Act III

"Tick" went the clock sitting above the empty bar.

 

The bar called Limbo, sat somberly still, as the sound of the classical rendition of 24 Prelude Overture 28,15 in D minor flat drifted though the smog and the twisted light of ambient green lamp shades that sat on every table.

It was eerily still and quiet.

The dimly lit lamps, held very little light in this already ambient setting of empty seats and an empty stillness that lay 

"Tock."

All apart from the ticking of the clock, that hung over the bar, illuminated brightly against the smog that forever lingered over this place. 

"Tick."

The bar was unattended and the bearded man who sat toward the back of the bar, tending to his black and white news paper was not to be seen neither was  the small boy who laughed and giggled as he blew bubbles into his chocolate milkshake at the edge of the bar.

And the man who calls himself "Death" had vanished from sight soon after he slapped the very lost boy out of his seat.

"Tock."

Only two people remanied, Chloe and The Time Traveler.

Who came into this world with no other name, no other title than 'The Time Traveller, which seemed like a strnage title to her at first 

"Tick."

The Time Traveler had jumped over the bar, seeking the whiskey his heart ever so longly craved or needed, she couldn't decide which. 

She couldn't decide a whole bunch of things as of late, being dead 

"That's stealing, you know that?" Chloe voiced her concern over the safety of the alcohol with that fiend present. 

She had been wandering around the back of the bar with a sense of morbid curiosity.

Something prodded at her sixth sense that there was something else here, something she was missing. 

After all "Death" had told her to trust nothing or no one here, so it made sense to snoop a little, while the place was dead. 

There wasn't much to investigate, she had studied all the weird paintings and portraits that hung on the stained magnolia walls.

She was captivated by the strangeness of them. 

The peculiar style of portraits that hung wall to wall of strangers to her.

Some painted in a classical portrait style, others some abstract pieces that boggled the mind. There was a few landscapes, of places she'd never even seen or ever will see outside of these walls that confounded the souls of the lost. 

"It's not like we're paying for it anyway, love." He said grabbing a bottle of vintage scotch. "You want another bottle of wine, sweetie?"

"No thank you." She shouted, her voice echoed. 

"I'm grabbing a bottle anyway. You like rosé dontcha, love?" He said in his thick southen British accent. 

The Time Traveler had swaggered back toward his seat at the table, two bottles of Scotch in one hand and a bottle of rosé wine in the other. 

Four maroon leather armchairs, surrounded the  thick oak table in the center of the bar the surface of the table which smelled distinctly of freshly applied ceder oil and polished wax. 

Chloe with her blonde hair and bloodied towel, loitered toward the back of the bar. 

Carelessly strolling between the  seating booths, her attention however,  would be caught by the tiniest  little detail or object she glanced.  

But she didn't dare go within a foot or two of the white mysterious door that Death had tried to lure her to go into, wherever it may have lead she did not want to find out what was on he he other side of it. 

Her fingers hovered over the shelves of a bookshelf  directly oppiste the mysterious door. It was stacked from end to end with entire volumes of antiquated novels, tomes and some rather odd looking books.

The bookcase was ancient looked itself  seven shelves stacked rows upon rows of ancient, and strange stories of forgotten forgotten fables, which Chloe had never heard of before.

Rows upon rows

below the it some old fashioned board games, an old raggedy stuffed brown bear, missing an eye and just plain old junk scattered around the bottom, thimbles, marbles, strange assortments. 

Many anonymous novels caught her attention, the books were bound in worn black leather that had already started to crack and fade. Some were thick, some were paper thin.

She picked up one antiquated book, the tome was heavy, thick with a spine made of sinister looking bones embroidered into the leather cover. 

Strains of jeweled pieces of braided dark string hung freely as she removed the leather and bone bound book from it's undisturbed resting place.

Chloe had no idea of what she was looking at flickering though old pages, only to find no words in this particular volume other than the words printed in thick black ink. 

"No Spoilers, Alice."  Scrawled across in  thick black ink across every page, start to finish.

Chloe ran her fingers  down it's spine, turning every page with great care, expecting to find some explanation for the words? 

"What is this book?" She said to herself, curiosity had gotten the better of her senses.

The pages felt crisp and fresh to her skin. 

The tiny droplets of blood that trickled off her ghost like figure did not stain the paper, it faded upon contact, she could feel something...dark...emitting from within it's black pages. 

Almost as if was vibrating in her hands, humming her a sweet lullaby that carried her mind further and further away.

She began to fell lost, as if the room around her was spinning violently, the floor beneath her bare feet felt like cushions of air. 

"I'd put that down if I where you, love." The Time Traveler called out to her from his seat across the room. 

Chloe snapped out of her momentary trance and turned to face the stranger in black. 

"You don't know what kind of strange s**t that goes on in here, best to leave things alone,  wouldn't ya  agree?" The Time Traveler nodded toward the book.

The book in her hands was protruding great black tentacles from the spine, slithering up Chloe´s arm with  a supernatural speed, clawing up her arms, wrapping itself to her.

She could feel the darkness on her cold skin. It was this deep black ooze, webbing itself together, in pieces forming up her forearm like malicious vines come to life.

Blacker than anything that Chloe had ever seen and darker than anything she had ever felt. 

She shrieked as she fought to loosen her grip from the on the old dusty book. Clawing at the black substance that was crawling up her hand, she gripped the book with her free hand and tossed it on the ground in front of her feet. 

it dropped with a thunderous  'bang' that echoed for what seemed like a infinity.

"What the, what the  hell is that?" She screamed as she kicked the book back toward the shelf. 

"I think that's a story best left for another day..." The Time Traveler said scratching his head, then pointed to the book again. 

The long black tentacles formed eight spider like legs from it's body and began to scale the bookshelf with animal like speed, clambering back into it's home upon the top shelf. 

"Yeah, I think you're right." Chloe said shuddering, brushing it off as something dark and clearly unnatural. 

There was a momentary silence, only broken by the everlasting sound of the clocks ticking hands. 

"Tick."

"Tock."

"So." Chloe broke the awkward silence between them, which had almost been unbearable. 

Since Death and the others had vanished from sight she had tried to engage in conversation with the man who had no name.

 "How'd you end up here?" She questioned the Time Traveler.

She carelessly pranced back to her chair, throwing herself onto the leather upholstery, before swinging her radiant silver hair over her shoulder.

"Don't want to talk about it." He snapped back.

"Well I'm bored! And as you can see there isn't much in the ways of adrenaline pumping excitement around here."

"Drink."

"I'm not thirsty."

"That isn't why we drink sweet heart." He said in a condescending manner slamming back another empty tumbler."

"Then why do you drink?"

"To forget, Love, we drink so we can forget." He hissed as the whiskey burned his throat. 

The Time Traveler grabbed the tall glass bottle of whiskey and struggled to pour himself another glass. 

"If I have a drink, will you at least talk about it?" Chloe asked, pushing the empty wine glass that sat in front of her toward the Time Traveler. 

The Time Traveler sighed as only he could,  his  dark blue eyes couldn't seem to look at her directly.

'Why?' She thought. 'What's wrong with him?'

"Fine. But I'm not going into detail. Ruinings the surprise for later."

Chloe handed him her glass and he began to speak.

"They say that you cannot change past. You cannot alter the hands of the clock, you cannot turn back the hands, there isn't a reset button. Time...time is a fickle thing. we each come into this world with only a certain amount of time hanging above our heads, a morbid count down,  just ticking away until we drop down dead." 

"Tick."

She fumbled with the droplets of blood smearing her slender bloody fingertips against her glass of wine , that rested upon the table. 

"We all wonder what it would be like to alter our time line. At some point, everyone has wondered what would have happened if they didn't do that particular thing on that particular day at that exact moment in time, how would their lives be altered? 

How would the hands of time have reshuffled their deck and played an entirely different hand? I had the means to travel freely in time. 

Anywhere in history, any place in time, I had the chance to do wonderful things. 

I had the chance to change and better the course of human history. 

And instead, I pissed it all away, drank myself half to death over a woman and the other half I drugged myself to death. So, I get the notion of changing the past, nothing major, just a little event that happened to me in the past. I didn't expect the outcome to be this." 

She couldn't really place his accent, distinctly British and southern, he didn't seem English type.

The time traveler seemed to resemble more of a burnt out junkie in a luxurious tailor made suit.

The black tie around his neck was loose at the knot, his short creased and dirty. 

He was a picture of curiosity to her nieve eyes.

Her gaze locked on the man in front of her
it was a dark and cold passageway, she didn't know what lied beyond that point, she'd already seen things that defied her concept of logic and sanity.

"You don't look much like a Time Traveler, are you bullshitting us?" 

He pulled 

"Huh?" she sighed, tilting her head in a coy manner, her almost silver hair hung freely down by her small subtle breasts.

"A paradox, sweetie. It's an impossibility in time and space. Like what happens if you go back in time and kill your grandfather?"

"Why would anyone want to kill their grandfather...aside present company."she hissed at him.

He muttered something profound under his breathe. 

 

"I know what a paradox is, don't let my blonde exterior lure you into a false sense of intellectual superiority. Why would I care about a paradox? I´m dead."

She frowned as she looked into the bottom of the wine glass.

The reflection in the rose tinted wine was almost foggy and distorted as the world around her now, which now mirrored her feelings.

Distorted and distant.

It was still hazy, the veil of smog that polluted the air around them was very thin and she could see the corners of the bar. 

"A paradox is an impossibility in the laws of our physical universe they're so complex and dangerous, oh they're very very dangerous 

 But paradox can only be a just a theory, because they cannot exist in our physical dimension."

"Still doesn't explain why you're here?" Chloe remarked. 

"It's a gun...a very odd shaped weapon, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't exist.

"Objects of the past have a funny way of affecting the future, a single object can alter a life, like a lottery ticket. What we perceive as just a little scrap of paper with some numbers printed across it, right? Or even a bad hamburger. That alone can change a whole persons timeline, their whole world just flipped to the upside of high society. In some cases anyway.

But this, this right here, shouldn't exist. It shouldn't exist because; I don't exist. And if I never existed? How can this weapon exist?" 

"You've lost me already." The bloodied girl replied, her gaze still half fixed upon the disturbing door at the back of the room.

"Because this, this, is the gun killed my father." The time traveler said spinning the weapon on the table as if it was nothing more than an empty glass bottle.

 

"No, no, he wasn't a poor parent...I wouldn't even call him a parent. No, the word I'd use for him would have been 'drunk' or more preciously 'stupid cowardly drunk who beats on small children' yeah, that's what I used to call him. See he wasn't a pleasant drunk either, no, sir, he was not." The Time Traveler  said taking a sip from his drink.

"How did he die?" Chloe asked.

" And that´s what confusing me. I have phased out of the universe, nothing more than a ghost of a paradox. But I still have the memories of his murder, one that I  committed."

"But you said-"

"Shut it, I know what I said. I was getting to that. So my dear old dad, used to get s**t faced, a lot. He´d get loud, he´d get this profound sense that everything in the world my fault. His nickname for me was It , he liked to take hollow digs at me. Or Piggy, because my room always stank and it looked more like a sty than a kids room. He was a cynical b*****d.

"He never laid a finger on me though.   That was the oddest thing, he used to look at me with this detest, this pure unadulterated rage, disgust or hate would be a better word, yeah, he f*****g hated me. It's such a shame, I'm a nice person really." He said downing the glass in front of him. 

"So there I was one night in bed reading this s****y World War Two comic, you know the 50 p ones you picked up down the corner shop." 

She stared blankly at him, but nodded. 

"So there I am in bed, when all of a sudden the door to my room comes flying open, and who should be standing at the door way, stinking of cheap vodka and even cheaper perfume with this look on his face.  But dear old Dad, And at first I couldn't tell if he was angry or f****n furious, it was the later. "Where are ya boy!" he screamed as I dove under the bed. See, I had it figured in my tiny kid brain, that the monsters lived under the bed.  So I figure he wouldn't find me there, because I knew the bigger monster was at my door, drunk and real f****n' angry. 

"Where are ya boy!" His voice grew louder and louder, like the booming call of thunder. 

 

He tossed aside my s****y little bed, tossed it aside like it was nothing more than piss soaked newspaper. 

And this f****r he kicked me, kicked me right in the skull. 

He punted me right in the noggin. 

But then I'll never forget what happened next. Because no one else believed me. Now this is where it gets real spooky.

The door to my bedroom exploded with light, and this man stood at the door, dark suit and tie, looking, real f*****g classy like." 

"Who was he?"

I don't know, but he was holding this gun., this special kinda gun I couldn't explain it at the time because I wasn't sure if I was still awake or alive , it was huge and silver, with these weird kinda markings down of barrel, the butt of the handle was pure chrome with these little blue flickering lights. I couldn't see his face I was fading from the man he stared at my father. With this intense hatred, there was so much anger in his square face, his suit radiated with luxury, but his face was covered in splotches of thick crimson. This stranger , I mean he walked nearer and my father sunk. With every step he edged nearer and nearer, closer and closer the fat b*****d just fell to the floor toward the floor, blubbering, pleading with this mysterious man. He was on his knees, tears pouring from his ugly face.

He walked up to him, didn't even say a word...that was the scary part, he walked in like he owned the place, his stride was a thing of grace, you should have seen it.
His gaze wasn't even focused on anything else, he knew what he was going to do when just f*****g appeared out of nowhere.

He shot my father, not just once, like, I'm talking like Bang! Bang! Bang! F****n, Bang!" The Time Traveller slammed his fist into the table, as he said the words, the glasses rattled and clanged against the surface.

"I lost count after five shots...The man just looked at me and said with the saddest look in his eye, "I warned him, I gave him a fair chance, you'll understand one day." And 

"And that's the gun there?" She asked. 

"Well I do! With the grim reaper not present I'm bored. And their wine selection is quite bland. So, come on, spill. Or at least tell me your name?"

"He's talking about the Blue Bag. And his name is -"Deaths voice rattled all around them, like the booming voice of god. 

Suddenly a shroud of black smoke and the young man disguised as the Grim Reaper phased into existence, sitting quite comfy the arm maroon leather chair next to Chloe. Before he could finish his sentence.

The time travelers hand was a blur of motion as he snatched the weapon from the table.

His hand grasped around the wooden hilt of the weapon and with a loud hum the hand cannon  came to life rising to his feet, he pushed the chair back.

He fired off two shots, the sound was deafening as it echoed for what seemed an eternity trapped in a small space.

"Keep your  f****n mouth shut."

Black smoke churned where the mans face should have been.

 And a creepy laughing skull formed in the smoke, then phasing back into the mans pale face, mopped with dark brown hair and a almost twisted smile plastered across his squared face.

"Blue bag?" Chloe murmured.

"The Blue Bag Paradox."  Death replied. 

"I said, shut up." The Time Traveler commanded, cocking the hammer of the gun he held so tenaciously in his grasp. 

"Your weapon cannot harm me, so there´s no point in trying to shoot me again, or have you forgotten? "

"But it works as such great stress relief." The Time Traveler snapped back, sitting back down in his chair. 

"Why is everything so cloak and dagger with you? Not that it matters now, you're dead!" Chloe snapped toward the time traveler.

The Time Traveler looked at Death for a moment and smiled.

"Oh no, I'm not dead. Not yet...I'd know when I'm dead. And so will he. In fact he's looking forward to it."

The Time Traveler said raising the tumbler of whiskey to his dry cracked lips, tipping the glass back, the ice rattled, the liquid dissipated down his gullet. 

"I changed my own past...I changed my own personal timeline, "

January 6th, 1920

Paris, France.

I  didn´t know where I  was, recollection was hazy, but I blamed that on the cheap brandy sitting in the bottom of my near empty glass. Or maybe it was the crudely rolled smokes the other men was passing between each other that made my awareness falter?

The sparkling city lights seemed like million little candles, flickering though the rain drizzled window. The Eiffel Tower twinkled in the distance, almost resembling a Christmas tree from a far.

A thick hazy smog hung over old parrie. 

Five men sat around a small wooden table, playing cards.

 An old windup record player skipped slightly as it churned out a distorted rendition of Frederic Choppin's, prelude 16 Overture 28, filled the silences of coins being thrown down.

"I´ve heard this before." I said to myself, looking round to my current surroundings.

All young, well groomed and sharply dressed aside from one. With buttoned shirts, braces, smoking many cigarettes much to one mans protest that they open a window.

They refused. 

"I was never a fan of Choppin myself,  I'm more of a Mozart fan, I mean that dude was into some messed up things. Am I right? " said the one man, sat in a black suit, black shirt, slick brown hair that hung over his left eye,  a strange slender black glass strip over his other eye.

'I don't speak German...' I thought to myself as one man handed me the funny smelling smoke. 

"Danker " I replied  taking the smoke to my mouth.

"Deal me in, and pour me another drink. Stop being such a Jew with the Whiskey."the  burly Frenchmen spoke.

One of the men chuckled at the remark, he was scrawny with tattered old clothes, but he sat with a straight piercing look upon his face.

Light and water danced together twirling against sticky cold winds outside. 

Heavy droplets of rain thudded against glass window finely lined with thick gray smoke, however what little streetlight fought though the heavy downpour the light that that hovered over the bustling streets of La, venture avenue resembled the a bed of sparkling diamonds, pressing against chilled winds. 

Out side birds sang songs of some distinct matter, regardless 

I could only speculate it wasn't important to the situation at hand.

Sweet melody of chirps and tweets almost drowned out the sound of the human traffic in the distance.

And it was a weird sensation I was feeling, I was clearly drunk, but I don't remember how I even got here, strange. 

"Why do you wear this glass monocle?" The German men said.
throwing down a French Franc calling on what he was sure was a good hand.

The German fellow was stocky built with a burlesque style of mustache.

Noir black chest hair poked through his milky white shirt. 

The man in the dark suit grinned from behind the mask he so casually wore. A illusion of smugness and assurance.

He raised, calling on the Frenchmen's pathetic excuse for a bluff.

"Why do you always do that?" The English man said. "Always with the questions! Can't we just sit here, get s**t faced and let me take this mans money?" 

Pointing to the poorest of all the men here, he wore tattered and dirty clothes.

"Me?" The painter blurted out.

"M-m-me, Yes you, numb nuts."

But his eye piece was something of a mystery to these three men and myself.
It was a small strip of black  glass, flashing with two lights, one red and one green over his pupils and retina.

I looked around the room and there was this awkward silence as the man with the odd monocle.

He was a picture of perfect calm, leaning back on his chair, spinning the brandy in his glass round and round. 

Because he knew what he was going to say next, and only he knew what was you to happen when he chose to speak those words. 

"I'm here to kill two of you. But which two I don't know just yet , so let's play a little game of find the killers."

The Time Traveler said placing the very large weapon firmly on the table in front of him. 

"So, here's the rules.  do me a favour, reach for the weapon, I dare you." 

The room was lined with motionless bodies, two of the bigger men, had slouched over one another in a rather amusing manner to the man who had just placed a bullet between the eyes of three of the five people. 

The man with the gun laughed uncontrollably, pointing down at the pair, now completely motionless. 

"Look, just look at that, that´s perfect, that right there." He said proudly . 

He pointed the gun towards them and bellowed loudly. 

"Even in death they was a pair of no good dirty cocksuckers."  The Time Traveler  reached over to see what cards the now dead and lifeless men held.

 

"All in on a pair of eights, dumb a*s, no wonder your cranial fluid is now leaking into the floorboards." 

He peered around the room, blood smeared the gray walls tiny splatters of crimson leaked down like raindrops upon a pale of glass, he stood with his head held high as he withdrew a silver case from his black blazer, plucking out a slender cigarette and a golden Zippo brand lighter. 

The Time Traveller looked tenacious like something from a painting from the Renascence , almost  solemn in his work, content with the amount of blood that had soaked the walls and floorboards now tainted more red than the original colour.

The Time Traveler  placed the stick in his mouth, flicking the the cap of the lighter, flicking the wheel, sparking the flint, it exploded with a small flame, he bought his face to it and inhaled as the fire burned the tip of tabbaco, he breathed poison and exhaled death.

The music had blinded me to the world outside, as I was captivated by this stranger who in spite of everything that just transpired, I knew him, I remember his face...

   

The small man in the corner coward in fear while my gaze was fixated upon the droplets of rain running down the window.

"You!" Screamed the time traveler.

The man in the corner cowered, trying frantically to bury himself further and further into his hiding place in the corner. 

fear of what this half drunk man was now going to do to him. 

"First piece of advise, my Austrian friend, get into politics, stop pissing around with paint."

The scrawny little man looked insulted, fear kept his mouth from moving. 

"Then, I´d start with growing a little mustache, like that Chapplin fella. I hear they're all the range these days. Do your self a favor mate and , move to Germany,  that seems like a good place to be at the minute." The Time Traveler  said as he picked the man up and began to dust off his shirt, which was saturated in bright red.

"Yes, thank you, yes I will do that, yes " he stuttered, tears and sweat rolled down his face.  

"I hope you didn't get hit." He said eyeing him up and down. "You seem to be in shock. Did you get hit? That would be bad if you did."

"What do you want? Don't hurt me please." The man fragrantly begged. 

"The big f****r. He was going to hold you down, while Mr French, was going to slit your throat, rob you, strip you of your clothes and sell you as the butchers "prime corned meat". 

The time traveler looked back at me at me.

"Yummy." He shuddered as the words left his mouth. 

"No, thank you Englishman! I will never forget the kindness and bravery of your people,  for as long as I live. This is horrible, they was my friends, I've been living with them for weeks and I didn't even know."

For a moment the time traveler 

"No, no, Never trust an English man, we're brash and reckless, unpredictable as a nation and as a people . Oh and watch out for Tom Cruise he'll try and plant a bomb in your office and it just won't be a good time for anyone okay. Now run, run along,  you can keep the money I don't really need  any old time money."

"Oh Ok? thank you, thank you, I will tell stories of this to my grand children." Hitler cried as he tried to hug him.

The Time Travellers hand was a blur, he snapped up his massive  hand cannon from the table. 

The weapon hummed to life, blue lights pulsated as he brought the barrel up to the blood splattered face of the man in tears. 

"Oh no! No, no hugging and certainly you, You tell no one of this, not a soul,  you got that Hitler! If I find out you've told anyone about me Ill scoop out your eyes with a spork!"

"Whats a spork?"

His fingers cocked the hammer back and he fired his weapon in the air. 

"Run!" The Time Traveler screamed in frustration, grabbing Hitler by the scruff, dragging him to the door and kicking him out the door, slamming it as I heard Hitler fall down at least one fight of steps. 

He stood at the foot of the door when Hitler left the building. 

He looked at me and smiled with this twisted sense of curiosity plaster all across his face. 

"Now let's get straight to brass tax,  who the f**k are you?" He said waving the gun in my face. 

"I'm Renton."

"Yes, well Hello there Renton.  I'm a Time Traveler, it's nice to meet you, quick question if you don't mind. Why are you still here? As you can see I've just  committed a very serious crime here in your home, why aren't you fleeing for your life? Or trying to contact the police?"

""You know it's fake? 

"What?"

"The rain." I replied without thinking.

He stared at me blankly for a moment before replying. 

"Yes, yes I can see that it's raining outside, very perceptive of you. What about it?"

"Why does the rain make me sad?"  I asked him, hoping that he'd know. 

"I couldn't tell ya mate, now either run along or you can help me out over here, this building ain't gonna burn itself down?"

"Help you?"  The words rang for a second in my mind.

I'm here for something? I remember, I was in a bar, and there was this girl who was covered in a bloody towel?

But that was just a dream?

 Was it just a dream?

The note, the note. He gave me, the note, help him change the past?

"The note." I said reaching into my pocket and pulling the envelope out.

"What?" 

"I've come here to help you change the past."