The Time Traveller
12: Rawley 29-03-84
Ippy went missing - is missing.
We don’t know when, but it must have been somewhere close to the beginning, because usually one or two of us have noticed him by then. His erratic nature is becoming a distraction, that much I know. I’m thinking that eventually the Woodworms are going to get fed up with him and simply drift away. Thing is, I can’t let that happen. I brought him into this world, this dangerous, confusing world, so its kind of my responsibility to - look after him I suppose? There’s so much of the young me in him, so evident in everything he does. I have to be there for him. I have to. It’s my fault.
Rawley is a sprawling place. It’s one of those modernisation areas, the people in power trying to polish that turd as usual. It was a labyrinth of confusingly similar roads and houses, of tan brick, identical lines, dug deep into the greenbelt, with its local pub, and its local shops, and its local amenities -
They all look the same to me. Twisting, turning, never ending confusion of cloned streets. And all the same cars in all the same drives. Only the colour of the garage door or the front door are different, in the attempt to mark their home as different from the rest - yet they sit on the same chairs, walk on the same carpets, sleep in the same beds, watch the same TVs. On and on, timelessly, immortal - of any time. Middle class values. Middle class aspirations. Middle aged death.
#
I’m tired. Even as I walk down these dismal streets. It seemed so simple at the start -
Time After Time, Somewhere in Time -
Science Fiction, more Fantasy Fiction I’d guess, tried to get it right. Many writers wrote of the concept -
Time Bandits, The Philadelphia Experiment, The Voyage Home, The Terminator -
So many Almost There’s, yet they don’t come nearly close to the truth, of time travel, the exhilaration, the loss of self in the never ending whirl of kaleidoscopic lights dancing before your eyes -
The Time Machine , 12 Monkeys, The Final Countdown -
Close but not close enough. Words don’t just follow words, see? They have to make sense, have to hold structure. Fiction isn’t merely the collection of ideas with confusion left behind, though some would think so to view their work. No, it’s about the sense of adventure, the thrill, of simply living -
Doctor Who, The Butterfly Effect, Back to the Future -
That’s what we fail to see far too often. Life is an adventure. Now, imagine one could utilise that and fix it somehow? Imagine if that were possible? It is -
Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure -
We each tell a story as we wander through life. Some make big stories, some make small, but all stories are valuable, and so are memories -
Flight of the Navigator, Field of Dreams -
Without memories, I am nothing. Without memories I could not have travelled time, as I surely have, evident by my presence here, in 1984. It still is 1984, isn’t it? These timeless, lifeless streets, so familiar and subduing -
The Time Tunnel, Catweazle, Quantum Leap, Slaughterhouse-Five -
Yet where is my sanity? Where does sensibility lie, when I justify my journey, through time, through space, through memory -
Planet of the Apes, Premonition, Primeval, Primer, Looper -
And frankly, who cares? Who cares if this is fantasy, or that is reality? Who cares which is the one lived, and which is the one imagined? Who cares if one is a parallel universe to the other, traversed daily, making all of us travellers of some sort or another? What if it was all unreal, and we lived in a box -
Goodnight Sweetheart, Crime Traveller, Source Code, Seven Days -
I had an option, I had a choice. And I took that choice. I took the choice to repair that which was broken. Or did I simply want to relive the glory days? Or. Or did I just wander here, compelled by a vision, drawn by emotion and desire? Oh, why so serious -
Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -
#
I found Ippy in Clunlade, the next town over. He greeted me with a drunken smile and a dangerous stagger. He must have topped up from the night before, what with the abundance of drink on hand, and wandered off, looking for some adventure. The drunken spirit. Instinct for survival still worked, sure. But sensibility, maturity, any of those senses that keep one out of trouble, well -
The devastation he might have ravaged? I was like this when I was young, to be sure. I know what he would have gotten up to, and I’m thinking it’s lucky he’s here and not in a Police Cell. His exuberance is worrying me, however. It seems so out of place.
“There you are! Where’ve you been?!” His arms flung wide, and the grin upon his face -
“I think you need a coffee, mate.” I said, holding him at arms length.
“What the Hell would you know about it?” he said, drunk and angry, quickly turning back on his grin and staggering walk, “Ah, come on mate! Have one yourself!”
“At least do your coat up.”
“Who are you, my Mother?” he joked, but there was a malice that even the alcohol couldn't disguise. He fell about in mock laughter, and it was all I could do to hold him up. “It’s too bad, you know.” he added, muttering.
“What is?”
“What?”
“What’s too bad?” I asked.
“Did I say that out loud? Ha! Naughty Ippy!” he said, mocking a slap of his hand with the other.
I decided to ignore it, put it down to a drunken man. Yet there was something I simply had to know, “Ippy, mate? What’s wrong? I mean, you were fine one minute, then all of a sudden you’ve - I don’t know - you’ve gone off the rails? You know I promised your Mom -“
“Here! Have a swig! ‘Cause if you don’t, I’ll - I’ll throw myself into the path of an oncoming train -“ he said, thrusting the bottle in my face.
I took it and drank down the oddly sweet liquor, until I thought Ippy would be satisfied and we could get back to some form of normality - as normal as it was possible to be in this odd situation. I mean, how do you tell a seventeen year old, almost eighteen, that you’re a time traveller from his future, and that you did it just to see Woodrowe at their peak -
We took it easy then, as Ippy seemed to have calmed down. In fact, by the time the other Woodworms had arrived at the Station, I was sat next to the sleeping mess that was Ippy Mendax, upon the wrapper strewn grass verge outside the Station entrance. The others made a fuss of my finding Ippy and that he was safe, if about to suffer the hangover of his nightmares when he awoke. Corakayla sat by me as I drifted off to sleep on her shoulder. The rest of the Woodworms were scattered thereabouts, looking for things to occupy them. My sleep was accompanied by the worst heartburn I’d ever felt, but it wasn’t enough to keep me conscious. I drifted off.
#
I woke suddenly, as I was vomiting, and Corakayla was trying to turn me over. She was screaming for help, yet her words were dull, dim, like as though from within a sound absorbing drum, an anti echo chamber, or just on the outskirts of thought. My eyes were scratchy, unfocussed and fuzzy. I couldn't stop myself convulsing and I felt I was at a point close to death, my life becoming extinguished coldly, calmly, like a whimper, rather than a bang. I was becoming lost and nothing seemed to matter anymore. I think I smiled to myself, inside, where the little cricket stood poncing about in his anthropomorphic top hat, spats and tails. I heard more voices, but they were getting dimmer.
Eventually there came a siren and I sensed I was on the move. But I didn't have time to admire the view. I was already slipping away -
No comments:
Post a Comment