Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: The Time Machine ::
by Katherine E Clarke
Melanie felt paint flakes slip under her nails as she gripped the warped picnic table. Despite careful maneuvers, she kicked an empty beer bottle and sent it rolling into the bench leg. She held her breath. She could hear the gang’s laughter, but believed they had lost interest in pursuing her - for the moment. She hoisted her body out from the hidey hole.
"Melanie," a voice softly called. Leaves and discarded wrappers stirred at the edge of the pavilion. In the faint dawn light, Melanie saw a feminine figure begin to form. At first, she was diaphanous, the graffitied pillar visible behind her, but with each passing moment, she became more opaque, more detailed. A ghost, Melanie thought. She began to wish she hadn’t "borrowed" Dr. Justman’s time travel machine.
Dr. Justman was a close friend and colleague of Melanie’s father. They worked in the University physics department. Dr. Justman had two hobbies - gourmet cooking and inventing. Since her mother’s death, Melanie and her father were often guests at Dr. Justman’s home. After everyone sampled his invariably successful culinary endeavours, the two men visited Dr. Justman’s workshop to sample his invariably unsuccessful intellectual endeavours. Melanie was left to tidy a very untidy kitchen. "Melanie would be happy to do the washing up," her father assured Dr. Justman each time, as Melanie, with mixed feelings of irritation and fondness mouthed "idjit", her oft-used yet rarely spoken aloud, all purpose insult.
Yesterday evening, a distracted Dr. Justman obviously hadn’t his mind completely on his victualage preparation. After an unusually simple meal, Melanie was faced with a much more orderly kitchen than she usually encountered. She finished cleaning and neatening early and sauntered out the back door to the white cement-blocked outbuilding Dr. Justman used as his laboratory.
"… a temporal displacement apparatus." The unusual term made Melanie pause outside the cracked window. Through the windexed pane, Melanie spied Dr. Justman displaying a strange looking digital watch. The window on the face displayed letters and numbers, and a whole array of knobby buttons bristled around the edge. Her puzzled father craned toward the arachnidan object. "A device with which one can travel through time," Dr. Justman beamingly expounded. A jargon filled soliloquy followed which Melanie scarcely understood.
"The actual operation of the device is quite simple," Dr. Justman concluded. "Depression of the green knob will send one to the date displayed on the screen. It is currently set for 6 A.M., October 10 in the year 2016. Push the red knob and one will be transported back to the place and time of departure, in this case my workshop in 1996. Since the setting of the apparatus is complicated and one never knows what one may encounter in another time, I felt it prudent to have a one button escape route. Green for go and red for return, you could say," Dr. Justman chuckled.
Later, tucked in bed, Melanie was deep in thought as she fingered the small scar on her upper lip she had received when she attempted to pull a plug from its socket with her teeth as a child. As far as Melanie knew, none of Dr. Justman’s inventions had ever worked. This time was probably no exception, but Melanie kept coming back to the same question - what if, this one time Dr. Justman’s invention actually did?
Melanie’s father had been spending more and more of his time in his office flipping slowly, tenderly through old photo albums of happier times. Students left phone messages that Melanie never saw returned, the same ungraded tests remained piled in her father’s briefcase, and now he had been summoned by the dean. Melanie feared he would lose tenure and then what would become of them? - of her? "I could borrow it," she thought. "The idjit won’t even know."
In the Doctor’s middle-class neighbourhood, neat, nearly identical brick houses sleepily lined the street as if presenting themselves for late night inspection. Relieved to find the window still afar, Melanie eased it open and with a muted grunt, clambered up and over the frame, and landed with a thump on the clean swept concrete floor. With a squeeze of her key ring torch, she instantly spotlighted the watch. The time machine lay on a contact-papered table, well-cared-for miniature tools lay in a row at one side. Melanie fumbled as she latched the converted men’s watch on her small wrist. Suddenly the overhead light switched on. "Melanie?" Dr. Justman gasped.
As her eyes adjusted to the brightness, Melanie nervously twisted her mother’s emerald ring on her index finger and silently rejected all explanations. She bowed her head and saw the machine still attached to her forearm. "Green for go," she whispered as she depressed the button. She heard Dr. Justman scream "no" and then there was darkness.
"Dr. Justman?" Melanie called. She slowly shuffled forward. Her outstretched hands brushed something. As she waited for her eyes to readapt, she wished fervently that she hadn’t dropped her torch when Dr. Justman discovered her. The workshop slowly came into focus. Begrimed boxes of various sizes were stacked helter-skelter in front of her. A couch, yellowed foam stuffing punching out of tears, was pushed against the back wall. The layers of dust Melanie had stirred up with her movement caused her to sneeze once, twice, three times in quick succession. The door hung on one hinge. She pushed it open with a whine.
Melanie’s plan was simple and unoriginal. She had "borrowed" it from an old popular movie. She would purchase a Sports Almanac at the local bookstore and then go back. Melanie had never placed a bet on a sporting event, but she didn’t think it would be too difficult.
Melanie waded through waist-high, stiff weeds and crepitating leaves to the cracked, buckling footpath and paused under a broken street lamp. In the obscure light, she could see planks sloppily nailed over Dr. Justman’s front door. Though the house on the right was also boarded up, a trio of rusty bicycles leaning against a sagging porch and the faint music of a radio attested that the house on the left was occupied. Not trusting herself to reset the machine, Melanie decided to wait in the park across the street until the bookstore opened.
Melanie could hear the brum-brumming of a car, but saw nothing when she checked up and down the road. She sped across and through the overgrown topiary entrance of the park. A dark shape filled the drive. Melanie barely registered the movement and sound in time and threw herself into the hedge. Branches, like rude fingers, scratched her face, tugged her blue sweat suit, and tore her hair. Brakes keened as the headlightless car swerved across the street, popped onto the kerb, and ploughed into the sinistral house. Shaken, Melanie pulled away from the hedge. She froze undecided and then turned and followed the curved drive in the park.
Melanie passed a netless tennis court and a forlorn swing set, then detoured up a footpath that wove around the toilets. At the back of the building a painted woman in a tight, shiny mini kneeled on the dead grass. Greasy, calloused hands pinned her arms and muffled her cries. When Melanie realized she was witnessing a mugging or perhaps something much worse, she edged behind a gnarled oak. A fallen branch cracked like a gunshot under her foot. Burly bodies slinked out from behind the victim and lurched toward her.
Melanie ran dodging under and around bushes and trees like a well trained footballer. She risked a glance behind her. She could see nothing of her pursuers but heard their muffled curses as they crashed through the shrubbery. The pavilion, where numerous family reunions had been held, loomed before her. Ignoring the steps at the far side, she reached up to grasp the shoulder high railing and hoisted her body up then wormed between a slot where a slat was missing, and rolled under a picnic table. She shivered as she listened to the attackers move closer and then away from the pavilion. She decided to move only when she felt a large, multilegged insect scuttle over her hand.
The ghost’s raven hair was laced in grey. "Melanie," she moaned, her voice stronger and somehow familiar.
Melanie wanted to run, but her feet seemed stapled to the wood floor. Splinters pricked her fingers as her hands clenched on the table. The ghost grimaced, deepening the crowfeet around her eyes and making a blemish on the edge of her maw stand out whitely. "Your trip through time was a terrible mistake."
"I’ll go back. I’ll go back and everything will be fine," Melanie rambled. "I’ll…"
"Idjit!" the ghost screamed. Melanie watched a nicotine stained finger rub the blemish on the shade’s lip. Not a blemish, a scar, she realized with a horrified start. The rising sun caught and reflected the green jewel in the ring on the wraith’s finger.
"Reset the watch to a time shortly before you stole it," the aged doppelganger intoned as it began to fade. "You must make sure the time machine is never used. Go back," it whispered. Then the apparition vanished completely.
A rubbish bin overturned with a loud crash. The gang must have come back, Melanie thought. She vaulted over the pavilion railing and fell to the ground, then gasped in pain when she tried to stand. Even a gentle probe of her injured ankle brought tears to her eyes. She balanced, storklike on one leg and groped for the watch which had slipped under her sleeve. Red for return, she thought as she depressed the button.
For a moment she was blinded by the bright light in the workshop. Dr. Justman crossed the floor and grabbed her arm. "Let go!" Melanie grappled frantically. "You don’t understand. I’ve got to go back." Dr. Justman’s grip slipped. Melanie overbalanced and tried to break her fall with her arm. There was a loud crack and the watch casing flew open. The inner workings sprung out.
"Look what you’ve done," cried Dr. Justman. "The only one of my inventions that actually worked and now I’ll never know why."
In a park twenty years in the future, the cat crawled from the bin it had overturned, shook its head and disappeared. And somewhere in the tomorrow a ghost mutters "idjit."
