Let’s see if we can’t loosen up some fingers out there, maybe get out of the Fiction department for a while:
New prompt: Recommend a book and explain why you are recommending it. Intrigue the reader without spoiling the plot.
Word Count: 600 – 1000
Due Date: Feb 7th (2 1/2 weeks)
-brett
***Note: I am posting this for Cindy as she is having technical problems with the site…Brett
Alice tried to remember who had given her the key. Perhaps someone at the realty group weekly meeting could shed some light. She had shown several houses the day before for one of her associates so maybe that was the answer. As she hurried down the hall toward the conference room, late as usual, she turned the key over in her hand but it simply did not look familiar.
Entering the room, Alice poured a cup of coffee and took the only empty seat at the glass topped table that was littered with papers and photos of houses. She took a large gulp of coffee and felt as though she was shrinking under the glare of her co-workers for arriving after the discussion had started.
Each person in the room, by turn, described their recent listings, contracts and closings. Alice took copious notes of any new information. She was new at this and still trying to understand what was important and what didn’t really matter. She reached for a cookie from the tray on the table and as she took a bite, she heard her name called. Swallowing quickly, she talked proudly about her new project and felt herself regaining stature in the room. Alice described the housing development she had been contracted to represent. She would be showing properties throughout the next week in a series of open houses. Queen of Hearts Estates it was called and she hoped her associates would drop in for a look around.
The British investors in “the Queen” as they liked to call it had done a remarkable job studying the market and understanding the buying and selling habits of suburban Americans. The houses were spacious and sat on large lots. Yet, each had a bit of whimsy about it – a cupola, a widows walk, a two story conservatory. One particularly lovely design had a broad roof that seemed to wrap around the house with one large bay window jutting through it in the front. It looked like a story book cottage on steroids.
The streets, laid out in a maze, were lined with manicured hedges and flower gardens so well-groomed that they appeared to have been growing for years. Alice made a note to get the name of the landscape designer. Streets branched off as soon as you entered the large wrought iron gates giving a sense that each house was almost its own estate. Brilliant. That alone would raise the prices for the homes by 10%. While many were struggling to buy and keep homes in a dreadful real estate market, the potential buyers for these properties were well-heeled with no problem making the purchase. They would relish the sense of eliteness exuded by the neighborhood design. Even the street names played into the plan, Ace of Spades Street, King of Clubs Circle, Jack of Diamonds Drive. Discreetly built just to the right of the gates was a row of smaller sized examples of each home model built exactly to scale, like a street of large dollhouses.
Alice drove through the area to get a feel for the very best way to tour potential buyers She got lost at nearly every turn and had to re-think her direction. Most of the lots were still empty but each had a lovely painted sign like a large playing card showing the best house model for that particular parcel. The houses under construction were in various stages of completion, from just sprouting up from the foundation, to that wonderful state where the new owner could choose all the little details themselves. A few were completely finished and ready for someone to just turn the key and move in.
The key. Alice reached for it in her blazer pocket where she had put it before leaving her condo. When she looked up she was directly in front of the model home/office and made a quick, dangerous swerve to pull in the driveway, almost hitting a rabbit that was scampering across the street. She’d seen that rabbit before a few houses away munching on the flowers. As she stopped her car, she made a note to mention to her management contact that something needed to be done about animal pests. Her clients liked the idea of living in the woods but would not want to deal with hyperactive rabbits running all around and eating their plants.
The management had left detailed instructions and all the needed supplies for her little tea parties as they referred to them. There was a lovely tea service and silver spoons. In the kitchen she found an electric kettle, various sorts of tea in a wooden caddy and nice cookies on a tray. The note indicated there were lawn games out back for the children. Alice laughed out loud when she looked through the kitchen window and saw croquet wickets set up. She wondered if the American children would even know what the game was. Note: teach a local teenager to play croquet and pay $8. an hour for her to hang out back on Saturday and Sunday and entertain the kiddies. Be sure she wears all white. Keeping up the image of the place would be good and the game’s large set up gave a good sense of the huge expanse of the back garden as she had been instructed to refer to it.
Alice filled and turned on the tea kettle, picked up the tray of cookies and returned to the drawing room, its name another affectation of the Brits. She straightened the stack of linen napkins and set a few cups on saucers. It was almost time for her first group of associates to come through. It was important that they want to bring their clients back.
Alice took a compact from her bag and looked in the mirror as she applied fresh lipstick. Reflected through the front window behind her she could see a large cat perched on the porch railing. Quite fluffy and an interesting shade of orange with darker stripes, he was busy grooming himself. As Alice turned to look at him directly, he lazily raised his head and stared back as if to say, “Who are you?” Perfect Alice thought, finishing her touch-up, a smart-ass cat. When she turned back around he was gone.
The first realtor to arrive was the last one Alice wanted to see. Frederick March was a thorn in her side. Always jumping on her leads to get listings, sometimes stealing clients from her, it seemed she often did the work for his rewards. He had been with the agency for years and was well known and respected in the community. March lived in a large house he inherited from his wealthy parents and threw lavish parties that kept him well-connected. Despite his prominent social position he needed to bring in additional money to support his lifestyle. And he hated to work.
Fortunately, March was followed by Sadie Madder, as always wearing one of her signature hats. Alice envied Sadie’s sense of style and self-confidence. Madder and March made quite a pair. Alice poured tea as they glanced through brochures and made notes. Remembering the key, Alice pulled it from her pocket and asked if it looked familiar to either of them. It did not.
The remainder of the day was a blur of activity. At one point a large group of realtors she had never met stopped by and Alice felt very pleased that she had led a car tour of the Queen’s Estates without getting lost. When they returned to the row of models she passed out keys that allowed the realtors to explore some of the finished properties on their own. There were even some potential buyers on this first day – a rather nervous and obviously newly wealthy couple that Alice joked to herself appeared to be looking for where to invest the recent lottery winnings or for a way to launder stolen cash and an older couple moving out of the city for retirement.
Near the end of the day a well-dressed woman came up the drive with two children, one holding each hand. When Alice opened the door for them she realized that the children matched. Exactly. Not only were they dressed alike but they looked, spoke and walked the same. Alice thought of directing them to the backyard but they occupied themselves going from display to display and talking to themselves while their mother made an appointment to come back with her husband later in the week. Alice laughed as the twins bounded across the front garden toward their mother’s car, matching stride for stride.
Exhausted and ready to call it a day, Alice glanced around the room to see what she needed to tidy up. In the mirror over the mantle she could see that the orange cat was back on the porch staring in at her. But when she turned around , once again, he had vanished. She made a note to ask if he belonged to anyone in the area. If he was a stray she might just try to take him home. His inquisitive nature had enamored her.
Having put away the remnants of the tea party, it wasn’t yet dark as Alice closed and locked the front door of the office. Looking down the row of home models being built for display she decided to take a quick look into each. As she stepped off the porch, a rabbit hurried past. It couldn’t possibly be the same one she thought. These nasty nibblers as her gardening friend called them could be a problem.
At each front door, Alice turned her massive ring of keys around until she found the one with the number matching the lock. She felt a bit like a princess as she walked through the houses and pretended she would ever be able to afford such luxury for herself. The first two houses were fairly well completed but as she moved from one to the next she encountered more and more construction. When she reached the last house on the lane she remembered; The site manager had given her the key just days before. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the key. The numbers engraved on it matched those on the lock. As she inserted the key and opened the door she was startled as a rabbit ran out past her. I wonder how long he has been locked in there she thought as her eyes followed his quick exit. Still looking over her shoulder she stepped inside onto an unfinished floor which collapsed beneath her. She fell into a black abyss and the rabbit hopped in after her.
Alice tried to remember who had given her the key. She tried to picture him, but it had been so long ago that most of the details were lost to her. She remembered that she had been about 5 years old, playing in the front yard, when the man had walked up to her, and that he had told her something, something that he said she would understand when she was older. He had then handed her a necklace with the key tied to it. He told her that it was very important and that she should keep it with her at all times.
That had been decades ago though, and Alice had completely forgotten about it until this morning when she went to clean out her parent’s house. She had been putting it off for weeks. Her father had disappeared almost two years ago now. He had left no sign of where he had gone, the police as well as multiple private investigators hired after the police had given up had not found a single credit card receipt, there had been no bank account activity, they had received no phone calls or letters. He had simply vanished. Her mother’s health had spiraled down after his disappearance, and she had finally succumbed only a month ago. The pain of losing her mother had kept Alice away from this final task, but the real estate agent was getting insistent, telling her that now was the time to list the house, waiting any longer risked losing thousands in this type of market. So she made the drive down from Kansas City, rented a hotel room, and went “home” for the last time. She had started in her own old room, unconsciously avoiding the parts of the house that, in her mind, still belonged to her folks. Over the years most of the stuff she had owned as a child had been given away, sold, or tossed in the trash, but there were still a few lingering mementos. She had been about to throw out a box filled with some of her old school papers and drawings when the key fell out of the bottom, clinking against the worn and dusty hardwood floors. After being lost in thought for a few minutes she placed the key into her pocket, sighed, and got back to work, wishing, not for the first time, that she wasn’t an only child. Having a few brothers and sisters would make this loathsome project a little more bearable.
Alice spent the next several hours organizing and packing her parent’s stuff into small boxes, trying not to think about just how little space two lives could fill. Her parents had lived in this same house since they had married back in 1952, having been given the house by her dad’s wealthy aunt. It wasn’t a spectacular home, having only 2 rooms and a single main floor bathroom, but it had been plenty for them, sitting on a couple acres at the end of a sunny country road in the middle of America’s bread basket, Leavenworth, Kansas. Alice had grown up with an appreciation for a simple life. She didn’t drive a fancy car, she didn’t wear expensive clothes, and her own house up in “the big city”, as her parent’s had called Kansas City, was modest by local standards. Sitting on the back porch swing taking a break, gazing out on the now-empty fields where her father had always had something growing, listening to the hollow clatter of an empty soda can rolling down the pavement in front of the house, half dozing in the warmth of the midday sun, Alice found her mind wandering again to the key.
Pulling it out of her pocket, she turned the key over and over in her hand, looking at it with adult eyes for the first time. She was just thinking about how utterly unremarkable it was when something caught her eye. There was something etched into the top edge of the key, near where you would thread it on to a key ring. Straining her middle-aged eyes to read the miniscule text, Alice’s breath caught in her throat. Looking closer, holding the key into the light to make sure her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her, she read it again. “Alice Farmer-5/27/09-3:14pm”. Alice checked her watch. That was today, in fact that was right now!
Alice was startled by the sound of boot heals on the stairs of her parent’s porch. Whirling around, she found herself staring again into the face of a the man she had met decades ago.
“Hello, Alice,” he said, a slight smile turning up the corners of his mouth. ” I see you still have the key. That’s good.”
“What?” was all Alice could muster, her mind spiraling.
“My name is Seth,” he answered, “Your father sent me.”
***
Sitting at her parent’s kitchen table Alice studied Seth’s features. He looked pretty much as she remembered him. He was fairly tall, she guessed he was at least 6 foot. He had black short black hair which was trending towards gray,and his face was heavily pockmarked from what she imagined was a bad case of adolescent acne,
“So how did you know my father, Seth?” she asked
“Do you know what your father did for a living?” he asked, deftly avoiding her question.
“Sure, he worked for the Leavenworth Times, as a printing press mechanic.”
“Well, yes, at first he did.”
“What do you mean? He worked for them for 32 years until he disappeared.”
“And now he travels.”
Alice paused for a second, feeling like she was suddenly caught in a bad horror movie.
“Ok, I get it. This is where the music swells dramatically, you look deep into my eyes and say something like ‘Alice, your father is alive!’, then I get all teary eyed, jump into your arms and then end up in the car with you. Well that’s not happening here dude. I don’t know who you are or what your game is, but I’m not that chick. I can, and will, kick your ass if you even think about getting too close.”
Seth just laughed.
“What, you don’t think I can do it? I may seem like some little defenseless city-dweller, but I grew a farm girl. I’ve thrown bales of hay heavier than you.”
“Oh no, it’s not that” he replied, still grinning, “I can’t really explain. Another time and place maybe. Look I know things seem strange, and trust me, they are strange, stranger than you can imagine right now, but I really was asked to be here by your father. He made that key himself, he engraved the date and time, handed me the key, and asked me to give it to you. Yesterday.”
“Right, so yesterday you broke in and planted the key, knowing I was on my way. You must know the realtor, quite the racket you guys have going.”
“Do you remember what I told you when I handed you that key?”
“I’m not buying it.’” she replied, not really hearing his question, “I don’t know how you found out about the key, unless my dad told you about it before he disappeared, which I’m beginning to think you had something to do with now, but I think I’m just about done listening to you.”
She grabbed the key to toss it at him, noticing again the date and time etched on the edge, “You can leave now, on 5/27 at 4:21pm”
Seth caught the key, then slid a piece of paper across the table to Alice. She stared at him for a second, in what she hoped was a menacing way, then grabbed the paper and read it, then sat back, her heart pounding. The note was written in her own handwriting. It said “Alice, he doesn’t have to leave on 5/27 at 4:21pm. Remember what dad always said, ‘sometimes you have to shut up and listen to your own head,’ well now’s that time. This isn’t a bad horror movie, he’s not trying to get you in his car.”
***
By the time Alice and Seth parked near the service entrance to the Leavenworth Times building it was after dark. Seth had spent the last few hours explaining what was going on.
Alice’s father had indeed worked for the Times for most of her life. It was while he was working there that he had found the room. It was a regular room, in a common area of the printing room. A room he had passed every day for decades without ever really noticing it. Until one day when he did notice it, almost by accident. He had been working on one of the machines when a special bolt he had just removed and dropped to the floor and rolled under the door jamb. When he opened the door, he was startled by a man sitting on a stool, eating a donut, reading yesterday’s newspaper. Barely looking up, the man had told her father to have a seat, that the timeline was off and he was about twenty seconds early. Her father had tried to ask the man questions, who he was, what he was doing in this room, but the man on the stool paid him no attention. Twenty seconds later three men walked straight out of a brick wall, nearly giving her father a heart attack, and shook his hand.
“You see,” Seth said “your father has a unique skill set. He knows how the machines in this building work. I can’t go into a lot of detail, mostly because the detail is lost, but we found the ruins of this building a couple years ago, and while it might seem backwards, we don’t know how to make it work.”
“You mean you guys have perfected time travel, but you can’t make a simple printing press run?” Alice asked incredulously. ” Did everybody get stupid?”
“Well not exactly. Have you heard of Moore’s Law? It says, basically, that computing power will double exponentially every 18 months or so. Well run that over equation over hundreds of years and you can see that, given enough time, the need for a knowledgeable printing press mechanic would be nonexistent. “
“Yes, but with all that computer power, why couldn’t you guys figure it out? Or why not just come back and get some books instead?”
“Why borrow a book when you can borrow an actual mechanic? When your water heater breaks, do you go buy a book on water heater repair or do you call plumber? We simply called a plumber.”
“Why, though, didn’t you bring him back?” Alice asked, her voice quavering.
“Ah, well that’s one of the problems with traveling,” he replied softly, “Once you travel you can never again rejoin your own timeline. Not at any point. We’re not sure why. You’re father can’t return to you, that’s why he sent me. He asked me to give you the key to the door.”
Alice sat quietly for a few moments, then remembered something that had been bothering her. “Speaking of the key, why when I was five?”
“What do you mean?” Seth asked
“Why did you give me the key when I was five? That’s a long time to hope I would keep it.”
“Well, for a couple of reasons actually. First, if I had tried to give it to you when you were in your twenties, what would you have done? If you had even bothered taking it from me, a big if, you would have tossed it in the first bin you came to, so I needed you to have it at an age when you wouldn’t question why I was giving it to you. Second, I needed it to prove to you that I wasn’t insane. You remember me giving you the key, which for you was 47 years ago, but for me it was yesterday. You can see I haven’t aged, I’m wearing the same clothes, everything about me is the same. The only way that would be possible is if I were telling you the truth.”
Alice nodded, realizing that what he said made sense. “So what now?”
“Well, from what we know, you no longer have any ties to this time. You don’t really have any close friends, you have no pets that need taken care of, nothing is keeping you here. Is that true?”
“It’s not so nice when you say it like that, but sure, I guess that’s true.”
“Then what do you say we go for a walk?”
***
Standing in the room her father had happened upon years ago, she discovered what the key was for. Her father had installed a door inside the storage room. He had built it perfectly, looking like any other door, except that when you opened it you were facing bricks instead of a closet.
“How do I do it?” Alice asked nervously, her stomach starting to do cartwheels.
“It’s actually very easy, just walk through the bricks, they’re just a holographic image, and when you get to the other side, tell the voice where you want to go. Think of it like a voice activated elevator, only instead of up or down, you’re moving sideways through time. For now just tell the voice you want the ‘lobby’. They’re expecting you there.”
Alice took a breath, her heart pounding, and started to step forward. Suddenly she turned back to Seth.
“Hey, what did you say to me when you handed me the key, the thing you said I would understand when I was older?”
Grinning again he replied, “See you in the future.”
“Well that’s just dorky,” Alice replied, rolling her eyes. “But I guess I’ll see you in the future, too.”
Seth saw her disappear through the bricks, heard her stumble over her words a little, then say clearly and with confidence “Lobby, please.” A deep chill whisked through the room, and then she was gone. He looked around, made sure she hadn’t dropped anything, then stepped through the bricks himself, closing the door behind him.
