All at once, he had an idea for a new Joshua Wyrdd adventure. He would send him back to 1973, where he would buy a newspaper and eat brunch at a greasy spoon café, paying for it with a twenty-first century fiver.
And then?
Joe didn't know. But he knew he needed to write down what was happening. Record it as best he could. If he waited, there was a chance he could forget some seemingly mundane detail that may prove crucial later.
He needed to get back to the Sea Breeze.
Chapter 4
When he arrived back at the hotel, Joe found his key still fit the front door. That was good, but there was still something deeply unsettling about it. Had the locks in this place never been changed? How many pairs of hands had his key passed through over the years? How many opportunities had there been to make copies?
There was definitely a case to be made for the hotel upgrading to a computerized key card system. But that would cost money. Money the hotel obviously didn't have in 2014.
He noticed for the first time that the old, scuffed sofa and coffee table had been replaced with bright shiny ones. There was even a plant pot in the corner. However, even in 1973, the now-immaculate reception area was still deserted. Nice to know some things never changed.
Joe hurried through and went directly up the stairs to his room. Without even taking off his shoes, he sat at the desk, opened the lid on his laptop and began to type. The words flowed easily. Easier than they had in a long time. When he found his muse, or when his muse found him, the words just seemed to appear in his mind, unbidden, as if by magic. All he had to do was copy them down.
He wrote until after midnight, describing every moment of his strange ordeal thus far in as much detail as he could remember. The sights, the smells, the overheard conversations.
By the time he had finished, he had written over three-thousand words. Not bad for a jaded hack who on any given day usually struggled to reach the six-hundred mark. Basking in the small glories of a job well done he hit 'save,' then backed-up his work on the separate USB drive he always carried with him.
He needed a cup of coffee. Maybe a cold beer. But he needed rest more. Still fully-clothed, he lay on the bed and wondered if he dared go to sleep. Maybe when he woke up, he would be back in 2014 and all this would be gone.
Or maybe it wouldn't.
Joe didn't know which would be worse.
Whilst turning over both scenarios in his mind, he drifted off into one of the most peaceful and serene sleeps of his life.
When he finally awoke, it was morning. Bright sunlight streamed in through the window. He had left his laptop on all night again, and was thankful that he wasn't paying the electricity bill around here. He hit a key to bring it back to life. The first thing he did was check to make sure his writing was still there. It was. That meant the weird events of the previous day hadn't just been a dream. The file was still safely stored on his desktop, saved in a Word document entitled '1973.'
A glance at the corner of the screen told him that his computer thought it was almost 10:00am on April 27th 2014. Not that it meant much.
He asked the computer to search for Wi-Fi connections.
Again, there were none.
That was a bad sign.
Very bad.
Dreading the moment, and at the same time yearning for it, he went to the window to look outside.
There weren't as many people as there had been the day before, but a small group of teenagers had congregated around a bench across the road. They had a ghetto blaster, one of those big cumbersome models with speakers set in either end. The faint beat of disco music issued forth.
Joe strained his eyes to try and see the kid's clothes, hairstyles, anything that could give him some indication whether he was still in 1973 or not. From this distance it was hard to make out much detail, but things were definitely different. The tight blue jeans and big hair sported by a particularly buxom female in the group told him that he may have arrived back in his own time.
Relief washed over him, closely followed by the smallest twinge of regret. By all accounts, it seemed as though normal service had been resumed. He wasn't a time traveller any more, if he ever was. Now he was just plain old Joe Dawson: cult author.
He showered and shaved for the first time in what seemed like days. Actually, it had been decades not days, a sarcastic little voice reminded him. Then he left the room, locking the door behind him, and walked down the hall toward the staircase. The walls and carpets were definitely not as immaculate as they had been the day before.
Letting himself out of the hotel, the first thing he noticed was that the graffiti was back on the wall outside.
SANDY 4 JAY
FUCK DISCO
PUNKS NOT DEAD
The graffiti, presumably once colourful and brazen, was now faded and washed-out by a million salted raindrops, but the sentiments remained. Declarations of love and misguided cultural observations by angry youths with no other outlet.
Joe glanced at the gaggle of teenagers across the road. The music from their ghetto blaster carried over on the gentle breeze. Now they were playing Michael Jackson's Billie Jean. He would know that tune anywhere.
There were more cars now than there had been the day before, and he had to wait for a gap in the traffic before he could cross the road. As he stood on the pavement he tried to catch a few makes and models, but he had never been much good with cars. To his embarrassment, he wouldn't know the difference between a 1973 model and a 2014 model. He liked to think he would know the difference when he saw it, but he had his doubts. The only vehicle he saw that he could identify with any degree of certainty was a lime green Volkswagen Beetle, which chugged past with a short-haired guy with glasses at the wheel.
When the coast was clear, he crossed, wanting to get a closer look at the gang of Michael Jackson-loving teenagers. There were other people around, but he suspected the teenagers would be more fashion-conscious than most, enabling him to get a better idea of what time he was in.
When people reached a certain age, too often they became stuck in their own private time warp where they shunned the latest trends in favour of what they knew and liked. The phenomena not only applied to dress sense, but also to music, books and films. After he reached the watershed mark of thirty, Joe had began to feel it himself. Despite having just as much free time on his hands, he found he didn't want to spend it following rock bands all over the country any more like he had in his twenties. He’d outgrown that phase of his life, and just couldn't be bothered any more. He told himself modern pop music wasn't as good, knowing all along on some primitive level that what had really changed was him, not the capabilities of contemporary musicians.
Or, more to the point, what hadn't changed was him.
As he approached, a couple of the teens eyed him suspiciously, looking him up and down as if he had just stepped out of a flying saucer. Joe offered a friendly and hopefully diffusing smile.
Two boys, three girls. All white kids. Two of the girls had very big hair and one had very short hair, bleached blonde and spiky. They all wore too much make-up; purple eye shadow and pink lipstick. Spiky-haired girl wore a black vest-top emblazoned with a huge 'A' in a circle.
The 'anarchy' symbol?
As he watched, she popped a bubblegum bubble. One of the lads wore a black vest white trousers and matching sandals. The other wore a pair of brown Chino's and a baggy pastel-blue shirt.
Very New Romantic, Joe thought. They looked like a pair of extras from a Spandau Ballet video. All except punk girl, who would be more at home at a Clash concert in...
Shit!
With a creeping sense of disbelief, Joe realized that he was no longer in 1973.
But nor was he in 2014.
He was now somewhere in between.
Judging by the clothes these fashion victims wore, he had arrived in the 1980's, one of the most nondescript eras of all humanity.
Fantastic.
He immediately set off in search of a newspaper,
if only to confirm his suspicions.
As he walked along the street, he cursed his luck. The eighties, pah! All synth-pop and shoulder pads, all style no substance.
All fart no shit!
Dear mum.
They hadn't been that great the first time around, and here he was again. Of all the places in time to get dumped. Even the depression of the early 1930's, the Blitz of World War II, would be preferable to the fucking eighties.
But surely all this couldn't be happening at random.
Why here? Why now? Where was the logic in it all?
The newspaper kiosk he had visited the day before was gone. But only recently, it seemed. The patch of pavement where it once stood was a slightly lighter shade of grey than the rest, betraying the fact that it had been protected from the elements for many years. Fleetingly, Joe wondered what had happened to the old man who had sold him that copy of The Telegraph in 1973. Was he in a retirement home somewhere? Or had he shuffled off this mortal coil?
Although the newspaper kiosk had disappeared, there was a corner shop across the street. The same street, he realized, that had yesterday been home to the little cinema and Ray's café, both of which were now gone. How quickly things change. Even in Rhyl.
On closer inspection, he realized the corner shop was actually a miniature supermarket. The air inside was stuffy and smelled like sweets. Awful synth-pop issued from somewhere behind a counter manned by a bored-looking guy with a bad case of acne and a Flock of Seagulls haircut. When Joe walked in, triggering a little bell above the door, he didn't even look up from the magazine he was reading.
Inside, four stuffed aisles housed what appeared to be anything anyone could ever need, from batteries to baked beans. Joe took a few minutes to browse. Half an aisle was devoted just to games. Not games for computers or consoles, but real, old-school games. There were a range of different coloured Frisbee's, Rubik's Cubes, skipping ropes, yo-yo's that lit up, and a fine selection of classic board games. Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, they were all there.
Another section was full of video cassettes you could rent for a pound a night; Both VHS and, get this, Betamax. Joe hadn't seen a Betamax tape since he was a kid. He picked one up and turned it over in his hands, marvelling at the sheer stubbiness of it.
The tapes marked 'New Release!' were already battered and well-used. They hadn't been new releases for a long time. First Blood, Rocky II, Raiders of the Lost Ark, On Golden Pond, Arthur and, ironically enough, Time Bandits.
The newspapers and magazines were situated in a large rack on the far side of the premises. Joe went and stood in front of them for a moment, letting his eyes roam. They soon settled on a gaudy copy of The Sun, and he carefully picked it up. He didn't know why he was being so careful, the newspaper felt as real and solid in his hands as any other newspaper ever had. He guessed he was afraid that touching something might break the spell. There was also a degree of trepidation, as he was aware that the next few seconds would confirm or allay his fears.
The date on the front page was June 9th 1982.
The main headline told him that the Falkland's War was nearing its bloody conclusion, and the Sir Galahad had just been blown up by the Argentine Air Force whilst transporting Welsh Guards to the conflict. Elsewhere, VASP Flight 168 had crashed in Brazil killing all 137 passengers and crew, unemployment in Britain had reached record levels, and Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan had began their nauseating political courtship. All quite depressing, really.
Joe returned the newspaper to the shelf and walked out. The bell sounded again, signalling his exit. The bored-looking guy sporting the Flock of Seagulls haircut still didn't look up.
Outside, he wondered what to do next. That drink or three was becoming more and more appealing. To calm his nerves, if nothing else. There were a few decent-looking pubs dotted around, but going inside any of them was out of the question. His main dilemma was that he only had twenty-first century money, and it was surely only a matter of time before someone noticed. It was one thing using the odd coin here or there and walking off. Hopefully, by the time anyone noticed the coins were different they wouldn't be able to remember where they had come from. It was another thing entirely handing over money in a pub, then sitting there waiting to be challenged.
He also wasn't relishing the idea of human interaction, even with random people in pubs. Everything he knew about was in the future, and he couldn't risk saying something that would invite a barrage of difficult questions. People would think he was nuts. If it happened a couple of centuries earlier (still possible, the way the trip was panning out) people would think he was a warlock or something and burn him at the stake.
Joe tried to think of some way in which he could use the situation to his advantage, apart from getting a new Joshua Wyrdd book out of it. How can you monetize time travel?
The obvious thing to do would be to bet money on sporting events that, in his future world, had already taken place allowing him to know the results. But apart from the currency issue, he couldn't remember any results with any real conviction. He had a little sporting knowledge, but his brain retained that sort of information only temporarily and even then only in the scantest detail.
The biggest worry of all, which was beginning to overshadow everything else, was not knowing where he would end up next.
Two different decades in two days. Who knew when he would be tomorrow?
His head was beginning to ache again, and Joe hoped it was down to stress and not some terrible, debilitating side-effect of time travel.
He decided to go back to the hotel, which had become a kind of sanctuary, and get some rest. After a short nap he would write up the day's events. But first he felt the need to address something much more important than Joshua fucking Wyrdd. He couldn't fight it any longer. It was time to get cracking on his Special Project.
Chapter 5
Joe's Special Project was something he'd been working on sporadically for years. Whenever the other work dried up, he found himself returning to it. It was a perpetual work-in-progress. And when it was finished, it was going to make him rich and famous. He was quite sure about that.
Maybe 'infamous' would be a better description. There was a fine line between fame and infamy. But the riches came regardless.
The body of work he had put in thus far had transcended a simple feature article long ago. Now, he was heading into in full-length non-fiction book territory. If it made enough of a splash, he was sure it would secure a deal with one of the major publishing houses. That would lead to serialized extracts in the Sunday papers, translations, publicity tours, literary awards, TV and radio appearances. Hell, he was even confident about selling the film rights to this one.
He'd spent enough time writing about things in which he had little or no interest just to make ends meet. It felt he was fighting a losing battle. How many people actually cared about what he wrote, anyway? At best, his work was disposable.
Sure, a few people enjoyed what he did, but not enough people to make any kind of real lasting impact on popular culture. After putting in years of graft, he now had enough published credits to be taken seriously by the people who mattered. It was time to go mainstream and write something that appealed to the masses, but was also original. And therein lay the problem.
What do people most like to read about?
He had asked himself that question countless times, and spent endless hours deliberating the answer. Eventually, he reached some kind of conclusion.
Pain and suffering, that's what.
Murder, rape, kidnappings, war, torture.
Whether we choose to admit it or not, deep down we all revel in other people's misfortune. It makes us feel better about ourselves. In some perverse way, it's life affirming. Joe's theory was that people liked to read about these things because it allowed them to explore the dark side we all have, but are unable to explore in our daily lives.
As a race, human beings are fascinated by the forbidden. The taboo. Things w
e shouldn't do, things we shouldn't see, things we shouldn't talk about. Things few of us can even imagine.
If we see, hear or read something that makes our bellies turn over, makes the bile rise in our throats, most of us would feel as if we'd discovered something. Learned something so new and exciting, that we couldn't wait to tell all our friends about it. Like it or not, that was how the human psyche worked. Anything unusual is exciting, and the gore factor often paid dividends. The more sheer brutality you could serve up, the better.
Material like that is rare nowadays. Since those first video nasties leaked out in the early eighties, the human race had become desensitized to violence. It's difficult to be original in the modern age. Everything you can possibly say or do do has been said or done countless times before, in countless ways, by countless people. Academics insist that it's only possible to come up with a handful of feasible unique storylines. Everything else is just a variation on the same few basic themes.
To be successful, to make his mark, Joe knew it was no longer enough to just push the boundaries so they bent a little. He had to blow those boundaries apart and blaze a new trail.
He had no problem with that.
People wrote about serial killers all the time. That was old news. People had been doing case studies on them and publishing the results for decades. Sure, it made for interesting reading. All those fucked-up people walking undetected among us; eating, drinking, shopping, laughing, and all the while planning how they would slaughter and cook their next victim.
The next step was for the serial killer to cross the line and become a staple of modern popular culture, which was achieved mainly through fictionalized characters like Hitchcock's Psycho and Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter, both allegedly based on real people and events.
After a while, even that wasn't enough. Stories about serial killers that may or may not be based on fact became commonplace. The genre became stale. Serial killer chic.
Out of Time Page 4