Friday, April 26, 2013

Short Story: Times Out by James Paradie

Another one by me. Very different from my last short story, Condemned Orphan. This time it is a time traveling thriller which turns ugly real quick. Not much a horror, but it doesn't have a happy ending either. Hope you enjoy and please feel free to comment.

Rated T for Teen

Got a story? Send me it at scaredsheetlessncn@hotmail.com Put "Short Story" in the title so I don't think you're my long lost lover of whom I've never met in my entire life!

Enjoy!

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Times Out

By James Paradie

                Dr. James Zander finally did it. He built a body suit that can boost him in time, anywhere, at any given moment. All he has to do is press a few buttons on a touch screen that he rigged from his son’s iPad 2. He wants to test it out, so he goes out to his garage and presses a few buttons. He put’s in the date December 4th, 2002 and presses a red button. Bursts of electricity shoot through the suit; however they don’t affect him in any way. He vanishes in a great light and appears again in the same light.

                He presses a button, which opens up the glass shield in front of his face. He looks around and if he could jump in this heavy suit he could. It worked! He knew it did, because the garage is a lot more cluttered than when he left; his old station wagon is still there that he would sell in two weeks to some sixteen year old just getting his license. He initiated a few command prompts on the touch pad to take off the suit. The suit folded up into a flat screen TV sized carrying case. He put it behind a stack of 2x4’s for just in case his plans didn’t go as planned. He walked up the steps and opened the door that leads to inside his kitchen. The coast is clear.

                He couldn’t hear a thing, but he knew they would be around. They were always around. Smoking, laughing, messing around in his own bed sheets. She would make him dinner, food that he bought his hard earned money. Not anymore. He went to his desk, the same desk he has now, and got the key out of his pants pocket. He unlocked it, rolled up the front, and right there is the Magnum his grandfather gave him before he died. Since James had it in his position, he never once used it. Never had the need to use a gun, but now it’s different.

                He moves slowly up the steps and his door is closed. It is never closed. He puts his ear up to the door and he can hear the groaning, the moaning, and the ecstasy of passion coming from his wife. He cocks the gun. He’s ready to go in and blast the head off of that asshole that ruined his life. He backs up and kicks open the door and…

                “Please take a seat, Dr. Zander,” a voice says.

                The room is so bright that James has to shield his eyes. All he can see is the shadow of this thin and short man.

                “Please … take a seat,” he says again.

                “What’s going on? Where-where am I?”

                “All your questions will have answers if you take a seat. It’s that easy.”

                James goes inside the bright room, which was his room just a moment ago, and takes a seat in this metal chair. He looks to his right side and sees this glass wall with his reflection looking back at him.

                “Stop the machine, please,” the man says, as a humming sound that James thought was coming from the bright light hums to nothing, and the lights fade to black. Small lights on the ceiling give very little illumination to the room as the man who told him to sit, still appears to be a shadow. He can make out a bald head and glasses; he’s also wearing a suit, but no more than that.

                “Do you know why you’re here?”

                “I’m wondering the same thing.”

                “You’re a scientist, correct?” James nods. The man gets closer to him and folds his arms down by his waist. He bends down a little, so James can barely make out a nose. “Then please, by all means, tell me why you think you are here.”

                “I-I don’t know. One minute I was about to kill my wife’s lover and the next-“

                “Why were you going to do that?”

                “Because, dumb ass, he has no right to be sleeping with my wife.”

                “Couldn’t you do more with your time machine?”

                “How do you know about that?”

                “Don’t act stupid, Dr. Zander. How do you think we brought you here?”

                “A time machine?”

                “No. We opened a vortex between your room and our secret location. Your wife is still having an affair with that young gentleman in 2002, but we just took you out of the equation.”

                “Why?”

                “Because we don’t need people tampering with time.”

                “Think about all the mistakes we can correct. I mean I could go back and stop catastrophes from happening!”

                “Might I say, choosing to kill off a man who slept with your wife instead of say, saving the innocent people killed in the Boston Marathon bombings a few weeks ago in your time line, seem like you just have your matters in mind.”

                “I wanted to try something non-essential first. To see if it works.”

                “Regardless, the past is something to not be tampered with. That’s where we come in.”

                “What are you going to do to me? You are going to put me in some Federal Prison for trying to make the world a better place. Give me a break.”

                “Oh no, nothing like that.”

                Suddenly wrist and ankle clamps trap James. He tries to struggle out.

                “What the hell?”

                “Do you think you’re the only one who’s tried to make the world a better place by going back in time? You’re not even in the hundreds. There are people out there, just like you and those from different walks of life, who are in the past. We are here to take them out.”

                Two large spheres come down from the ceiling and James can hear an electric current running through both of them.

                “Shit. Can’t you – can’t you just erase my mind?”

                The man chuckles. “We are the government. We don’t alternate the problem. We euthanize it.”

                Before James could utter another word, the spheres give off an electric currency of so many volts that his heart explodes. The spheres stop and there James sits, frying in the chair. A voice comes over a speaker that says, “We have retrieved Dr. James Zander’s device.”

                “Good,” is all the man says. “Dr. James Zander has been taken care of.”

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