“Now do calm down, Mister Brewster,” said the doctor. “However far-fetched your story may be, I have a duty to hear it through to the end and will not pass judgement until it is complete.”
“I’m really not sure I want to continue,” I said. “Perhaps a beer would help. I get ever so loose-lipped with an ale in me.” I motioned to the telephone and smacked my lips together, for I was thirsty as hell.
The doctor considered my request for a moment before snatching up the phone. “Claire, could I get a beer in here, please? In fact, make it two. And a couple of whiskey chasers. Have one for yourself.” And he hung up. “Now, where were we?”
I sighed heavily. “We were at Sidhu’s…”
12
“Mister Sidhu!” I said, merrily as we entered. It was nice to see him not being held up by an armed robber. In fact, he seemed to be engaged in a pleasant conversation with a young man. “How are we on this fine Saturday afternoon-cum-evening?” And I practically danced up the aisle like a whirling dervish, and John kicked me in the calves, for he was trying to, as he put it, keep a low profile.
“Alan, John!” said Sidhu, clapping his hands together for no good reason. “Pub shut early, has it?”
“No it has not, my fine Indian friend,” I said. “We’re in the market for a lottery ticket, and were told by a good friend of ours that your shop is a stockist of such things.” I slapped a quid down on the counter, and the young man standing there – who looked awfully familiar, and yet I didn’t quite know why – huffed. “What’s the matter, friend?” I said. “Never seen a pound coin before?”
“This is my son,” said Sidhu. “You’ll have to excuse him. I’ve just offered him a bit of work, and he’s a lazy bastard—”
“Dad!” said the young man. “I said I’d do it. I’ve just never held a shotgun before.”
This was when Sidhu took to shushing his son, and when I realised where I’d seen the young man before. This was what he looked like without a balaclava.
“You’re the one that holds the shop up!” said John. “And quite menacingly, might I add.”
“That’s none of our business, John,” I said, for Sidhu and Son were starting to look a little nervous. “We are here for the purchase of one lottery ticket.” I reached into my pocket and retrieved the pink slip Mister Sidhu printed off for me a few days from now. “These are the numbers we would like to use.” I handed the slip to Sidhu, and he scanned it with no small amount of confusion.
“The date on this slip hasn’t happened yet,” he said. “And it was also printed off here, in this store, and yet I don’t recall doing so.”
“Your son is about to commit a huge insurance scam,” I said. “And you’re worried about the date on that there slip?” I wasn’t proud of myself; I seldom am. But needs must, and blackmail seemed to be the only option.
“These exact numbers?” said Mister Sidhu, prodding at the Lotto machine with tremulous fingers. A few seconds later, he handed me a lottery ticket – the winning lottery ticket – and smiled sheepishly. “Not like you to play the lottery,” he said. “In fact, in my sixty years as proprietor of this quaint little corner shop, I don’t think I’ve ever served you with a ticket.”
“The times they are a-changing,” said I. “Also, if we win, we’ll bung you a few quid for Shiva’s Medical School tuition.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Sidhu. “Though I doubt you’ll win. Also, how did you know Shiva was going to Medical School?”
John looked at me, and I looked at him, and the son of Sidhu looked at us both, and his look was one of suspicion. “She just looks the type,” I said. “Anyway, have a pleasant day, and if I were you, I’d put twenty quid on Rubber Scrotum at the 8:15 at Chepstow.” And with that, John and I made our way out of the shop, leaving Sidhu and Son to discuss the finer details of their scam.
By the time we arrived back at the abandoned car-park, it was starting to get dark. I could tell that John wasn’t pleased about the situation, but I knew that would all change once we arrived back at the correct date with more money in the bank than Donald Trump’s mistress.
The DeLorean was exactly where we left it, which came as something of a relief. The last thing we needed was to be stranded in Saturday just gone. What if we bumped into the earlier versions of ourselves? That always seemed to be a big no-no in the movies. Luckily, I knew where we were at this particular time on Saturday just gone; I was standing at the bar trying to get Marla the Stereotypical Barmaid to show me her boobs and John had passed out in the men’s toilets. The chances of us meeting our former selves were slim.
“Can I drive this time?” said John as we approached the car-cum-time-machine.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” I said. “You’ve had far too much to drink. We’ll end up on a French battlefield or the like.”
John considered this, and then, by way of agreement, nodded before climbing into the passenger seat.
“Ready to become super-rich and irresistible to members of the fairer sex?” I said, knowing that at least one of those things was about to come true.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” said John, clamping down on the dashboard with his teeth again. I inputted the date and time to which we wished to return, buckled my seatbelt, made a high-pitched yee-haw noise that John didn’t seem to appreciate, turned the car around lest we slam into the wall a few inches in front of us, and slammed my foot down on the accelerator.
“Oh, fucksticks!” said John.
“Giddy-up!” said I.
And off we went. Back to the Fut…well, back from whence we came.
13
“To riches beyond your wildest dreams,” said the doctor. “I shall look forward to receiving my fee, which has just been amended to suit your current financial situation.”
“Hold your horses there, doc,” I said. “As is usually the case with time-travel, something often goes wrong, thusly making the whole thing far more trouble than it’s worth.”
“What are you telling me?” said the doctor, knocking back his second whiskey chaser. “That there is no money? No DeLorean? That the whole thing was a delusion shared by you and your best friend, John? That you are, in fact, in the right place now, for you are more than a little tapped in the head and deserved of that straitjacket?”
“Not at all,” I said, sipping at my light ale with the straw provided. It was going straight to my head. My perfectly sane head. “We arrived back in the now, or the then as it was, to find that certain things had changed. That somehow, by putting on a single lottery ticket, we had all but destroyed Buckfutt as we knew it.”
14
“The pub’s on fire,” said John, pointing to the pub, which was clearly ablaze. A few patrons – The Barry Boys, Trevor McDougal, Noddy Holder (who popped in on occasion to talk about his Slade days) – were standing just outside as the flames licked about the place. Sid was also there, but when he saw us he pulled his hat down and stepped into the shadows, which saved us having to warn him, once again, of his superfluity.
“So it is,” I said. “I wonder what’s happened.” I also wondered whether Marla the Stereotypical Barmaid was okay, but I kept that bit to myself.
As we approached the pub, Peter Muffin came bursting through its burning doors. To say he was a little bit on fire would have been like saying Hitler wasn’t too keen on the Jews. After a rather clever stop, drop, and roll, the landlord of The Fox leapt to his feet and said, “Am I out?”
“It would appear so,” I said. “What the flaming hell has happened here? Where’s Marla? Why’s Noddy dancing?”
Peter, doubled over and panting like a thirsty dog, said, “Some sort of explosion in the kitchen. I was upstairs when it happened, but the blast was so powerful that just a second later I was downstairs, surrounded by fire and fairly winded.” He turned to face his burning establishment, and for a moment I thought he was going to start wailing. Fortunately for those of us present, he did nothing of the sort. “Marla is still in
there.”
John began to wail, which made us all uncomfortable. “Oh, Marla!” he screeched. “Oh, Marla, you’ll be burnt to a crisp by now!”
“Calm down man!” I said, and thwacked him across the face with the back of my hand. His expression was one of utter shock. “I’ll go in and rescue her!” It was a silly thing to say, but love does silly things to one’s senses. There was a good chance I would die in the next ten seconds.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to put myself at risk, for Marla the Stereotypical Barmaid presently burst from an upstairs window, screaming frantically, dropped twenty feet or so to the ground, and exploded in a mess of blood and splintered bone.
“Ah,” I said.
“Wah!” said John.
“This can’t be happening,” said the landlord. “She’s worked for me since the very beginning. Do you have any idea how long it’s going to take me to replace her?”
“Well, the good thing about stereotypical barmaids is—”
“Look over there!” yelled Noddy Holder, who had stopped dancing and was now pointing in the direction of Sidhu’s corner shop.
On the pavement in front of the shop, Mister Sidhu was being mauled by a pack of hungry wolves. I could hear them growling and snarling as they went to town on him, tearing meat from his bones and swallowing it hungrily down. It put me right off mince, I can tell you that much.
“We don’t have wolves in this country, do we?” said John, and it was a damn fine question, and one I would deign to answer once I’d finished upchucking.
“Not as a rule, no,” I said, wiping vomit from my chin. “Maybe they’re not wolves. Maybe they’re some special breed of pooch.”
The wolves began to howl, and if there was a more terrifying sound, I didn’t know what it was.
Just then, Shiva came running from the shop. She was wielding a cricket bat and swinging it wildly at the feasting animals. “Get away from my daddy! He’s paying my school tuition, you bloody bastards!” She clobbered one of them squarely on the jaw and it whined plaintively. The rest of its pack would no doubt tease the poor fucker later, but for now they had only one thing on their mind, and that thing was Shiva and the devouring thereof.
I couldn’t just stand here while all this was going on, and so I quickly covered my eyes and pretended I was in the Bahamas. It worked for a moment – at least until Shiva’s agonising screams pierced the night – but then I was very much back in the room and feeling, for want of a better description, like a right arsehole.
Just then, Trevor McDougal, one of The Fox’s oldest and most loyal punters, dropped to the ground and began to shake uncontrollably.
“I didn’t know Trev was epileptic,” said John.
“Nor did I,” I said.
“I don’t think he is,” said the landlord. “He’s been a patron of The Fox now for over sixty years. I’m almost certain he would have mentioned it.”
It transpired, in the seconds following Trevor’s apparent seizure-that-wasn’t-a-seizure, that he was under attack by something far worse than a tonic fit, and this became obvious when his chest erupted and a small creature, almost like a demon, emerged from the cavity. Its pin-teeth looked deadly, and the noise it made as it regarded us…well, let’s just say I was in need of fresh underwear.
“Hey, isn’t that one of those things from that film?” said John.
“Yes it is,” I said. “Once again, might I remind you that we’re trying to avoid a lawsuit, and therefore we shall refer to that there creature as a ‘breast-breaker’.”
“What’s it doing here?” said John. “In Buckfutt?”
“I have no idea,” I replied, for I was well and truly flummoxed. “Ooh, look out, it’s coming this way.”
It came at us, screeching, and we leapt out of its path. Into the alleyway at the side of The Fox it went, but if you listened really carefully, ignoring the sound of the flames as they decimated the pub and the screams of Shiva as she was eaten alive by wolves, you could hear the creature screaming as it began to evolve, and we all knew what would happen should that thing grow up to be an adult.
I dragged John away from the burning pub and distraught landlord. “This is all our fault,” I said. “None of this would have happened if we hadn’t put that quid on the lottery.”
“How can a go on the lottery result in the arrival of wolves and, quite possibly, a Xenomorph from LV-426?”
I poked him in the eye. Not hard, but it was enough to bring him to his senses. “We have to go back in time,” I said. “We have to go back, and stop ourselves from buying that lottery ticket.”
John looked at me as if I’d just told him I was the proud owner of a particularly nasty bout of herpes. “I thought you said it would be bad if we bumped into ourselves in the past?”
“If the films are to be believed,” I said. “But it’s not like we’ve got much of a choice, now, is it?”
“Incoming!” yelled Peter Muffin the landlord, and we all dove for cover as a trio of Messerschmitts roared overhead, dropping bombs on Buckfutt as they went. A series of explosions rattled the village; the wolves, and what was left of poor Shiva, were obliterated in an instant. The shopkeeper’s daughter had, it seemed, drawn the short straw in this little narrative.
“Was that the fucking Luftwaffe?” said Noddy Holder, dusting off his twelve-inch-heeled platform boots.
“See!” I said to John. “We can’t just stand by while all this is going on. We’ll be dead within the hour, and then who’s going to save Buckfutt from ze Germans and the aliens?”
“You get us into some right messes,” sighed John, shaking his bald and sweat-shiny head. “To the DeLorean!”
And off he went.
And off I followed.
And behind us, the rest of the villagers were attacked by mutant wasps with daggers for arses, but the less said about that the better.
15
The doctor relaxed back in his chair. Probably not the best move, since his chair had no back, and so he picked himself up from the cold, hard tiles and retook his seat. “This is all very interesting,” he said. “Like something by Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov. You really should be a science-fiction writer with that marvellous imagination of yours. Have you ever thought about putting what’s in there” – he jabbed his biro toward my head – “down on paper?”
“It’s the truth, I tell you,” I said. “All of this really happened.” I knew I wasn’t making a very good case for why I wasn’t, in fact, insane, but we’d come too far now, and I hadn’t even got to the bit with the dinosaurs.
“If this all really happened,” said the doctor as he lit a cigarette and offered me the same, “then why didn’t anyone else see it? I mean, the Luftwaffe dropping bombs all over this quaint little village of ours? That’s the kind of thing that people might notice.”
“That never happened,” I said. “I mean, it did happen, but when John and I went back, we changed the course of the future once again, thusly removing the German aircraft from the plot. You really must pay attention.”
“So you and your best friend John returned to Saturday just gone and put a stop to yourselves purchasing that lottery ticket?”
“Precisely,” said I, and then, “Well, when you put it like that, it sounds easy, but I can assure you it was nothing of the sort.”
16
“Park our DeLorean next to that DeLorean,” John told me as we emerged, quite dramatically might I add, in the abandoned car park on Charlie Chaplin Street. “Why didn’t we arrive before them? Wouldn’t it have been better to get in front, so to speak?”
“They – I mean we – would have seen the other DeLorean, and that might have confused them – I mean us – and changed the future even more.” I knew what I meant, but the expression upon my best friend’s countenance suggested that I was the only one.
“This is all terribly confusing,” said John. “Do you think people will be able to follow the plot?”
I shrugged. “It’s all very s
imple, really. We’re back in Saturday just gone, and so are the other versions of us, the ones about to purchase a lottery ticket. We just need to stop them from doing so. It’s hardly fucking Inception.”
“More like Bill and Ted,” said John.
“Yes. More like Bill and Ted,” I said. “Right. Let’s go and prevent the other us-es from setting foot in Sidhu’s.”
“Simple,” said John.
“Simple,” I echoed.
However, when we came upon the earlier versions of ourselves, we realised it was going to be anything but simple. There we stood, across the street from Sidhu’s corner shop, face-to-face with our doppelgangers, and it was an extremely strange situation to find oneself in. I had no idea how large my nose really was in person.
“I’ve got a massive conk,” I said, pointing at the offending feature.
“Never mind our nose,” said the other me. “What the bleeding hell are you doing here? John and I are about to get very rich.”
“No, we’re not,” said John – my John. “You can’t buy that lottery ticket. To do so will spell the end for Buckfutt.”
“Don’t be so ridiculous,” said other-John. “How can buying a solitary lottery ticket result in the demise of an entire village?”
My John shrugged, and so did I, for we hadn’t the foggiest. “You’re just going to have to trust us,” I said. “If you purchase that lottery ticket, Marla the Stereotypical Barmaid will be burnt to a crisp at The Fox and, upon attempting escape from the conflagration, very much reduced to mulch and viscera.”
Other-me and other-John exchanged a glance. Funnily enough, I knew what we were thinking. We were both thinking that the chances of fornicating with Marla the Stereotypical Barmaid in the near future would be greatly reduced if she should become a human milkshake. At least, that’s what I knew I was thinking. Other-John was probably trying to figure out how she would fit in her wedding-dress without dripping from its sleeves.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” asked other-me. “You could be imposters trying to swindle me and my best mate out of a fortune.”
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