The Grisly Ghosts of Gruesome Time – Chapter 7

The Great Substack Story Challenge

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Just the man Joey wanted to see. Joey didn’t like being jerked around or lied to, and he’d had enough.

“Howdy, John.” Joey said, his fist already in motion.

John didn’t see the right cross coming until it was too late. He landed on the street in a heap. 

He spat, straightened his glasses and looked up to see Joey rummaging through the brown duffel bag that was on John’s back a moment ago. 

“Joey, what the h-“

Joey ignored John, sweeping his hand back and forth inside the bag until it closed on something circular and metal.

He pulled the time disc out of the bag and turned to face John. 

“I’d say sorry, John, but I don’t like lying.” Joey said, gripping the disc tightly in both hands.

“I’ve got a message for your friend Maureen. Tell her not to worry about finding me. When I’m ready I’ll find her.”

“Whoa, slow down Joey, what are you talking about? I know this experience has been a lot for you but-“

“Oh, and tell your wife she owes me money.”

Joey gripped the disc harder and closed his eyes. His stomach lurched like the big drop on a roller coaster, and he disappeared from view.

The lurching feeling stopped, and things settled around him.

He opened his eyes and was instantly confused.

The street was nowhere to be seen. Joey found himself standing in the middle of a large green field.

The humidity hit him right away, making his head swim and disorienting him for a moment.

He tried to move and couldn’t at first. Looking down, he saw his feet stuck deep in fresh fragrant mud.

With some difficulty he yanked his shoes out of the muck and found a slightly drier place to stand.

“Okay,” He said. “Where the heck am I now?

Placing a hand over his eyes, he tried to see into the distance. After a moment, he thought he could see movement just over a hilltop several feet away from him .

A shapeless mass of blue appeared on the horizon. As it came closer,  Joey could tell he was looking at a large group of men.

They walked in tight formation, marching fixedly towards him. Suddenly, they stopped and spread out across the field.

Joey could now see their deep blue uniforms, crisscrossed with deep red and gleaming white. They each wore tall shako hats trimmed in gold and topped with bright red plumage.

He heard a noise like a thunderclap followed by a high keening whistle.

A cannonball zipped through the air, missing Joey’s face by a fraction of an inch.

He snapped out of his daze in a hurry.

“Nope, nope, no way!” He immediately regretted watching that documentary on the Battle of Waterloo a few nights ago as he fell asleep.

Clearly time travel had a learning curve.

Closing his eyes, Joey gripped the disc and concentrated, disappearing again just as another cannonball passed right through the spot where he’d been standing.

The moment he slugged John, he’d made up his mind. If all these kooks wanted him in on the fun, it was going to be on his terms. 

People he thought he knew had changed their stories and allegiances so many times it was fruitless to keep believing and then unbelieving them. Joey was going to find out the truth one way or another, and he wasn’t going to wait for the next surprise visit or phone call.

It was time for them to be thrown off a bit, and time for some straight answers. If Joey could find the multiverse marshals instead of being found, he could change the game in his favor.

Multiverse was the last word on his mind as he felt the time travel tug again.

This time he landed hard on an unforgiving surface that felt like metal. 

“Gah!” The air rushed out of his lungs and  he lay flat for a moment, trying to catch his breath and figure out where (or when) he was now. 

A sucking sound made him look up in a hurry.

The sky above him was a deep, malevolent purple. He was lying on a slanted silver surface made out of some sort of enormous metal tiles and tilted at an extreme angle.

The sucking sound (he discovered) came from an impossibly large vacuum cleaner. It was being pushed by a human-sized aardvark. The creature wore faded coveralls and large brown work shoes. A name tag on the creature’s lapel read SLAYBIB.

Joey’s mind reeled at all the compounded absurdity. A million questions and comments jockeyed for position in his mind before one finally won the day.

Slaybib turned off the gargantuan vacuum for a moment just as Joey said,

“Where the hell am I?”

The creature turned large watery brown eyes towards him.

In a gravelly voice, it said “In my way. Move it or lose it.”

“Fair enough!” Joey yelled, he grabbed the disc and began to travel but was momentarily delayed when his shoe got stuck in a seam in the metal tiles.

He managed to escape the space vacuum just  in time. He thought he heard a voice calling his name as he jumped, but it was too late to check.

Joey had a few more bizarre close calls (talking down a suicidal cup of coffee , running from an amorous talking badger,) before he finally saw something useful for his quest.

As he ran past a news kiosk with the badger hot on his tail (or hot for it? Anyways…) he caught sight of the year: 2050. He had just enough time to dodge the creature and duck into an alley.

He kept the phrase Time Guardians (AKA Multiverse Marshals) in his mind and made one last jump.

Joey landed in front of a nondescript office building. A sign hanging above the doorway read Mite Files Security.

This didn’t seem quite right. Joey was just about to come up with another plan when a voice behind him said,

“You’re a difficult man to follow, Mr. Hardcase.”

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Text (c) 2022 by Thomas Bubb

Header image by Erica Drayton.