Time Between Time (Part 2)

Issue #05 Keith’s SciFi Musings Sunday, August 4, 2024

But the grinding wouldn’t wait. It only grew louder, and it had to be coming from his office, because it was right there in the middle of the room.

Except that it wasn’t. Because there was nothing in the middle of the room except what had always been there.

“Hello..?” he said.

The sound paused. Had it heard him? Then there was a painful metallic groan, like that noise a teetering building makes in one of those action movies when it’s been hit by some sort of explosive and is about to crumble into itself. Jonas loved action movies.

“Hey! What the hell you doing in there this time of the morning, Jonas? You know what time it is?”

The neighbor. Jonas knew the neighbor’s name, but to Jonas he had always only been ‘the neighbor’. Almost as big of an asshole as his brother. Almost. He must have come outside to the backyard porch, which wasn’t more than 20 feet or so to the left of his office window on the other side of the chain link fence. These houses were built way too close together, he thought.

“It’s not me,” replied Jonas in a voice that was too frail and distant to be heard by the neighbor. “I don’t know…I don’t…”

He saw something. Or he thought he had. A glimmer, a twisting ribbon of aluminum and light that sparked in and out of his disbelieving view. Jonas squinted his eyes.

“Hello…?” he said again.

The glimmer, which had only been about the size and shape of a very long strip of bacon at most (if you could imagine a strip of bacon contorting in and out of itself), began to stretch longer and wider in the middle of the air. And the more its dimensions expanded, the more the groans became loud and insistent. Jonas clapped his hands over his ears and began shaking his head as he closed his eyes.

“You need to stop,” he said in an anguished whisper.

And so it did. Just like that. Jonas opened his eyes and noticed the glimmer was still there, bigger and more solid in shape, not flickering in and out of view any more. The groaning sound had been replaced by a low level hum, like a room full of contented bees.

“Jonas!”

The neighbor again. Jonas ignored him, as he often did. Must have been feeling better.

“Thank you,” he said to the glimmer.

The sound of contented bees humming increased in intensity for about five seconds, then dropped back down to its original level. Jonas smiled. The glimmer, which had been vertical, switched to horizontal, and then stretched itself into a U-shape, roughly resembling a smile.

Jonas laughed. It started off small, more like a chuckle, but then it swelled into a full-throated guffaw as his almond-shaped eyes crinkled at the corners.

“Seriously, Dad?”