042. You're not as now as you think you are

The present had a habit of showing up, unannounced and uninvited –if they were honest, it was a bit of a bastard about it.

Tammy and Daryn had reconnected on Facebook, fifteen years after they’d last shared the same oxygen. Although they were nervous, they were also excited. They agreed to meet at a nearby bar at 8 – he was late, she was early.

When he saw her, he thought about the things she had been at 17. A short skirt and a shy smile. The occasional glance at him from her spot next to the window geography. $3’s worth of chips from the fisho after school. A center-court spot in the netball tryouts. And the heat. If Tammy was anything, it was heat. Sweat and company, as she fought for composure on the long summer afternoons of their adolescence.

She thought about all the things he could have been. A steady income, and a father for some children. A warm mass in her bed. A revolutionary, fighting to change the world into what he always said it should have been. And a presence, soft and earnest and constant, in her otherwise transient life.

Somewhere between the fifth and sixth drinks, they kissed. Boy and girl, love and longing, past and future – joined together in a moment of temporary whole-ness. But then the present showed up and ruined everything. No idyllic past. No unspoiled future. Just incomplete, unfulfilling now.

They had tried to pretended it didn’t exist, but the present still hung in the air between them. It darkened things. Like secrets and ghosts and second-guesses.

041. The Little Red Hat

The man from Johnson & Puck's Pest Control crouched in the dirt next to Meg's tulips and shone a flashlight underneath her porch. 

"Hmm", he said. He went inside the house, knocked on Meg's walls, examined the living room floor and scribbled in a notepad. "Mhm, yup, less than 1ft probably", he muttered to himself as he measured a small hole beneath the kitchen sink. When he crawled around on the attic Meg waited below with a big glass of water. She could hear him shuffle around up there. At one point the shuffling stopped and Meg heard a muffled

"Aha!"

Shortly thereafter he came down the ladder again. His blue dungaree, the brown uniform below and his black hair were tinted grey by a thick layer of dust.

"Yup", said he and slapped at his arms and legs to clear some of the dust off, "it's what I thought". He took the glass from Meg and poured half of the water down his throat.

"What is it?" asked Meg as the man reached into one of the pockets of his dungaree and dug out a tiny red, felt object. He handed the scrumpled up thing to Meg. It was a little red hat. Meg studied it as it lay in the palm of her hand, the width almost that of a tennis ball, too small even to be worn by an infant human child.

"You've got gnomes, miss", said the man.

"Oh", said Meg. 

It made sense in a way. The last couple of months she'd heard weird sounds, small creatures moving around at night. She always seemed to be out of milk and her cat, Steven, had run away. Weirder than that, though, was that the house was always clean. Immaculate. She found clothes she swore she'd thrown on the floor folded up and put neatly in drawers. The dishes magically made themselves and flowers bloomed in her garden even though she rarely tended to them.

The Pest Control-man finished his glass of water and handed it back to Meg. He took the little red hat from her hand, pulled out a pair of reading glasses from another pocket and examined the hat closely.

"Mm", he said, "See how well-kept it is? Almost spotless?" Meg agreed that yes, the hat was in very good shape.

"That means you've probably got house gnomes."

"There are different kinds of gnomes?", inquired Meg.

"Sure. There are house gnomes, dune gnomes, creek gnomes, garden gnomes." He gave Meg a puzzled look, "Have you felt a little down lately, miss? Had the urge to drink whiskey in the middle of the week, stare at old pictures and listen excessively to Johnny Cash?"

Meg shook her head and the man nodded. "So it's definitely not garden gnomes, then. They spread melancholy around like pollen. Could be milk gnomes, dandy gnomes, rodeo gnomes, pentatonic scale-blues gnomes".

"But I don't live close to the rodeo", said Meg.

"Oh, it's just names, miss. Gnomes are sensitive creatures, very easily offended. They only socialize with like-minded gnomes. Worst case scenario", he said and shuddered, "it's Siberian gnomes."

"Surely, it could be worse than that, right?" said Meg, trying to lighten the mood, "At least I don't have dragons."

"Spend a month with Siberian Death Squad gnomes, ma'am, and you'll find yourself wishing it'd been dragons."

"Oh"

"My best advice is to invest in a couple of toadstools, put out some milk and cookies every night and hope they take a shining to you". He handed the little red hat back to Meg. "House gnomes can be real helpful if they like you".

040. Have you guys noticed anything weird?

It had been a bad day at the morgue.  More than a dozen bodies had been pulled out of a train wreck and everyone needed a drink. As it turned out, they needed more than one.

Dr Marcus was the first to say it aloud.

“Have you guys ever noticed anything weird during an autopsy?”  She asked, then signalled the bartender to bring another round. “You know, like something comes out. Something other than vitreous humour and cerebo-spinal fluid, I mean.”

No-one knew what to say. Dr Parkanus cleared his throat. Mike, the second-year intern, traced a line in the condensation on his glass.

Dr Marcus was already regretting bringing the phenomena up, but it was too late to stop now.  “It’s like…” she started, “It’s like we don’t keep emotions where we’re supposed to.”

The drinks arrived, and everyone took a bigger sip than they needed to.

“Take logic, for example. Everyone think it’s in your head, but it’s actually in the kidneys. And kindness isn’t in your tongue, it’s in your cheeks.  Shame sticks to your teeth – there's a film of it.”  She sighed. She should have kept quiet. The others were going to think she was losing it. “Then there’s freedom – ”

Dr Parkanus looked down at his feet, involuntarily, and Mike shook his head. “Nope, not your legs,” he chimed in. “Your lungs, actually.”

Dr Parkanus raised an eyebrow. Dr Marcus smiled. It was nice to have someone standing with her on the edge of crazy.

“Everyone thinks love’s in the heart,” she went on. “But it’s not. It’s in your hair.  Of course, that’s a stupid place to put it. It takes so much time, and it grows so slowly.”

She took another sip. “And it fades and gets brittle in the sun.”

No one said anything.

“But it smells good,” she finally admitted. “Like apples.”

Dr Parkansus gave her a weak smile and changed the subject. It was unkind to brush his colleague off, but the conversation had made him uncomfortable. Medical examiners weren’t supposed to be poetic. And besides, his hair was thin and brittle and his cheeks were hollow. He had so little love and kindness to give.

039. Fictional creatures

“Do you believe in the ghosts?”, said Donnie. “That a spirit can leave the body and go somewhere else?”

Boyd eyed him in disbelief.

“You're kidding, right?”

It was a stupid question. They were staying the night in a supposedly haunted house, weren't they? Anyone who truly believed the stories about this place would be nuts to spend even ten minutes here.

"Yes or no?" Donnie stared back. Eyes flat. He was being serious.

"No”, said Boyd, “Of course not, man".

His eyes flicked around the room. It was huge. One time, long ago, it had been the dining hall of this old mansion. They had lit well over twenty candles but big chunks of the room still bathed in darkness.

Every now and then the wind would crash into the exterior walls and the wooden mansion would creak as if someone walked upstairs. Or tried to break through the walls. How had Donnie talked him into this?

"I think I do”, said Donnie, “I believe in ghosts”.

He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew heat onto them.

“Maybe. The definitions seemed simpler way back when.

“When they had devils and werewolves and sea monsters. Witches, and succubi, and creatures in the woods that would coax gullible men to do stupid shit.

“We've rationalized away true evil and substituted it with mental health issues.

“Like we know so much about the world. We split the atom and decided we'll be our own Gods. It's all so subjective, right? We get all caught up in definitions of reality and everything needs an explanation that doesn't spring from fiction. There's no monsters. Just sick people.

“But fuck that shit. What do we know? Maybe there's someone on death row right now that had to slaughter a bunch of people just to stop a zombie outbreak? We don't know.

“Or, like, right now? I don't know if I've got a tumor making me see shit, if it's the shrooms I put in our water or if the lady behind you is an actual ghost”.

A spiky chill shot through Boyd. It grabbed hold of him like a tentacle that reached up through his ass and replaced his spine one vertebra at the time. But when he turned around there was no one there. Just his shadow dancing on the wall. He could almost feel his bowels unclench. Fucking Donnie.

“There's no one there, Donnie”, he said and, internally, “Asshole”.

"So you can't see her, then."

Boyd shook his head and turned back around. He tensed up. Donnie had a knife. Where had Donnie found a knife?

“Where'd you find the knife, Donnie?”

“You can't hear her either?”

“No, man”.

“Oh”

The hint of a smile teased at the corner of Donnie's mouth but Boyd found no comfort in it. He wasn't fucking with him. This wasn't the smile Donnie sometimes let slip when he hid Boyd's car keys or tried to gull him into believing he'd slept with his sister. This was the dreamy, drugged smile of a man seduced.

“Guess it's just me then”.

"What's she saying, Donnie?", Boyd asked, careful to not stare on the knife so hard he lost sight of the man holding it.

Donnie sat with his head cocked slightly, listened intently, and stared at a point somewhere slightly above Boyd. The knife hung loose between the fingers of his right hand.

“She says that she's lonely. And it's such a big house to be lonely in, every room a reminder of a life lived so long ago it'd be history if anyone cared to remember. But all the people that could have remembered have moved on so she's left here to carry on for them, in an echo chamber of loneliness.

“Every now and then people, people like us, Boyd, come to tell stories and to try frighten each other and she sits by them and feels their warmth and tries to remember what it was like to have a heart beat and for a moment she gets to be a little bit less lonely. But the people always leave.

“She thinks she'll go crazy soon. She has no one to talk to. She's forgotten the names of her parents. She doesn't know when she was born. There are so many things that are slipping away from her.

“It takes awhile to create a monster. But eventually, time takes everything. It's a cruel thing, time. First, it takes your youth. And then your body. And if you stay around long enough it'll take away your humanity. Peel it away just to see what's below.

“Someone needs to stay here to keep her sane”.

Donnie finally seemed to notice Boyd. Horror had crept into him, pushed his eyes wide open and frozen him to the spot.

“Oh, don't worry, Boyd”, he said and stood up. His right hand had started to clench the knife. The knuckles on that hand were pale.

“She says that she likes you”.

038. Welcome to 2117. Try not to drip on the carpet.

Theresa’s neck ached from lying to one side for more than a century. She was beginning to think she should’ve sprung for the deluxe preservation orb. After all, when it came to cryogenics, you got what you paid for.

When she could walk, the first thing she did was look out the window. Through the smog, a labyrinth of overpasses crawled with traffic. The shapes of the cars had changed, but they still moved on wheels.

“Where are the hovercraft?” she asked, and Dr Montgomery laughed. He was still in his first-life, so he didn’t know what it felt like to arrive in a disappointing future. He ushered her into another room, and sat her down next to a box of her old belongings.

There were documents for a bank account, with what amounted to quite a lot of money in the new currency. She would need it to retrain, of course – her skills as a games programmer would be hopelessly out of date. Rummaging through the box she also found photographs of now-very-old friends and her childhood teddy. A few of her favourite dresses. A battered copy of Catcher in the Rye. And – she laughed a little – a Snickers bar. She wondered if they still sold those.

One of the staff had thoughtfully included a book, “Avoiding an Icy Reception: The Cryogenician’s Guide to Social Norms in the Year 2117.”  Under the “Politics” heading, she noticed the US president was George W. Bush.

“I see the Bush family still has a hold over American politics,” she said.

“Actually,” Dr Montgomery said kindly. “Mr Bush is from your life-era.  You’ll be pleased to know there are quite a few of you around.”

Theresa stared. “They brought him back?”

“More than once, actually,” Dr Montgomery said. “His popularity shot right up after the second assassination.”

There was a pool of water in her now-vintage shoes where her toes were still thawing out, and that wasn’t the only reason Theresa was uncomfortable.  She was beginning to think she had made a terrible mistake. 

037. New Sue

When Sue's plane crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean her parents and her boyfriend Clive buried an empty coffin and waited three weeks before ordering a SoCom Clone.

Clive would have had one sooner, it was flu season and he worried Walmart would be out of stock, but on this issue Sue's parent simply wouldn't budge. They'd wait three weeks. Out of respect for Sue. Besides, when John Blue snapped his neck in a skiing accident last fall his parents waited for two weeks. And Sue's parents would not be out-mourned by the Blues.

But Clive's worries were unfounded. The lines were long but Walmart was well-stocked and while Sues parents helped Personality sort through Sue's social networks Clive went to the Modelling desk. It wasn't hard to re-do Sue. Last Christmas, Clive's brother had bought him a new camera so there was plenty of video for the Walmart staff to track and enough audio to make NewSue be pitch perfect.

The pictures he brought for her body template were a little over a year old. He had newer ones, sure, but Sue had gained a few pounds after Mittens 4 died. She'd irrationally cancelled her subscriptions with CopyDog just a month earlier but when Clive had offered to pay for Mittens 5 she'd refused. Instead she spent the better part of April on the sofa binging on ice cream and crying over old videos. He thanked the BuddhaBots that Sue had mourned Mittens 4 in front of the TV instead of the computer. NewSue would have no memory of the dog.

It was Saturday and crowded but within the hour Clive had them back on highway 7 and heading home. NewSue rode shotgun. Mittens 5 yapped in her lap.

But Original Sue wasn't dead. She'd washed up on a beach in Thailand, mildly amnesiac and with life-threatening wounds. But very much alive.

When she recovered and finally returned home, four months later, everyone felt a little awkward. Sue was the original so no one was comfortable admitting that maybe they liked NewSue a little better. She always had a funny video or a kooky news story to share. And SoCom Clones cost a lot of money. So Sue's parents urged her to think positive.

“Didn't you always want a sister, dear?” said her mother.

“I'd be over the moon if I had a clone”, said her father, “finally someone to match me in squash”.

But Sue hated her clone. She was incessantly perky, to the point of bimbo lunacy, and she wouldn't shut up about her food.

"It's just spaghetti and meat balls!", screamed Original Sue in exasperation, "No one cares about your stupid spaghetti and meat balls!"

“Not true”, said Clive and took NewSues hand in his.

“I like her spaghetti and meat balls”.

036. Martin Todd, you are not Godzilla

"Don't you think you're a little old for the dinosaur suit?" Dr Prentice was asking.

He had a point. Martin Todd was about three decades too old for a dinosaur suit – so old, in fact, that he'd had to commission a lady he'd found on the internet to custom make a costume big enough to cover his enormous girth.

It had all started when a package arrived from his primary school. Some workmen were excavating the playground to build a new drama theatre when they had unearthed a time capsule he and his classmates had buried there. The new principal had enclosed a letter from his 7-year-old self, and reminded Mr Todd that if he enjoyed the flash-back he was most welcome to make an alumni donation.

Dear future Martin Todd, the letter read, in earnest cursive. I bet your life is sooooo cool. I hope your a cirkus trainer and that you get to ride the lions for fun, and that your married to someone really pretty like Annie from my class. Also, in the future you will have your own hovvercar and drive around singing and waring sunglasses. Hope its orsome.
Love, Martin Todd.
p.s. Also in the future do you get to be a dinosaw sometimes? I hope so. I cant wait.

The letter had arrived on a Tuesday, which was also the day Martin Todd's department accounts were due. Sitting in his cubicle, wading through a pile of paperwork he could barely see over, he'd felt the rest of his life stretch before him in a haze of unmarked days. He decided something had to change.

So he began to sneak the dinosaur suit to work with him on Fridays. At first, he would creep into the toilets in his lunchbreak and change into it. He didn't go anywhere – he was worried people would stare at him – but when he locked himself in a cubicle and read the paper, he smiled for the first time in March.

When he got a bit braver, he wore it on his sandwich run. Then, he wore it to the bank. Today he'd even worn it to his standing appointment with his shrink, a decision Dr Prentice was having trouble understanding.

The suit didn't change anything, of course. When he took it off, there was still a pile of emails in his inbox and a dearth of food in his fridge. Kelly wasn't any closer to taking him back and the rusted-out Corolla was still leaking oil onto his garage floor. His life still sucked.

But when he put on the suit –

Well, for one hour every week, he was living the dream.

035. Hooves of time

Bill fiddled a little with his napkin and fought the urge to order a beer. Some things you do sober or not at all.

Drive. Text-message after 10 pm.

Break up.

A little pile of shredded paper bits sat in his lap and he realised he must have started to rip at the napkin. He brushed it off.

None of this was right.

He'd fallen out of love with Lauren as easily as one steps through a doorway. It wasn't even from one day to the next. It happened in a couple of heart beats at the supermarket, between the milk and the sour cream.

At first he chose to ignore it and wait for the feelings to return.

He told himself that love fluctuates, the same way his interest in books and TV ebbed and flowed. The same way he'd be crazy for pasta one day and then sick of it the next. He would tire on something just long enough to miss it. And then when he circled back his love would be renewed. Stronger, even. More passionate.

But his feelings for Lauren stayed gone. He could dig around in the memories, remember what they looked like and do a decent enough impression of himself as if he was still into her but inside he felt cold and afraid.

At night, when Lauren slept nuzzled up next to him, he imagined time like a buffalo. He saw himself strapped onto a beast that roared forward with relentless fury. Days pounded into weeks. A rolling dust-cloud of months. In the absolute stillness of their bedroom he could hear the hooves of Time thunder forward, towards the cliffs perched on infinity, and he would have to fight very hard to choke panic back down his throat.

The little bell above the door chimed and Lauren entered the restaurant.

She saw Bill and smiled and gave him a little wave while the staff took her coat. He returned her smile. It hurt him to realize how pretty she was.

034. Shouldn't have done the laundry

He was putting the fitted sheet back on the bed when she burst into the room.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she yelled, tearing it from his hands.

He shrugged. “I washed the sheets.”

She grabbed pillowcases from the floor and shook them, viciously. Then she shook the blankets, too.

“I thought you’d be happy,” he said. “I used fabric softener and everything.”

But she didn’t look happy. Her face was streaked with sweat and fear and she was beginning to cry.

“Annie,” he soothed, putting his arms around her. “What is it you’ve lost?”

 “The string,” she said, into his chest. “The one between us. I think it must have broken last night.”

He didn’t know what she was talking about.

“It must have got tangled in the sheets,” she said. “And then you washed them, and now it’s gone.”

He spent over an hour trying to convince her there was never any string between them – that what held them together was as strong as ever, and no missing string would change that. When that didn’t work, he gave up arguing and helped her look for it. They tried the washing machine and the laundry cupboard, under the bed and inside the doona cover. There was no silver-fine string anywhere, and she was inconsolable.

Finally, they lay down on the clean sheets and he wiped smudged mascara off her cheeks.

“We needed the string,” she kept saying. “Without it, we’ll never find our way back to each other.”

He told her she was crazy. It would be easy to find each other, because they lived in the same house. The next day, he kissed her softly on the cheek.  “We’ll have pasta for dinner,” he promised as he left for work. She liked pasta.

But during the day, he felt her starting to fade. First her face, then her voice, then her smell. By the time the knock-off bell rang at 5pm, he could barely remember her at all.