by Mark McDonald
Dancing On Daddy's Shoes - Chapter 16 - The Devil in the Details
Tim was unprepared for the profound sorrow that engulfed him. The short journey from the 4th floor to the world outside was filled with blackness. He struggled to maintain his composure, doing his best to avoid raising alarms of concern from hospital staff.
On his way to the double sliding glass doors in the lobby, Tim was struck by overwhelming panic with all the force of a major cardiac infarction. His breath left him, driven from him with such force that he felt he would fall to the floor and die in front of everyone. His face became grey as the blood drained from his extremities in an attempt to protect his vital organs in his state of shock.
He burst through the first bathroom door he could find, hoping to recover on his own. His senses told him to avoid being seen for the time being. He had no idea why however. As it turned out, the first restroom he had chosen had been the ladies room. Nothing seemed out of place, toilet stalls in a row, a stand of sinks, paper towel dispensers. The conspicuous lack of urinals triggered no flags of concern. It wasn't until a woman occupying one of the stalls coughed while Tim was standing there, looking at his reflection in the mirror that the connection of exactly where he was could establish itself.
He received only cursory looks from those who saw him exit the woman's room and with a deeply embarrassed looked enter the men's. At some point, many of them had made the same mistake and found only sympathy for Tim if not a few chuckles at his expense. He locked himself in the furthest stall, sat and prayed for the pain in his chest to pass.
But even here, in the men's room, a gender specific public facility he had, in some capacity used a thousand times before as Tim, he was not comfortable. He felt out of place and he understood instinctively that he would have felt more comfortable back in the ladies room. He realized he was experiencing the same panicked emotions he had felt when he first realized he had been transformed in to his female counterpart in some sort of freakish parallel universe, if there was even such a thing. Now however, it was Kim's shoe on the other foot. He could hear the part of him that was still Kimberly screaming in abject terror at the idea of finding herself in a male body.
He intermittently ran, jogged then walked to rest when running became too much. He tired easily. Had his body in this reality become ill while he was off on sabbatical in Kimberly's life? Why had he gotten so thin? He could answer none of these questions. After resting he would began running again. At times he burst into tears, weeping angrily at the sensations from his body, the loss of who he felt he still was, a father he would never again see. Finally, gasping, out of breath with a tear streaked face, he stopped to rest against a telephone pole.
He braced himself with one hand, bent over at the waist he dry heaved. When the nausea had and the tears had run themselves dry, Tim eased himself up to see just where he was. Home was still some two miles away. He was worn out, yet he experienced no thirst. But there was too much to think about right now for that to become a concern. For a moment he stared into the empty interior of the mask thinking that letting Ben take it off had been a mistake after all.
"You don't have to do this Kim…" Ben had offered.
A much larger portion of himself wished now that he hadn't. He would not put the mask back on however. Not now, he couldn't. Not until he talked to Ben. If he was wrong about coming back only Ben could fix it. If Tim tried, he knew there would be no way to undo it.
Here, Ben's body was whole again. There was no Abner to murder the only person in his life that had treated him with dignity and love. Tim doubted that he would want to go back. This was the least that Kim could for him for saving her life. Exchange her existence for Susan's. Give Ben back body, intact. When he was ready, he stood up when something caught is eye. A poster, stapled to the phone pole he leaned on. The masthead read:
Have You Seen Me?
Below that, the image of himself, face plump, eyes nearly squinting with one of his I just ate an entire quart of ice cream looks on his face. It was an old school picture from last year.
Below that was the legend, Missing since April 22nd.
"Oh God," Tim breathed. "Four months." Tim's conscious thoughts whirled wildly. What does that mean? I've been gone for four months, gone since I put the mask on? Did I turn up and someone just forgot to take this poster down? There were no clues in his thoughts like the ones he had had after slipping into his Kim's body. There were no Timmories to bridge the gap of experience. It felt almost as if when Ben had put the mask on him that he had simply ceased to be. Had there had been no dual life here as there had been with Kimberly's life with Tim mindlessly waiting around for Kim to jump back into it?
That couldn't be right could it? There had been a complete life for Tim to transition into in Kim's world, memories, likes, wants, needs - a history. If that didn't exist here now for Tim, what would he say to his mother, to Bobby? Tim struggled to recall one thing from this world since he'd been gone. Something to build one bridge to a thing that happened in his life in the last four months. All he got was darkness.
Tim pushed off the phone pole unable to rip his eyes away from the image of the smiling plump face depicted in black and white. The flyer itself was dirty and somewhat faded. It's been here a while, Tim noted with a measure of fear, weeks, maybe longer. It was puckered in places, evidence that it had suffered at least one rain storm. If it hadn't have been stapled to the pole at all four corners, it probably wouldn't still be here.
The only possible explanation was when he had become Kimberly, he had vanished here. He had not slipped from one parallel existence to another. He had to get home. He had to try to explain his absence somehow, to let his family know he was alive and well.
Tim dashed out against the light onto the busy main thoroughfare through Baker, known to locals as "the four lane". He narrowly missed getting hit twice. Angry drivers blared their horns but Tim paid little attention to them. No one stopped. No one recognized him, even with posters of his face up on electrical poles here and there. Of course not, his mind rebuked, how many people actually look at those things, he wondered? Tim doubted even if he'd ever run across a missing child in his life that he'd recognize them from the posters. He couldn't remember a time when he'd ever had been able to recall the faces printed on them.
He didn't want to get stopped by a stranger anyway. There was going to be enough negative fallout from this as it was. Not being able to tell the truth about where he'd been all this time was only going to make matters worse. It would be better to be in the protective hands of his family for as long as possible before the authorities became involved.
Tim ran where possible down the sidewalk passing small familiar businesses. Ahead, just past a small convenience store was a vacant lot, beyond that lot through the woods at the back was his neighborhood. Tim set his next resting point at the far corner of the convenience store. The sun had risen fairly high in the early afternoon sky when Tim passed before the large plate windows of the Lil' Champ store. When he did, he saw the ghost of a translucent reflection in the convenience store window.
The image in the window startled him. It looked nothing like the boy he remembered from just a few months back. Worse still was the fact that he looked remarkably different than he had only hours ago in the rest facilities of the hospital. The weak reflection looked more like the abused child Ben had been in Kim's dimension, dirty, thin, scratched and scarred. He sported a huge, almost gangrenous, weeping black eye. The very image of it made Tim gasp in alarm. How could he have not noticed that before?
Simple, Kimberly answered in a voice he more closely associated as his own voice, It wasn't there before.
He was tempted to get closer to that reflection, to examine it, to reconcile the changes his eyes registered. But something told him not to ask too many questions… press on, find out if Ben was Okay. Don't linger too long. Remember there are much worse things to lose than weight. Tim took the advice and quickly moved beyond eyesight of the plate glass storefront.
As he moved away however, he could not help but search is mind desperately for anything from Tim's past he had not been part of. He wanted something that would give him a clue about what had happened since Ben had put the mask on him. There was nothing. It was black. His last memory here had been in his room as the mask struck his face as it had leapt from Ben's hands.
With mounting fear that something here had gone horribly wrong, Tim ran as fast as he could. As he ran he noticed something else peculiar. His body didn't respond easily or accurately to his commands. He felt uncoordinated in his step. While, he had been no where near the athlete Kimberly was, his legs had never felt as lethargic as they did now. When not planted on they ground, his feet wobbled crazily, his arms wobbled about at his sides. He had to focus to keep them under control.
Fear of what it meant kept him from dwelling on it too long. Perhaps he was sick. Maybe returning to Tim's life had offered him an opportunity to undo whatever had caused him to go missing in the first place. There would be an explanation of his condition eventually. He couldn't force the answer. He didn't really want to. Don't think about it… You can't change it right now anyway. Just find Ben. He plunged head long into the woods behind the convenience store. The short cut would get him home faster, but it would mean cutting through several yards and over many fences.
Jesus, where have I been to have gotten so beaten up? Tim thought. If he had simply vanished as he had first believed, if he didn't exist here, like some crazy alternate universe version of It's a Wonderful Life, then why were there such intense changes in his body?
He knew this would not only be his question, but the question of everyone else that was looking for him. How would he explain THAT? Maybe Ben will remember something… But if he, Tim, couldn't remember anything of the last four months here, how could Ben be expected to? Deep down inside Tim was his suspicion he had held as Kimberly that Ben, the physical Ben from this existence had not really transitioned completely to Kimberly's world. Rather, only a consciousness had followed him into Kim's life, supplanting itself into the Ben from Kim's existence.
In that case, would that Ben have come back with her to Tim's life? Suddenly, Tim no longer held any great hope of that. If not, how would he be able to explain where he'd been all this time? If he couldn't, what then? They'll lock you up for years trying to "cure you", he thought to himself. Somehow, it didn't matter. If Abs was back in jail, if Ben and Bobby were not crippled, if Ben's mother was no longer dead; everything would right itself. Everyone would be back where they belonged.
At the edge of their neighborhood, Tim stopped as he emerged from the woods. There were the two houses, just as they had existed in both worlds. His appeared to be completely deserted. A realtor's sign pierced the front yard, a large red SOLD placard mounted above it. "Sold?" Tim asked quizzically. Any remaining strength his legs held ebbed out of them like syrup from a bottle on a cold day. I must have been found; they wouldn't have sold the house and moved without knowing where I was…
A flash of circumspect reality wedged its way into the center of Tim's logic. Yeah, but what condition were you in when they found you? Tim growled at the renegade thought, shoving it as far away from the present as he could, jerking physically with the effort of it. Then Tim turned his eyes to Ben's home and that reality began to force its way back in, in spite of Tim's efforts to keep it away.
Susan's Saturn sat in the driveway of the house Tim remembered from his childhood as Ben's home. It was stained with the yellow and white crust of drying egg. Toilet paper hung from the trees like white Spanish moss. Someone had dug the yard up with a pair of mud tires attached to a fairly powerful transmission, judging from the depth of the furrows in the yard. A window downstairs was broken. Tim knew this to be Ben's bedroom window.
Most alarming was the yellow tape that surrounded the entire yard. It drifted lazily in the late summer breeze, dancing on its soft currents, signaling to the passers by, CRIME SCENE - DO NOT CROSS, in large black letters. Someone had hung a black mourning wreath on the front door, but it seemed old and tattered. It hung askew, almost loosely on the door. It had not been tended to for quite some time.
Tim's breath locked inside his chest. His heart beat shortened becoming irregular. The feet at the end of his legs had seemingly grown roots. There was no way he could get any closer to that house. It was a ghost house. It almost seemed to sag in the middle from sorrow, as if the structure itself was weeping for some great lost part of itself, if such a thing is possible. The condition of it spoke of nothing good inside or out. The two yards were silent. Nothing moved within sight of either home.
Swallowing hard, Tim forced his right foot off the ground and forward. It felt as heavy as lead. The tears were backing up behind him, hot and full of fear. He was shaking his head at the inevitability of what that yellow tape meant. If he didn't acknowledge it was really there, he would not go insane. There would be no problem. All of this would end logically. But his heart could not deny what the tape had been put there to protect. His brain spoke out of turn again, this time with only one word;
Evidence!
Tim turned away from the Ackerman home. If he continued to look at it his head would begin trying to deduce a reason again. Moving once more, Tim launched himself toward his family home, giving Ben's house a wide, cautious berth. He swung onto the long stone walkway, the same one on which he had felt Kirk's hungry eyes gobbling up the sight of his ass in Kimberly's cheerleader uniform. One strained moment passed when Tim glanced over his shoulder approximately at the point where he had as Kim. He fully expected to see Kirk there in his football hero's muscle car, window down, drooling as Tim walked to the house.
The feeling's and signals he was getting from his senses made him feel gravely uneasy. The entire tone of the place had changed at some basic level. Even the bright and happily shining sun casting its rays down so warmly, as it had as long as he could remember in either life, seemed full of foreboding malevolence.
The entire neighborhood felt haunted.
Tim mounted the stairs to the porch. The creaking of the old boards was the only sound. Even the birds, if there were any, weren't singing. The image of Kirk, sprawled out on it where he had fallen in his first confrontation with Bobby flashed in his mind, his jacket sleeve torn by a loose nail. There, as in Kim's world, was the loose nail, exactly as it had existed, right down to the dogleg to the left. Tim ripped his eyes from the spot and turned instead to the door. Tim flexed his fingers, preparing to open the door when he stopped, If I open that door and Kimberly is in there, I'll never be able to stop screaming.
Before reaching for the door, Tim looked again down into the curved interior of the mask. Through the eyes, he could see the boards of the oak porch, painted green. It made it look like the mask had green eyes in reverse. I have blue eyes though… he thought, still thinking of himself in the context of Kimberly.
Tim put his hand on the large brass handle, depressed the lever and pushed the door open.
It swung inward without a sound, and what rushed out almost knocked him to his knees, not so much with intensity as with what the odors meant. It was the smell of ammonia, cleansers and fresh paint. Inside the house was a dark and silent as an old stone tomb. Worse for him was the fact that the house was completely empty.
All the furnishings were gone. They've moved, He thought to himself.
What part of SOLD didn't you understand Timmy? The sweet and lightly southern accented voice of Kimberly asked in his head.
The place was immaculately empty in fact. There was neither a cobweb nor speck of dust anywhere. He could still smell fresh latex paint on the air, but its aroma was faint enough for Tim to tell that his had been painted weeks ago. They've been gone for a while now.
Unable to reconcile what his eyes told him to be the truth, Tim explored the old antebellum home, all five bedrooms, the study that had been left just the way his father had kept it of for all those years after he died, the back yard. Even the pool had been emptied and resurfaced. Where had they gone? Had they moved from Baker or just down the road? Why would they have left knowing he was missing and possible alive out there some where?
The idea of abandonment began to settle into his system, pounding fear and profound sadness deep into his soul. He was alone. They had left to carry on someplace and he had no idea where to begin to look for them.
Go to the police Tim… They're looking for you anyway, they'll know where your family is.
It seemed like the logical answer. But the question of where he'd been all this time remained. How was he going to explain that beyond being over simplistic? Being folded into Kimberly's life had been almost easy compared to this. The life there had been ready made. All she had had to do was remember what had come before. It was a little like having an on-line owner's manual to her own life in her head. There was no record, no accounting for Tim of the time that had passed since going there. He could remember nothing. It was like peering into a black box where light could not infiltrate or escape. It reminded him of The Nothing from the book, The Never Ending Story by Michael Ende.
"Why can't I remember?" Tim muttered pathetically. Tim noticed that even his emotions seemed dulled, diluted somewhat. He should have been hysterical at this event. His family was gone, he'd been missing for months and yet, he only felt afraid. His body felt frail his legs and arms weak but he felt no hunger, no thirst. This realization scared him the most. They were clues to a larger picture he could not seem to piece together. Yet, in the back of his mind, he felt if he dared to look hard enough at the pieces as they lay there, he just might be able to catch a glimpse of what that picture was supposed to be.
He turned his mind's eye away from that image, unwilling to be distracted by it. He told himself that he needed to think straight but that was only an excuse. He didn't want to see the monster laying in wait there for him. It would consume his mind. If he did and then he'd be lost forever.
Once, Tim was startled by the image of a boy that flashed in the corner of his mind as he explored his mother's room. It wasn't until he saw that it was his own reflection on a floor length mirror mounted on the open door of his mother's closet that his heart began to calm. Checking that reflection however sent sharp shards of terror into is brain, like broken glass tearing at the tissue of his poor mind.
Now he could see exactly what had appeared to be so off kilter with his reflection at the convenience store. There stood a boy Tim did not recognize at all. The image was terribly thin, bluish tint in pallor, eyes sunken into skeletal orbits. He stood there looking at a living corpse. Three of his teeth were missing and he had scrapes and cuts that were old and unhealed on his arms, legs and face. Some of his hair was missing and his clothes hung off of him like a circus tent hung on a broomstick. The eye that had so startled him was not just infected. If it had been that might have been a relief. It was deflated, withered and discolored. A large bruise, maybe three inches wide lay across it in a rectangular pattern. To Tim, it had the familiar shape of the end of a brick.
Tim covered the damaged eye with one hand and realized there was no change in his vision. He had not been using that eye at all. It was dead.
In fact, if he had not been standing there looking at this horrid image, he would not have believed the boy in the reflection was alive. Yet, he had not looked nearly this bad in the reflection of the window of the Lil' Champ.
The image was enough to drive him from the house. Tim exited the front door like a cannon ball from the mouth of a cannon. In his hand he still carried the mask from the Wizards shop. Now, as he ran, he could see flashes of his hands as they pumped to carry him away from that wretched mirror behind him. Now acutely aware of his physical appearance, he watched them in horror as they seemed to change before him. The color turned from a grayish blue to a deadpan flat grey. I'm dying… he thought to himself. I'm decaying as I'm standing here… OH GOD! In a little while, Tim could imagine that his limbs would simply begin to fall off from the impact of running.
Tim practically dove into the woods he had used as a short cut after reading the handbill about his disappearance. He wandered about, pacing, worrying about what to do next, where to go. His fingers almost subconsciously exploring the dead and dried out right eye. There was no feeling to it. In fact, there was little feeling to the tips of his fingers as well. Panic fired in his heart. What was he going to do? He didn't have hours to find out what was going on here. He barely had minutes. Having answers didn't solve anything either. People in his condition simply didn't survive.
In his hand was the mask. Eyeing it, he spat hate from his heart at the cursed thing. He turned to heave it deep into the woods but could not muster the bravery to do it. Tim didn't even know if it could be used again, or if it could, what condition Kim's world would be in. Ben had been right about this one thing, you can't just screw around with the lives of everyone on the planet. This mask wasn't just about Ben and himself. It was changing the fates of everyone!
Was fate again conspiring to trap him? Tim no longer believed that there was a consciousness or anything like it that could be called "fate". There was just rotten luck, selfishness and bad timing. The only thing he truly believed was the mask had done all this to them. Still, he couldn't quite bring himself to throw the damn thing away. Several convenient excuses continued to pop into his head, all of them narrated by the voice of Kimberly Glass, What would happen if someone else found that mask? What if it breaks and all that magic comes spilling out of it? What if you're really supposed to be ME?
Crying now, afraid, Tim slammed his hands over his hears and cried, "Get out of my head!"
I can't, was the answer that came back in Kim's sweet voice, It's kinda my head too. Fraid you're stuck with me now.
That was the crux of it wasn't it? It was the memory, or rather the Kimmory of all the things he'd learned about that other life. They were still with him, as vivid as ever. He had the baggage of two separate and distinct lives in his head. Granted there was a significant piece of this life now missing, four months worth of it. Other than that, he was two people here. He could feel them fighting inside of him, each one vying for control, trying to split from the host, each one so different, both of them the same person.
Go see him Tim…
"NO!" Tim knew right away who his other side was speaking of, "That old fucker started this whole mess."
I don't think so Tim.
"SHUT UP!"
Think about it Tim. Think about the extremes you're seeing, the thoughts you had back there before you went in the house.
You still have his mask, he's there. They were the last words he would ever hear from Kimberly glass. She retreated deep within him, content to watch the show from the sidelines. Tim knew she was right. It wasn't over, not by a long shot. He'd come back to set things right. Now that seemed impossible, but he had to find out for sure before he did something else stupid.
His mind flashed now with a memory not from this life but one from Kim's. The strongest Kimmery he'd had yet. It was the image of that shoe stepping past the limits of that open door of Bobby's room at the hospital. She had known whose leg it was attached to in an instant. She had not needed to see his face. If she had been blind, she would have known by the way the air had changed when he entered. He remembered the sudden release of all that compassion and love at seeing his face after so long. He could still feel how the vulnerability of the day had fallen away when he had opened his arms as she had leapt up into them.
Tim fell to the damp forest soil, the knees of his jeans soaking up the musty moistness from beneath the dead leaves. He hit his hands, hanging his head, unable to breathe, unable to think. A long, mournful groan oozed out of him as the pain in his heart grew exponentially as each Kimmory and Timmory of his father assailed him like angry phantoms.
"Please…" he wept, "Please help me."
"Then you have to get up son!" said someone standing very close by.
Tim tried to look up but his head weighed about a million pounds it seemed. He was helpless against its weight. "Here, I'll help you," said the voice so kindly that Tim wanted nothing more but to get lost in it and stay there forever. "Come Tim… give me your hand."
An old man in faded old Chino workpants and scared and scuffed old loafers stepped up where Tim could see only the feet. At least, this is what the world at large would have witnessed had they seen him. Just another old man in old man's clothes doing old man things. But what Tim's eyes beheld was very different from what anyone else lucky enough not to be associated with him would see.
What he saw was the hem of a deep blue satin robe with sparking white fur trim along the hem and up the middle. It flowed out hiding the feet beneath. The lower limit of the robe floated magically just above the ground. The white fir gathered no dirt, it touched no rock or rise in the soil. In stead, the hem danced just above the ground with a life of its own, avoiding the soil and debris of the wooded forest floor.
On the robe, within the limits of his sight, Tim could see galaxies and comets orbiting in three dimensions on its blue field. Only the robe didn't look like it was made of fabric. It seemed to Tim that this was a door way to so many worlds, so many galaxies that all he would have to do is reach out and pluck it from its place there. He fancied for a moment that he could grab one and simply put it in his pocket. He wanted so badly to see if it could be done that he began to reach up as if to do just that.
There was a tremendous cold emanating from the robe. It was bone chilling. Tim had heard the phrase used in the past, but now he felt he understood what it really meant. The dimensions of the robe's field seemed boundless. That if he got too close he would simply tumble off into the depths of space itself. The voice called out to him again, "I wouldn't advise it Tim. You're in enough trouble as it is." At that warning, Tim's hand simply continued up toward where Maurice held out his old, craggy but warm and gentle hand. When their fingers met they were no longer in the woods across from the deserted glass home.
-*-
There was a flash of bright light and an enormous crack of what sounded like thunder.
Tim found himself on the floor of the Spells-R-Us Boutique. He was alone, still on his hands and knees. "Oh my GOD!" cried a sweet but obviously disturbed voice. "Look at him. He looks awful."
"Well, you would too if you were dead."
Tim squeezed his eyes shut against the words and cried weakly, "I'm not dead."
"Well, as far as anyone knows, not yet. It's the only reason you're here at all Tim, because no one knows yet. But they will. Now that you've brought your body back I'm afraid that, as they say, is merely a formality."
"Nice Maurice. Very tactful," Darla scolded obviously annoyed, "Why not just say, Ah, just in time for the funeral."
"I don't really have to do that now," Maurice said with a certain amount of glee.
"Oh?" Darla seemed to ask. "Why's that?"
"You just did."
From somewhere above him Tim heard Darla growl in frustration, "Here," she said and suddenly there were hands on him, helping him stand. "Get up. There you go." She turned him to face her, "Let me see. Oh my." The grave tone in Darla's voice was clear. She brushed his hair out of his eyes and he looked at her. "He's failing fast."
"Not before we conclude our business," Maurice said, "Tim, my mask if you please." The old man held out his hand and waited for Tim to hand over his property.
"What happens if I go back?" Tim asked.
"Impossible, our deal is done. It's time to face your future here now that you're back."
"Future? You just said I was dead," Tim said unbelievingly. "What kind of future is that?"
"It's your future Tim," the Wizard said sternly.
"Is this because the mask got stuck on me?"
"No Tim. Fate simply used that moment to let what was going to happen anyway happen."
"Don't give me that crap about fate!" Tim tried to yell but his energy seemed to be draining out of him faster than he could understand.
The Wizard's robes turned dark, black and gray storm clouds formed, blocking the view of the heavens and striking a terrible image with lightening and claps of tremendous thunder, "DON'T YOU RAISE YOUR VOICE AT ME BOY!" he bellowed in a voice as large as that of God himself. It echoed from places where there was no space to echo from. Tim cowered away from him and trembled in fear.
"You're scaring him!" Darla cried and took a swipe at the old man with an open hand. "Stop it."
"DARLA," he tried to bellow once more but Darla was having none of it.
"You be quiet, right now," the apprentice insisted and in the blink of an eye, the Wizard's robe returned to its Astral configuration.
"Okay, but I want my mask back," he said sounding a lot like a chastised ten year old.
Darla reached down and grasped the mask. Tim clung to it for a moment, refusing to let it go. "I'm sorry Tim, it is his." She had such a pained look on her face that for a moment he thought she too might start crying. He looked down at his only life line, not just to his father and his best friend, but to life itself. Looking back up he sadly let it go.
"I'm truly sorry Tim," Darla said apologetically.
Tim followed it with his one good eye, carefully watching what the Wizard did with it. The old man set the plastic mask down on the corner of the counter. It wobbled there for a moment and fell still. He knew his chance was gone. He still needed to find Ben to put the mask back on. Now that the mask was back in the Wizard's shop, there was little chance of getting it back.
Tim hung his head wishing he had listened to that voice inside his head. He could have put the mask on himself. The cost would have been that under no conditions could he have changed the outcome of that act. He would have become Kimberly for the remainder of his life. But, he reasoned now. Isn't that really better than what they were proposing as a future?
"Sir?" Tim asked.
"Yes Tim," The Wizard replied.
Teary eyed, Tim lifted his head, "What happens now?" The degree of Tim's denial amazed even the Wizard. He seemed to understand that Tim was still trying to negotiate the situation. Perhaps the fact of being alive and dead at the same time could be deceptive to the subject?
"Have you seen your self Tim? Do you know what you look like?" Tim clinched his fist and laid his forehead on it in frustration. He did not respond to the Wizard's question however. All that was left was for the Wizard to be brutally honest with the sad young man.
"Now it's time for you to go." There was a profound regret in the old man's eyes and Tim began to understand there was no way out of this for him.
"But I'm NOT dead!" Tim shouted. He was beginning to become more angry than frightened as his flight or fight instincts began to wrestle with each other. "You're talking about this like it's already happened. But I'm still here! If this is you're idea of some kind'a sick joke to teach me a lesson… Don't bother. I've had more lessons in the last four months than you or… or… God or anyone could teach me in 100 life times." Tim ranted as he paced about.
"It's not a joke Tim," Cautioned the old man.
Panic began to dawn in Tim's eye. Even with the suspensions, the wild theories he had never really believed any of it. "But I just missing. HELL, I'm not even missing. I'm right here! I'm standing right here. All you have to do is put me back into my life here. Just give me some way to explain this to my mom…"
"I can't do that," insisted the old man.
"What do you mean you can't do that? You changed me into a girl didn't you? Well use your magic or something. Give me a fucking cosmic kiss for my supernatural booboo to make it all better."
"I didn't change you into anything Tim. The mask changed you into who you would have been if the circumstances of your birth had been different. That's all. A lot of space and time had to be manipulated in order to do that and it screwed up a lot of lives in the process. I can't change anything that's been put in place to compensate for that disturbance. Our arrangement was for 24 hours, not four months. If you and Ben had stuck to that deal, then none of this might have happened. As it is however--"
"That was not our FAULT!" Tim cried.
"Why did you come back Tim?" the Wizard asked folding his arms across is chest.
"Because of Ben… His mother was murdered."
The Wizard eyed him smugly, "And here, you're the murder victim. Funny how life compensates for the vacuums we create as we live our lives. In this world your father is dead as a result of a plane crash, in Kim's, its Ben's father and yours is still alive. Balance Timothy. Even those things we can't possibly begin to understand accomplish some sort of balance somewhere.
Tim tried to piece the logic together, but there seemed to be no logic at all for him to grasp on to. "My mom, what about my mom and my brother?"
"You've been missing since Ben put the mask on you. They spent every penny they had trying to get you back, posters, fliers, T.V. ads. You're mother quit her job to look for you. She was devastated Tim. They sold the house to raise more money, to raise hope."
Tim's heart was broken under the crushing weight of this news. "Where are they now? They wouldn't just leave without me."
"They're still looking Tim. And tomorrow morning they'll have an answer, one way or the other, when police find your body," the old man said regretfully.
Tim began to pace franticly around the store. "This is CRAZY!" Tim cried wildly. "I didn't want to do this in the first place. Now you're telling me my life is over, because I got stuck in that thing?"
The old man came out from around the counter. He seemed to pass through some barrier but managed it easily. When he appeared on the other side of what looked to be no more than distortion in the room, he was again wearing the Chino's, Chambray work shirt and scuffed loafers. Only this time Tim could see them. He draped his arm around Tim's shoulder trying to console the walking corpse that called itself Tim. "You weren't listening. I said Fate took that point in time to do something that had to have some resolution in reality. When you became locked in it Tim, the odds of being able to come back here, of even wanting to come back were so remote… the world simply moved on."
Now shaken deeply, Tim cried, "Without me?" The old man nodded sadly.
"Tim, you're acting as if you're the first person something like this has ever happened to. Remember Jimmy Hoffa?"
Tim was beet red, flush with anger now. "I don't give a rat's ass about Jimmy Hoffa. I wasn't even born when… whatever happened to him happened to him. I don't want to be dead."
"No one does Tim. That's kind of the irony in death. No one wants to live forever either. What do you think about that?"
"Not too much." Tim spat. "What happened to me?"
"Does that really matter?" Maurice said trying to move the business of the day along. He seemed in a hurry and this only served to annoy Tim further.
"I think it's fairly significant, yeah!" Tim concurred excitedly.
The old man went on to tell Tim briefly of how Tim had vanished after Ben put the mask on him. The Wizard then went on to confirm something that Kim had already suspected, Tim had been the only one sucked completely through the rabbit-hole. Only a portion of Ben's consciousness had been pulled through with him. The remainder, the physical Ben of this reality had been left here. Since he was entwined in this, part of Ben had to follow so that the mask could be removed.
The part of Ben left here had an entirely different experience however. "As it was, all the Ben of this dimension knew was that he had no explanation as to why you might have disappeared. In fact, he remembered was going to the bathroom and when he returned, you were gone." The Wizard let this sink in for a moment. "The only clue they had was an open door to the upstairs fire escape well at the back of the house. No one actually found the door standing open for almost thirty minutes, an eternity in an abduction case."
"What are you talking about, abducted?" Tim asked not really sure he wanted to know.
"When something interfered with your return, this thing I'm calling 'Fate' compensated for your disappearance. That power needed to shift things around to maintain the equilibrium of life, the continuum, the constant of cotton candy… call it whatever you want, it doesn't really matter. That flow had to be maintained. All magic does in manipulate that flow a little. So, when you vanished, there had to be a real life rationale for it. That force put a rather nasty burgeoning child molester in your path in this reality while you were off being Kimberly. That's why you don't remember anything else of this world. He killed you in fairly short order."
"Oh God…" Tim said feeling sick to his stomach. Tim turned back to the Wizard pleadingly, "Please, you can change this… You have some spell or something that can let me go back and…"
"Sorry Tim, no refunds. Once something's been changed, once it's in the past, it's permanent."
"That doesn't make any sense to me. I never drowned, but I can remember breathing in the saltwater when I got dragged off the boat that time when I was a little girl. When I think about it, I can remember how much pain I was in. I can even remember the taste of the saltwater in my mouth." That never happened.
"Yes it did Tim. But because it happened in a life you weren't there to enjoy, all you could have from it is the memory of it. But Fate constructed those events based on other events of your 'altered' existence. It's sort of like watching a film in ultra fast forward. You did live it, it just happened so fast, it took time for the memories to plant themselves. That's why it took you so long to recall them all. But I think the thing you need to remember is that in that world, as Kimberly, nothing on Earth or in Heaven can change the way they happened now. They're permanent. They are part of Kim's finger print.
Tim's shoulders slouched forward. He was the very picture of a beaten human being. His spirit was broken, his hope had been stolen and his life was, very literally, over. He wished desperately he'd listened to Ben when he had offered at the last second, 'you don't have to do this.' He had no idea that things could have been worse in the reality he had originally come from. Now, everything that had happened to him as Kim seemed like Christmas morning compared to what was transpiring now. Soon, everything would be blackness.
"It's time to go Tim," The Wizard said. There was a flat, detached tone in his voice.
"Please… Don't do this to me."
'Maurice," Darla begged, "he's scared."
"I understand that Darla, but this is out of my hands." Turning to Tim, the old man said once more, "Come along Tim."
Tim's face balled pathetically in a mixture of fear and panic, "Please… I'm just a kid."
"Tim…"
"I want to see Ben. I want to talk to him." The old man glanced at Darla who could only look away. "What?" The two said nothing. "What is it? What was going on at his house? You know I saw that, tell me."
"Tim, I'm afraid there's no way you can talk to Ben. If you left the protection of this store yourself, without the mask to protect you, you'd sorta just, fade out. Even the force of that magic wouldn't protect you long, as you can see from your deteriorating condition."
"Then bring him here," Tim insisted. But his request was met with stony silence. "What's happened?"
"What you saw at Ben's house Tim was part of an investigation that started yesterday morning. Ben's mother took her own life three days ago. The police found her body in the house yesterday afternoon." To Tim, Maurice sounded as officious as a State Police Officer delivering the news of a highway accident. I'm sorry to have to inform you Mrs. Doe, you're daughter Jane was in an accident…
Tim was shaking his head. Even with the sight of that yellow plastic tape everywhere, he had not allowed himself to think the worst. Even now, he was not letting himself consider the obvious possibilities. "That can't be. Mrs. Ackerman wouldn't do something like that." He staggered backward in shock. His words were for no one in particular. They were just statements of fact. He tripped over a box that sat tapped up on the floor behind him, stumbled and fell backward sitting down hard on it.
"If you think about it Tim, there is one reason why she might." The Wizard prompted.
Darla came and squatted down next to him, her small frame seemed so large to Tim who now felt every bit the inexperienced teenager he had once been. "Tim, we all know that Ben wasn't the best driver. You've thought the same thing yourself, haven't you?" Her tone was sympathetic, her eyes sorrowful. Tim pressed his lips together in a tragic sort of smile, his mind empty except for the obvious conclusions to be draw from what Darla had told him. More than anything else, he had wanted to save Ben.
Perhaps it was Kimberly's persuasion, her influence that made all of this seem so futile. But it had been Ben she wanted to save, much the way he had selflessly saved her one night three months ago. Ben had been the one to lose everything. It had been in her power to give him something back. So was it Kimberly that sat silently and mourned or was it Tim. He couldn't say. Perhaps there was no Kimberly, no Tim. There was just this life force and the vessel that contained it didn't matter. All he knew was that she had failed, and that feeling was perhaps the most crushing reality of all. Ben had needed her and she had failed him.
"We never wanted this," sobbed Tim.
"JUST what was it you wanted Tim." The Wizard said cutting him off clearly losing patience. "What was it you were looking for? Wasn't it enough that I gave you what you asked for?"
"What I asked for? I never asked to be a girl!" Tim insisted angrily.
The Wizard began to speak, but this time it was Tim's own voice coming from the old man's mouth, "Who do you think you're fooling Ben. If you think it's me then you're nuts. I've known you too long Ben. So don't sit there and think that if I manage to get a date, then you're in too. I can't make a girl like you Ben. Fuck, I can't even make girls like me!"
Then the old man's voice returned to his normal, old man rasp, "Remember that? Or how about this golden oldie?"
This time it was Ben's voice that came out of the Wizard's mouth. "Half the guy's think we're gay because we only hang out with each other."
Startled beyond words all Tim could think about was his response to Ben's comment, "They think we're gay?" Tim flushed again at the memory of it.
The Wizard didn't stop there however, "I think you're both a couple of malcontents. That's what I think. Nothing is good enough for either of you. At least Ben had the decency to be honest about what he was looking for when you both came here. You know something Tim, he stuck to the bargain. You were the one that tried to change the rules. He was also honest with you about being in love with Sarah. I have to admit, he surprised me. But so did you, cause when you were no longer being picked on, no longer unpopular, loved not for who you were but WHAT you were, you still weren't happy. Now you want to go back to the beginning and start over? I hate to burst your bubble Timmy boy, but there are no 'Do-Overs'' in life. You go forward, that's the end of the issue. Game over man!"
Hurt, Tim sulked, "I though you were our friend?"
"I have no friends Tim, I'm a Wizard. Most of the people that come into my shop are selfish, self-centered people that get what they have coming to them. It was rather refreshing to think that this once I was doing something good for someone that deserved it for a change, but now I can see you're just like all the rest. That is exactly how you surprised me, Tim. I thought you were different."
"Well, you're back now. They'll find your body soon and since coming back, it's become vitally important that they do. The man that took you will end up killing seven more children before he's caught, that is unless they find your body and the forensic evidence they find with it tomorrow morning as they're supposed to. Call it a little welcome home gift from the powers that be. You're going to get to be a hero."
"So," Tim said indignantly. "Let them find my body," Tim complained.
"Well, that's a problem because right now, you have it. It's not yours any more Tim."
Tim smiled a malicious smile, "Then they can't find it right?"
"Oh no Tim, they'll find it as of 7:43 tomorrow morning whether you have it or not. The problem is for you is, you'll just cease to exist in…" The Wizard checked his empty wrist as though he were examining the face of a watch, "16 hours, 7 minutes and… 20 seconds. You've only been here eight hours and see how much time has compensated for your arrival."
Tim could feel time draining away no differently than he could feel his life's blood draining away.
"So Tim, I'm curious?" asked the old man incredulously. "Is it fairer for all the kids that die in house fires or car accidents or of cancer or who drown each year than it is for some nobody from Hick Central, Tennessee to die at the hands of a murderer? So let me tell you what is fair Tim. You're going to give your life so that seven other children can live. I'm sorry that this tragedy falls on the heads of your family after you've already lost someone they love. I really am. The reality is this though, you're going to save a lot of lives this way because being born a boy in this reality is the only way you can do that. As Kim, you managed to save at least seven lives by just being Kim, maybe more. But then, I guess we'll never know."
And so this was the corollary. This was the balance the wizard had spoken of. There was a police officer somewhere in Kim's reality that Abs had not killed because her father had punched out Abs' eye. Kim having appendicitis had saved her father, and then there was Ben. But this is where Tim lost the connection. Was one of them Sarah, maybe her brother? He was about to ask when the Wizard said, "It's time to go Tim. Time has come."
Tim continued to weep, his head down where neither the old man nor Darla could see his face. The Wizard began to move back around the corner of the counter, putting himself between the shop and the mask which still sat one the counter where the Wizard had put it. "Come along Tim, I'll take you to the quarry myself and put you where you'll be found. You'll just go to sleep. There won't be any pain. I promise you that."
As soon as the old man was clear of the mask, with his back turned to him, Tim leapt up and snatched the mask off the counter and bolted for the door.
"TIM!" the Wizard called out, "Come BACK!" But the old man knew all too well that Tim was not going to be turning around. It happened exactly as he'd planned it.
"Elvis has left the building," Darla said glumly. "I know how she feels."
Maurice turned to his apprentice and asked, "So, how'd I do?"
"You're a ham," Darla said disapprovingly. "Did you have to scare the shit out of her like that?"
"She wanted answers. She wouldn't have taken them any other way."
"I think she would have gone back on her own. Even if she wasn't really dead here, she would have gone back."
Maurice gave her a quizzical look, "How do you figure?"
"She has something neither of us have," Darla said with great regret. "At least until today, I know I didn't."
"Oh?"
"Yeah," Darla confirmed, "A heart."
"I'm actually jealous of her, of what she has. Can you imagine, me, jealous?" Darla said seemingly in a daze. The Wizard watched as the pieces fell into place in Darla's feminine mind. A slight smile, a smirk almost, touched one corner of Darla's pretty mouth. There were volumes of emotions written there in that smile, and plenty of room for volumes and volumes more. That smile hung there for a moment until she asked, "You know something Sir?"
"No Darla I don't."
Darla didn't answer at first. She just smiled that wonderful smile and The Wizard watched enjoying this young woman's glow as it filled the room. At length she began to untie the short apron she wore to keep the dust off of her clothes. Darla folded the garment and then laid it gently on the glass counter at the front of the store. She exhaled softly and laid her hand flat on the surface of the apron. Her smile was somewhat sad, thought The Wizard as he watched her. She wasn't facing him when she answered him.
You're an old liar..." She said and smiled.
The old man smiled a big smile for her. "Will you come and visit me after you get settled?" He asked her.
"I don't know. There are a lot of bad memories associated with this place." She turned toward him and he expected tears, but she was not crying. Instead her eyes were ablaze with the fire of a life not yet lived. When he looked at her, all he saw was potential. "I may not be able to find you again," Darla admitted. "You know how this old store is, here one day, gone the next."
"It's Okay," her former mentor assured her, "I know how to find you."
"I can't believe I'm actually going to just walk out of here like this." she said in amazement. "This will be it won't it? I mean, I won't be going back to being male ever again if I do this?"
"It's already too late," The Wizard said, "You couldn't stay here now if you wanted, and you don't want to, do you?"
Darla thought a moment, "No, I want a life. Not a pipe dream."
"Well, go on then. There's some lucky man waiting to meet you out there. Don't disappoint him by not being there when he shows up." He gave the girl a light swat on the behind.
Darla walked to the door way and stood there looking out at the busy mall. Most people could not see the store front as they passed by. All most of them saw was an empty, out of business shoe retailer, with its windows covered in craft paper and a sign on the door that said closed. Darla began to tremble. "I'm scared... It's like I've never been out there before. I've been a girl for three years and now I'm scared to go home."
"Darla?" Asked The Wizard.
Darla turned around with a questioning look. She half hoped that the old man would ask her to stay. She would have given up her inspiration in a second if he had. Maybe I haven't gone too far after all. He'll save me. He'll throw me a line and pull me back in. I can't go out there and be a girl, not like Kim. I'm not even a real girl! Now the old man was going to give her a way out, Thank God... He saw it was a mistake, Thank God!
"Would you do a favor for me?" Darla sighed in relief. He was going to ask her to stay.
"Sure, I'd love to..." she was going to say, 'stay' but was stopped in mid sentence when a small red and white sign appeared in her hands.
"Would you be a Dear and put that sign in the window for me love?"
Darla looking surprised and hurt, turned the sign over slowly. It read, "Help Wanted!" A tear of fear and heart break splashed onto the 'H' of the sign. Help Wanted... yep That's what I want. I hope I find it out there.
"Sure, I'd be happy to." She blew the old Wizard a kiss, slipped the sign in the window and stepped out into the mall. She waited for just a second before turning around. When she did, all that was there was an empty store front with an old sign that said, The Shoe Barn and a closed sign on the window. There would be no going back now. Darla turned and walked away, blending into the crowd of shoppers, just another 18 year old girl in a world filled with 18 year old girls.
-*-
When Tim burst out of the doors of the Spells-R-Us shop, he found himself spilled out on the ground of the woods across from his family's home. The mask still clutched in his hand. Perhaps none of what he remembered had actually happened? He gingerly touched his bad eye and flinched. That at least appeared to be real. He had to assume the decay he'd witnessed was still there too.
The idea that he must HURRY, nagged at him.
The image of a dream he had as Kim came back to him. A dream of the two of them, Kimberly and Tim in the Tennessee River, their souls being pulled gently apart by the swollen river's current. He could see himself drifting away as he had that night in Kim's dream, only now, curiously, he was looking back at Kimberly who clung to the branch of the old dead tree. She wore a white cotton dressing gown and an expression of intense anguish on her face. Her platinum hair plastered to the sides of her head. There was no way she could come in after him. And so there was nothing left for her to do but diminish in size on the horizon as Tim slipped farther and father from her grasp, from rescue, from hope itself.
He began to lift the mask to his face, to shut out any possibility of the old wizard chasing him down to claim his property. Something stopped him cold however. It was the idea that if she popped back into her own time, several miles away from where she was last seen, more than twelve hours from that point in time, God only knows what would happen. It might have been a found-less worry, but there was risk attached to that idea that Tim wasn't willing to lay anything valuable on. That bet was stacked in the house's favor. She had to be at the hospital when it went back on. And, she'd have to be alone.
The walk was hard and tiring. His feet were barking Dobermans after only three miles. Tim's only solace was that Kimberly's feet would be well rested and comfortably in her workout sneaks when she finally got back into them. Tim misjudged the walk and ended up at the hospital at 7:17 p.m.
Noting the time, Tim realized when he got back, Kim was probably going to be in trouble. "I'm gonna get grounded again…" Tim said miserably but found that he was now thinking of himself tucked snug in Kim's room, nestled among all her stuffed bears, happily sleeping safely in her own home. "Okay then, let's go get into T.R.O.U.B.L.E."
Tim made his way back up the fifth floor. When he peeked in the room he discovered that they had already given the room to an elderly woman. Her eyes were closed and she appeared to be either sleeping or drugged. Either way, it meant, Tim hoped, that he could slip the mask on without being seen. Tim looked about briefly and then slipped into the room and closed the door. Tim turned and was startled to see that the old woman was wide awake and staring at him.
It's okay. It's dark and she can't see you… he told himself when she suddenly screamed, "RAPE!"
"No!" Tim said holding his hands out and shaking his head.
"RAPE!" she cried again, louder this time.
"Oh no…" Someone would be coming soon. The old woman's voice was the pitch of a fire siren and had the volume of a jackhammer.
She ripped off one horrendous cry, "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!"
"You have to be kidding me lady, what are you, a million years old?" Tim asked and immediately hated himself for being so cruel. He was, after all, dead and not looking all that attractive himself. Tim thought briefly about turning on the light, letting the old woman see that her would be rapist was actually a zombie in disguise. That would send her for a loop, Tim thought. But, he cautioned himself, it just might send her into cardiac arrest too. The humor drained from his idea as the old lady began to press the buzzer to the nurse's station and right away, a nurse rang back, "Mrs. Clutter? Are you Okay?"
"RAAAAAAAPPPE!" she cried again, this time spraying herself with thick spittle as she pursed her lips to purr out the 'P''s in rape.
"For God sake lady... I just want to change."
"RAAAAPE!" The woman began to thrash about. Shit, she's going to have a fucking heart attack right here.
Tim dashed to the bathroom and locked the door. There was no time to think about it now. Fate was vying against him. He felt it was trying to keep him from moving the pieces around again. They would be here to open the door soon. Tim understood that the locks on these doors were easily opened from the outside if a patient became disabled while using the facilities.
Tim pulled the mask from under his shirt and held it up to his face. He just couldn't touch it to his face. "Now you asshole! NOW!"
Outside, Mrs. Clutter shouted, "He's in there... He's in thereeeeeeerrrr!"
"Okay Mrs. Clutter. I'm here now," said one of the young nurses from the nurse's station. "Stop... you have to be still or you're going to..."
"RAAAAAPE" the old woman cried.
"Mrs. Clutter, I don't think whoever it was really wanted to rape you..."
'Thank you!' thought Tim.
Tim returned his gaze to the mirror before putting the mask on. But he had lost his focus on his relative distance from the mask for just a second. The thing flew from his fingers and on to his face. Tim saw in the mirror the utter surprise and horror in his eyes beneath the mask, 'I wasn't READY,' his mind wailed, but the deed was done! No matter how he clawed at his face he could not tear the mask off. There would be no more time left to him as Tim. That boat, as they say, had sailed.
Next: The conclusion to Dancing On Daddy's Shoes.
