Poison

Paddy saw him from afar on that steamy August afternoon in the Boboli Gardens, wearing low-cut jeans, a white t-shirt that showed off his slinky frame and sinewy arms, flip-flops highlighting the high arches of his tanned, olive Italian skin – and wearing aviator sunglasses on a face with a square jaw, luscious, full lips, a high forehead, and that Roman nose – Paddy, the freckled redhead from Dublin on holiday before the last year of university, was transfixed.

The boy walked past Paddy, peering down at him, smiling with a little twitch of that luscious mouth, and passed him. And as the young man walked away, he planted his legs just every so slightly forward – so as to pump his left glute, then his right, in a way that (Paddy was certain) was intended to entice Paddy to follow.

And so Paddy did follow.

The magical motion of the young man’s bubble butt had Paddy entranced. He followed him from one terrace to the next, past a Roman statue and then a Greek – one of the gods, Aries, Paddy was sure. When the young man came to a fountain with a statue of Poseidon, about to walk down the stairs to the next terrace, he looked back at Paddy. And smiled. Then disappeared down the stairs.

Paddy’s heart raced. He could feel his pulse just above both ears. The arousal he felt in his torso – which led to an arousal between his legs, overwhelmed him. He had to continue following that boy, that Eros who enticed him to fill a need he’d never felt, never experienced in his Dublin years – and then the boy with the swaying hips and the luscious glutes and that magical Roman nose crossed a street, and then Paddy followed him –

The last thing Paddy remembered was a loud, roaring sound coming toward him, as he turned his head to the left and saw the speeding Mercedes autobus –

Wishing you well

When Martha contemplating dying, she could feel the dry, chalky flakes as her fingers swept over "Alas, poor Yorick's" skull." She could see the limp head of her pet sheltie Heather flop down as she lifted her to her chest for one last hug. She could smell the pungent citrus flavor as she opened the door to her grandmother's apartment, five days after poor Grandma died.

She could hear her boss talking about poor, dear, sweet Ellen, "We wish her well in her new endeavors."

Martha couldn't believe her ears. Ellen, the most productive, the most engaging software engineer in the whole group - the mother of the team, the oldest member of the gang, the one who always got us going to lunch together, and the one who kept the product going forward - canned. Like death, like the flicking out of a candle.

All of a sudden, and without warning, Monday at 3:30 p.m. Kram the boss pinged us for a meeting in a conference room. Funny thing, everyone was there, sitting around the table. We looked at each other. Every pair of eyes said, "Why the hell are we here?" And then it became weird, where the hell is Ellen? She was upstairs, she's here today. And then Kram said, "As of today, Ellen is no longer with the company."

No longer with the company. The dreaded undiplomatic, idiotic, moronic phrase. No longer with the company. Well, fuck you too. The company is no longer with reality. We fired her, that's what you meant to say? Well, Ellen was worthy of a hell of a lot better than that. No longer with the company. Well, guess what? Neither am I.

No more direct deposit, close checking account, sell house, live on the street. Never mind.

Back to death. The end of all nuisance, the end of all pain. Maybe those dry flakes on the skull of that dead alas-poor-Yorick don't feel quite so bad.

Back in the day

“Oh, Ashley, how you do run on,” Scarlett said.

She and Ashley had not yet noticed Aaron peeking through the doorway. It must be late in the book. Scarlett wore a garish blue-and-white outfit with an ostentatious bonnet, and Ashley had gray hair and a worn flannel shirt.

Poor Ashley, never can figure out if it’s Melanie he loves or Scarlett. And poor Scarlett – oh, the hell with poor Scarlett.

“Things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to, did they Ashley?”

“No, but they never do. Ah, how I remember those moonlit nights at Twelve Oaks …”

On and on they went. From standing by the door to the office, eavesdropping, Aaron could see it coming – the hug. And, true to form, he looked out the main door. There they were, approaching – India Wilkes, Archie the convict, and Mrs. Elsing. Poor Mrs. Elsing, she never got enough scene time.

Aaron had to act fast and stop Scarlett and Ashley from hugging. India Wilkes would see it and tell Melanie. Aaron tried to step in the doorway to call out a warning, but some force above him reached down, slapped him in the face, and said, “Get out of my novel! You’re going to ruin the whole climax of my book.”

That was Margaret Mitchell. And before he knew it, he was back in the time machine heading home.

How dare you

With Aaron’s new-found knowledge he intended to make the most of it. But wait a second … if she knew that she’d win the presidency, then she wouldn’t work for it. And she needed to work for it … in order for it to happen. No, Aaron had to remain silent about what he’d seen.

But it didn’t matter right now, because Aaron was sitting in a metal chair in from of a metal table in a metal-walled room with a metal-door and no windows. His hands were locked behind the chair in metal handcuffs.

The consortium was really unhappy with what he’d done. And then the wall in front of him slid off to the side. There they were. Three judges in black jeans and black t-shirts and black boots.

“Mr. Aardvark,” said the man in the middle, a bald man with smooth, taut skin but with a salt-and-pepper goatee atop a muscular frame, “we are quite unhappy with you. How dare you disobey us.”

“You’ve violated Plenary Rule No. 3385,” the wrinkled woman with long gray hair and a narrow, long nose said. “Future time travel is expressly forbidden.”

“This hearing is convened,” said the third judge. He had soft eyes, white hair, and wore black-framed glasses. A big red nose. It was the late Spencer Tracy, brought back to life. “Order in the court for Case No. 47.”

“Forty-seven?” Aaron said.

“Quiet, Mr. Aardvark. It is rare that a client violates a rule. Yes, you are only our forty-seventh case,” Spencer Tracy said. “The charges have been laid before you. What is your plea?”

“No contest,” Aaron said.

The woman spoke up. “Do you have an explanation before we pass sentence?”

“This was a lapse in judgment. I intended traveling to a political rally in 1935 for Senator Huey Long of Louisiana. My time machine, as you well know from my documented repots, errs frequently and placed me at a rally for Donald Trump in 2015.”

“Horrors!” said the bald muscle-man. Aaron made a note to get his phone number.

“You poor, unfortunate soul,” the woman judge said, “to be subjected to that vitriol.”

“What did you do next?” Mr. Tracy said.

“When the mob started attacking a woman of Muslim faith, I ran for safety, fearing I’d be next. When I got to the time machine, I must’ve been in a state, because all I thought was, Hillary has to win, Hillary has to win. And then it occurred to me, I could find out, I could find out. So that’s when I dialed the chronometer all the way to the right. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

The three judges looked at each other and conferred with hands on their microphones. After a minute, they looked up.

“Mr. Aardvark,” Mr. Tracy said. “Would you stand, please.”

Aaron stood.

“It is the judgment of this court that you violated Plenary Rule No. 3385. However, given the extreme circumstances of the mortal danger in which you found yourself at the Trump rally, we’re taking possession of your time machine for six months and grounding you during that time.”

Aaron breathed out and felt his insides begin to relax.

“No human being,” Mr. Tracy said, “should be subjected to one of those political rallies.”

Flapping

“Phooey, those racist bigots kicked the Muslim woman out and sent her careening down an alley way.” Aaron had enough of the Donald Trump rally and decided to hit the road. He might’ve been just as pasty-white, blue-eyed, and red-headed as any of the pathetic drones at that rally, but somehow he thought they’d turn on him as soon as they were done with the brown people.

He found the time machine behind a range of bushes and jumped in, cranked on the ignition, pressed the pedal, and waited. He turned the dial to March 2016 and then positioned the pointer on his map for home – ah, San Francisco, so nice to go home, he thought. And then he had an idea. So he cranked the dial all the way to the right, all the way to January 2017. And he repositioned the pointer to Washington, DC.

He just had to know. Aaron knew it was against the rules. He could only go into the past, but what of it? What the consortium didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. He’d come back quickly to the present. And if the election turned out wrong, maybe he could help change the course of events. When he pressed on go, the machine sputtered, smoked, flapped its side panels up and down, jumped up and down, and then whooshed into the white light.

He landed in the middle of a blizzard wearing only jeans and his polo shirt. “Drats, it’s bloody freezing here. And where the hell am I? Can’t see a damned thing.”

He began to shiver, but could see a wide avenue in front of him. In the distance, there were people on either side, and then he saw lights coming toward him, slowly, very slowly. And then he could hear the cheers begin to rise. Yes – he’d made it to the presidential inauguration.

Had to get the time machine out of the way. It was right in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. But it wouldn’t budge. Too much snow and nice. The procession approached more closely. Aaron could now see the figures of a tall man and a much shorter woman with long hair approaching him. They were waving to the crowds on either side, walking in front of the limousine with all the lights. But who were they?

He couldn’t leave the time machine in the middle of the avenue. As soon as he started pushing it again, he felt a rumbling of the earth beneath him. A voice spoke from the sky, “Aaron Aardvark, you’ve violated Plenary Rule No. 3385. No future time travel. We’re taking you back to the consortium for a judgment.”

Just before he felt the machine whoosh him away, he took a look at the approaching procession. He could see the man and the woman now. He recognized the famous smile of the white-haired man and the wide-eyed excitement in the eyes of his wife.

“There is a god after all.”

Not on my watch

Aaron scampered down the stairs of Aunt Wilhelmina’s house to the garage, opened the door, and removed the cover to the time machine. He got in and started it up. The machine sputtered, jumped up and down. Fog spewed from both sides and the machine groaned its way to a start. Aaron turned the time dial back to 1935 and the location dial to Louisiana.

He hoped he’d land in Baton Rouge just in time. He was doing research for a political science class, and needed to speak to Huey Long. He knew the rules – he couldn’t tell these people what was going to happen to them. But he’d love to tell Long he’d be shot and killed because he was such a creepy demagogue.

After he interviewed Senator Long, he’d swoop over to the Senate floor in 1954 and meet with Joseph McCarthy – his second interview for the term paper at U.C.S.F.

The machine finally began to purr, then Aaron felt himself rise in it and get swooped into the clouds. Before he knew it, he saw the white light in front of him, blackness surrounded the white light. And then he landed with a thud that had him groaning.

He was surrounded by bushes and trees, but could see a small town’s buildings just beyond. Good – a rural, country town likely in the Deep South. He’d made it to Louisiana. Aaron crept out of the time machine – oh, his left hip to a beating at yet another rough landing.

He walked around the corner to Main Street. His heart sank when he saw a Chevrolet Camaro and a Toyota Prius. New models. Damn, he hadn’t made it back to the 1950s. He was still stuck in 2015. But he did get to another location – though it was Marietta, Georgia. Not Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Damn. He heard the political rally beyond. He could hear the threats and the insults from the microphone – a high-pitched voice spewing insults with bad grammar and a thick New York accent that always had Aaron thinking, “this guy has no class.” Aaron walked toward the rally and saw all the denim and polyester among the overweight people wearing old shoes and baseball caps.

There wasn’t a non-white in the crowd. Oh, well, Aaron thought – he needed to interview the third demagogue on his list for the term paper anyway. Might as well check Donald Trump off the list now as later.

No way!

Leila screamed, terrorized by the scene before her: Howard, face down in front of his apartment, dead as a door nail, a large kitchen knife protruding from under his body; Grace, white-faced, blood on her hands, splattered on her neck, down her cleavage, her eyes blazing and poring into Leila.

No way could this be happening. The hallway zoomed out like a mile-long tunnel and zoomed back in, hitting her direct in the face. Ceiling shadows menaced her like scampering tarantulas, a sudden itch in her back startled her into turning around, sure that a violent murderer would soon seize her, and Grace's eyes penetrated right to the bottom of her stomach. It lurched and seized her abdomen; she vomited her dinner. Spinach from the salad she'd eaten only forty minutes ago blew out her nose, landing on the white wall beside her.

Grace flexed her long, tenacious fingers -- claws that caused Leila to retch even more. "You bitch-whore!" Grace screamed, her blonde hair falling into her face, wet-streaked with perspiration falling down her blood-stained face. Before Leila even stopped vomiting, she was on Leila, grabbing her by her long, dark hair, pulling her head back. Leila choked on vomit, struggled, spit on Grace's legs. She looked above her, weeping for the impending doom she was so soon to reach. And then the fight came back into her.

With her free hands she clubbed Grace in the knees, pulled one of her legs in one direction, the other in the opposite. Grace fell forward on top of her, pulling hair out of Leila's head, falling on top of Howard's back. Leila kicked at Grace, pulled herself free, and with all her might slammed her fists into Grace's back. And then everything went black …