He hung his head low and watched as the child’s mouth began to produce sounds he could not understand. Onezzllott now owed it to his crew to get them safely back to the Humeril and continue with their travels. He would mourn for his daughter later and during most of the remainder of the mission, most probably meeting his own endtime upon his terms soon after reaching home. He would go to Tukkoozzllott and tell her how sorry and sad he was that he had failed her. But he had to get his ship and crew home safely first. Only in that could he find any remaining honor that was his due.
He looked once more upon the child and nodded his head toward the small creature before turning back for his ship. “Goodbye, daughter, I have failed you but shall see you soon.”
Tommy Ackerman watched the white thing turn around and head back into the woods through the tears that dripped from his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed as he grabbed Sparky’s leash tighter. “I’m so, so sorry...”
“Let’s go, boy,” his father said and grabbed him roughly around his neck by the collar of his vest. “I don’t know if there are any more of those things out here but I sure as hell don’t want to find out.”
“Why’d you do it, Dad?” Tommy asked between his sobs, looking up at his father’s face. “Why’d you have to kill it?”
“What kind of question is that?” His father growled and hauled the boy along by his collar. “Who knows how dangerous that thing might have been, Tommy? Who even knows what in the hell that thing was? I don’t take any chances when I got you out here, son. Your safety and mine come first. It had to die and I killed it and that’s the end of it.”
Tommy Ackerman looked over his shoulder and saw what was left of the small white thing lying on the ground as his father half-dragged him away from that place. It was covered in a dark oozing liquid and there wasn’t much left where its head had been.
The smell of the thing was lingering and Tommy began crying again, harder this time. He didn’t know what the thing was either but he was pretty sure that it had been lost, just like he had been a couple of minutes ago. He was pretty sure that it had been scared out of its mind, just like he had been. And he was pretty sure that the other one, the one that had nodded at him while his father was still standing over the one he had killed, was just as sad as he was now... maybe even more so. Yeah, Tommy Ackerman was pretty sure that his father had just killed something else’s child. Much to the dismay of his father, Tommy Ackerman cried all the way home.
THE END.
PLACED by George Strasburg
Jennifer was the gunman. All I did was drive.
I should’ve removed that stupid Dallas Cowboys license plate frame first. Poor bastard even told me he didn’t have time to catch my plate number. But he had no problem remember that I rooted for the Cowboys. He drove around for days. His grief powered him through without sleep or nutrition. He didn’t look like he needed either when he grabbed me by the throat and yanked me out of my car.
He could’ve used a breath mint.
He spit on me as he cursed. That saliva was absorbed by my skin, and now hours later I could still smell his halitosis. He said a lot of things to me that he might live long enough to regret.
Thing was, the Cowboys were dreadful to start that season. There were rumors that the owners were trying to sell, or move the team. Can you believe that, an American institution like the Dallas Cowboys moving to Toronto or San Jose? Many diehards had removed their license plate frames and magnetic decals from their automobiles. But I knew better.
A couple days ago I bought the license plate frame. The guy the convenience store laughed at me. “You hoping that becomes a collector’s item one day?”
“They’re going to win it all,” I told him.
That guy laughed as hard as he could and probably told every customer after me that he’d served the biggest fool in all of America that day.
I wished I’d be around just to pop into that store around February next year and ask that guy if he remembered me.
I knew that the Cowboys were going to win 10 straight to make the playoffs and then win the Super Bowl. I took the Vegas odds on it, and put it in someone else’s name.
She could use the money when the time came.
I’m no saint. The first time through I tried to collect the money myself, but the truth was, I’d never get to spend it. I tried burying it, but someone found it before I could collect it.
Of course the first time through, he didn’t catch me.
He remembered that it was a woman who shot. Tried to torture her name out of me. But I only knew her name was Jennifer, and she smelled like cinnamon and sugar. She had a last name of course, but we were on a first name only basis.
She was not from the future, and I knew that she would not live long enough in the future that we’d meet up and high five each other on a job well done. Things happened. For six years the history books are a shrug of ‘sometime around here—probably in the winter—this occurred---we think.’ Sometimes things that everyone said were fact would change. The more they sent us back the more this happened, but other facts came to light. We hid surveillance footage so that it would survive the war. We hid the equipment that could read it, the manuals and textbooks to operate and repair it.
From the surveillance footage they made a list. We didn’t have names, just faces and places.
“Why?” the man asked me.
“I don’t know why she did it,” I lied. I could’ve told him the truth, but I couldn’t imagine it would do any good. No one wants to hear, ‘it seemed like she might be the kink in the hose.’
If I made it back this time, maybe the grass will be a bit greener. Maybe the wind would blow from the east instead of the south.
My tough talk didn’t last. He broke me, and a babbled about the future until he beat me for being insolent. Then I wept and told him what he could do if he wanted an answer.
“Dig a hole on East Main, third or fourth tree. Try and get it beneath the roots. They won’t be there later. Put a note in a waterproof box. Something that won’t burn. Then check it a few days from now, a couple times a week. You’ll get an answer if…” I said, “You’ll get an answer.”
“What do I ask?”
I tried to shrug, but the ropes were too tight, and the skin around them was chafed. So I winced which raised doubt. “J-J-Just ask if it worked and include…include a p-p-picture of her.”
Every day the man returned to the hole and checked the box. This went on for a week, and he beat me harder each time. I tried to rationalize why he didn’t receive an answer yet—not for him, but for me.
But the truth was, this was my place. No one responded because I never made it back to the future and then back in time again.
When February rolled around, I begged him to let me watch the Super Bowl.
I’d spent months reminding him that they wouldn’t lose a game from the rest of the season. I told him the final score of the big game. When it happened he came downstairs. He didn’t say anything at all. He cut the ropes and I fell on the basement floor. My legs had atrophied and the man’s belief in my story did not include any assistance. He left me in the basement, went back upstairs and killed himself.
Come to find out later, he’d bet against the Cowboys.
I was almost starved by the time I crawled my way out of that basement. The police, responding to neighbors’ suspicions found me in the kitchen, bloody and bruised.
It wasn’t until I found myself in a hospital that I remembered that I needed to make it back to the future so that I could put a note in that man’s box so that he’d let me out earlier.
Then I met her, and I as she helped me recover, I realized why I never responded to the man’s question. There was no other way in which I’d meet the beautiful nurse who took in a John Doe and made him the happiest man alive.
A man with a place.
THE END
This Collection is presented by THE 9 TALES SERIES for more information on this series pleas
e visit www.brideofchaos.com
THE AUTHORS YOU SHOULD BE READING
Visit our Website for FREE STORIES
And ‘Like’ us on Facebook for all the latest news and FREE PROMOTIONS
https://www.facebook.com/The9Tales
Other 9Tales Available Now:
VULTURE & Other Tales- The popular villain of the Horrors of Church Hill series accompanies 8 other tales of terror. For more horror check out: PROMISED: TALES OF SUSPENSE & TERROR
TALES AT THE WORLD’S END- A foray into the end of days. 7 authors bring some of the most shocking, poetic and action packed tales to your Kindle with stories about alien invasions, floods, zombies, evil board games and other catastrophes that will make the final days on Earth memorable ones. #1-2 available. #3 available June 2016.
GLIMPSES: TALES OF FICTION & FANTASY- Maynard Sims is spotlighted in this amazing collection of noir, horror, and science fiction.
9TALES TOLD IN THE DARK- Gather round for 9 terrify stories featuring evil clowns, curses and the undead. #1-16 available
9TALES FROM ELSEWHERE- a unique blend of stories takes you to worlds distant from our own. Science Fiction, Fantasy and even Westerns. #1-8 available.
LOOK FOR MORE 9TALES RELEASES THROUGHOUT 2016!!
And keep up with these authors and more in our Alumni at http://www.brideofchaos.com
© 2016 Bride of Chaos
Thank you for reading!
9 Tales From Elsewhere 8 Page 10