Words wormed their way through his head like an infestation of ideas. Cyril chuckled as he wrote, a vision of main character Sandra beckoning him on. And his fifteen year old heroine was writing her own novel about school life and its daily dramas. Cyril laughed again, this was a fun hobby for his recent retirement.
He heard his neighbour turn up their music and sighed. Little did he know, that hairdresser Daphne was also writing upstairs, indeed almost directly above him. In her story, heroine Sandra is the same age as her, 28, but a teacher rather than a hairdresser. And writing their own novel about school children antics. Daphne laughed as she wrote. Life should not be this fun. Words ran through her veins like ideas on drugs. And like a careful configuration of dominoes just ready to fall, words pushed a crazy pattern to its dizzy destiny … as an avalanche of words thundered through her fingers.
In the top floor flat above Daphne, John laughed as the keys of his laptop clicked like a dismembered voice. And the voice was inside him, it was in the words that streamed through his head like a fast flowing river, it was in the words that appeared on the screen before him, like imposters that surely did not emanate from him, like a visible scream of creation.
John, an IT technician by trade, wrote of novelist Sandra. At 50 years old she had a chip implanted to help her think, to write, to throw words in to the void that was life … This would be a dystopian novel about AI taking over real people. John laughed like a maniac as he wrote, words filling his heart with their wild song.
Cyril, Daphnie and John would briefly say hello to each other on the stairwell. Daphne knew their names; no one knew hers. Secret souls with hidden quests, their lives did not intersect however their private worlds were on a crash collision course of insane words on the run.
One day far in the future, the three novels were published by three different publishing houses. It did not take keen readers long to connect the three stories which featured the same character at different stages of life. The publishing world was on fire. How had this happened.
Daphne met Cyril on the stairs holding her novel, School Solstice. “That is my novel!” she gasped excitedly. John came through the front door to find the two writers in deep discussion. Soulless words hung in the air as the three neighbours suddenly spoke to each other properly for the first time. Words linked them together like invisible glue. Nervous laughter sent invisible words flying. And then the idea came … they would write another Sandra novel, together. A happy ending flickered behind their eyes as they shook hands.
On the other side of the world, Sandra sat before her laptop as words rewired her brain. She laughed as her fingers played the keyboard like a piano, an inaudible music like frozen ideas waiting to melt. And one day they would, one day the novel would be published, making fictional neighbours Cyril, Daphne and John famous. Sandra laughed again, as she described the Victorian tenement with the residents who knew so little about each other. Of course the building would be haunted by the ghost of a Victorian writer, an unpublished would be Dickens who whispered in the ears of her characters. Sandra stopped typing and picked up the leaflet next to her. Brain chips to enhance cognitive faculties. If it helped her write better, then why not? Sandra laughed as words once more played together on her screen, dominoes falling in to place, the crazy patterns of her mind.
Words whispered in the wind like ghosts. Somewhere far away, a writer hunched before a screen and laughed. Words pounded inside like demented drummers. Stories that knew no end and had lost their beginning, fiction fingering lives that would be known, the words of lost souls screaming in the night. Stories would come, a written word that would last forever.
Tessa was born on a still spring night, in a time-tarred barn. Her first memory, at a week old, was of stars through a broken roof, pins of light in the night, a pin cushion of the gods. I want to go there, she thought feebly, away from these ugly siblings. I want to go to one of the lights, I want to be free.
Tessa’s first few weeks were spent sleeping in the hay, or exploring the field next to the barn. She cuddled with her feline family to keep warm at night, but avoided them in the day. She was different, and she knew it.
One day a strange cage appeared in the field, with tasty food inside. However it became the taste of freedom denied. Tessa was locked inside the cage, no way out. Frantic with the desire to escape these grey bars, Tessa gazed at the stars in the sky. Please help me.
The next day a lady abruptly arrived and seized the cage. Tessa hissed in alarm. She was placed in a strange vehicle which began to move. The day descended to the depths of a cat’s despair. Tessa meowed, willing the stars in the sky to reappear. Finally, the vehicle stopped. A huge building confronted her, as Tessa’s cage was seized once more. A fat middle-aged man surveyed them from the door.
“A black and white kitten! Just what the doctor ordered!” Tessa liked the man straight away, knowing that a new life awaited, several purrs ahead.
The man, Derek, adored her. She listened as he composed music, purring in accompaniment. He told her that he had never known inspiration as prolific until she entered his life. Of course, she did not understand his words, but she purred anyway. Somehow, she knew that she was helping him. And somehow, he knew that she was special. But he did not realise how special.
Tessa would paw at Derek’s feet when he did not pay attention to her for a while. He would chuckle, declaring, “This cat keeps me on my toes!” Tessa purred in reply. She began to feel that she was her owner’s protector, his health in her paws, his well-being in a flick of her whiskers. Sometimes she felt compelled to follow him around the house, just to make sure no harm came to him. It was almost as if … she was waiting for something to happen.
Then one night, she had a dream. In the morning, Tessa was not there, bed empty, food bowl untouched. Derek searched everywhere for her. But she never returned.
In Tessa’s dream, she saw a man – a different man, but somehow she knew it was Derek. He was in a room full of children, pointing at a large black board with white letters on it. But something bad was going to happen. She knew it. That was when she did it for the first time. The Jump.
One minute she was observing the man while she slept. The next second she was there, really there, in the classroom with the teacher. The schoolkids looked at her like they had never seen a cat before. But there was one boy she had her eye on. The dark energy emanated from him.
Tessa ran and bit his leg. In alarm, the boy dropped something from his hand. A knife.
“He was going to throw that at you Mr Castle!” one of the children shouted.
Mr Castle retrieved the knife, and flushed while a look of trepidation dimmed his eyes.
At the end of the school day, he carried Tessa home. She was very happy living with Mr Castle (Derek in different clothes) until … another dream.
She saw him. Derek with another face, with different clothes. He was lying in a ditch with other men, and somehow she knew that the ditch was called a trench. He was in mortal danger, she understood as her heart thudded hard at the thought. She jumped … and was there. By the man lying in the ditch, the man who was about to die. She howled hideously, her voice her only weapon. “This is no place for a cat!” he picked her up and began to walk. Behind him, artillery fire felled his colleagues. He looked back in shock, his frozen heart breaking through ice as tears formed in his eyes. His friends. He held the cat who had saved is life as if he would never let go.
But Tessa had other ideas. Her next mission was massaging her mind. She jumped from his arms … and back in time to 1597, to a witch being hunted for trial. It was Derek, dressed in women’s clothes and with a female smell, but Derek nonetheless. She was cowering in her tiny cottage as men broke down the door. Tessa knew she did not have much time to help. She didn’t know what witch trials were, but she knew this woman was in mortal danger. Tessa looked in her eyes and screamed with all the cat telepathy she could muster “HIDE!”
The woman disappeared with the grace of a cat. As the angry men entered, they looked around in alarm. “A cat! She’s turned herself in to a cat! She really is a witch!”
Tessa was violently grabbed. She hissed in anger and pain. Then used all her might to … do the special jump.
She found herself in a very strange place, with large windows looking out on stars. Ahead, a man spoke to a wide room full of people. It was Derek, in uniform and of course with a different body. But she would know him anywhere.
The man suddenly stopped speaking. He had noticed her.
“A cat!” he laughed. “We have a stowaway on the ship! I like it! A sign! When I first enrolled in space academy, I encountered a cat at the door of the school, a lucky black cat like a sign of good luck. I saw the cat again the day I graduated. Is this a sign? A validation of my intent to arrive in peace rather than taking a more hostile stance? Somehow I know it is.”
Tessa purred. She could feel it, destiny shifting beneath her paws. Whatever she came here to do, she had achieved it. But this place was strange. Time to jump again.
But she could not do it. The jump energy evaded her. She did not understand the concepts of time travel and reincarnation. But she knew she had a gift, and that the different people she had encountered had all been versions of the first Derek, her Derek. But the real Derek, the owner who had loved her so much, was many years and star systems behind her now. She could not return. The gift was gone, dimmed by the bright stars all around. This was her time now.
I am in the stars, she thought feebly, I am free. Only it no longer felt like freedom. Destiny’s paws had dealt an unkind blow. She was here forever. Time to enjoy herself, time to flirt with freedom, to taste just the one life as others knew it. It was time to be Tessa.
So she stared at the stars, and prayed for a freedom that could not come. Like a mouse in a huge field, you could chase it relentlessly, but it would forever evade capture. Some mice have luck; some cats have nine lives; some cats have dreams that never end.
The little boy fingered the photograph. The handsome man smiled eagerly at the camera, a person who time had erased.
Slowly, he crumpled it. There was a void in his heart that he did not understand. A memory of …
**
The future. Malcolm surveyed the group of assorted individuals, vying for an acceptable degree of eccentricity, and smiled with his fierce charm. He had found the writing group by accident, seeking for a new hobby and noticing their advert in the local library, on a flying 22nd century adverts screen. Creative writing, well that could be a nice little money-spinner.
He began to speak, savouring each corny word that he had written. It had been so easy to churn out the saccharin sentiment. Strangely, he had enjoyed it.
Chris woke up, saliva dried on his chin. His heart beat to the drums of disquiet. So much that he had done wrong in his life. A tear trickled down his parched skin, lacing his sagging cheekbones with the kiss of karma. This was it. He deserved every rag of remorse that now filled his head.
Tonight, the dream had been of childhood. That village idiot boy he had bullied. Regret roared in his heart. The pain of his actions painted new wrinkles on his face.
What would tomorrow’s dream be? What new horrors to relive?
His own misdemeanours weren’t the worst of it. Reliving the betrayal of others, the infidelity, the lies … the pathetic pretence of so called friends.
But while he dreamt, every day there were new wrinkles, and every minute he could feel it … his approaching end.
So it was … time to forgive.
Malcolm paused in his rendition. A slow smirk crossed his face. He enjoyed an audience, and this one was stunned. They didn’t like him, he knew that much, but maybe, just maybe, they were starting to respect him. He relished the silence, filled with unspoken applause.
As he caught Chris’ eye – the boring librarian type he had based his central character on, after all he had to dislike his fictional Chris to bombard him with such suffering – he began to read once more. The words danced from his lips. Inside he roared with insane laughter. But on the outside, he carried on calmly reading.
And now, in the future, there he stood, speechless, in a major bookshop as he gazed upon his finished masterpiece.
A sparkling jacket cover, an inspiring illustration of an old man clutching his heart. He read the biography inside. And re-read it, bile rising in his throat.
A Time to Forgive, screamed at him as he looked at the front cover.
His story, his inspiration, left unfinished as he succumbed to more and more overtime, the insane search for new career heights, his writing a forgotten dream in the cupboard of regrets.
But there it was, his book.
The cover winked at him nastily.
By Chris Thomson…
He had even kept his own name as that of the central character. That was how narcissistic the man was. Malcolm grimaced. Chris Thomson, lowly librarian turned bestseller. He would get what was coming to him…
Malcolm continued to stare at the novel jacket as a slow smile formed on his face. Of course, karma was fair, but revenge so much sweeter. Yes, it would be his … revenge. But how?
It took him a long time to figure out the perfect crime. But when it came to him, overtaking many other mediocre ideas, it was so inspired he almost took up a pen to write a new novel … and one he would finish this time. But no, his idea was too good for that. It must really happen.
Kenneth was the answer. His time travel technician friend. In 2162, time travel was highly classified, and used for the purposes of government research only. However he was sure that in the future a whole tourist industry would arise to take advantage of this emerging technology. At this point in time, the authorities were still nervous of the potential power inherent in time travel science.
However Kenneth had once promised him, over a Friday night bottle of wine, a peak in to the future if he so desired. He seemed excited. It transpired that Kenneth had seen the future himself, five hundred years ahead to be exact, however he would not speak about it. Some secrets, he confided, were too volatile to share.
But Malcolm did not need to go as far as five hundred years. No, just about 21 years would be perfect.
He thought of Chris’s sickening biography. “The proud father of 6 month old Amy …”
Amy would be his prize.
**
Malcolm had the easy conceit to realise that he was a handsome man. And a well-off one too, the plus side to becoming managing director of a small but prosperous marketing firm. The downside of course, was that due to his current work commitments he no longer found time to write … but he wouldn’t think about that. A dark shadow moved across his heart as he contemplated what could have been. The success that Chris now enjoyed…
But a smile vanquished the clouds on his face as he thought once more of revenge. Oh so sweet. The saccharin sweet of his novel, the candy corniness of Chris’ writing skills (or lack of).
Time travel beckoned his steel resolve with a claw-like grip.
It was over. His good looks and charm had seduced Amy instantly. And the added bonus was that he had really enjoyed his time with her.
Malcolm had taken sufficient cash with him (and thankfully no one commented on the date on his money) to secure an apartment for a month. It was four weeks of pure bliss. A better man than he would have fallen for the girl, she was so sweet. (Saccharin sweet, the clear offspring of her idiot father.) But not him. The steel resolve still held him with vice-like strength.
It was revenge he was really after, not romance.
As he took the time travel pill to return, he smirked with all his heart’s broken promises. He knew Amy would be devastated. All she would have left would be the photos of them together … the pictures he hoped Chris would eventually see. With supervised time travel now legal in two decades’ time, perhaps Chris would very quickly understand. And revenge would be his. He would have broken the heart of the man’s daughter. When he had asked Amy to marry him she had cried. Now she could cry for ever, for all he cared.
Kenneth had warned him about coming back. The risks were greater the longer you spent in the future. Generally, a maximum of 24 hours was recommended. Something to do with the way your thought forms integrated in to the time travel pill in your bloodstream. Malcolm had spent a total of 29 days in the future, but as he closed his eyes and allowed the pill to send him to sleep, he knew no fear. Telling the pill what date to send you to was a bit weird, however. He couldn’t believe it would really work, but as he mentally stated the date his eyes closed and he knew no more …
… Until he woke up to a sun-scorched day, lying in the park where he had chosen to time travel both times. Some landmarks never changed, and parks were an easy bet.
He smiled in the sunlight. He had done it.
Revenge was his.
**
It was later that the idea came to him. It was during a sleepless night when his thoughts, almost inevitably, turned to writing. It was still a dream of his, sleeping in his subconscious, occasionally rising from its slumber to scream … before the silence of sleep claimed it once more.
He had endured a few sleepless nights since his return from the future. He decided to ask Kenneth if insomnia was a side-effect of time travel.
But he had no time to think of that now, for the idea had him transfixed. He would write. That’s what he would do. He would write a novel about time travel revenge.
And Chris and Amy in the future … they would find out exactly what he had done.
His smirk was back. It lit up his face with a sludgy glow, a smile from hell.
Malcolm laughed.
**
As time ticked on, the novel progressed. He found he was writing later and later in to the night as sleep evaded him. When he did fall asleep, he was flung in to deep and vivid dreams.
Then one night he awoke from a nightmare. It had been a real incident, from many years before. When he had broken up with his first girlfriend, at school. He saw every contour of her pathetic little face in his dream, and sleeping tears rose in his eyes. He was amazed to find that his face was wet when he awoke. The pain pulsed through him, the memory of the injury he had inflicted. He shuddered.
Malcolm rose and walked to his bathroom. As he put on the light he gazed at himself in alarm. In the mirror, two wrinkles had etched themselves firmly in the otherwise youthful skin on his forehead. He shrugged. He was not getting enough sleep, that was the problem.
The next night, he dreamt of Felicity. She had been his first real love, and the excruciating agony of finding her with his best friend caused him to shriek in his sleep. He awoke shaking. As his mind calmed, the word came to him. Forgive.
That’s what he must do, he realised with cold certainty. Forgive those who had hurt him. Forgive himself, and his folly.
Another wrinkle was plastered across his face. Puzzled, he phoned Kenneth in some concern, to enquire in more depth about the side effects of time travel.
“It’s your thought forms,” explained Kenneth. “Whatever is concerning you, when you have the time travel pill in your bloodstream, can take on real substance. So if you’re worried about your weight for example, you may put on a few pounds. It’s something to do with the way the pill is synchronised to understand your thoughts. That’s how it can send you to any time period you choose.”
Malcolm swallowed hard. So what had he been thinking of? Of course…
Night and night the dreams came, and every morning there were new wrinkles. Malcolm aged about five years each day. He could hardly recognise himself anymore. He was cursed.
And still he wanted to forgive. It seemed so important now, so important as … he heard his inner clock ticking. This was it. He was living his novel. The cause of his revenge … it had become his life.
His new novel was finished. Accepted very quickly by a publisher – time travel was all the rage in the current market, now its reality was dawning – he knew, with chilling certainty, that he would not live to see it in print.
Malcolm had not gone to work in weeks. He could not let them see him like this.
He sat at home with his thoughts every day. Forgiveness obsessed him. For everyone who had ever hurt him … but most of all for him. He must forgive himself for the countless slights, the rarer rages, the selfish actions, always motivated for him, him, only him … He would forgive.
He had not dreamt of Amy yet. He knew when he did the pain would surely kill him.
So he sat at home and watched the months slip by as mere seconds, a river of time taking him nearer and nearer to …. the end of the novel.
And Chris lay down to sleep at last, with an expression of pure bliss on his face. He had forgiven everyone, there was no emotion left to explore. It was time. Forgiveness would free him, as the peace of death would erase every wrinkle from his face. And in death he would become complete…
**
The little boy showed the photo to his mother. “I found this,” he murmured. “It’s Daddy, isn’t it? Was he a bad man?”
Amy looked at him with a woman’s wisdom. “He was only a man, dear. Deluded, a fool … but I forgive him. I forgive him for everything. For I have you.”
As she hugged him, the photograph fell to the floor. A smile flowered on her face, as forgiveness lit up her heart.
**
Time to forgive, muttered Malcolm as he sank in to a deep sleep. Amy was walking towards him, and in his dream he found himself running, desperate to see her, to speak to her, to explain …
His sleeping brain slowly understood the truth. He had really loved Amy. Blinded by revenge, he had actually wanted to remain with her. Really, deep down.
In his dream she mouthed, “I forgive,” and held out her hands.
He no longer wanted to wake up. The dream was too sweet.
And as he died the dream became real. There was no turning back now…
The lone lady walked the crisps aisle in the convenience store, fingering the packs with frail fingers. Slowly, she chose a six pack, wrinkled hands sparkling with heart shaped jewels. A smile lit up an ancient face, a memory of a younger yesterday behind eyes that had seen too much. The old lady walked towards the checkout till, still smiling. For a love of good crisps survives time, a comfort to an aching heart. And what stories this heart could tell.
**
Brian’s heart furiously pumped blood through his body. He had just finished an early morning run. Pouring himself a water, he eyed the bag of Walkers ready salted crisps on his worktop. That would be a treat for later.
A little indulgence, a tonic that crunched to a place beyond his heartbreak, a happier world where crisps were free for all. A world where his wife of many years Stephanie, had not left him for his best friend.
Brian’s heart beat faster as he contemplated all he had lost. At least he still had his cars, they would not desert him. His second true love, a car mechanic by day, by night he worked on his hobby cars, mending the beating heart of their battered bodies.
Then his eyes returned to the bag of Walkers crisps, and he smiled. Slowly, he opened the pack. His smile faded as he regarded the crisp in his hand.
It looked exactly like half a heart, with a jagged cut on its straight side. It was a broken heart.
Tears pricked Brian’s eyes. Slowly, he placed the heart shaped crisp on his windowsill. He could not eat it. So the crisp lay there as the sun rose higher and then as night descended, kissing it with silver moonlight. It slept in silence, forgotten.
**
Melissa folded her knitting, its progress a thorn in her heart. She lacked the will to continue. Nothing enticed her excitement anymore. It felt as if life had ended when Michael left her, for none other than her hairdresser Anne. Life was cruel and as hard as cement.
She threw the knitting across the room, as the tears began to flow, a waterfall of regret. George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” played softly in the background, a sonnet of pain.
Absentmindedly, Melissa opened a pack of her favourite Walkers cheese and onion flavour crisps. A powerful pick me up, a remedy for rusted over romance.
Then she saw it, and her heart stopped for a moment. A perfect half heart shaped crisp, with a jagged edge where its other half should be. A broken hearted crisp.
Melissa laughed with little humour. She would keep this crisp. It summed up her mood perfectly, melancholy in potato art.
That evening, her friend Tina came over. “Look at this broken hearted crisp!” Melissa cried, delight tinged with distress in her eyes.
Tina’s eyes twinkled. “Let’s do a social media campaign to find the owner of the other half!”
“What?” exclaimed Melissa. “If there is another half, someone has eaten it by now. I’m the only idiot who would cherish a crisp and keep it!”
“But let’s try!” insisted Tina. “A social media campaign can’t do your florist shop any harm, in fact any promotion is good!”
So it came to pass that #brokenheartmate was born. To Melissa’s amazement, the hashtag began trending throughout the UK. And so the search for the second broken heart shaped crisp began.
**
Brian’s cleaner Wendy had almost finished her shift. His house was one of the best on her list, always tidy and no nasty surprises. She entered the kitchen, and stopped short in surprise.
A crisp shaped like half a broken heart lay on the windowsill.
Quickly, Wendy retrieved her phone and searched for the hashtag brokenheartmate. Before she knew what she was doing, she had uploaded a photo of the crisp. It was time for social media sundown.
**
Melissa could not believe her eyes. A heartbroken crisp to match her own.
Melissa and Brian’s friends persuaded them to meet. Brian drove from Glasgow to London, asking himself all the way what on earth he was doing.
They met in a coffee shop, surprised to like each other straight away, but laughing together that love at first sight had not occurred. However, their two crisps fitted together perfectly. Fate fingered their hearts as their brains said no.
They kept in touch and then met a few more times. Eventually, their flimsy fondness for one another turned in to enduring love. They had found their brokenheartmate.
**
One year later, their wedding day dawned to sunshine and joyful birdsong.
Melissa wore a white dress with a heart embroidered on its chest. Brian wore a kilt with a heart shaped sporran.
Before their altar lay a heart made of 20 red Walkers crisp packs, inlaid with blue cheese and onion packs, with a further inlay of red rosebuds, and their two original broken hearted crisps proudly in the middle.
Then the short service had concluded, and two broken hearts became one.
Later that evening, guest Shona sat alone at the bar eating a bag of salt and vinegar crisps. To her shock then simmering satisfaction, she found a half heart crisp, with jagged edges on its straight side. Recently single, Shona laughed. Did she too have a brokenhearted mate somewhere?
Nigel also found a brokenhearted crisp. He pocketed it, smiling. Later, dancing with Shona, little did either know about each other’s crisp shaped secret. However, they certainly knew that they liked each other very much.
Brian and Melissa departed later that night, in an open topped car overflowing with crisps. “Wherever they are going, they will not be hungry,” mused Shona.
Every guest’s goodie bag contained a bag of crisps, in addition to a heart shaped cookie. It looked like the guests would not go hungry, either.
**
The old lady slowly ate a bag of crisps, contemplating her long life. Her one true love had died two years previously, however they had shared decades of contentment. She chuckled, as she reflected on their honeymoon, days of unrivalled happiness asleep in her heart never to be woken up, a sweet slumber of forever.
She withdrew her hand carefully from the pack, looking at the crisp in her palm. It was an old habit.
Then the tears came. She was holding a half heart, jagged on the straight edge. Did it portend a better future, or just a piece of her past that would not die? Miracles unspoken murmured deep in her heart. The old lady smiled, wiping away her tears. Slowly her eyes closed as the honeymoon in her heart flew free.
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