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| *thinking cap optional |
On the plus side, this means there'll be 30+ TPU posts for November instead of the usual 20-25, on the downside there's no essays or short stories for a bit (comics will keep coming, they're too much fun).
For those just tuning in, here's a link to Chapter One to get started. Navigate using the shortcuts at the bottom of each chapter, or of course with the post-by-post shortcuts on the right-hand side of the blog.
So follow along if you dare and see a start-to-finish novel (albeit a short one) emerge before your very eyes! Will it be 50,000 words long? Probably! Will it have a beginning, middle, and an end? Hopefully! Will it be any fun to read? You decide!
The Stats:
Words this entry: 2,747 Words total: 11,145 Words to go: 38,855
The Stats:
Words this entry: 2,747 Words total: 11,145 Words to go: 38,855
Chapter Five
She spun around and pressed her back to the doors, staring at the man on the floor.
“No, I’m fine,” he was saying, grunting and getting an arm under him. “No help needed here,” he said irritably.
Eva didn’t move.
One hand was pressed to her mouth, the other was sort of flipping about her middle, possibly looking for some sort of weapon to pull out of thin air; if unknown persons could materialize at will, why not she be able to magically procure some means to defend herself.
“Really,” he was saying, sprawling around and trying to rise, “it’s good for me to get exercise and injure myself this way. Don’t bother to help me, I’m sure you’ll only hold me back.”
Eva remained still by the door.
At last he managed to get his feet under him and, grunting and muttering, stood. He was short, and round, getting towards enormous, and it had taken an effort for him to sit up. His face was very red, and he had a salt-and-pepper stubble all over his cheeks and chin. He also was dressed in a suit, brown and un-pinstriped, with a red tie. His hat had fallen near his hand. His head was bald, and his eyes were smallish but not vicious looking, only sort of like they had too much lid for them, like an anteater. It made him look older than he probably was, and sleepy.
He was panting and gasping, but at last he met her eye and spoke.
“Sorry,” he said, dusting his hat and putting it on. “My aim was a little off, meant to come into the hallway.”
Eva tried to speak, but only made another ribbit sound.
“My name,” he said, speaking a little slower and looking closely at Eva’s face, “is Dash.”
Eva found herself shaking her head in a small, rapid way.
“No, I promise,” said the fat man, “it is Dash, I’m quite sure.”
Eva found she could not stop shaking her head.
“Agree to disagree,” the man said amiably. “Now, I am here looking for someone, and I was wondering if you could help me.”
Eva made a supreme effort of will and managed to hold her head still.
“Do you know,” said the fat man, slowly and distinctly, “a young man named Jeffrey Palmer?”
The words were like a magic spell. Somehow, Eva’s rigid body relapsed into a silly state of relaxation, just for a moment. She forgot for a few seconds that she had seen him come out of thin air: the fact that he was not after her convinced her that everything was alright. She almost nodded, and then was instantly back on her guard, though no longer paralyzed. She could speak again.
“Who?” she said. She could speak again, just not intelligently.
“Short guy,” said the fat man, “curly hair. Smells like cologne?”
“What about him?” asked Eva guardedly.
“Do you know him?” asked the fat man, shrugging openly.
“Your associate said,” she said slowly, “you were looking for me.”
“Associate?” said the fat man.
Eva gestured with her head at the door.
The fat man shuffled over and glanced through.
Nib was still standing outside, holding up the coffee cup and smiling. He was beginning to strain after their attention.
“Never seen him before,” said the fat man.
Eva looked up at the ceiling.
“How did you get in here?” she asked. The ceiling as intact.
“All in good time,” said the fat man. “Jeffrey Palmer?”
“What if I know him?” she asked.
“I wanted to speak to him,” said the fat man, “about something very urgent. Do you know where we could find him?”
“At,” Eva glanced at her phone, “two forty-five in the morning?”
“I said it was very urgent,” said the man.
“No,” said Eva, “I don’t. And who is we?”
“We who?” asked the fat man.
“You said,” said Eva, “‘do you know where we could find him?’ You and who else?”
“If he’s not here,” said the fat man, “I’ll have to check elsewhere. Good morning, Miss.” He made a little bow, and walked towards the exit.
“Hold it,” said Eva.
The man paused with his hand on the door handle.
“You can’t just come--” she halted, reluctant to revisit the materialization episode, “--come tumbling in here, and leave without an explanation. Who are you people?”
The fat man looked a little weary, but gave her a look that said he was persevering where some others wouldn’t feel they were obligated to do so. He sighed.
“You won’t believe me,” he said at last, and opened the door.
“What?” shouted Eva, wishing she had something more intelligent to shout. “Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
“There are some things, miss,” said the fat man, pausing before the outer door, “that are better left unexplained.” He put on his hat, said Good Morning a second time, and nearly bowled Nib over when he pushed open the second outermost door. Eva did not realize until much later that he hadn’t had to unlock it as he should have.
“Coffee, miss?” asked Nib anxiously when Eva barged out of the lab on the fat man’s heels.
“You stay away from me,” she barked at the thin man, and he nearly fell over backwards for a second time. “And you stop right there.”
The fat man paused a third time, standing in the middle of the dim hallway.
As he looked at her, Eva realized she wasn’t sure what to say.
“I’m going to call security,” she said after a pause, jerking her phone back out and stabbing at the keys. “Your presence here is unauthorized. Do you have anything to say before I do?”
“Where you able to finish your math work?” asked Nib helpfully.
“Shut up,” said both Eva and the fat man at once.
Eva held up her phone, her thumb hovering over the ‘send’ key. The fat man peered at the phone’s screen for a moment, and sighed.
“For your protection, Miss,” he said at last, “from things which you do not understand and which I cannot easily explain, we have been sent to you tonight. We are here to assist you, though you may never know why.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Eva.
“Dash,” said Nib quietly, “are you quite sure we should?”
The fat man didn’t respond to either, but plowed on with his own thoughts as though they hadn’t spoken.
“We have journeyed,” he said, “a long and dangerous road to arrive here tonight. I’m not certain that we’ve landed where we meant to, or whether we’ve arrived in time to do any good.”
“It is rather hard to narrow it down,” said Nib confidingly. “After all, we’re the first to figure out how to get through.”
“Narrow it down?” said Eva, more confused than ever. “Get through what?”
“The barrier,” said Nib, with a little shrug, as if everyone knew what he was talking about. “We’re the first ones to come this far back, you see. No one else has been able to. Not yet, anyway.”
“Nib,” said Dash solemnly, “you’re going backwards again. Think about when we are now: how would she know about it?”
Nib sighed and shut his eyes tight in apparent self recrimination. Eva stared at him, and at the fat man.
“We have come to you,” he said tiredly, “from the future.”
For the second time that night, or morning, Eva found herself struggling with her sense of obligation to disbelieve the impossible, because she knew from her toes to the roots of the hair rising from her skull in an uneasy prickle of intuition that the man was neither deluded nor lying to her. He was telling the truth. To her credit, she did not ribbit or do anything foolish. Instead her body did the only thing it could think to do: it bit down hard on the habits of common sense, and caused her to start laughing.
She laughed from her belly, shrieking and letting her head fall back a little over-dramatically, but this was just to make sure they got the point that she didn’t believe them in the least. She wanted no doubt left that she thought they were mad, because she found the world was suddenly made of doubt, and herself mad, or dreaming.
“Okay,” she said. “Alright, you got me. So you’re from the future, and you travel here by, what? Falling out of thin air to the floor.”
“It’s hard to narrow it--” Nib began again, but Dash waved him off as she started laughing agin.
“Alright,” she said, “alright. Thanks for the laugh.”
She pressed send on her phone.
When she did so, Dash calmly reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out something that looked like a glass jar full of water, tapped carefully on its lid, unscrewed it delicately, and then threw it full in Eva’s face.
“Short guy,” said the fat man, “curly hair. Smells like cologne?”
Eva was soaked. She reached up to wipe the water from her dripping face and hair, only to find that she had only imagined she was wet. Or had it just dried instantly? Her shirt was dry now, too.
“What did you say?” she asked Dash, blinking quickly. Her face felt groggy.
She realized they were back inside the lab, Eva was standing by the console. The fat man was standing just where he had been, but now Nib was there too, near the door, still holding the coffee cup.
“What happened?” asked Eva.
“I sent us backwards in time,” said Dash. “You’re welcome.”
“What do you mean?” asked Eva sharply. She wasn’t catching on, and she didn’t understand how they’d come back into the lab so quickly.
“He means,” said Nib encouragingly, “that you have more time to finish your work again now.”
“No time for that yet Nib,” said Dash. “We’ll have to persuade her first.”
“Should we tell her about how things turn out?” asked Nib.
Eva found herself sagging into the chair at the control console.
Since she’d been splashed in the face, the smell these two gave off had become stronger than ever, something like a cross between plastic model cement and petroleum jelly, but with something sweeter, almost like cider, mixed in underneath. She thought that if she didn’t get fresh air quick she would probably be sick on her shoes.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” asked Dash.
“Is that coffee?” asked Eva, pointing to Nib’s cup.
“Of course,” he said.
She oughtn’t to have accepted a drink from a stranger, but at this point she figured whatever she’d already been dosed with was clearly too strong for it to matter much. She accepted the cup from Nib, beaming to be helpful, and took a sip.
She immediately spat it across the room.
“What is this?” she cried.
“Oh dear,” said Nib.
“What did you put in the coffee Nib?” asked Dash.
“That white powder, from the paper packet,” said Nib meekly.
“Imbecile,” said Dash.
“It’s salt,” said Eva, and she almost started laughing.
“Here,” said Dash, “have some of this.”
He held a small flask out to Eva.
She accepted it and took a swig, then spat that across the room too.
“Garghh!” she said in utter disgust.
“No need to be judgmental,” said Dash. “That’s gratitude.”
“What is that?” asked Eva.
“Worcestershire sauce,” replied Dash glibly, himself taking a swig.
It was not worcestershire sauce, but if he’d been honest with her just then she would have been made incredibly distressed and unhappy.
“Why do you--” Eva began, but then she stopped, unable to bring herself to ask.
“Do you believe us yet?” asked Dash, putting his flask away.
“Believe you about what?” asked Eva.
“That we took you backwards in time,” said Nib.
“I need to get out of here,” said Eva, half-rising again.
“It’s quite true though,” said Dash. “Check your block watch.”
“Oh, is that what they call those?” asked Nib.
“No,” said Dash. “I am amusing myself. They’re called foams.”
“Phones,” said Eva.
“I like block watch better,” observed Nib.
“How did we get back in here?” demanded Eva.
“We didn’t,” said Dash. “We never left.”
“What is this?” said Eva. “Did you hypnotize me? What did you do?”
“This,” said Dash, and splashed her again in the face.
“I am something of an expert on this line of work,” Nib added, with a diffident little cough. They were back in the coffee closet, and Eva could tell her face was already dry.
“He is too, you know,” said Dash behind her.
Eva screamed, a full scream and no ribbit this time, and leapt pat for the hallway.
“Wait!” said Nib.
“Stop!” said Dash.
Eva didn’t wait or stop, but sprinted flat-out for the stairs to the exit. She had had more than enough of suited strangers and disappearing water, and she clearly needed to go home, sleep whatever this was off, and come up with an explanation for her advisor in the morning. Or the next day. Maybe she should just tell them the truth, it would certainly take care of any worries she had about getting tossed out of the department once and for all.
Halfway to the foot of the stairs she halted. The bottom floor of the building was absolutely dark.
She heard the clattering of dress shoes on the stairs above her and the two men’s voices raised in agitation.
“You shouldn’t go down there!” Nib was saying.
“It’s dangerous!” Dash was gasping, unaccustomed to running.
Eva leapt ahead and ran as fast as she could for the exit anyway. She had forgotten, of course, about having heard the very first WHUMP.
Halfway down the hall something bolted from the shadows and knocked her flat. When she recovered her senses, she saw by the glow of a streetlight just outside the windowed entryway something hovering over her, about the size of a large dog, and round and snuffling. She had the impression that it looked something like an enormous armadillo, only made out of scraps of cloth, or maybe plant’s leaves. It might have been black, but the hallway was dark.
It snuffled at her feet, and her head cleared she remembered she could move; just as she tried to scrabble away from it on her heels and hindquarters, it grabbed her legs suddenly with a horribly soft grip, bowed its head, and she felt a sharp biting sting in her side.
With a clatter and a great confusion of shouting, the two weird men came down the hall and knocked the thing aside. Eva wasn’t aware at first of this, she was too busy trying to curl herself into a ball and feeling herself begin to sob. But soon she realized that the thing was gone, and the two men were trying to help her up. She thought maybe she had felt some of the disappearing water on her legs.
“Did it sting you?” Dash was saying. She was hunching over to one side, her lower abdomen on her right-hand side felt like she’d been run through.
Eva nodded breathlessly. She realized they were outside, and it was somehow broad daylight. Had she fainted for hours?
“I need to help you,” said the fat man. “I have to take you somewhere to help you.”
I’m sorry,” said Nib. “We don’t want to take you away. I will bring you back when you’re well.”
Eva waited, trying to speak through the pain, but couldn’t just yet. She was trying to figure out where they were, there was a lot of sunlight and grass around. Were they near her apartment?
“Is it alright if we go?” said Dash finally.
Eva wanted to say of course not, how did she know that beast thing wasn’t part of their weird plan, she couldn’t trust them in the least. But something in the way they asked made it alright to trust them, at least for the moment. She had nothing else she could do. If she was wrong, she would do her best to fix it later: right now she knew she needed help.
She nodded her head. She was sagging against their hands.
There was a rushing sound, and everything got a lot heavier. Then the sunlight and the grass and everything else collapsed into a point and faded away, and Eva heard and saw no more.
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Mid-Week Update
So far so good I think!
The entries, especially this one of course, have been creeping up in page length though, which is a mixed bag; I'm trying to keep each installment to a whole chapter, and keep the narrative running more or less on course to finish with a satisfying end at by the time the 30th rolls around.
I would normally have found a stopping-point for this one before it ran on so long, chopped off the action there, and saved the rest for a head start on the next chapter (I did that with chapters three and five already, and also with chapter four when writing chapter two). But we're roughly halfway to being a third done with the story, and I wanted to have the beginning more or less squared away before we got any further than this. So I kept going until the spot we ended on today, and it wound up taking more words than I'd planned, but there it is.
The trouble with longer and longer word counts early on is it's easy for the first fire of one's enthusiasm to be exhausted before the going actually gets rough in the weeks ahead.
Remember this is going to wind up to be a short novel when it's done, even if all the entries wind up in the 2000-word neighborhood and we hit 60,000, that's still something you could easily read in a Saturday if you wanted. Which means that we've got to keep moving towards a middle and (eventually) an end to the story, now that the beginning is firmly in hand! Getting to the end of the story by 11/30 is the goal, not necessarily just hitting 50,000 words.
So we'll try to step back the exposition and pick up the pace a bit more to keep things moving along.
Onward and upward! What will come next?
So far so good I think!
The entries, especially this one of course, have been creeping up in page length though, which is a mixed bag; I'm trying to keep each installment to a whole chapter, and keep the narrative running more or less on course to finish with a satisfying end at by the time the 30th rolls around.
I would normally have found a stopping-point for this one before it ran on so long, chopped off the action there, and saved the rest for a head start on the next chapter (I did that with chapters three and five already, and also with chapter four when writing chapter two). But we're roughly halfway to being a third done with the story, and I wanted to have the beginning more or less squared away before we got any further than this. So I kept going until the spot we ended on today, and it wound up taking more words than I'd planned, but there it is.
The trouble with longer and longer word counts early on is it's easy for the first fire of one's enthusiasm to be exhausted before the going actually gets rough in the weeks ahead.
Remember this is going to wind up to be a short novel when it's done, even if all the entries wind up in the 2000-word neighborhood and we hit 60,000, that's still something you could easily read in a Saturday if you wanted. Which means that we've got to keep moving towards a middle and (eventually) an end to the story, now that the beginning is firmly in hand! Getting to the end of the story by 11/30 is the goal, not necessarily just hitting 50,000 words.
So we'll try to step back the exposition and pick up the pace a bit more to keep things moving along.
Onward and upward! What will come next?
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