RE: Jerks In Time
04-09-2016, 11:50 PM
Anne took a deep breath and checked her pistol. Four bullets. Four kids. She checked over her shoulder, at little Robert who couldn't have been older than 10 and smelled like piss, at even littler Sally, clutching her backpack and shaking, and at Alexis hugging her tight and giving Anne the stink-eye. Also at Timothy, who was incongruously smiling and bouncing up and down. Could she do it?
Anne turned a corner and turned around behind her again with her glock against the headrest and tried to shove some steel into her voice. "One way or another, you're not telling the pigs anything, you hear?" Robert nodded. "My name's Anne Gruen, and my partner back there who just took out the two cop cars back there is my husband, Johnny. He's gonna go back, pick up your mommy, hop in the original getaway car, and go to our hideout way, way out in the country with her, so you won't be seeing her for a while, okay?" Anne lied.
"Now as for all y'all," she continued, still driving without looking at the road, "I haven't made up my mind. Can I trust you not to tell the police anything all on your own?"
Robert and Sally frantically nodded.
"Really? I can?"
"Yeah! I won't tell them anything, I swear Misses Gruen!" said Robert.
"Fuck you!" Alexis threw her backpack at Anne and Anne jerked away, swerving them all into the wrong lane for a moment.
"It ain't Xmas, kid," Anne said. "And it ain't your turn to fuckin' speak!" She took her hand off the wheel and started steering with her knees, and nearly ejected another perfectly-good bullet for emphasis, then remembered her arithmetic.
"Look out, Misses Gruen!" said Robert, pointing ahead.
Anne turned back around to the road and took a hard left rather than drive into a wall or a semi truck. Did you know SUVs could drift?
"Thanks, kiddo," said Anne. Right turn. "Now, I've got three options here. One: I kill you all." Anne swept the sweat off her brow with her gun hand.
"No!" cried Sally.
"Two: I kidnap you all," Anne said. Right turn. "Just for a bit. An insurance policy."
"Our dad's a cop! You'll never get away with this!" said Alexis.
Anne laughed. Left turn. "Kid, you tryin' all the time to make number one look like a better idea or what?"
"Yeah, shut up Alexis!" said Timothy. "I wanna hear number three!"
"Number three..." said Anne. She slammed on the brakes and skid to a stop in the road in front of the elementary school. "Get out. It's time to go to school." She put her head against the steering wheel and caught her breath. The sirens were getting closer every second.
Robert, Alexis, and Sally filtered out of the sliding doors quickly, screaming. Timothy reached over and closed their door behind them.
"Timmy, come on!" said Alexis from the sidewalk. Tim just waved goodbye.
"What's the matter, kid?" said Anne. "Trouble with the buckle?"
"I'm not some dumb baby in elementary school," said Timothy. "Eighth grade is boring anyway and they're all jerks. Can you take me hostage?"
Anne, laughing, threw her head back to the headrest and her foot down to floor the gas pedal. "Okay, kid." The van peeled out.
"My name's Tim," Tim said, putting his hand into the front seat for a handshake.
"Driving," said Anne, who was indeed. Tim retracted.
"Is Anne Gruen really your name?"
"Pfft! Nope, and that wasn't my husband either," she said.
"Sweet," said Tim. "You're so cool. I wanna be just like you when I grow up. Except not a girl." (Now, Tim was actually dead wrong on that last point, but he's gonna have to survive seven more years to figure that out.) "Where are we goin', anyway?"
"Here," said Anne, slamming on the brakes and skidding to a stop again, like she didn't even know how else to park a car. She grabbed the plastic bag, unbuckled her seatbelt, stashed her pistol away, stepped out, and tossed the keys to the valet. "Take it 'round back to the Batcave. Dig?" She winked.
Timothy trailed behind her, gazing up in awe at the Mountain Creek Apartments building. It was just an unadorned concrete rectangle piercing the sky, strangled by ivy, possibly the most nondescript, decrepit tower in the whole city, but to Tim it was Disneyland.
Anne pushed through the creaking rotating door. One hand was holding Tim's, and the other put the bag on the reception counter.
"Jesus Anne, you're really fuckin' hot," said Paul, leaping off his stool. He peeked in the plastic bag.
"Why, thank you," Anne fluttered her eyelashes.
"No, really, REALLY hot." Paul shoved the bag off the counter. "This oughta cover it, but I ain't paintin' my hands red when I can hear the -and-blue. Just get up there, we'll talk payment later."
Anne nodded and walked away, high heels clicking on linoleum.
"I'm taking the car, though!"
"I've never been in a freight elevator before," said Timothy a few moments later, riding in the freight elevator with Anne. "It's so cool!"
He thought the barren apartment with exposed, moldy concrete walls, non-functioning plumbing, a broken window, and a lightswitch that sparked when you touched it was cool too. Anne sat cross-legged on the floor and dumped the loot out.
Spare bullets and now-useless shotgun slugs to the left. Real jewels in one pile, phonies in another. Same for the watches. A six-inch-tall stack of large bills. This is why you're not supposed to keep more than $500 in your cash register.
All in all, a great haul, but one Anne couldn't actually enjoy. She lied back on the floor and stared at two rings from the bag. They were supposed to get married after this job. Anne slipped one of the rings on and threw the other one across the room, then turned on her side to the wall to have a good cry.
"Hey, what's wrong?" said Timothy.
"Nothing," lied Anne, lying.
Timothy shrugged and left it at that, because middle schoolers are little monsters with no sense of empathy. Instead, he started digging through the stolen goods like they were his toys. He put on a necklace, used a diamond to scrape a crude penis into the floor, and opened up a stopwatch.
It was golden-plated, and actually had 4 date-keeping clocks on the other side of the clamshell from the main watch. It was ornate overkill, a beautiful and perfectly-calibrated little machine made, according to the lower-right date dial, to last for centuries. So naturally, Timothy started fucking with it. He pressed in a dial and started winding the watch back and forth aimlessly, then pressed in another dial and did the same thing with that, then pressed the button on the top that held the chain.
The air in front of Tim ripped open. It was an oval window into pitch-black darkness.
"Holy shit," said Tim, standing up and approaching it. Of all the crazy things he'd seen today, this slightly outranked the freight elevator.
"What the — what the fuck did you do, kid?" Anne rolled over the other way and stood up quickly. She hoisted Tim off the ground and stepped away from the portal. "Drop the shit, God damn!"
"No way, this is so cool!" said Timothy, clutching the watch to his chest. "I bet it's a time machine!"
"What the fuck is wrong with you, are you an idiot?" Anne now deeply regretted her choice of hostage.
"Come onnn," Tim whined. "Lemme try it!"
Anne sighed, and dropped the kid. "Your funeral."
Timothy shoved his hand into the portal. "See? It's fine," he said. He pulled his hand back to the present to open up the watch. "What time is it?"
Anne checked her own watch, rolling her eyes. "7:36 AM."
"It's two days and seven hours ago through here! That's why it's so dark!" Tim said, hopping up and down in place, making his necklace bash against his chest. "Or six, I don't know how to read clocks. Come on, let's go through, it'll be fun! Oh, you should bring your stuff." Tim started putting the things on the floor back in the plastic bag. "You know, in case we can't come back or something. This is gonna be so cool!"
"Kid. Kid. Kid. It's not happening."
"Aww, come on!" Tim whined and finished shoveling loot in the bag.
"I'm not going running through crazy God damn mystery death portals because a little boy wearing a fake pearl necklace — take that shit off, by the way — said so, okay?"
Tim pouted as he slipped the necklace into the bag. "Man, I thought you were fun."
Three knocks — pounds, really — on the door. "OPEN UP!" they shouted. "THIS IS THE POLICE!"
"Now, the 5-0 on the other hand," said Anne, grabbing the bag and Timothy. "Let's get."
"Yesss," said Tim. The two ran through the portal, which disappeared behind Timothy.
Tim and Anne appeared in thin air at midnight-thirty. Anne shivered from the cool night breeze from the broken window, and looked around the room.
"Well," she said. "Here we are, I guess. You happy?"
Tim wandered about a yard away, looking at the floor. "Look, here!" He pointed. Anne squinted.
"There's nothing there."
"Exactly!" Tim said. "I drew a dick on the floor right here! We traveled back in time!"
"Fine, whatever."
"I was right, and you were wrong! Say it!"
"Shut up for once, you brat, you're really getting on my nerves here," said Anne. "People are tryin' to sleep."
"Let's go to the future next," said Tim. "I wanna see what I'm like when I'm older!"
"Except you won't be there," said Anne. "Because little you disappeared years ago into a time portal."
"Oh, damn. Well robots will still be cool."
"No," said Anne. "No... We need to save Johnny."
What was Anne's plan to do that?
Anne turned a corner and turned around behind her again with her glock against the headrest and tried to shove some steel into her voice. "One way or another, you're not telling the pigs anything, you hear?" Robert nodded. "My name's Anne Gruen, and my partner back there who just took out the two cop cars back there is my husband, Johnny. He's gonna go back, pick up your mommy, hop in the original getaway car, and go to our hideout way, way out in the country with her, so you won't be seeing her for a while, okay?" Anne lied.
"Now as for all y'all," she continued, still driving without looking at the road, "I haven't made up my mind. Can I trust you not to tell the police anything all on your own?"
Robert and Sally frantically nodded.
"Really? I can?"
"Yeah! I won't tell them anything, I swear Misses Gruen!" said Robert.
"Fuck you!" Alexis threw her backpack at Anne and Anne jerked away, swerving them all into the wrong lane for a moment.
"It ain't Xmas, kid," Anne said. "And it ain't your turn to fuckin' speak!" She took her hand off the wheel and started steering with her knees, and nearly ejected another perfectly-good bullet for emphasis, then remembered her arithmetic.
"Look out, Misses Gruen!" said Robert, pointing ahead.
Anne turned back around to the road and took a hard left rather than drive into a wall or a semi truck. Did you know SUVs could drift?
"Thanks, kiddo," said Anne. Right turn. "Now, I've got three options here. One: I kill you all." Anne swept the sweat off her brow with her gun hand.
"No!" cried Sally.
"Two: I kidnap you all," Anne said. Right turn. "Just for a bit. An insurance policy."
"Our dad's a cop! You'll never get away with this!" said Alexis.
Anne laughed. Left turn. "Kid, you tryin' all the time to make number one look like a better idea or what?"
"Yeah, shut up Alexis!" said Timothy. "I wanna hear number three!"
"Number three..." said Anne. She slammed on the brakes and skid to a stop in the road in front of the elementary school. "Get out. It's time to go to school." She put her head against the steering wheel and caught her breath. The sirens were getting closer every second.
Robert, Alexis, and Sally filtered out of the sliding doors quickly, screaming. Timothy reached over and closed their door behind them.
"Timmy, come on!" said Alexis from the sidewalk. Tim just waved goodbye.
"What's the matter, kid?" said Anne. "Trouble with the buckle?"
"I'm not some dumb baby in elementary school," said Timothy. "Eighth grade is boring anyway and they're all jerks. Can you take me hostage?"
Anne, laughing, threw her head back to the headrest and her foot down to floor the gas pedal. "Okay, kid." The van peeled out.
"My name's Tim," Tim said, putting his hand into the front seat for a handshake.
"Driving," said Anne, who was indeed. Tim retracted.
"Is Anne Gruen really your name?"
"Pfft! Nope, and that wasn't my husband either," she said.
"Sweet," said Tim. "You're so cool. I wanna be just like you when I grow up. Except not a girl." (Now, Tim was actually dead wrong on that last point, but he's gonna have to survive seven more years to figure that out.) "Where are we goin', anyway?"
"Here," said Anne, slamming on the brakes and skidding to a stop again, like she didn't even know how else to park a car. She grabbed the plastic bag, unbuckled her seatbelt, stashed her pistol away, stepped out, and tossed the keys to the valet. "Take it 'round back to the Batcave. Dig?" She winked.
Timothy trailed behind her, gazing up in awe at the Mountain Creek Apartments building. It was just an unadorned concrete rectangle piercing the sky, strangled by ivy, possibly the most nondescript, decrepit tower in the whole city, but to Tim it was Disneyland.
Anne pushed through the creaking rotating door. One hand was holding Tim's, and the other put the bag on the reception counter.
"Jesus Anne, you're really fuckin' hot," said Paul, leaping off his stool. He peeked in the plastic bag.
"Why, thank you," Anne fluttered her eyelashes.
"No, really, REALLY hot." Paul shoved the bag off the counter. "This oughta cover it, but I ain't paintin' my hands red when I can hear the -and-blue. Just get up there, we'll talk payment later."
Anne nodded and walked away, high heels clicking on linoleum.
"I'm taking the car, though!"
"I've never been in a freight elevator before," said Timothy a few moments later, riding in the freight elevator with Anne. "It's so cool!"
He thought the barren apartment with exposed, moldy concrete walls, non-functioning plumbing, a broken window, and a lightswitch that sparked when you touched it was cool too. Anne sat cross-legged on the floor and dumped the loot out.
Spare bullets and now-useless shotgun slugs to the left. Real jewels in one pile, phonies in another. Same for the watches. A six-inch-tall stack of large bills. This is why you're not supposed to keep more than $500 in your cash register.
All in all, a great haul, but one Anne couldn't actually enjoy. She lied back on the floor and stared at two rings from the bag. They were supposed to get married after this job. Anne slipped one of the rings on and threw the other one across the room, then turned on her side to the wall to have a good cry.
"Hey, what's wrong?" said Timothy.
"Nothing," lied Anne, lying.
Timothy shrugged and left it at that, because middle schoolers are little monsters with no sense of empathy. Instead, he started digging through the stolen goods like they were his toys. He put on a necklace, used a diamond to scrape a crude penis into the floor, and opened up a stopwatch.
It was golden-plated, and actually had 4 date-keeping clocks on the other side of the clamshell from the main watch. It was ornate overkill, a beautiful and perfectly-calibrated little machine made, according to the lower-right date dial, to last for centuries. So naturally, Timothy started fucking with it. He pressed in a dial and started winding the watch back and forth aimlessly, then pressed in another dial and did the same thing with that, then pressed the button on the top that held the chain.
The air in front of Tim ripped open. It was an oval window into pitch-black darkness.
"Holy shit," said Tim, standing up and approaching it. Of all the crazy things he'd seen today, this slightly outranked the freight elevator.
"What the — what the fuck did you do, kid?" Anne rolled over the other way and stood up quickly. She hoisted Tim off the ground and stepped away from the portal. "Drop the shit, God damn!"
"No way, this is so cool!" said Timothy, clutching the watch to his chest. "I bet it's a time machine!"
"What the fuck is wrong with you, are you an idiot?" Anne now deeply regretted her choice of hostage.
"Come onnn," Tim whined. "Lemme try it!"
Anne sighed, and dropped the kid. "Your funeral."
Timothy shoved his hand into the portal. "See? It's fine," he said. He pulled his hand back to the present to open up the watch. "What time is it?"
Anne checked her own watch, rolling her eyes. "7:36 AM."
"It's two days and seven hours ago through here! That's why it's so dark!" Tim said, hopping up and down in place, making his necklace bash against his chest. "Or six, I don't know how to read clocks. Come on, let's go through, it'll be fun! Oh, you should bring your stuff." Tim started putting the things on the floor back in the plastic bag. "You know, in case we can't come back or something. This is gonna be so cool!"
"Kid. Kid. Kid. It's not happening."
"Aww, come on!" Tim whined and finished shoveling loot in the bag.
"I'm not going running through crazy God damn mystery death portals because a little boy wearing a fake pearl necklace — take that shit off, by the way — said so, okay?"
Tim pouted as he slipped the necklace into the bag. "Man, I thought you were fun."
Three knocks — pounds, really — on the door. "OPEN UP!" they shouted. "THIS IS THE POLICE!"
"Now, the 5-0 on the other hand," said Anne, grabbing the bag and Timothy. "Let's get."
"Yesss," said Tim. The two ran through the portal, which disappeared behind Timothy.
ACT II
In Which There's Time Travel Now
In Which There's Time Travel Now
Tim and Anne appeared in thin air at midnight-thirty. Anne shivered from the cool night breeze from the broken window, and looked around the room.
"Well," she said. "Here we are, I guess. You happy?"
Tim wandered about a yard away, looking at the floor. "Look, here!" He pointed. Anne squinted.
"There's nothing there."
"Exactly!" Tim said. "I drew a dick on the floor right here! We traveled back in time!"
"Fine, whatever."
"I was right, and you were wrong! Say it!"
"Shut up for once, you brat, you're really getting on my nerves here," said Anne. "People are tryin' to sleep."
"Let's go to the future next," said Tim. "I wanna see what I'm like when I'm older!"
"Except you won't be there," said Anne. "Because little you disappeared years ago into a time portal."
"Oh, damn. Well robots will still be cool."
"No," said Anne. "No... We need to save Johnny."
What was Anne's plan to do that?