Temporal Tantrums

Mist meanwhile, was moving further and further into the gloomy darkness of the shoescape of her dreams. She stopped for a moment, as it dawned on her that she was also drifting further and further away from the opening of the wardrobe. She looked around, wondering whether to walk on or whether to turn back and get Roan. “It’s just a dream,” she told herself, though her voice was quieter this time, “I’m sure he’ll wake me if I get into trouble.” She stood, hesitating, when something strange caught her eye, she stopped to get a better look. It was a pair of high stilettos, which at first glance seemed kind of attractive, but on closer examination were actually a little ugly, incongruous. “Don’t like those very much, why would I dream them?” she muttered, frowning.

Walking on, she saw another pair of peculiar shoes amongst the clutter. “They look strange too. Maybe it’s all in my mind. Of course, it’s all in my mind - I’m dreaming.” But even as she said it, doubt tugged at her. Some shoes were too strange. Feeling perplexed and anxious, she decided to investigate the immense foot-wear panorama some more. But gradually, something was changing. “Dreaming,” she repeated in a shaky voice.

The shoes were ever-so-slightly altering and so was everything else in ‘wardrobe heaven’. The colours, which had been light, bright and vibrant were becoming increasingly dark and sinister. The shapes were changing too. Some shoes were strangely pointy, others were mismatched, weird boots with parched, stained and worn leather.

“What is going on here?” Another pair caught her sight, “Who on earth would wear these?” They were a long pair of lilac shoes, turned up at the front “Only a pixie or something silly like that would wear these,” she laughed nervously. At that moment, a bearded face suddenly emerged out of the darkness, a twisted fairy-tale creature, with a cap-like red hat. It gazed around, seemed to notice her, then disappeared back into the murky gloom from whence it came.

“Oh my!” Mist was scared now and edged backwards, “Time to get out of here.”

She looked around, but the wardrobe was not in sight. “That face looked familiar,” she said. Mist was feeling more and more uncomfortable and shouted, “Roan! I think I’m stuck!”

She stared into the darkness waiting, but there was no reply. “Roan? Roan?”

She didn’t know what to do other than continue walking, hoping to find a way back.

She peered further at the carpet of shoes noticing more bundles arranged even more haphazardly. A small pair followed by a large, crooked pair and then small and large ones all together. “These are awful,” Mist muttered, scowling at a large pair of leather boots. They were horrid, smelly and tatty. She felt a chill creep through her. “Who on earth would wear these? What am I going to do?”

Before she could finish her thought, a hideous, hairy face loomed from the gloom, huge bull horns protruding cruelly forward. Stuttering in confusion and fear she blurted, “B... be... beest! Oh no! Got get out of here!” The grim apparition made a low rumble deep in its throat before disappearing back into darkness, twisting as it faded left and right as though searching for something, unready to depart. The sound it made lingered, echoing, circling the air.

Mist began to run in the direction she imagined her bedroom to be, but the wardrobe entrance was nowhere to be seen. Then she stopped; she had to stop.

Ahead, there was a vast stone wall extending as far as the eye could see. She looked up and could see it disappearing away into murky obscurity. Left and right - again the wall seemed to go on without end. As her eyes scanned the immense obstruction, she saw words etched into an old sandstone slab set into the surface. They looked ancient and weathered, but there was something fishy about these words. They read as follows:

THOUST STEAL FROM THE BEEST

THOUST WILL BE SMOUTED

THOUST TAKE GUMBALDY

THOUST WILL FACE THYN DOOM

GUMBALDY, GUMBALDY,

OH THEE PRECIOUS RIMGUMBALDY

REMAINTH WITH THOU MASTER,

THE BEEST OF GUMBALDY

HINDER NOT THE RIMTINDER

FOR HE IS LORD FOREVER

IN THE LAND THAT ONLY FOOLS LINGER

TAKETH FROM HIM A

ND HE WILL TAKETH FROM YOU

*****

Elmo stood there in the darkness of the woods; his phone faded, only the pale light of a waterlogged moon made him visible at all against the drenched foliage. Holi’s evident distress finally had his attention.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” he sighed,“but I thought if the device did as I expected, I might finally be able to face myself.”

Holi took a step closer to him, flinching at water drops on her neck. Elmo’s previous shortage of words was returning, he watched sympathetically as Holi shuffled from foot to foot, wet, anxious, bewildered.

Still by the tree, the midget stood impassively, its bald, green head gleaming slightly in the moonlight. Elmo scowled at it, searching for some appropriate words of comfort for Holi, but stopped short.

“Did you hear that?” he whispered sharply.

A peculiar, echoing voice came from among the trees.

“Go back!” it said, “Go back, there is great danger!”

Holi seemed not to hear it, this was all getting a bit much for her to deal with. Elmo hesitated, took a quick chance swipe at the rat that was squirming and clawing its way up his body, missed, wriggled wildly, gave up and squinted in the direction of the strange voice.

“Go back!” the voice persisted from behind a snarled knot of bushes, “Go back now, while you still can.” Something familiar about the voice gave Elmo a flush of courage. He tip-toed forward and peered cautiously through the thicket. Someone was crouching in the undergrowth, a piece of plastic drain pipe held to his lips. “Go back, go… oh dear!” said the figure as it saw Elmo.

“What on earth?” squawked Elmo in consternation.

The figure stood up, awkwardly dropping the pipe behind his back and Elmo gasped. This person looked identical to himself. Same slender form, same short, wavy hair, sharp Indian features. How was that possible?

“Who are you?” he asked incredulously, “You’re like me!”

“Not ‘like’ you. Who were you expecting?” The stranger glanced around agitatedly, clearly deflated, his face lit by an orange glow emanating from something he held. Elmo stared his double in the face, wrestling disbelief.

Holi, by now, had edged forward, seen what was going on and turned slowly around so that her back was to the two look-alikes. She seemed to be humming, as if attempting to block out the ludicrous, impossible truth unfolding around her - couldn’t be real, couldn’t be.

“Aaaneeyway,” continued this second Elmo, with one eye on the obviously disturbed Holi. “I've come back to stop you. Something you do round about now messes up your future, disrupts everything you love and value. We haven’t worked it out as yet, but we think that it’s something round about now.” His eyes narrowed.

“W... we?” stuttered Elmo, looking nervously about, before blurting, “Future? Surely...” He hesitated, stupefied to be engaging with this bizarre situation; he must be delusional; but he’d accepted everything else, why not this? “Isn’t it you?” he said. “If you’re from the future, you shouldn’t meet yourself; doesn’t that cause issues? I know that – why don’t you know that? You’ve seen Back To The Future! You must have, if you’re me.”

Future-Elmo paused and looked around as if expecting help. “Aghh!” he groaned, looking down at his own body accusingly, “I’m messing up! They’ll kill me!” Then, distracted, “Is that a rat sticking out of your jumper?”

“Go back from what anyway?” Elmo demanded.

“How about you tell me what you were intending to do.” Future-Elmo suggested, followed by, “It is a rat isn't it? I can't see properly in this dark. Did it just roll its eyes?”

Holi, in disbelief, had her hands over her ears and had begun singing, gradually louder and louder.

“I know!” beamed Future-Elmo. “I’ll send you back in time. Just a bit - just ten minutes or so - and you can make sure you stop yourself from coming here and meeting me, er you, er... you know what I mean! That should do it.” It sounded like a bad sci-fi script. Elmo, still reeling from meeting this future self, was about to point out that this might not be the best solution and the implications of this sort of decision should be given some serious thought, but stopped as he realised Future-Elmo was brandishing an exact copy of the device that only moments ago had been stolen by the robbing bunch of midgets in the wood.

“Where did you…” he began, but thrusting it in Elmo’s direction, Future-Elmo poked something on the device’s surface and the world began to blur into a kaleidoscope of colours. The rat, mid-leap from Elmo’s shoulder, seemed to be making a desperate grab for Future-Elmo. Elmo tried to dodge the spiralling vortex but it was too late, he and the rat were both flung into a swirling wormhole.

Here is where an especially unfortunate thing happened: during the temporal displacement, the tumbling rat passed directly through Elmo’s body space. Crucially, the pair remained entangled as they emerged from the dizzying event. The exact physics of the anomaly is both complex and tortuous. It might have been something to do with quantum relativity, gravitational warping of dimensional geometry, or the distortion of space-time continuity. perhaps it was a result of the swirling. it might even have been all the flashy lights. Whatever the case, Elmo felt a visceral, gut-wrenching lurch in his stomach as an overwhelming wave of vertigo swept through him. A sickening, nightmarish disassociation took hold, as though his very essence had been ripped from the fabric of his being. With it came the most awful sensation of disembodiment.

When the swirling finally stopped, Elmo found himself flung out onto the grass, disoriented and dizzy. He lay still for a moment, the world spinning around him. A little way off, through the trees, a scene unfolded that felt eerily familiar. There, wrestling with three little humanoid figures, was... himself.

“What...?” Elmo blinked, trying to process what he was seeing. The humanoid on top of his past self, yanking on his hair, looked like a smaller version of him - except this one had a beard and wore a red, pointy hat. Elmo stared at the struggle, unable to comprehend.

“This can't be real. I’m hallucinating. Back in time. No.” That wasn’t really possible. There was something else though. Initially it had been a faint sense of increased hairiness, decreased trouserness and a close-to-the-ground viewpoint that was unusual. He touched his face, felt thick fur, spun to gawp at his long tail and felt a powerful urge to scurry. Impossible! He was hallucinating, all that swirling had dislocated his brain!

Elmo looked down in dismay at his hands and saw paws – he couldn’t actually be in the little furry body of a rat. It was not possible. To his side someone climbed unsteadily to their feet, then seemed to think better of it and hopped off on all fours. “No, no, no!” he thought, feeling panic rising up in a hot tide, “What now? That’s my body! Did he really send me back? Does that thing have my body while I’m stuck in its stupid rodent skin? No. No, I’m imagining it!”

As he watched his human body disappearing clumsily into the undergrowth, inhabited by ‘that’ rat, he became aware on his other side that the struggle between what was presumably Past-Elmo and the midgets was reaching the same climax as before. Any minute the midgets would have the device and would vanish. Then... then...

Not at all sure what to do, he scampered in his new rat body in the direction of the fight, wondering when he would ‘snap out of it’. Meantime, could he stop himself from going looking for the portal and meeting his future self and getting himself into this mess?

Would that actually undo anything though - is that how it worked? Unexpectedly, just as he bounded into the fray, one of the midgets grabbed him roughly and bundled him up Past-Elmo’s trouser leg.

"Oh dear, I don’t think I like where this is going,” he thought. "What's more, I don't like where I'm going or heading or... No! Surely not! My legs never used to be that hairy?" In danger of going into shock, it was at this point that he discovered that his rodent body had a nice set of rodent claws - ideal for hooking into ankle skin. His beady little eyes seemed better suited to the dark than his normal human eyes and his rat tail, a thing he couldn't help considering a rather disgusting object, was proving quite useful.

“I hope this isn’t going to end up like one of those films where the character begins to take on the personality of the animal or... or... rodent! A rat! I couldn’t stand that,” he muttered, scampering northwards up along the tangled hair. “I’m a talking rat, like something from that book of fairy tales that Holi gave to Mist! A talking rat! As if that’s my greatest worry!” he quickly added with a demented snicker.

For the Elmo who belonged to this time a number of things all seemed to happen at the same time: an unpleasant sensation of damp fur and sharp claws wriggled at his ankle, he saw a curving flash of light back near the cottage and he dismally fumbled the device.

It appeared that a car was pulling up somewhere off near the cottage. He saw Holi, who had also seen the light, flounder for a moment before heading hurriedly towards it like a moth fluttering after torch light.

“Who is that?” this Elmo thought, trying hard to make his fingertips regain purchase on the shiny metal, “Why’s Holi going to meet those strangers?” An upward jerk from the rat crucially stole his focus as the car stopped. He heard people get out. The words ‘like a rat up a pair of drain-pipes’ flitted through his overwrought mind just as he registered familiar voices.

“It's Roan!” he thought aloud. “Some help!” At the periphery of his vision, he saw Holi gesticulating urgently, then four figures started hastening towards him. Then they stopped.

“Elmo?!” Roan called, as Gum and Heather stood supportively around the frantic Holi. He saw Elmo clawing apparently at his own hair, although Elmo's hair looked bigger than before. “He had said that his barber was purposely cutting it quite long so that he’d have to come back more often,” Roan thought, realising that this was an odd direction for his thoughts to take right then. But just then the ‘hair’ looked at the four arrivals and seemed to jump off and run away into the distance, out of sight.