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

on his temples. It was hard to think. “What about this, Hugo? You gave me this, and now I can use it to stop time.”

“It wasn’t me,” Hugo said. “I was off my meds. I mean, I collect toys like that. I have a ton of stuff. But as for why I gave it to you? I have no idea.”

“Off your meds?” Jack asked.

The guy nodded. “I have episodes.”

It wasn’t what Jack wanted to hear. He went over and crouched down in front of the woman. “Mrs. Mundi, what do you remember?”

She dropped her hands and sat back. “It was a Friday night. I was closing up, thirty-six years ago. Then? It’s only just hands on me.”

“Demonic hands? Rubbery skin, smells like shit, claws?” Jack asked.

Hugo leaned against the doorway to the kitchen. “Wait. You can stop time?”

Jack held up a finger. “My questions first. You’re the one who dragged me into this shit.”

Mrs. Mundi looked into Jack’s eyes. She didn’t seem bothered by the cursing, or that this was all so strange. Then again, she was alive, in a new world, time, and place.

She shook her head. “Not a demon. I mean, it’s hard to remember. She was very beautiful. She...” A glance at her son.

“Hey, Hugo, can you get me a glass of water?” Jack asked.

The guy nodded, turned.

Mrs. Mundi pulled Jack onto the sofa. She grabbed him. “She was all over me, Jack. I mean, I’ve had fantasies of being with a woman, but this woman? She was beautiful, with such delicious brown skin, and such dark hair, and her eyes, one was blue, one was red. She kissed me, and I melted. She was insatiable.”

“Did she use her tail on you?” he asked.

That was going too far. “What? Oh my goodness.” She was clearly shocked at first, and then she frowned. “I don’t understand. Or I don’t remember. It’s all so odd. I felt so tired for so long, dreaming but awake, like when you’re sick with a fever. Time, day, night—it all gets so fuzzy and painful. But not with her. With her, I felt like she was giving me something. In a very nice hotel, maybe that Marriott by St. Jude’s Catholic Church, if you can believe a woman like me would ever get to stay in such a nice place.”

Hugo came back with the water and a couple cans of Bud Light. “Hey, Jack, that’s my mother.”

Mrs. Mundi let go of Jack and scooted away from him. “Sorry. It was my fault, Hugo. I got a little excited. But next thing I know, I’m here, at the front door of my house. It took some convincing, you know, for me to believe it wasn’t 1985.”

“Does the name Beyazul Baal mean anything to either of you?” Jack asked.

Both shook their heads.

“Bailey?”

Hugo didn’t.

Mrs. Mundi blushed a bit, her eyes lit up, her mouth opened, then she frowned. “Maybe. Again, I don’t remember. Jack, can you tell me what happened to me?”

Jack pressed a knuckle into his temple. “I think a demon grabbed you and pulled you out of the timestream, and that demon fed on you, somehow. I don’t know for sure. I stopped time, drove the demon away, and pulled you out. Only another demon grabbed you, a succubus. That would be Bailey. And I’m sorta surprised she didn’t kill you. Instead, she played with you at the Marriott, ate up your lust, then wiped your memory. Instead of leaving you on the street, she brought you home.” Jack hadn’t seen that coming. What was Bailey’s true nature?

Hugo cleared his throat. “So, about my questions...You said I gave you a toy soldier, and it can stop time?”

Jack stood up.

Both of them were saying shit, asking questions, but he didn’t have much to tell them. And he wasn’t worried about telling them about his superpowers because who in the fuck would believe them? Shit like this didn’t happen, and it especially didn’t happen in Plum Creek, Colorado.

“Let me see your room, Hugo,” Jack said. “And I’ll take a beer. Then I have to go.”

Hugo gave a Bud Light to his mom, then opened the other one. He gave it to Jack, who took a sip. Just the one sip had him feeling less miserable. The real cure was going to be ice and sleep.

Then Hugo led him through a kitchen, which again was dirty, but you could tell that someone had wiped away at least the top layer of filth. That would’ve been the mom. The son had obviously lived in squalor.

Until Mom came back from diddling a demon and started cleaning.

Through the kitchen was a room that had been a patio at one point, but someone had enclosed it and added wood paneling and a crappy electric heater in the baseboards. The brick of the outside of the house was visible. This was Hugo Mundi’s domain, and it was full of shelves, which held toys. A lot of toys.

There were ancient toys, like the tin soldier, but there were also Star Wars Lego sets, and G.I. Joes, and Garbage Pail Kids crap, and Mad Ball monster toys. He even had old Fisher Price people, and their Adventure People sets. Of course there was a wide variety of Matchbox cars and Hot Wheels, including a racetrack with a loop-the-loop. Hugo’s bed was in the middle of the toy heaven.

“That’s where the windup guy would’ve lived.” Hugo nodded at a shelf of soldiers, some windup, but mostly they were small plastic army men—the bazooka guy, the kneeling guy with the radio, the dead guy laying on his back with his rifle across his belly.

“Can you really stop time?” Hugo asked.

Jack squinted at him. “If you get off your meds again, come and talk to me. Because I have some fucking questions that you might be able to answer if you were crazier.”

“And this isn’t crazy?” Hugo motioned to the toy chest that was his room, a grown-ass man sleeping among the ruins of his childhood.

Jack grinned.