Writing For G.O.T

Week 3 - Prompt 3-Story- Inversions

1304 Words

Inversions

Her thick glasses, her old-fashioned clothes, and her unidentifiable accent all gave off the impression she was from another place, another time. Perhaps she was…A time traveler.


And Why not? I thought, Even Stephen Hawking has admitted time travel was possible, although he was much better at writing children’s science fiction than musing on time travel and stuff way over any scientist’s head in this century.

I took another look at her, a closer one. Forget the thick glasses, she was stunning. Long ruby-red hair folded in a bun, pale skin slightly tanned, enchanting emerald eyes. Had I seen her before? I wasn’t sure. But, in either case, why was she hiding her beauty and what was she doing in this dump? Could it be she was from a far, far away distance? Yes, of course. I was quite sure of that.

As soon as I pushed the elevator button, she ducked behind me. Was she running away from someone? When the door of the elevator opened, she shoved me aside and rushed in before me. I guess they don’t teach politeness or not shoving people wherever she comes from, I thought, pressing the number of my floor while she made no similar attempt.

“Which floor?” I barked, still pissed off at her shoving. She looked at me, her eyes clueless. “Oh, sorry!” she said, diving into her purse and picking out a ratty, crumpled piece of paper. “Apartment 9 B,” she said.

“You are on the same floor as I am,” I said. “Are you the new tenant?”

“This is where they told me I should go,” she said, looking not too sure of the answer.

This time, I let her go in front of me, gesturing with my hand to point the way. I didn’t want to be shoved again for I was afraid my wig would fall off. Then, how would I be able to explain…well, never mind that.

The hallway on the ninth floor was bleak. The mold on the corners of the walls gave off a distinct smell, which possibly drifted through the entire tenement. The apartments in the building weren’t to write home about, either. For starters, the middle apartments had no windows, for being dug too deep into the building to receive any light, except for a sliding panel in the kitchen, which in this case, would be the apartment 9B on the ninth floor.

I took my old-fashioned key out, probably a skeleton key in transit, and opened the door of 9A. When I turned back to close the door, I saw that she was still standing at the door of 9B looking lost or maybe misplaced. I should have ignored her, then, but they say hindsight is always twenty-twenty. Not a problem though. Mine is always twenty-twenty.

”Don’t you have a key?” I asked her.

“Oh, a key? Well, I can open the door without it, but I am hesitant to step in a new place, alone.”

I guess I should have shrugged and closed the door, but I didn’t, as my travels back and forth had given me a completely different perspective on life and people, which I thought was precious and usable for my ends, but they also created the deficit of forming long-term friendships. As it was, I was now friendless, not that I minded it all that much and neither did I want to be this woman’s friend, but what the heck!

“Okay,” I said, closing my door behind me and stepping into the smelly hallway again. “I’ll go in with you.”

When she pressed her finger into the keyhole, I heard the lock open. That trick, huh! I should have known then, but I acted as if I didn’t notice. Only because I knew my part inside out, having studied every subtlety and mannerism carefully.

She pushed the door open, and instead of asking me in, she shoved me, again, into 9B. I fell headfirst into the apartment, but I leapt up, turned to the door, feeling an intense need to get out of this place.

Too late! She had shut the door and was leaning against it. Violent delights have violent ends, Shakespeare had written, and I could have told her that, but I knew better not to.

I straightened up, fixed my wig, and wiped the dust from my hands onto my faded jeans. I noticed then that my hands were grimy and my fingers had elongated. I stared at them, holding them out.

Then I raised my eyes at her and my mind was suddenly racked by waves of panic. “You!”

Sadly, I wasn’t working for her anymore. At least I told myself that, to make it believable, knowing her tricks. “What’s happening?” I asked.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?” I detected the sarcasm. No one ever recovered from Condora’s sarcastic nature, but this sarcasm was a bit on the mild side.

She tapped her foot on the floor, her each tap echoing in my brain. “The Alliance sent you here to 2016 on a fact-finding mission from 3519. And look at you. How shabby you are! You must have even erased your own memory. I knew it the moment you didn’t recognize me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had to do that. They were about to capture me. I figured if I had the memory box, the mission wouldn’t be safe; although I wouldn’t have talked…willingly.”

“All right,” she said. “But you could have hardened your mind, instead.”

“They are more powerful than you know, than what you were taught. The can get through anything.”

“So you work for them now?”

“No,” I said. “I am actually in a kind of semi-hiding. They think I am working for them, inside Amazon.” I don’t know why I said that. It was the first thing that came into my mind.

“Finding you in the jungle would be the easiest thing,” she said.

“No, not that Amazon. I kind of work for Amazon, the cyber department store.”

“And you think you’d be safe there?” She squinted at me.

“Huge warehouse. All those boxes. It is fun. Then I come here at nights. 3000 miles apart. Who’d suspect!”

“We would!” Her switch was immediate.

Oh, well, well! Now, who stood before me was not Condora anymore. Ahha! Some kind of a coordinated violence…I looked into the dark eyes of Swanidze.

“Your job is -was- identical regardless of whose hands you are in,” she said. “But you’re stupid. And stupids are not tolerated inside the Alliance.”

“What did you do with Condora? Where did she go?” Just for the fun of it, I was keeping up with her.

“She was never here, Aemon. I traced Condora from the fragments in your memory. I took her shape temporarily to follow you. You are such an idiot! It is disgusting, really. You couldn’t even erase you own memory-box properly.”

“What about the mission?”

“What’s mission to you? You idiot! You dumped the Federation to switch to Alliance. You loused up Federation’s plans and what you did for Alliance didn’t amount to an ant’s footprint. You are now lost to both sides. You mustn’t exist.” She stretched her hand to zap me.

It’s true, isn’t it? I had given an immaculate performance so far, but I needed to do what was expected of me.

Swanidze’s death ray reflected off my shield and backed up to zap her instead. She didn’t die. Couldn’t. She was more valuable to the Federation alive, until after our techies raked through her memory box.

Condora appeared immediately from behind her and tied her up.

While the andronauts took Swanidze away, Condora turned to me with a huge smile. “Great job, Aemon. I’ll see that you get medals for this. Just how did you know Swanidze wasn’t me?”

“You never put your hair in a bun,” I said. But that wasn’t entirely true, either. She’d never know I had been peeking inside her suit.