glimmer of sympathy.
“It’s cool. Everything is cool. We all had screwed up teenage years,” Jason laughed. “If I ever went back, I’d probably flatten my old man.” He paused as if considering the possibility. “Or my ex-wife. Anyway, it’s over, let it go.”
The network of lines, each signifying the creation of an entire universe, vanished, replaced by a clean graph.
Jason turned the monitor back around. “Swipe did her job. She’s back in her hiding box in the accounting software, where no one will find her.” He stood and put the clipboard on a wall hook, obviously confident no one would ever discover Mike and Jason, two low-level contract employees, had taken a super-secret time machine for yet another illicit nightly romp.
Jason considered the imposing robot and shook his head. “Still don’t know why they made it so damn big and mean looking if it can’t impact anything in this reality.”
Mike cleared his throat. “This isn’t worth losing our jobs.”
Jason shrugged nonchalantly. “Doc won’t fire us, we know too much. Kill us, maybe, but not fire us. Shit, she hasn’t even sent Sam back past 15 minutes, and then only to the lab. Imagine the look on her face if she knew we had Neanderthals worshipping Sam like a god. Do you remember the tits on those cave women?”
Mike cracked a smile, but he couldn’t calm the aftershocks rumbling through his soul.
Tonight, he had killed.
Jason glanced over at another monitor, this one showing the parking lot outside the top secret facility. “Shit, she’s early.”
In the pre-dawn darkness, an image of a squat, frumpy grey haired woman with an oversized purse, strolling toward the guard shack could be seen.
“Lucky we stopped when we did,” Mike said.
“Yeah,” Jason glanced down at Mike. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. No problem.”
Jason’s stare lingered for a few moments. “Seriously, you scared the shit out of me tonight. Let’s stick to cave women and leave our own pasts alone. Okay?”
“Yeah. Cave women. Deal.”
***
“I smell it, too.” The Major wrinkled his nose, and tried to look everywhere around the bay except directly at her. One day, he knew he would let his gaze linger a fraction too long, and all self-control would evaporate into a fit of laughter. Such a lapse would do little to advance the project, or his career.
The hooded clean suit amplified the Professor’s already squat, pudgy physique to the point of absurdity. This morning, her permanent scowl had somehow obtained a new level of pissed off. Arms folded, wrinkled face now almost beet red, she looked like premenstrual Oompa Loompa.
I guess that makes me Willy Wonka, he thought and stifled a laugh.
“That smell, it does not belong here. Of zhat, I am certain!” The Professor’s German accent, stern and clinical, almost made her intimidating.
Almost.
“Someone entered my bay last night.” She narrowed her eyes and pursed her thin lips. “Jason. It had to be Jason. That little shit never follows protocols. The slob left Cheeto crumbs all over the console…AGAIN!”
The Major sucked in his lips and nodded seriously, fighting with all his strength, but a snort escaped anyway.
She snapped around. “Is zere a problem, Major?”
“No. No problem, Professor. I’ll talk to Jason when he reports tonight.” He glanced up at the control console window, where Maggie held up a piece of paper with the words “Send in the Fembots!” scrawled in black Sharpee. The morning shift rolled in laughter, safely behind the sound proof window.
“So help me, if I find out he introduced a contaminant into my bay, I’m going to fire him. Fire!”
The Major raised an eyebrow. She might own the science, but the Army owned everything else, and for all practical purposes, the Major was the Army in this lab.
Jason and Mike were exceptional technicians, even if a bit too informal. Mike Clegitt bordered on genius, and had solved many of the I.D.’s quantum field hurdles. Unfortunately, the Professor despised them both, forcing the Major to relegate his best contractors to the overnight shift, and strictly to caretaker duties.
“I doubt we can fire them,” he laughed half-jokingly, trying to lighten the mood. “They know too much. But we could always shoot them if that would make you feel better.”
“Iz zat supposed to be funny?” She glared up at him with puckered scowl, accent suddenly thickening.
Everyone behind the console window quickly gathered their composure before the Professor turned to look up at them.
“Ms. Ross, check the logs and security feed and see if anyone entered the launch bay last night.”
After a few moments, Maggie shook her head and clicked the intercom. “No ma’am. Logs and sensors show no one entered after we sealed it yesterday afternoon.”
“Hmmph.” Arms behind her back, she knotted her bushy eyebrows. “So, then what zee hell is zat smell?”
“It smells like cooking grease,” the Major offered. “Maybe there is a leak in the complex’s filtration system. We should delay the next test until we find it.”
“Major! Professor!” shouted a technician at the gantry’s base. “You should see this.”
A moment later, they stood with several technicians in a circle at the I.D.’s feet, examining something lying on the floor between them.
“Vaht iz it?” She bent over and peered at the white, bumpy ring lying on the floor, so pale it almost blended perfectly with the tile.
“Perhaps an o-ring from one of Sam’s hydraulics,” a technician offered.
The Major bent over for a better look. He sighed, and picked it up between two fingers, and took a whiff.
Jason and Mike, what the hell have you two been up to? he thought.
“That, Professor, is not an o-ring. That’s an onion ring that’s been bleached by decontamination aerosol.”
***
On the car radio an announcer gave the morning traffic report while Todd chewed in silence. Mike didn’t try to force conversation, but resigned himself to watch the scene unfolding across the avenue where a pack of kids waited on the school bus.
Clear eyed and clueless, teenage boys gathered in a grinning mob around the girls packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the park bench. The girls held their school books tightly to their bosoms like shields, but their eyes welcomed the boys’ innocent attentions. Naturally, the boys tried to one-up each other, snatching backpacks, chasing and occasionally tackling one another, while the girls giggled behind closed hands.
“Being young means having no regrets,” Mike said absently.
“Whatd’ya say?” Todd looked up from his half-eaten chicken biscuit and hash browns.
“Nothing.”
At the bus station, Todd had appeared far older than his thirty-eight years. His only belonging, a stained surplus Army duffle bag, now rested in the truck bed behind them. Mike felt sure, stuffed somewhere in that bag, was a cardboard sign with “Will Work For Food” scrawled on it.
Now, in the sharp morning light, Mike thought his best friend looked a thousand years old.
Where Mike had sodded and grown fat, time had depleted Todd. Wiry strength had wasted to emaciated gaunt. Tattoos haphazardly inked across arms and neck in moments of youthful pride, now clung desperately to sagging flesh.
Mike watched Todd chew quickly, lifelessly, as if he hadn’t eaten in days, until the biscuit and hash browns vanished.
Todd belched and turned, revealing a yellow smile missing a few teeth. A wreath of wispy gray hair poked out beneath his black stocking cap.
Mike’s heart sank as he finally got a good look at Todd’s sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. Mike handed him his unopened biscuit. “I’m not hungry, do you want mine?”
<
br /> “Thanks, man.”
As Todd continued to eat, Mike turned his attention to the kids. Their laughter penetrated the morning rush hour traffic. The girls were all standing now, one of whom playfully hit a tall blond boy with mock outrage.
“Can’t believe you still have this truck.”
“Megan got the minivan and the house, I had to sell my Mustang to cover alimony between jobs. Dad still had it out in the barn. It took me a few weeks to get it running. New tires, replaced bearings, plugs, you know, that kinda stuff. But…” he motioned across the dash. “…here it is. I made a few updates, too. Sorta turned into a hobby.”
“Sorry about your dad. If I’d known, I would have come to the funeral.”
Mike shrugged, knowing Todd probably wouldn’t have come.
That’s just Todd, he thought. Nothing is going to change, not a damn thing, so no use getting upset about it.
He hurried to change the subject. “Look, dude, you can stay at my apartment as long as you need. I got a spare room. It doesn’t have a bed, but I can borrow a cot from my neighbor.”
After a few moments, the distinct lack of noise from across the cab drew Mike’s attention.
Hands trembling, Todd stared at the half-eaten biscuit as if it held all the secrets to the universe. “Do you know when I was last in this truck?”
“Yeah,” Mike whispered. “The night we broke into the high school.”
“I fucked up your life.” Todd’s voice cracked. “I fucked up my life.”
Todd turned his sunken gaze to Mike, the old spark gone. “I’m going to change, Mike. I promise.”
Mike didn’t know which hurt more, the rage on his own youthful face in a different universe, or the pain on his only friend’s face beside him.
“No, you’re not. You’re going to heal, but you’re not going to change. I’m not going to change, either. But I’m going to move on. Sometimes, moving on is the best we can do. Sometimes, it’s the only thing we can do.
“You can’t change the past.” Mike thumbed over the smartphone plugged into the upgraded equalizer’s MP3 port until he found the song he’d converted from a homemade CD he never threw away. “It is what it is.”
Todd buried his head in his hands. Mike thought he heard a stifled sob.
“If you cry, I’m going to call you a pussy.”
Todd grinned with misty eyes, and threw the wadded wrapper at Mike. “How would you know, you’ve never seen a pussy.”
“I’m looking at one right now.”
Play.
Woofers hummed to life and levitated ancient dust off the floorboards and into the air. Concentric percussion circles danced over the steaming coffee in the cupholder, as if a herd of T-rex’s were rumbling by.
The teens across the street ceased their antics, drawn to the sound of the bass.
“War drums,” Mike grinned and adjusted the equalizer.
Todd launched himself halfway out the window and shouted at the top of his lungs, “WAR DRUMS!”
***
The kids filed onto the school bus, all the time gawking and pointing at the crazy old men in the pickup truck across the street. One guy looked homeless, the other a fat nerd.
Some shook their heads and made wisecracks. Others marveled at the way the bus’s windows rattled under the onslaught from perhaps the loudest stereo they had ever heard.
We'll be singing
When we're winning
We'll be singing…
I get knocked down
But I get up again
You're never gunna to keep me down!
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Sinner
Tony Bertauski
TATTY IS A SLUT.
Tatia traced the letters carved into the formica, the edges raised, the valleys filled from decades of grease, grime and sweaty forearms. Megan Sherman etched that with a steak knife twenty years ago because Tatia had fucked her boyfriend behind the Dairy Queen so, factually, it was accurate. Fucking Billy was a mistake. Yanking a wad of hair from Megan Sherman’s scalp was, too. Just two items on a long list.
The phone rang like a school bell.
“Toasty’s,” Irene answered, untwisting the curly cord. “Okay. All right. An hour.”
The old woman stuck the ticket below a row of clam chowder, the labels faded and stained. No one ate clam chowder. It smelled like rotten pussy.
“You want something?”
“Coffee,” Tatia said.
Irene had worked for twenty years plus at The Toasty, a diner half the size of a single car garage that was three drunks deep on a Saturday night, all waiting for a cracked bar stool so they could pound an order of cheese balls with more oil than a County fair grease trap.
She looked a hundred years old back then. She was still wrinkled like a baked apple, still hunched between the shoulders and she shuffled between the coffee machine to the counter, but the old hag still balanced a Marlboro 100 between her thin lips like a circus act. The Toasty was the last place on Earth an employee could still smoke. God Bless America.
Church bells rang across the street.
“Cream?” Irene asked.
“Sugar.”
The old woman took a dispenser from the shelf. “Tatty, that you?”
“Yes.” Tatia couldn’t help but smile.
Irene’s eyes, magnified in the oval glasses, focused on her teeth. Tatia quickly covered her mouth. She could go to AA meetings the rest of her life, repent till the day she died, but those meth-rotted teeth would tell her story in seconds—all the lower-than-low scumbags she screwedfor a pinch, all the people she fucked-over for tomorrow’s swirl. All the people she quit on. Irene could replace the counter some day and TATTY IS A SLUT would be gone, but Tatty’s mistakes were etched on her face.
“Where you been?” Irene asked.
“Moved away.”
“Now you’re back?”
“Just visiting.”
The smoker’s laugh gurgled in the old woman’s throat and, as sure as church bells rang on Sunday, turned into a hacking cough. Irene spat in the trash.
“You all grown up, Tatty.”
“Shit happens.”
“You ain’t changed.”
Laughter, again. Cough, hack and spit. The old woman went back to flipping burgers. Across the street, the heavy oak doors of Murpheyville First Baptist opened. The first of the congregation hustled down the concrete steps. Penance paid, Sunday was free to spend at the lake or the bowling alley or wherever the good folks of Murpheyville whittled away an afternoon.
“Something to eat?” Irene dropped a brown paper bag on the counter, the bottom half soaked with grease. Three other bags waited for pick up.
“No.”
“Just come for the shit coffee?”
“Couldn’t live without it.”
She laughed without coughing. A small miracle.
The tiny bell rang above the door. Tatty picked up the coffee, turned her head to avoid the cop. She didn’t give a shit about the badge, she hadn’t broken any laws. It was the man in the uniform, the one that graduated in her class. Twice the size he’d been back then with a belly that could hide triplets, Brad Carroll snatched two greasy papers and dropped money on the counter. Tatty felt Brad– former quarterback, former heartbreaker, current lardass– stare while waiting for his change. He didn’t recognize her, didn’t ask her what she was doing back in town, what she’d been doing since high school and just how fucked her life had become since leaving this shithole. He took his change and oily bags and left.
Irene lit another 100 and tossed a burger on the grill.
Across the street, the pastor was on the top step greeting his flock with a beefy handshake and a booming God Bless You. His legs were sticks, but his upper body ballooned out as if God had squeezed his lower halflike a tube of toothpaste. She’d seen the pastor lean back in a La-Z-Boy with a bowl of chili balanced on his gut and a tall boy within reach. Now a glutton for God�
��s glory, as he told his flock on Sundays, he only got drunk on the Holy Spirit. But he’d still eat the shit out of bowl of good chili. Cue laughter.
He was their pastor. Her father.
Amidst the crowd of retirees, two young girls slipped out holding hands. They wore white dresses with frilly edges. The older one, fifteen years old, led the five year old to the pastor. He held the older one by the shoulders. Several old dearies gathered around clutching handbags and listened to God’s glutton spout something that made them all laugh. The pastor’s laughter gonged louder than the church bells.
The girls skipped down the steps.
“Be right back.” Tatia slipped off the vinyl barstool.
Irene sucked her cigarette and watched her leave, the little bell ringing. She wouldn’t get paid for that shit cup of joe.
Tatia walked in the building’s shadow where the sidewalk cracked and buckled, keeping pace with the girls across the street. They stopped at the corner and crossed after looking both ways. A block away, the church crowd thinned out.
“Cheri?” Tatia crossed the road. “Tina?”
The girls stopped.
When Tatia stood on their side of the road, the little girl turned around. Tatia dropped to her knees. She smiled, she couldn’t help it. They knew who she was, what she’d done. She couldn’t hide that.
“Mommy!” Tina shouted.
Tatia caught Tina, felt her tiny arms wrapping around her—so soft, so warm and innocent. Tatia closed her eyes and held on, her daughter’s hair like corn silk, fragrant with conditioner—the distinct smell of talcum on her neck, the same dusting Tatia used to get before church. It made her nose runny. The tears, though, were already there.
“What are you doing here?” Cheri crossed her arms.
“Mind your manners.”
Cheri sneered and set her feet—the same look Tatia used to see in the mirror when she was that age. She set Tina down and looked behind her, the sidewalk still clear.
“You been good?” She played with Tina’s hair. “Santa bring you everything for Christmas?”
Terrible Cherubs: Tales of Sinners, Mistakes, and Regrets Page 21