Time Jacker by Aaron Crash (nonfiction book recommendations .TXT) 📕

Well, now, this was interesting. He pushed through the doors and stepped outside, just to check to make sure the world was stopped. It was. He saw Boy Rolex’s car parked out there. That would be the BMW M6 convertible with personalized plates. “R1CHB0Y.”

That would be easy to fucking remember. This guy must’ve driven down from Cherry Creek or some other rich suburb of Denver. Plum Creek people, even the rich ones, were generally not that flashy or douchey.

Jack didn’t want to hate rich people, but what had happened with the Malcolm family, the richest family in Plum Creek, had put a bad taste in his mouth for such folks, and Boy Rolex had gone ahead and confirmed his bias, so thank you fucking much.

Jack pulled out his phone. No internet. No phone calls. Everything was stuck in place. He wondered if the entire universe had come to a halt. The timestamp was there on his phone, though.

October 8th at 7:17 pm.

He waited. The time didn’t change. It seemed his phone was like the soda machine inside. It worked, but again, it must be about his aura. He was outside of time, and so what he touched was as well.

The little pain behind his eyes had grown into pinpricks. The pain wasn’t bad at all, so he could get stronger, or maybe it was getting used to not being in the flow of time. The Tempus Influunt or whatever.

He put away his phone and went back inside the restaurant. He wanted to get the home address of Boy Rolex, or at least his name. He wanted to see how deep his pockets were. The Rolex and Beamer might all be a show, and he might not have a pot to piss in. If he did, however, then Jack had found one of Aunt Sue’s rich pricks he might want to rob later on.

Jack put his soda down and approached the guy, figuring his driver’s license would be in his phone case, in the inside pocket of his suit coat.

Or Jack could simply take his Rolex. He’d have to be careful how he sold it, but Pinetree could help with that. It wasn’t that Pinetree was a criminal, but he knew criminals, and served them booze before they went to do their criminal things. Pinetree had a certain moral flexibility, though, and for a long time, as the son of a cop, Jack hadn’t understood that.

Then the shit went down in the cadet program. It all changed, including how Jack saw life.

Jack didn’t go for Boy Rolex’s watch. He did reach into the douchebag’s inside jacket pocket. The minute Jack’s hands touched the fabric of the guy’s jacket, the tin soldier slammed his drumsticks down on the drum. And in a splash of noise, time lurched forward. Boy Rolex shoved Jack away.

“What the shit, guy?” the rich prick snarled. “Get off me! You have a fucking problem?”

Jack didn’t want to have to fill out an incident report on this asshole, and he didn’t want to get bogged down in a fight. Lastly, Jack didn’t want to wash the guy’s blood out of his clothes. Fucking bloodstains were hard to remove.

“No, sorry,” Jack said. “I tripped, is all. I didn’t mean to touch you.”

“But you fucking did!” Boy Rolex shouted. He charged forward.

In normal circumstances, the confrontation would devolve into a shoving match, or a yelling match, because in the end, normal people didn’t want to fight. In the end, it was why in the animal kingdom males feinted attacks to intimidate their opponent rather than lock horns.

Not Boy Rolex. He’d had some training. And he was a prick. Put them together, and the guy tried to clock him. Jack saw where his weight was, and he shifted, avoiding the first punch, and the second, and the third.

“Do you really want to do this?” Jack asked.

Boy Rolex replied with the very astute, “Fuck you, cocksucker motherfucker.”

“Don’t know what that means,” Jack said, “but I’ll take that as a yes.”

The best way to avoid blood was to avoid bashing in this prick’s face. So Jack let him come close. Then he grabbed the guy’s arm thrown forward in a punch. It was an Aikido move, using your opponent’s energy against them.

Jack pulled Boy Rolex forward. At the same time, Jack rammed his knee up into the guy’s diaphragm. The rich prick wouldn’t be breathing for the next few seconds, maybe a minute, as his diaphragm spasmed. It was a good, solid hit.

Boy Rolex was on his knees, gasping like a carp looking for a lake to crap in.

Jack tweaked the guy’s nose. “That’s why you don’t throw punches at people you don’t know. Always somebody better. Always somebody tougher.”

The entire Señor Chang’s had been silent. But after he’d taken care of the problem guy, the restaurant started clapping, whistling, hooting, and hollering.

The chubby girl behind the counter lifted up a paper bag. “Uh, his kung-pao shrimp burrito is ready.”

Jack took the burrito and the guy out the door.

Boy Rolex took another swing at him, but it was weak, and he was a joke. Jack shoved him down onto the pavement. He then walked by him and set the kung-pao shrimp burrito on the roof of his car. “There you go, R1CHB0Y.” He motioned to the license plate.

He would be following up on the name of this joker. Boy Rolex had too much money, obviously, and Jack was going to help him with that little problem. The guy had also solved one little mystery for Jack—he could touch and manipulate things, but he couldn’t touch people.

The douchebag was tired of Jack besting him, so Boy Rolex said some shit, got in his Beamer, and took off in a scream of rubber.

Jack inhaled the air. “Damn, that got me hungry. Now, what did I want again?”

He smelled a very distinctive perfume—a little spice, a little musk—and he whirled around.

He heard throaty laughter. Was it from one of the blondes