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"A man with a glowing weapon and a transforming humanoid face monstrous creatures emerging from an unstable portal under a starry sky, as energy pulses illuminate the battlefield."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 3

The Man With Three First Names
Rabbits leap through time,
Portals hum with shifting fate,
Night and day now split.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.

There he was, standing face to face with the janitor. All around them, snarling beasts with odd numbers of legs and eyes circled as the mist faded and the stars above them shined brighter than he had ever seen them shine before. Michael stood there, thinking about all the things he’d seen and realized that his odd and strange life was flashing before his eyes, and on over the back of his neck, making him shiver in all the wrong places.

One of the creatures snarled at him as it made another circuit.

The trollish looking beast, now half human and half janitor watched him without making a sound or even a noise. The man-beast seemed to regard him with distaste, or was it even disinterest, slumping to the side so as to appear to be staring through his left shoulder. He shook it off. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t matter at all.

A creature, a strange combination of a black panther, ravenous viper, and a six-foot-tall raven-thing lashed out. It jumped Michael and knocked him to the ground.

Michael took out a small umbrella from a back pocket that definitely didn’t look big enough to hold it, and jammed it in the creature’s mouth, hitting the open button. The creature’s mouth split open and expanded with the umbrella, sending it reeling off to whimper on the ground in just enough time for a second one of the little demons to jump him.

Michael was able to fend off the creature with a punch to the side of its immense head. As it hobbled back, it stumbled on its undersized hind legs. A third one jumped over the second, landed square on Michael’s shoulder and knocked him to the ground. Just as Michael’s back hit, the creature used the forward momentum to flip over, and land on him again, this time with its butt in his face. One fierce fart later, and he jumped in the air, intending to do the trick again, but it never made it to the ground. Instead, he just hung there in the air. It took Michael a moment to realize the janitor had grabbed the creature in mid-air and held it there in the air. It was unable to reach the ground, grab anything or gnash its teeth on anything worth gnashing.

Simon, what there was of his mind, threw the creature aside, breaking its back against the wall, and the side of him that was now a monster in its own right, let out a screaming yell, then gibbered for half a moment, crouched, and cleared his throat. He grabbed Michael and leaped out of the hole that was now in place of the testing facility. He landed a hundred feet from the hole, and Michael marveled at how careful the creature was being with him.

He expected to be dead.

Simon laid him down, next to his car, and then stood there, panting.

They could hear them, the creatures pulling themselves up and out of the facility. It wouldn’t be long before they were surrounded again.

One of the creatures popped its head up. Simon turned around and flew off, his arms flailing in rubbery directions, landing on the creature’s head. Simon was as large as a car himself and punched his fist down and into one of the creature’s eyes. It popped like a grape, and the fluid flowed over the janitor’s ragged coveralls.

Another one popped its head up from the great hole in the earth, now a bastion for evil natured creatures. Michael pulled from a concealed shoulder holster, a silver-tipped pistol that appeared alien in nature. He pulled the trigger. It had been designed for use by creatures with three suckered fingers. He fired it, blasting the creature with silver light that caused it to vanish without a trace.

Smaller creatures were now starting to spew up and out of the circular crater in the ground. They had mutated into something closer to ants with sixteen legs each, hard and black, about the size of a large shoebox, maybe something boots might come in. Michael stepped on one of them, and it splattered into five or six more creatures, the same in shape, only fewer legs. He blasted them, each in turn and jumped on the hood of his car. They had surrounded him.

Simon wasn’t faring much better than Michael was. Thousands of the tiny creatures covered him, each taking great piercing bites into his flesh. He threw them off, and rolled around, flailing in all directions. The wounds from his bites covered him in a foul black ichor.

Simon screamed, no longer able to speak the words he needed, and slumped down to his knees, willing himself to just sit there and take it, for them to tear him apart, certainly that would be the answer, the thing that would bring him peace.

Michael didn’t want to receive one of those bites for anything. He kicked the roof of the car, and the sunroof began to open, but there wasn’t time. He wished he hadn’t because the little creatures were just falling in there with him.

He hit the engine, cranked the car to life, and revved it up, the little bugs were starting to get the better of him, nipping him here and there. He slapped them away, and then stood up, to blast a larger creature coming out of the hole, pushing with great thin legs as it shook slime from its great huge wings. The creature exploded in the light, spraying its foul green lunch from another world all over everything.

At that moment the portal below flickered. It danced, and shimmered, almost closed for good, but then the ground shook with an enormous pulse that knocked everything to their feet.

It flipped Michael’s car over, and it landed on its wheels again.

The blast blew out from the portal. The creatures, the blood, everything except for the hole, the portal itself and Simon seemed to get sucked back through.

Michael ran to Simon and picked him up. He was shivering but normal otherwise. There was still some slime from his creature form on his forehead. Another pulse and he might not be so lucky. He looked over the edge, leaving Simon behind for a short period.

He watched as the portal flickered.

“It’s not long now,” he said. “It’s either going to go critical or fizzle out, you never know.”

It pulsed again, but it was a false alarm.

“I haven’t got long.”

Michael helped Simon up, and half walked, half dragged him to the car.

He plopped them in and revved it up. They were going to have to come up with a plan. He was going to need some help.

He pulled out, and once up to sixty-six miles an hour, he flicked the switch and the car vanished from the side of the road and reappeared a hundred miles away at an abandoned warehouse where he kept his office. At least that’s where it was this week.

He pulled in, and Simon followed him blearily up the steps to a small office, in the middle of the otherwise abandoned building.

The office had it all.

It had the half-frosted glass door with the lettering. It was totally, and blissfully computer-less, though he did have his gadgets here and there. It had an old-style rotary phone, sitting on a telephone book that was so old it was almost completely faded white. The office walls were covered from floor to ceiling with great and gloriously dusty bookshelves.

Behind Simon’s desk was the most interesting shelf, he called it his curio cabinet, even though there wasn’t any glass there. In the curio cabinet, there was a wide variety of items from every culture he’d encountered so far. He had alien artifacts as well as stuff from Earth. There were spiritual items as well as electronic gizmos. There was a helmet covered in gold next to a trio of shrunken heads, each clutching a sharp diamond in their teeth. Next to that were voodoo dolls, alien tech sensors, a lava lamp for the hell of it in purple and red. One of the oddest pair of things he’d ever acquired was the living undead zombie heads of Felix and Faustus. The zombie’s heads were each seated on a small dinner plate to keep the orange pus that was leaking from their necks from getting on the books.

Felix turned his head the moment Michael came into the room. “Well well well, if it isn’t the man with three first names then, back for another go?”

“Shut up Felix.”

He ignored the talking head as it sat there, rotting on his shelf, covered in maggots that Michael knew were nothing more than a trick of the mind designed to freak people out.

Faustus looked around but wasn’t impressed. He stopped when he saw Simon. “What’s with the stiff over there?”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “His name is Simon. He’s a Janitor.”

“He’s been touched, you know,” said Faustus.

“I know.”

Michael pulled open a drawer and rifled through it. Not finding what he was after, he pulled the whole drawer out and threw the entire thing aside were junk and old pens splashed to the ground.

Felix turned his head on his plate and twisted his remaining eye back at an unreal angle to watch what Michael was doing. “It’s not in that drawer, It’s in the red book this time.”

Michael had just finished turning out another drawer out when he looked up at Felix. “The red book eh?”

Felix tried to nod, and almost toppled off the shelf.

Michael jumped forward and climbed the first two shelves near the floor so that he could reach the red book, which was a large three-inch-thick tome, covered in dust.

He opened the book and saw within it a set of goggles, made with real eyes, bloodshot and darting that regarded him with fear, and a syringe filled with an orange liquid that seemed to glow with its own faint light.

He grabbed the goggles, and put them on, looking through the darting eyes at Simon. He took the syringe, and held it up then, as if he were blind, and not trusting the eyes he was looking through, he stepped forward, and took Simon’s arm.

“What are you going to do with that?”

The eyes were darting hard left and right. It made Michael wobble.

He took the syringe and watched Simon’s arm.

“It’s the toxins from the gate. This can slow down the transformations. There could be another pulse at any time, and the next time, you might not make it.”

He plunged the syringe in, seeing now the floating purple and orange spots floating in the eyes of the goggles. He shot the liquid into Simon’s arm.

The scream was unreal. Simon thought he was hearing someone else do it. It sounded like someone trying to scream while gargling three feral cats and a bucket of fried chicken.

There was still a little bit of raw strength there, and he struck out and toppled onto the desk, sending papers everywhere.

“Good one Mike,” said Felix.

Simon stood up, and began to transform, clutching his arm.

“Oh yeah,” said Felix, “make him change early. Nice. He might get worse next time now.”

Simon stood and roared, his mouth splitting as his head began to change and his hair began to grow and muscles became better defined. His shirt tore, and he clawed his hands across the bookshelves sending cheap paperbacks in all directions. He jumped through the door, luckily open, and bounded out into the open warehouse.

“Crap,” said Michael.

“You better get him quick Mike,” said Felix.

“Yeah, right.”

“It’s good you’re the only one at the office. It’s hard to fire yourself.”

“I’ll have to remember that. Firing myself once in a while might feel pretty good.”

He’d chased a lot of zombies in his time. He’s chased them over garden fences and into the back yards of many a housewife looking in on her above ground pool full of kids while there was nothing else left to do but go after them with a shotgun. It was the best way to kill zombies, so no judgment there. You had to make sure their heads came off or you were screwed.

Michael was running flat out, as fast as he could. He was keeping up with Simon though, who had flung into a rage.

“Crap.”

He dodged a low hanging branch as the troll-like beast half lumbered, half catapulted through the back yards of several nearby houses to the warehouse. He wondered if he could catch him. He wasn’t breaking a sweat yet. The number of aliens he’d chased through these woods, only to lose them as the ship took off, the number of zombies, which seemed to keep cropping up, and then there was the werewolf, but you couldn’t call that a clear case of lycanthropy. The snout wasn’t right. He didn’t believe it anyway.

He jumped like he had so many times before and found his footing on a ledge that he didn’t even have to look at anymore as he crossed it. He flew past the creatures, diving to the left, and down an embankment that faced a nearby park where everyone would be out in the open. The hill was edged with a twenty-foot layer of the forest, and on the other side was a park with four baseball fields that all faced each other.

Michael landed at the edge of one of the baseball fields. Was the High School not playing here anymore?

In the middle of centerfield stood Simon in the moonlight. His skin was gray-green, and silvery, glistening with a thin layer of slime that seemed to ooze from his skin and coat it. It glistened. His work shirt was torn, and the overalls were hanging on him. Any shoes he might have been wearing were long gone. Simon now had large and oversized claw feet. His hands, though sharp nails protruded from the fingertips, were deft, and almost delicate. The fingers were long and strong. His muscle structure reminded Michael of a wrestler after a recent fight with a bowl of cocaine, and the teeth just didn’t make any sense. It was almost as if they got wilder and wilder based on how crazed Simon was at the time. He seemed more like a vicious troll than a zombie.

Michael shook off the zombie line and stepped out into the field from the first baseline.

Simon turned around and howled in his direction.

Michael froze, closed his eyes and lowered his arms to his sides.

He imagined the beast calmly returning to him, and Simon recovering enough to come back to the office with him. He was doubtless going to have a call by the time he got back there, and he did not want to miss it, He knew he’d need some help pretty soon.

He stepped forward, and Simon leaped forward, landing right in front of him.

Michael almost stopped breathing, and turned his palms out, allowing Simon to smell him, hoping this was like meeting a dangerous dog.

He wished he had some bubble gum with him. Though cheese would be better.

Simon stepped back and lowered his head once after getting a clear sniff of Michael. He blew a wad of snot and phlegm into Michael’s face, and after a last and final sniff, he blew Michael’s hat off with ribbons of the stuff.

Michael winced but otherwise stood perfectly still. He’d seen a friend of his, Mathers, last year try this same thing with a gargoyle in Central Park, and it had cost him his life, but he needed Simon. He could feel it.

When he opened his eyes, Simon Dunbar was standing in front of him, shivering in the night air.

“How much time?” he asked.

“What?”

“How much time have I been… it?”

“Just a few minutes.”

“Can you help me?”

“I think so. Come on.”

Simon hobbled next to Michael. Maybe the trollish piece of him could slough off the more dangerous elements of the chase, but it hurt later.

Together they walked off the field, and up onto the main street that cuts through the neighborhood, so they could get back to the warehouse.

“Simon, right?”

“That’s me. You’re a janitor at the facility?”

“Yes. I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

“I know. If it makes it easier, I know all about them. The Sublight Group, I think, right?”

“Yes.”

“I used to work for them. Experiments in dimensional travel. It looks like they were trying to open a portal.”

“They have been doing that a lot lately.”

“What, other portals? That wasn’t the first?”

“No.”

“Does anything ever come out, like this time?”

“Not usually. I’ve seen space, and other planets, strange landscapes, usually it’s just a blue star or something, over a planet covered in trees and grass.”

“Nothing intelligent?”

“Not that I’ve ever seen. Until tonight, the most intelligent thing I’d ever seen was something like a polar bear with a huge central tusk, like a rhino or something like that. It was coming up through its bottom jaw. Well, that’s true for the portals anyway.”

“Was it furry?”

“Yeah, white just like a regular polar bear except for the horn and like a flat double nose. They kept that portal open too long looking at it, the machine’s never worked the same since.”

“Was it erratic, or what?”

“It was just shaky. That’s the best way to describe it. Shaky. It was one of those things, you know?”

“Like what?”

“It’s just a window. It’s a window with the most interesting things in it, the only problem is there’s a thousand-foot drop if you try to climb through it.”

“Deadly?”

“Serious deadly.”

“One step through and it tears you apart anyway. We had a strike team in the facility. They were acting all-important, and stomping around like they owned the place. It was three months ago, they opened the portal, and everyone walked through. We could see them on the other side of it.”

“What happened?”

“When they stepped through, they turned around, and couldn’t see the portal anymore, it just wasn’t on their side at all.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah. We sat there and watched them, trying to get them back, but they never saw the portal again. It just wasn’t there on that side. We watched three of them get killed by some kind of pterodactyl, and the other ones, we watched as they stopped breathing. The atmosphere just wasn’t right. It took a long time.”

They turned the corner up towards Michael’s warehouse.

“Do you think you can help?” asked Simon.

“I think I can. I’m not sure. The only thing I’m sure of is that I think I’m going to need you. You were right on that portal, and a piece of you has been changed by it and you survived. Do you remember anything from it?”

“You mean besides the monsters?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I do. They had one on the other side this time.”

“A portal generator?”

“Yeah, and they were looking at us the moment we were looking at them. We both had them turned on at the same time.”

“What are the odds of that?”

“Like a million to nothing,” said Simon. He rubbed his arms.

“You have any clothes at that warehouse of yours?”

“Yeah, I’ve got lots of stuff.”

They entered through the back door. This used to be an old television studio before it closed, there was a small costume room and something like a two-car garage sized area full of rolling racks full of clothes.

“Take your pick. I’m going upstairs to get some coffee going. Pick out two or three things, and a shoulder pack you like. Anything that fits, you are welcome to it.”

Simon nodded.

“We want to make sure you have some options if you bug-out again, so make sure you get shoes as well.”

Simon nodded again, and Michael left him there, alone to look through the clothes.

Simon sat down in the middle of the room and sobbed for a moment on a large oriental rug. As much as he’d seen today, he wondered if the rug might fly should he know the magic word.

He shook it off, and stood up, looking at the racks of clothes. He decided to ditch the over-all look. He picked out a couple of sweatsuits with hoods, a load of underwear and socks, a couple of baseball hats, several pairs of shoes and a cheap suit. There were more expensive-looking suits over there, but this one was comfortable and understated. He put on one of the sweatsuits and noticed the shower room just off the wardrobe here. He availed himself of the showers, and then donned his sweatsuit again, grabbed his shoulder bag, kind of a smart satchel with lots of pockets, and made his way up the stairs to the smell of perfect coffee.

“Well, if you’re going to be like that Mike, then to hell with it,” said Felix as Simon entered the room and sat down.

Simon reeled, not just at the fact that it was a gross and decapitated head sitting there talking, but that there were two of them, and nobody around thought this strange at all.

He was greeted with a cup of coffee, and he noticed that the talking zombie heads on the shelf were sucking their own coffee through straws.

“Where was it going?”

“Simon, these are Felix and Faustus. Don’t be alarmed.”

Felix turned his good eye to Simon. “How’s it going? I hear you transform into some kind of beast.”

“Troll, I think.”

“Right, Troll Man, yeah.” Felix took another sip of coffee. “Crap Mike, that’s hot!” he said, and then burst into hideous laughter. “What are you trying to do, kill me?”

Faustus turned both his eyes, for he still had two, and blinked a friendly hello to Simon, but did not speak.

Simon took the coffee and a cookie or two from the table. “What are we going to do?”

“I’m still working that out, but we don’t have much time. I know there’ll be another pulse soon, and I think we need to get back into town before that happens. We’ve got to do whatever we need to do to shut off that portal, and clear that area. I’ve called in a strike team to surround the facility and keep people from getting too close.”

“What kind of team?”

“An effective team.”

“I think we’re due for a pulse or two before, maybe a micropulse.”

“What’s that?”

“What you’re having now. Take off your shoes.”

Simon was starting to shake.

“Not again!”

He took his shoes off, threw them in his satchel, and then faster than ever, he transformed into the troll-like creature, this time much more smoothly and he looked a lot cleaner, without ripping the clothes. His hair was wild and long but fell back in long black-green locks behind his ears.

He stood there looking at his arms and legs, feeling his hair.

“Michael?”

Michael looked back at him with both eyebrows raised.

“Simon?”

The voice there was normal.

“Is my voice… is it clear?”

“Clear as a bell, my friend.”

He slumped into Michael’s chair, and broke it to pieces, sending a cloud of dust into the air.

“Sorry about that!”

He got up, dusted himself off and looked around.

Felix rolled his eye.

Faustus kept drinking his coffee. One of his eyes was twitching from it. The eyelid had flopped off on the other side, so there was no help there.

Michael pushed over a wooden box, might have had the ark of the covenant in it at some point, and Simon sat on it. It didn’t break.

A great gong sounded in the air.

Simon looked around. “Dinner?”

“No, a phone call.”

"A retro diner glowing with neon lights in a distorted landscape. Monstrous creatures roam outside, tossing cars, while two adventurers inside enjoy their meal, unfazed by the chaos."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 2

The Man With Three First Names
Rabbits leap through time,
Portals hum with shifting fate,
Night and day now split.
Buy Yours Here:
Amazon - Books2Read

This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.

A resounding scream came from the air.

The night sky erupted with light and static as two forms descended from the moonlit night through a cacophony of sound that shook the trees and caused three carloads of teenagers at various and sundry lover’s lanes to puke, and run from their cars in wobbly heaps. The two of them seemed a bit distressed, but was it something in the air? Was it just the fact that they were falling from an impossible height? Or was it the subtle laughter as they hit the earth and drove a hole in the soft ground as they did so?

There was silence.

Then there was laughter.

More silence.

Then there was easy giggling that comes from a couple who have been on the road together just a little too long.

Fred and Moxie pushed their way up to the top of the hole and looked around. They had made a considerable mess this time. They wore jeans, sneakers, and sweatshirts, and were wearing backpacks filled with everything they could think of. Everything seemed to be hanging from them including flashlights, several kinds, tennis rackets, pool cues, water guns. There was no end to it. They wouldn’t carry anything lethal unless it was explosives, but other than that, it was pretty much useful junk they just thought would be fun to carry.

On their wrists, they wore space-time-traveling locaters, not the most smooth form of travel. They enjoyed them just the same.

On their heads were ball caps. Fred’s had a pair of goggles pushed upon it, which he pulled down and put on, and Moxie’s had a pair of sunglasses perched on it, which she pulled down and put on.

She smiled and looked around.

“Where the hell are we?” she said.

“I don’t know, but I have a funny feeling that it’s…”

He checked his wristband.

“Yep,” he said, “it’s Earth all the time.”

“What is it with Earth? We’re always coming back to Earth again.”

“I don’t know, I think it’s the polarity or something, keeps zinging us back here.”

“Fred, how long has it been since we traveled anywhere else?”

He thought about this for a moment and allowed the thought to gel there in his mind.

“What, like a year or so?”

“That’s about right.”

“We have got to get off this planet.”

“Agreed, but first food! Hey Moxie!”

She scowled at him.

“What?”

“They’ve got the best burgers here, I can smell them.”

She walked to the edge of the trees.

“I guess I better clean up then.” He pointed his wristband at the ground before them. He hit a button, and the ground zipped itself back together as if nothing had happened.

“Hey, wait! Where are you going?” he said.

Fred trotted to keep up with her.

“Over here, I think,” she said. “I think there’s a burger joint over here.”

“What, have we been here before?”

“Yeah, it looks like it.”

Her wristband made a bleep.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know, I think these things are running low or something.”

“You know full well they get power from our bloodstreams. There’s no battery to lose.”

He shook his and looked down at it again. “There is a disturbance.”

“Shut up. It’s just us, crash landing as usual.”

“No, Moxie, it’s something more.”

“Food!”

She took him by the sleeve, pulled him toward the street. Cars were now going up and down next to them. Across the street, a twenty-four-hour burger house.

“Come on, burger house.”

He shook his head.

He held her hand. With a touch of their wristbands, they disappeared from one side of the highway and appeared on the other. They trotted up towards it.

He looked up at the place.

“You know, I think we have been here before.”

“See what I told you? Now get inside, you’re buying this time.”

They pushed their way into the little burger house. Tiled in black and purple, it consisted of a long counter of barstools. Around the outside edge were a series of booths. A jukebox and a cocktail table Ms. Pac-Man stood by the front window, which was open to the street and the parking lot.

There was a cook behind the counter, already at work on a griddle full of hamburgers, and a toasted sub sandwich, and there was a waitress. She bustled up to Fred and Moxie as they sat down at the lower end of the bar where it swept around the corner. Her little name tag said Jen on it. They swiveled in their chairs and watched the cars go by outside. Moxie was already fishing for change. They had lots of Earth cash on them, deep in the packs. She wanted to fill up the jukebox.

“What’ll it be?” asked Jen. She was already working up the bill on a little blue pad.

They ordered sodas and burgers, Moxie went for the fries, but Fred just opted for a second burger instead. “Hey Walter, I got three belly busters and an order of potatoes, cooked ’till they’re dead.” He acknowledged the order with a wave of his hand and went on about his business like he had two extra arms, which he didn’t.

“I haven’t seen you two in here for like six months,” said Jen.

“Has it been that long?” asked Moxie while Fred was asking “Have we ever been here?”

Jen looked at them both and also ignored them at the same time. She remembered them just fine. She wondered how long it would take them to remember. It had been just a couple of days in Fred and Moxie’s personal time.

Fred couldn’t remember this from the last three burger joints they had gone to, but Moxie did. She remembered it because of the bathroom. She remembered the way that the toilet in the ladies’ room creaked when you sat on it, and the stink bug she saw run across the mirror.

Moxie winced at the memory but brightened when she remembered that the food was pretty good. She could say that it was something that not only could you write home about, but she had opened her computer and done so.

She wrote her mother a letter each Monday, in her own personal timeline that would reach her mother in hers. It was more of a space mail, and sometimes she included a video of her and Fred in various places around the galaxy, but that didn’t matter. Her mother rarely returned the letters, though she did read them. She sometimes responded with single-word messages like “Cool,” and “Keen.” “Wow” was one of her favorites, as was “Fun.” Sometimes she just responded with “Hmm.” When Moxie was being rather wordy about Fred, her mother would fail to respond at all. It was better than getting a response like “Crap, Boring,” or Moxie’s favorite, “Fuck.” Her mother didn’t like Fred so much, which was a shame. Moxie rather loved him, even if she had no idea what the hell she was doing with him. He was rather helpless at times.

He was currently trying to feed a quarter into the Ms. Pac-Man machine, with a crow-bar.

“No silly…”

He looked up because, with that tone, he knew she was both talking about and to him.

She took the quarter from him and dropped it in the slot. The machine made a satisfying plunk noise. He nodded thanks, and hit the button for a single player, he could make it from here.

A few moments later Jen was calling them, their food was up. She brought it to the bar and dropped it down in front of them, first Moxie’s with a deafening crash. Now that was wrong. It sounded like a whole ton of dishes breaking in the back there. She set Fred’s down, and he jumped as he heard the sound of a car crash outside.

They looked up at Jen.

She shook her head and shrugged it off. She’d seen weirder in her time. Much weirder.

She turned and went on about her business, taking care of the couple of other customers she had tonight. Walter cleaned the griddle, pouring mounds of kosher salt on it, and scrubbing it around to pick up as much grease as possible

After a few minutes of nothing but the sound of soft chewing from around the room, Jen filled everyone’s sodas and coffees and she and Walter sat down to a quick meal themselves.

Outside, the sky began to cloud up. The moon disappeared behind storm clouds, and a fog rolled in. Not much of a fog, just a misty one that was good for getting behind your eyes.

Fred saw it and made a mental note not to try a jump in this, it tended to make it a little messier at the other end.

Moxie was deep in her tunes, she had the jukebox going. There was a little rock, a little country with the change of scene. Enveloped in the smell of her french fries, she jumped and fell from her stool as one of the cars in the parking lot was grabbed by a huge half-mechanical tentacle and then thrown into the sky. A moment later a resounding thud rocked the ground along with the sound of tinkling glass.

Walter picked up the phone and dialed it like he was calling his mother. The phone rang a couple of times, and you could hear a customer rep answer on the other line.

“Yes, said Walter, I believe I’d like to remove a car from my insurance policy… Yes, I have the Vehicle Identification Number for the Car… Nope… I just decided to get rid of it, you know how it is…” He read the number off and waited a moment. “Thank you,” he said and hung up.

Moxie got back to her feet. She and Fred watched the landscape outside of them twist and stretch as shadowy creatures with strong limbs continued to lumber across the parking lot. They kicked cars, and smashed windows, but stayed away from the diner.

Walter shrugged his shoulders. “What could I tell the insurance? Destroyed by an alien monster?” Everyone agreed and went back to their burgers. You’d think they’d all be screaming and running in every direction, but the burgers really were that darn tasty.

“I love this place,” said Moxie.

“Yeah, the jalapeños are particularly good,” said Fred.

Moxie and Fred looked at their wristbands and tried to make sense of what they were reading there. “It was definitely dimensional in nature, but how?”

“Have we ever seen anything like this?” asked Fred.

Moxie shook her head. She was reading intently.

In the distance, she could see people trying to get in their cars from the other stores and businesses in the little strip mall with them. Once in their cars, people were either drawn up into the ant-eater-like nose of a great beast floating above the clouds or if they were unlucky, they were torn apart by small strike teams of monkey-headed warrior wasps that were patrolling the perimeter.

There was no need to panic, everything was just about as ridiculous as possible already.

Fred waved to Jen. “Could I have a refill?”

“Sure hon, no problem.” The aging waitress brought the refill and set it down in front of him. She marked it on her bill pad as she ignored the scene around her. The steaming pile of cars in the parking lot of the ice cream shop next door didn’t seem to phase her a bit. She just marked it down and went on about her way. She dropped her pen behind her ear, and adjusted her visor a little bit, fiddling with her name tag a little.

Fred just looked at her, away, then back at her.

Something fresh came on the jukebox.

He waved and snapped in front of her face, and looked around.

“Yep.”

“What?” said Fred.

“I can see them out there.”

“You can?”

“Of course.”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“You seem to be.”

“Well, of course, have you ever seen anything like it?”

“Dear, when you’ve seen as much as I have in this business, there ain’t nothing that could scare me.”

She winked at him and toddled off to check what was left of the rest of her other customers.

“Moxie, did you hear that?”

“Yeah, have you been watching?”

“I, well… no?”

“Look.”

He turned around and there was a flash across the sky as if for just a moment and a half a second moon appeared to be there.

“What the hell!”

“I know, right? Look at it.”

He cupped his hands to the glass of the window and looked out at the second moon.

“We are definitely talking multi-dimensional here,” she said.

“No shit,” he said. Then he sat down with a thud, and began to check his wristband. “Do you know which one?”

“How should I know, there are thousands of them, you know that.”

“Yeah, I know, but you know.”

“Yeah.” She looked out, and in a brief flash, the moon was again alone in the sky.

“It hasn’t finished yet.”

“Yeah, it still looks pretty unstable.”

“How long do you think we have?”

“I don’t know, I think it might have just started.”

“You think it was an accident?”

“Has to be.”

“Does it?”

“I don’t know.”

“It looks like it’s getting lighter out there.”

“Yeah, some of it’s gone with the moon, like it’s still pulsating in and out. Another pulse and it could all be over.”

“Hell, one more pulse, and we’re just as likely to be in the hot tub with your step-mother.”

Fred closed his eyes, it was a vision he did not need. He tried to un-see it with his mind and failed. He gave her a dirty look.

She laughed at him.

Somewhere in the distance a helicopter flew over the local mall and was sucked into another dimension. The crew was all eaten for dinner at a grand wedding banquet. The helicopter itself was given to the bride’s nephew Kenny as a present for being so good during the rehearsal dinner.

The only evidence that it happened at all was the thump of the rotors on Fred’s wristband, and the lack of them on Moxie’s just a moment or two later.

“What was that?”

“Food’s up!” called Jen from behind them.

In a single insane moment, they forgot about their worries and decided to trust in a good hamburger instead.

Moxie looked at hers, slice after slice of cheese with fries. Fred had two burgers, spicy and hot. They stood there and allowed the smells to waft up through their noses like it was the most cherished thing in the world.

There is little in this galaxy that can please better than a good hamburger, no matter what the cost, the kind of beef, where the lettuce came from or even what color it is. Also, beyond the simple, well-cooked hamburger, there is nothing better in the galaxy than one cooked for you by someone else.

They lifted them to their mouths, each took a bite and settled in. They allowed the creatures who were still kicking and lumbering around the parking lot behind them to linger in the backs of their minds for a few moments. They were no longer exactly concerned anymore with the day’s events. This was a safe haven and one that tasted good.

While they were eating, one of the creatures, something at least seventy feet tall with great huge silent pads for feet, strolled up to the burger joint and lowered its fantastic head into view. It looked at them with eyes the size of truck tires.

“I think this is the best hamburger I’ve ever…” said Fred.

“Shut up,” said Moxie. She took another bite and persisted in ignoring him until there was nothing left.

Behind them the creatures snacked on cars, played kick the can with a Mustang convertible, and made a mess of most of the signposts that they could find, snagging them and chewing them like great huge metal flowers.

Fred let out a monumental belch. “Can we look yet?”

“No.” She was still nibbling.

She took the last bite of the last french fry and then turned to him. “Now,” she said.

They turned around and looked out at the landscape around them.

The parking lot was gone.

“Don’t suppose you’ve checked your wristband again?”

She nodded.

“We can’t jump now.”

“Don’t know where we’ll end up right?”

“Yep.”

They turned, it was Jen. She was sitting on a stool behind the counter flipping her hair with a third hand and arm that she then quickly put away.

“You’re a—”

“Alien, yep.”

“But you’re—”

“Living on Earth as a waitress, yeah, I know.”

“Why?”

“Partly to avoid shit like this.” She pointed out the window. “Not much used to happen on Earth. It’s a helluva place to live lately though.”

“Do you have a way out of here?”

“Personally? Nah, I junked my ship years ago.”

She poured herself a cup of coffee. She poured cups for Fred and Moxie as well.

“I think I stay for coffee these days.”

“Right. The coffee.”

“You have no idea, traveler. The coffee on the Earth is the best coffee this side of the galaxy.”

“We keep hitting the earth, you know.”

“Yeah, and I’ve seen you in here before anyway. Are you both from Earth to begin with?”

She took a sip of coffee.

“Yeah, well Moxie is half-human,” said Fred.

“Shut up.”

Fred smiled at her, he loved her just the same.

“I don’t like to talk about that,” she said.

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right dear.” Jen stroked Moxie’s cheek. “That’ll pass. There’s a station near the edge of Town, several that have been messing around lately. I figured it wouldn’t be long until someone hit the nerve, and opened a portal up. Looks like they don’t know how to close it this time.”

“May not,” it was Walter.

He strode in and sat down on the counter to look out at the parking lot. “All this will be normal again. Probably in the morning or something. That’s the fun of dimensional rifts they usually snap back sooner or later.”

“You too?”

Moxie and Fred turned to look at him.

“Yeah, Jen and Me, we were travelers too once.”

He shook his head.

Moxie went to the window. “Why can’t they get in?”

“What? In here?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled. “Because of the force field, honey.”

Her eyes bugged.

“What did you think? We wouldn’t protect the place. You watch. This is the most fortified burger joint in the western hemisphere.”

“There are others?” said Fred.

Walter addressed Moxie. “Is he a little dumb dear?”

“No, just a bumbling idiot in the face of trouble.”

“Ah,” Walter nodded, “one of those.”

“Hey!” But it was too late, they were all laughing at him.

There was a pulse.

You couldn’t hear it, not like anything else on Earth. It was a ripple in time and space, centered on the station, and right on the portal, still buzzing away next to Simon, the janitor, and Michael.

“What’s your name?” asked Simon, still groggy from the blast, and not at all sure of what or who he even was anymore.

Michael brushed himself off and helped Simon Up.

“My name is Michael David Christopher. Some call me the man with three first names.”

“I like it. It’s got a ring to it.”

“You think?”

“No.”

The pulse exploded from the gate in a silent wave and knocked them both over.

They pushed their way up and looked around. Nothing seemed to have changed except that the night and the monsters seemed to have vanished.  Suddenly, daylight was upon them.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Come on, it won’t be long before another pulse sends them all coming our way again. We have to figure out how to close this sucker without harming as many people as possible.”

At the little burger joint, they watched as the pulse went out across the land. Buildings returned to some semblance of normal, while at the same time, cars reappeared, or were replaced with mopeds for the few and unfortunate.

The sun seemed to appear on the horizon as though it were a fresh day.

“Fun,” said Fred.

“I call it the yo-yo effect,” said Jen.

“The what?” said Moxie.

“The yo-yo effect. It’s like a rubber band, stretching and popping as the dimensions expand and contract. You never know what could be next. Could be dinosaurs, could be vampires.”

“Could be giant flowers or bunny rabbits too?” said Moxie.

“True,” said Jen. “but much less fun.”

“It could also be something boring like a great dessert or a starry plain with dragons in the sky.”

Moxie and Fred were fascinated.

“Strange, right?” said Walter, “It could be hell next, at least a fire world, I’ve seen that before.”

“You want to know the fun bit?” said Jen.

“What’s the fun bit?” asked Fred.

“The fun bit is unless you are in a force field like this, or at the epicenter, somewhere like that when it starts, you won’t even notice until it’s all over if you ever do at all.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it’s not them that’s in trouble really. It’s us. We’re the ones moving from one parallel universe to the other as the pulses go, call it a dimensional quake ripple or something.”

“How long do you think it’ll last?” asked Fred.

“I’ve seen one that lasted a year, most are a day or two. It depends on who started it, and what they are doing about it if they are still alive.”

“You think it was an accident?”

“I don’t know. Most likely.”

“This happens all the time in nature, it’s just not that often that we realize it.”

“And those people aren’t getting killed out there?”

“Yeah well, in their own dimensions they are. We just keep slipping around looking at the different versions of dimensions, and what’s going on in them.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” said Fred.

Jen caught Moxie’s eye. “He’s slow on the uptake.”

“But I love him anyway.”

Moxie beamed despite herself.

Fred watched out the window at the normal world out there standing as it was when they first arrived, except for the fact that it was dawn instead of dusk.

“Is the time differential normal?”

“If that’s the least of the permanent changes that’ll be a blessing,” said Walter. “Sometimes one or two of the creatures gets left behind after we swap.”

“Sometimes a building or something goes missing, leaving a patch of forest or something behind.”

“Funky,” said Fred.

Moxie looked out in the parking lot. “What’s that?”

She was out the door before Fred, who did have it together despite their having fun at his expense, could catch her. He flew out of the door behind her. “Hey, come back!”

“I’ll just be a minute.”

She left the confines of the force-fielded burger joint and headed out to one of the cars in the parking lot that was now some kind of a short-backed hairy beast about the size of a hippo. It was a cross between a sheep and a bison with purple fur. The creature wheezed and moaned at them with as much compassion as you can show with a single eye.

“Can we keep it?”

“Moxie!”

"A hidden research facility in the woods, covered in vines, with an old SUV outside. A mysterious figure in a fedora stands at the entrance as eerie purple light glows from within."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 1

The Man With Three First Names
Rabbits leap through time,
Portals hum with shifting fate,
Night and day now split.
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Amazon - Books2Read

This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.

It was a small facility on the western side of Atlanta, Georgia. Nestled in the woods, you might never have thought anyone up there was up to anything.

Nothing going on here.

It was one of those places. It was a solid red brick building covered in kudzu. It was easy to just pass it by, especially with the inscribed door that said General scientific facility west, Do not Enter.

The building was much larger than expected and positioned as it was in the landscape you couldn’t tell that there was any more to the building than the eye could see. Built into a hill, the rest of it went deep underground. From the surface, it just looked like it was a single story. There were a couple of cars parked outside.

It would take a native from that side of town to know that it was always the same two cars and that they never moved. One of them couldn’t move at all and was long ago abandoned by some teenagers who had escaped from the local police after being caught at it in the back seat. They escaped over the fence years ago, and never had the nerve to come back and get the car. Good for them. Married now, they had two kids. He hated his job, she didn’t like hers, and ends were stretching thin these days, but they never forgot that night. This is not their story, it’s just something fun to think about.

The other car was not a car anymore now than it was anything else. It didn’t run. Most of its guts were torn apart years ago and replaced with strange and bizarre scientific equipment, surveillance cameras and other things that were difficult to explain because they were from another world. Patched into the old SUV was enough equipment, crossed with enough other things around the small compound that if a chipmunk farted too hard a hundred feet from the front door, you could tell how many acorns he had in his mouth at the moment.

The back door was the only one that anyone ever used anymore. There were a few cars, and a light bus parked back there where employees came in and out on a regular basis. It was an odd 48-hour schedule. At the moment, everyone was at work, and there was something in the air. Something was going to happen, and no one knew what it was. Some of the scientists thought they knew what it was. Some of the military officials who were visiting today thought they knew what it was too, but none of them knew what was going to happen.

It was sad.

Of all the things that people shouldn’t be screwing around with, This was it. The people inside, with all their experience and knowledge, were just too stupid to realize it.

Simon Dunbar stood by the back door, with a cigarette in his mouth, and a pale expression on his face. His work overalls were dirty and seemed to be steaming. There was a stain on his leg that seemed to have a life of its own. He looked at it and brushed away as if it were nothing. It jumped from his pant leg, fell to the ground and then became a still puddle on the loading dock.

“Heh,” he said, and tossed the butt of his cigarette at it. It burst into flame and sank into the ground, disappearing in a mist of purple fire.

“That’s enough of that crap. Assholes don’t know what the hell they’re up to in there. Goddam military assholes.”

He stood up, took his mop, and finished wringing it out.

“You’d think they’d have some kind of robot or something to clean up the place by now.”

Simon looked around himself. Just like always, there was nothing. Nobody there.  Nothing ever happened around here and nothing ever did.

“You’d think these guys would understand it. Here I am, top security clearance, and I’m emptying the trash cans.”

He looked around himself again and shrugged off the feeling that someone was watching him. Someone almost always was.

He made his way through the screen door, and on through another secured door behind that, which was three feet thick.

As soon as Simon was behind the door, a dark sedan pulled up. It looked like it was half new and half old. New equipment modern dashboards and a dusty black finish on the outside with fins that looked like they were from the 1950s. It looked like the car was both clean, and that it hadn’t been washed in about a hundred years. It was impossible not to be a total wreck of rusted garbage by now, yet it hummed right along, smooth as any modern car.

Mr. Michael David Christopher opened the door and stood from the car. He walked by the old SUV that was loaded with sensors and equipment, none of which was able to pick him up in the slightest. He looked in through the driver’s window on the SUV. He put on the white jacket to his suit, and then, adjusting his tie and fedora, he reached in and pulled the plug on the sensors. Then he pulled a small electrical device from his pocket, and doused the sensors in orange light, cutting the device the rest of the way from the dash.

Within a moment, the camera turned back on, there was a slight flicker. It appeared otherwise to continue reporting that everything was all clear. It even beeped to let you know everything was as right as rain.

Michael looked around and slipped passed the fence like it wasn’t locked, which it was, with lots of padlocks and barbed wire and electric shock wire on top of that. The thing was, when Michael came to the gate, none of it was there. He just pushed it open and slipped through, and on to the back deck. A moment later he heard it clang closed behind him, and when it did, it was completely locked up again. Anyone else walking up to the gate would see it covered in wire and padlocks. They just didn’t exist when Michael was looking at them.

He moved forward. It was now starting to get a little dark, but that didn’t matter. He worked his way around to the back door, and pushed open the screen door, and walked through it. There was a small greenhouse there, about ten feet square, with a door on the other side with a large computer key-code lock. Around him were plants of various kinds and sizes. A few were ornamentals. There were flowers on one side, with a Schefflera. There were various kinds of fruits and vegetables on the other side. There was a small bench there as well, with some digging tools next to it.

He looked over at the computer key-code system and sat on the bench to take a close look at it. He crossed one leg over the other one, took a pack of gum from his pocket, and began to chew it as he sat there and thought about it. It looked like a regular telephone keypad, and it looked like there was some kind of a swipe card mechanism on the other side of it as well.

“Double sure,” he said. “Double indeed. They are out of their minds. How am I supposed to get through that? No matter. Someone will open it for me.”

He sat for a moment and imagined someone opening the door from the inside. He thought of someone coming out to check something, while he snuck in. He closed his eyes and he imagined the door opening up. That someone coming out and beginning to tend the plants that were there, and just not noticing as he waltzed right in.

He opened his eyes and the door was hanging open. Standing before him a mid-forty-something man was beginning to kneel at the bed of plants in front of him. He was listening to music at top volume on some headphones. Bopping along, the man had no idea and did not look up as Michael walked right by him.

He had that knack, for keeping out of people’s way. He’d always had it, best not to think about it or he might get caught.

Through the great electronic door, that was at least three feet thick, he made his way through and down into the corridors. Already past three more guards, each unable to detect him for completely different coincidental reasons, he remembered that he was thinking about being sneaky again.

Simon looked at the spill. He nudged it. It looked back at him with disgust.

He stepped into the spill, sending droplets of the curious creature splashing in all directions. He scraped his foot through it, and then off of his work boot on the edge of his rolling mop bucket. The liquid glowed with a phosphorescent sheen in the darkness of the upper level of the underground laboratory. He was up on a ledge near the catwalks that spanned over the middle of the place. He reached out with his mop and wiped out the stain. It complained a bit and whimpered as he dropped the mop into the bucket, and pulled the yellow handle to wring the mop out with. The stain fell into the bucket, and swirled around in there, biting at the sides.

It taunted him and growled.

Simon stooped over the bucket and lined up his shot. He was carrying a small container with an eyedropper. In it was a purple steaming liquid.

“Take that,” he said and dropped a single drop of the green liquid into the bucket. It began to fizzle. Soon the water was clear.

There, he thought. Enough of that nonsense for the evening. He leaned on the handrails nearby and looked down at the little men in white coats who were bustling around checking their equipment. They were moving around like bees with nothing to do. He liked to watch them, even though he had no idea what he should do about them.

Something about them wasn’t right. It made him hungry and nauseous to work in here sometimes. He patted his stomach. It would go away.

They were busy today, it looked like something more than normal was up, but he couldn’t tell what it was. The truth was most of what they were up to didn’t make a lot of sense.

He stepped backward, pulling his bucket and mop with him into a small elevator with no front door, and held on as it slid down to the bottom floor of the laboratory. He worked his way through, listening to everyone as he kept a careful mind about making sure he watched the floor like he was paying attention to what he was doing.

In the middle of the floor was a large open space, where great huge spikes rose into the air, and matching ones hung from the ceiling. It looked like the mouth of a futuristic vampire of some kind.

Little pops of energy spiked from point to point as the lab techs jumped around, tweaking dials and checking their work against large print-outs, which they immediately threw away where they piled onto the floor.

“Hey you,” one of them said.

“Me?” said Simon.

“Yeah, you. We need you to make sure that lane over there is spotless.”

It looked like a series of benches in a circle near the spikes that were coming from the floor.

“Are you sure that’s wise? The electricity and all?”

“We’ll tell you when things are safe around here, now, get in there. We’re about to begin!”

Simon trudged in, shaking his head, and looking around as little as possible. He was aware of the mess in front of him. It looked like more of the ghoulish sentient slime, and a combination of human blood and alien vomit.

“Where did they get this stuff?”

Behind him, a count-down started in large orange numbers. They were pulsating up there and counting down as the heat and crackle of the spiked probes began to spark up again. He shuffled his way to the side and took a moment to look around.

He almost saw Michael there, but missed him by a blink, as did many others in the room as he made his way through. Those who did see him walk in thought he belonged there and dismissed his presence.

Michael stepped forward over the catwalk and marked his path, looking down over the sparking arcs. He’d seen something like this before, but he wasn’t sure what to call it. It was definitely some kind of a gate or something, or was it a trans-dimensional rift? He couldn’t remember. When science and alien tech mixed in the name of any of the world’s governments, it was never a good idea.

He looked down through the electric zaps and pops of purple energy arcing back and forth and kept it in the back of his mind that no one would notice him up here while he worked. He looked around and accepted the fact that no one was looking in his direction. Then took that idea for granted, and lowered himself from one catwalk to another one, down where he could get a closer look.

US soldiers were patrolling on this level, overseeing the project, but not close enough to get in the way. They walked right passed him as he stood way off to the left side of the walkway. He kneeled and lay down on the catwalk and reached down as close to the arcing energy as he could stretch to.

Behind him, on the walls was the countdown. Was it ten days or ten minutes? How fast was it all going? He watched a minute finish ticking off. Ugh, it was ten minutes. Not much time to figure out what they were up to here.

He reached down again and held out his hand. Clenched in his fist was a small device, it looked like a green thumb-shaped item, glowing on one end. He reached it out, allowing all thoughts of being caught or even being noticed to pass over him, and out of his mind. The end of the green item opened.  He squeezed a small button that sucked a tiny amount of the arcing electricity into it. It processed for a couple of seconds, and then the answer went straight into Michael’s mind. His eyes glowed with a green flicker, as the transfer happened.

Of course, that’s what they were up to. They were trying to open a gate into a parallel dimension. Why would they want that? What would be the point? Well, there were the obvious reasons, but most of them didn’t make any sense, even time travel wasn’t worth it when it came down to it. I mean, how many times could you go to the first game of the 1963 world series for a first date anyway? Even in a separate dimension, there was a possibility of meeting yourself. It made for a terrible social life.

He stood up and looked both ways. The military police were talking about sports, and about their wives. They talked about what they were expecting to see during their next chance at leave. He looked down and the men in lab coats were too busy to look up. The arcs were flying, and it looked a little unstable, but you could never tell.

This was always the problem with dimensional travel, especially when you were opening gates from one to another like this. You just never knew what it was that was going to come through. Sometimes you got lucky, and there would be a nice meadow with a couple of cow-like creatures you could snag just to prove you did it. Other times you could find a place like Earth where they brought their summer movies out three months earlier than we did. You could score an early screening of the next big blockbuster. Otherwise, dimensional travel was a pretty useless thing, unless you were hoping for a disaster to happen. If you knew what you were doing, that could be even more dangerous. It could be a nightmare.

“What were they up to?” said Michael.

Simon sloshed forward, the black liquid was starting to spew from thin air into the room from where the arcs of energy were crossing just a little too much. He looked around, up and down, and thought about it. Where would that stuff be coming from? He shook it off. Just clean it up. That’s all he was supposed to do.

“Just clean it up.”

He shuffled forward and sloshed an amount of water onto the floor. The black liquid seemed to soak into the mop with vicious speed, and disappear. Simon was proud of himself. He shook the mop into the wringer. It was already dry. He pulled the mop up to his face and watched as the strands dried up before his eyes and the stain reached the entire length of the mop and then dried to a solid black mass. Then it started flaking off like fresh ash.

“I’m going to have to get a fresh mop again, that’s like the third time today.”

Pulling the rolling bucket, now without a mop stick to help him maneuver it around, he plodded over to a small locker, where he kept his supplies and pulled out a fresh mop. He tossed the remains of the other aside, where it clattered to the ground and then shattered into a million pieces. A wind from below spread the ash out.

He shook his head. Something else to clean up.

He took the fresh mop and pulled a broom and dustpan out as well, and while the mop was starting its initial soak, he gathered up the remains of his old mop. He dropped a couple of extra drops of his fizzing liquid into his bucket. He threw the ash into a nearby bin marked ‘unstable do not touch,’ and continued working on the spill with a fresh mop.

The large display was counting down fast, and if he hadn’t seen them do this a thousand times already, he would have been concerned, like he was the first fifty or so times before it got boring.

Michael, while he’d seen this kind of thing before, was still anxious as hell about it. He’d seen times when this kind of thing had gone wrong before, but also because he’d seen how foolish people could be, especially with technology. Below him now, not twenty feet away, Simon was working on another spill pouring into the lab from some other dimension and time. This time it was still dark in color, but definitely green and rough and glop-like in texture. It just sort of splattered on the floor, and with each half-gallon, Simon’s brow seemed to furrow even more than Michael thought it was possible to do so.

He heard footsteps and froze. He imagined himself in another place and time, out of range of the scientists below who were looking at less than three minutes to go before all hell broke loose. A small pack of them slipped by him, crouched on the catwalk, and never noticed that his tie was dangling right in front of them.

Michael watched as Simon heaved full mop-load after load of the green stuff into the bucket. The stuff seemed to be disappearing as he did it. What was that stuff he was using to drop in there? Did it transport toxic waste to another dimension?

Simon looked up.

Michael looked down.

Their eyes locked.

“He’s seen me!”

Michael fell from the catwalk, ten feet from Simon and darted for the small open elevator that carried people up to the upper catwalks. Simon watched him make the climb. No one else seemed to care that he was there. Maybe he was down from the main office? Something like that? He didn’t know and didn’t care. What concerned him was how he was going to keep this part of the floor from disintegrating before his eyes. The arcs of purple were even more intense than usual this time. He could hear the scientists and military men in the control booth calling out numbers and coordinates. Someone called for someone else to keep it focused this time. It didn’t concern him much, and as for the guy, what guy?

Michael stayed in a corner, imagining that he was on a beach in Florida rather than here at the moment, and how there seemed to be more money for books, and less interest in going to play mini-golf than he thought at first for this trip when he went totally unseen again. Simon, now a hundred feet below was concentrating on a piece of the floor that was starting to rip away before his eyes.

The countdown on the clock was close to zero.

It was almost there.

Time seemed to slow down as the last few seconds elapsed on the board. When it reached critically there was a massive explosion. Save for the purple arcing lights, which transformed themselves into a massive circular gateway, everything else in the room simultaneously exploded, imploded, fried and then exploded again. Metal shrapnel went everywhere. It’s possible that the first casualties got it from exploding iron filings, built up in their blood. Michael was never sure.

The gate opened with a white-hot light and creatures of every description began to pour into the room. They were dark and slimy, their eyes rose on great stalks, and small fluttery useless wings beat behind their forearms like broken umbrellas attached to elephants. Many of the scientists were immediately trampled. Others lost their minds on the spot, which started to leak from their left ears. The creatures, three-legged behemoths, romped around the room and up the walls. They tore down catwalks and rampaged over everyone.

Michael stayed silent, and unseen, something he saw as necessary. He would admit he was a coward, but it was the right thing to do if he was going to stop this from spreading any further. He was about to send a message to his car outside when one of the creatures picked up Simon with its central foot, which doubled as a thrashing arm and threw him into the portal. At that moment the white-hot light of the portal exploded again. Everyone, including the creatures, smashed against the walls. Simon’s body also flew against the wall, but in the darkness, no one could see it.

Michael’s body stayed put.

The gate remained open, flickering.

Michael slipped down, pulling a flashlight from his pocket, and making his way down the remains of the wall. At the base of the gate, was a power station. If he could just get to that. He reached out and pulled the power switch. Would he see the end of this fiasco, or would he help create a larger mess?

The explosion rocked the hillside where the laboratory was. Out on the surface, the building fell into the ground, as if sucked into another dimension, which is what was happening to it. Michael’s car remained still, held by its own internal force. 

The gate remained rock steady.

Standing at the base of it, looking out at the now open sky stood Michael.

Standing next to him was Simon, or at least the remains of Simon. Still in his overalls and work shirt, what stood there now was the spliced remains of two creatures. One the janitor of the unheard of, and the other a creature from another dimension. It was white, pale, and gibbering.

Michael stood there and watched Simon, wondering if the former janitor-thing would kill him before he could escape.