Day 4: Odyssey's Doorgate

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                        History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived…

                                                                                        Maya Angelou

Deschase was one fun-loving lady who possessed that devil-may-care flare on the side. And she’s got one of the Dirty harry kind of friend-scientist friend-who invented a time capsule or machine or call it whatever you want. He’d used a lot of specimen to test the stuff out including some animals. The results looked promising though, as he found out, the machine was more effective if said animals were unconscious before teleportation. Otherwise, the creatures exhibited a kind of weird behavior and a glazed look after they got zapped in and out of the past/future.

One funny day, since every good or bad thing happens one day, Deschase was visiting with this friend of hers. (They were out of school-high school, or some college?- they were something of adults, but this guy who was just a friend wasn’t exactly adult.)

Before visiting with the scientist friend who we would call Garland, Deschase took a detour to the local cemetery, to pay her respects to her grandma who she was sweetly close to as a child. That day doubled as her grandma’s anniversary. When she was through with the death rites or paying her respects, call it whatever you want, Deschase got up to leave and soon she was passing by an ancient tombstone. The inscription on the tomb told her the lady whose bones lay buried beneath that ground was about the same age with her when she passed on to the netherworld. The tombstone gave great details of her death even going so far to state she had died of a heart attack. Something struck Deschase as funny about the situation surrounding this strange woman’s death-something that kept tugging at her curiosity.

She searched out and found the grounds keeper, a cheeky fellow they called Mr. Drake. She persuaded him to follow her to the plot where this lady’s graveside.

            “What happened to her? Do you know?” Deschase asked.

Mr. Drake who happened to know a whole lot of stuff about a lot of tombstones and their occupants, both legend and factual, even things he had no right on God’s earth to know, said he did.

            “What you have here my dear, Deschase, is one sorry ass bitch. Believe me, this lady went all the way and worked herself into a heart attack. It happened not quite long ago.”

Deschase took another look at the epitaph and saw the year of death was 2003-barely five years ago.

            “You see, there’s so much infidelity among youths these days. I mean, I don’t know what’s going on. But this lady, there was a lot of soap opera history she hadn’t caught up on, yet. I mean, did she not know? She can’t feed anybody that bull she didn’t know her man was on the Dirty Harry list. Every fellow does it these days.

            “What really happened, Mr. Drake? Please, do tell.”

            “She bought . . . had this lady friend who came visiting . . . I don’t know the details godammit. I wish I knew that sonafabitch, I should really pay him a visit, sometime. Pay him a serious visit. The Angel-of-death kind-of-visit and make sure he pays for this . . . Big time!” He rammed his fist into his left palm. “So, you see, this friend comes over to her house, it’s been a decade since they last saw eye-to-eye, a pretty time, you mind me, now. So, somehow, she got wind about the pretty missus’ place and comes over. They’ve been best of friends at school (or so I heard) and it looked a pretty nice thing that their paths crossed, again. I mean, it would be a year later when facebook was founded or they’d have found each other sooner.

“But this lady comes over and they’re catching on to the good ol’ times when the hubby this here missus’ trudges in, all worked from the job. He throws a passing glance to the lady beside the wife, trades a trifle pleasantry but doesn’t mind her much, you see. He heads to the bathroom, first. Gatto get all that macho sweat of his wife-cheating ass.

The lady too, doesn’t really check him out just then.

“He comes down after he’s changed and stuff and goes to the table. And that’s when he’s got the time to check out the damsel. The DAMNED-SEL, I mean. The two idiots stare at each other hard and long. Hard stares. And then the feeling starts coming home.

“The previous Saturday, he’d been caught up in a freaking traffic and he had this lady with him in the car. Well, hell if this guy wasn’t a man. I mean she was all pretty and looking all of . . . a special delivery from hell is what it turned out to be. As they say, one thing led to the other, they got to starting something, got kissing and their damned fingers wouldn’t stay put. The fingers went . . . well, places. They didn’t really get down to the old wazoo, but just as well, huh? I steal a sheep and, you steal a freaking lamb we both get the noose, right?

“All I’d say is, it was a bad day for getting caught. The hubby, Richmond, misinterpreted the lady’s visit. Thought she came to place charges, you know women for what they are with their two-bit blackmailing ass. The guilty look was written all over his face like a film credit on the screen at the end of a movie. He couldn’t freaking hide it. The lady, she was talking when the guy, Richmond came down the stairs. The words, they hung in her throat. She swallowed so hard she practically choked on it. This lady, Anne, she saw . . . felt the tension in the room.

            “Have you two met . . . Honey, what’s wrong? You look like you . . . Deville? Somebody, please talk to me.”

“I’ll bet you fifty coffins had the backstabbing bastards known that Anne had not the tinniest idea what went down between the two they would have kept it a secret and kept right on with the affair right under her nose. Right under her naïve nose. But they blew the whole thing from hell to breakfast. The guy thought the lady came to set the record straight and she already told on him. The lady, ah well, you add the missing pieces, lady.

“So they open up the can of worms to Anne and it’s way too much for her . . .

“You see, Anne had this long time heart issue and she was asthmatic, to boot. Much of them times, it was a mild thing but, she had it all the same. The asthma took her by storm at that very moment. It was too much for her fragile heart. You know, like that foursome dudes sang. Westlife I think they called ‘em.

                                    ‘A fragile heart was broken before.

                                    I don’t think it could endure another pain.’

“She passed out. DRT-Dead Right There. From what I gathered, the father popped the hubby, the Richmond guy, one to the head. I don’t blame in but, neither did the Judge who sentenced him to time in a Federal Prison. I think they are set to parole his ass in two years.”

This is the situation Deschase saw rather than heard and it hung on her mind for a while. And every time she visited her granny’s grave she passed by that plot of land and wept in her heart. Wept and stomped her feet.

Then came this day, when she had to visit her mad scientist friend. Getting back to our story, are we? Garland, I believe the guy was called, although as we would soon find out there was nothing gallant about the guy. Garland was in the barn behind the house doing the only thing that gave sense to his life-nonsense.

She comes into the barn and finds Garland working on some weird-looking hunk of scrap metal. And much more ugly was Garland in his own costume.

            “What are you up to, dude?”

            “What . . . hey! Miss Universe, pretty thoughtful of you to pay me a visit.” He stepped away from his invention and waves his hand over it like a magician showing off. “What you have here is ‘Odyssey's Doorgate ’.”

            “The what?” Deschase said.

            “Odyssey's Doorgate-the power to visit your present and your past. To zip-zap, to and fro, back and forth and all that.”

            “Does it really work?”

            “Girl, ain’t your mama ever teach you the power of faith? The world’s greatest scientist invents a time portal and all you’re getting freaked out if it works?”

            “Get serious, Garland.”

            “Now that you mentioned that word, I’m still working on it. But it’s almost . . .”

            “I guessed so.”

            “Han, han, no time for guesses. Come on over and watch me go to work.”

            “Is that safe? You think?”

            Garland favored her a look that said, Do I look suicidal?

That was as good an answer for Deschase. She went closer.

            “You see this here is a guinea pig. I put it through this and flip this button,” He motions towards a red knob on the scrap of metal. “And it goes back in time and when I flip this button here,” This one was a blue button, “It comes back to our moment in time. But I think I’ll try this, instead.” He brings out a camera. Presses record. “I been meaning to see what this place was like in ancient times.”

He chocks the camera into the time machine, fiddles with a few buttons including the red button and zap! The machine some out-of-this-world kind of noise and the camera disappears. A few moments pass, possibly minutes, and Garland, the weirdo repeats a similar process-going from a reverse angle. The weird sound comes from the machine again; the machine actually, rattles a little. Deschase retreats a few steps from the apparatus.

Garland opens the junk box and out came the camera. Intact. He presses play.

            “The barn had been some sort of burial ground in medieval times,” He announced.

            “Ooh,” said Deschase. “I’m ascairt.” Then, she bursts into giggles of laughter. And then, a though occurs to her. She grabs Garland with such force her nails sink into his skin.

Garland winces. “Easy, babe. I’m going nowhere.”

“Garland, can you actually determine the time-year and place that thing teleports objects to?”

            “But of course, you was here when I zapped the camera, wasn’t you?”

            “Don’t answer a question with a question. It’s bad habit.”

            “I’m Nigerian, remember? I’m born to it. By the way, what do you have in mind? Why are you so hard on specifics?”

Like I said, something was beginning to take shape in the mind of the little missus.

Deschase said, “Can a human being be safely teleported hence and forth through Odyssey's Doorgate?” The emphasis here is on safely.

            “Maybe, but who would want to do that? Like it is I’m still testing the lump on things like objects and white rats. It’s not quite ready to admit humans, yet.”

Eventually, Deschase persuades Garland against his will to shoot her back in time.

It’s dark when she arrives in the past so she decides to rest in a motel and leave first thing in the morning for her business. Lucky for her she found some change in her jeans pocket which she used to foot the motel bill.

She also had some fun thrown in for good measure. She met this young chap in the lobby, a salesman, who may or may not be married. Well, they got talking. They talked well into the still of night. And then he led her to her room and gave her a peck as a goodnight kiss. Then, he turned meaning to take his leave for the night. But that ancient serpent was present at their parting and it whispered something to Deschase. Deschase whispered it to the traveling sales guy who called himself, Duke. It sounded like a plan to both of them. It was a long hot night for the impromptu couple and Deschase wondered if you could take a pregnancy from the past into the future.

In the morning when she awoke, the sales guy was gone and it was just as well. She showers and after breakfast sets off for her business.

What Deschase had actually done going through the time portal had been to try and correct the past.

It was getting late when she found the place. The lady took her in and they actually fell into conversation, naturally.

She’s beginning to get into the deep of her story; she’s trying to convince the lady, Anne that she’s from the future when the hubby comes in all sweaty and tired out. He barely looks at her as he climbs the stairs to his bedroom and she does no more than throw a courteous glance his way.

A few moments later he returns to the dining table where the two women are seated.

She had come to visit the lady whose story Mr. Drake had narrated to her by her grandma’s graveside and to warn her about the future. But as Deschase found out, the man who stood before her-this lady’s husband was her one night stand. The traveling salesman she had sex with the previous night was Anne’s husband. Her quest into the past had killed the woman she had come to save.