Doc Masterson and the Prisoner of Time, Chapter 2

The story so far: After agreeing to work with Paul and the mysterious but powerful organization that employs him, Doc Masterson returns home…

I walked home after the meeting.  It took an hour or so.  I don’t remember much of the walk back except for the cloud of anger around me. Why hadn’t I told Paul to go fuck himself? Why was I suddenly excited about the future? 

I was still angry by the time I got home.  I didn’t know what I was angry about, and not knowing made the anger worse.  I decided to drink some beer and smoke some cigarettes.  That didn’t help so I smoked some pot.  The pot helped a little.  I sunk into the couch and flipped channels on the TV.  I couldn’t get the meeting with Paul out of my mind.  I couldn’t get any of it out of my mind.  There’s nothing more frightening than change – it’s like death.  I felt that change was coming; that the ground beneath my feet was lifting and about to spill me into something unknown.  I knew I was angry because I was scared.  I spent the rest of the afternoon in pit of paralysis.

At five o’clock, right on time, my Filipina housekeeper and cook, Emmarita, came barging into the apartment with groceries and her endlessly sunny disposition. 

“Hello hello Docta Masterson!” her voice sang as she walked from the entry hall into the TV room.  She caught me red handed – doing a bong hit while watching the Cartoon Network.

“Hello Emmarita,” I said, coughing smoke.

Emmarita was in her mid-fifties, thin, maybe five feet tall.  Her hair was cut short and she wore too much makeup.  She always had rattling jewelry on, even when she was cleaning the toilet.  Emmarita looked me up and down, saw the mess of beer cans, the bong, the cartoons on the television.  Her eyes scolded me.  Then she seemed to notice something else.

“Why Docta Masterson so sad?” she asked.

I sighed.  “Business,” I said.

“Business.  I thought you retired now?”

“So did I.”

“Hmmm,” Emmarita said.  “Maybe work good for you.  All you do since you retire is mope around the house.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

Emmarita raised her eyebrow, obviously disagreeing.  She moved to the kitchen where I could hear her unloading the grocery bags. 

“What you need is wife,” she said.  “Plenty of women be happy marry nice man like you.”

I snorted sarcastically.

“What you want for dinner?” she asked, changing the subject.  

“I don’t care.”

“I make you cheeseburger.  Cheeseburgers make everybody happy.”

Emmarita mostly talked about her son, her nieces, her sister, her husband, her mother, and of course did not neglect to complain about her mother-in-law.  That’s why I liked her so much – she wasn’t that great a cook, and she was a little lackadaisical about cleaning – but for a couple hours a day she filled my apartment with human life.   She was right: the cheeseburger did make me happier.  I really hadn’t eaten much at my lunch with Paul.

By seven-thirty Emmarita had left and I was alone again in the apartment.

What had Paul been worried about?  Why was the Apparatus so desperate to get me on their payroll?  Wasn’t everything under control now?  Isn’t that what they were there for?  I was never a believer.  I had my own problems, after all.

I turned on the news and drank more beer.  I glanced over a stream or two of information on the internet, trying to find a thread.  Nothing.  I left the files Paul had given me untouched.  If there was something happening of that magnitude, I should have been able to see it.  Whatever it was, it was invisible.  What could be so invisible?  

I got a little drunk and stumbled into my bedroom.  

“Motherfucker,” I muttered sloppily.  Where did the time go?  I had spent it fleeing from the past, but there was no escape.  The past led to the future, after first making its way through the gnashing teeth of the present.

I went into my closet and dug out the shoebox where I kept all the cursed and treasured souvenirs of my past.  Photos.  Love letters.  You know the deal.  I fell to the floor and pawed through them.  There we all were, me and my friends, before we all started dropping dead or losing our souls.  My God.  How long had it been since I had looked at this memorabilia.  Touching these things filled me with such a terrible sense of loss and broken hopes. 

I dug deeper down to the bottom until I found her.  Jenny.

Yes. Jenny Clifford, Nova Girl, the only woman I ever loved – who turned into a supervillain. Then she had died.  Or had supposedly died. You know how it is.  

I had searched everywhere for her, searched for any trace, any whisper, any shred of hope.  People thought I was crazy. “She’s dead, for God’s sake, John,” they told me.

They hadn’t known my Jenny.

So I had given up. I had given up on everything. I had surrendered to nothingness.  That’s where I had been for five years, and that’s where I still was that night after I had lunch with Paul.  

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 3