In the Bud: A Time travel thriller

The short story, In the Bud: A Time Travel Thriller, was previously published in Suspense Magazine March/April 2018 under the pseudonym Patrick J. McKnight.

August 29, 1984

Hand trembling, Mike checked his phone. Then slipped it into his back pocket. One thirty-seven pm. Twenty-three minutes until the Bolden brothers yanked him back to 2023, but only if he failed. 

The man he had to think of as merely a mechanic slammed the hood of the brown eighty-two Chevette shut. Pulled a rag from the back pocket of his oily uniform and rubbed the grease from his hands. 

The mechanic asked, “What was that you were holding?”

Mike swore silently to himself for being so stupid. Wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with his bare hand. What the fuck was he thinking even bringing a smartphone to nineteen eighty-four, let alone pulling it out so someone could see it? Just bring the note and the cash, they’d said. But no, he didn’t listen. 

Which was his problem. He made bad decisions. Been that way for years. Had the track marks and the prison tattoos to prove it. But this was his chance to fix all of it. To make all of his pain go away, just like the Bolden brothers promised. 

He made a mental note to toss the iPhone in old Farley’s pond, if he had the chance. 

Rather than tell the truth, he said, “Nothing.”

“Nothing? You stared at the damn thing for over minute. Looked like something from Star Trek or something.”

"It's a new TV clicker prototype."

“That small? I call bullshit. Where were the buttons? How do I know it’s not some commie spy shit?”

A chill wiggled down Mike’s spine. I call bullshit. Oh how he hated that fucking phrase. But in a rare expression of self-control, he glared at the grease-smeared name on the mechanic’s uniform—Charlie—and refused to take the bait.

"I'm not here to discuss a hunk of plastic, Mr. Dysinger."

The mechanic fired up a cigarette and instinctively, Mike’s forearms burned. 

With the butt dangling from his lips, Charlie clapped him on the back and said, “I’m just screwin’ with ya, pal. So you want to talk about the boy."

“I want to meet him is all.”

“Why?" the man said between smoke rings. “The kid's a goddamn loser, just like the rest of his mother's deadbeat family. Shitty grades. Lousy attitude. Haven’t found a single form of discipline that works, though.”

“So you’ve given up punishing him?” 

“Good one.” Then Charlie flashed a menacing smile. “But one of these days I’ll find a way to break the little shit.” 

The disregard for basic humanity made Mike shiver. Made the needle marks on his arm burn. But beneath the shock, the sweating and the withdrawal, he shook it off. Maintained his focus. 

“Where is he now?” 

“What are you? Some kind of old pervert?” 

“No, sir. Just a long-lost relative from that deadbeat family of the boy’s trying to reconnect with his family tree.” 

Charlie appraised him from head-to-toe. “Yeah, you don’t look so swift. Got that vacant stare they all got.” The mechanic tossed the oily rag on the Chevette’s hood. Put his hands on his hips like Superman. “It’ll cost ya.” 

Mike had expected nothing less. 

“The boy said something about going to the creek behind the house. He hangs out there to do who knows what. Probably got some of my Playboy’s out there or something.” Then Charlie held his hand out. Arched an eyebrow.

Mike dropped a crumpled twenty in the open palm. 

“One more thing,” he said. “Any idea where I can find a gun?” 

The twenty-two rested uncomfortably in Mike’s waistband. Of all the horrible things he’d done in his life, he’d never fired a gun. In fact, his only experience with guns was being on the wrong end of a deal gone bad, leaving him with a hole in his bicep, no smack and forty fewer dollars in his pocket. 

Out of usable cash, he hustled across Keenan Center on foot. The Bolden’s had traded him one hundred dollars of pre-nineteen eighty-four bills for two hundred dollars of post-nineteen eighty-four bills. All of it went toward the gun. Just two more shitty trades Mike had to endure. 

There was nothing special about the day. August 29th held no particular meaning for him. Neither did nineteen eighty-four for that matter. He’d given the Bolden’s a range of dates and this was the block of time they had available. Simple business. 

The house was on the outskirts of Keenan Center, three quarters of a mile from Charlie Dysinger’s garage and just past the Springfield Southern Railway line that separated suburbia from farmland. An easy ride on a Schwinn banana-seat bike for a kid. A pain in the ass job for a desperate, strung-out junkie like Mike. 

Dark clouds gathered, threatening to unleash a torrent of rain. The late summer heat only made his chills worse. But whereas most of his life he’d have said fuck it and given up by now, a new sense of purpose powered him through. Fuck the rain, he thought, when the first drops dampened his hair. 

Only two cars passed him along the lonely two-lane road out of town. The houses quickly went from being stacked atop one another to being nearly an acre apart. Carlyle’s creek meandered behind them, hidden from view by the thick, lush tree line. By October, the leaves would be long gone and like curtains pulled back from a window, expose everything to even a casual passerby. 

Mike was two houses away when he stopped and confronted his next problem: how to get to the creek. As a kid, cutting through someone’s yard was expected, almost a right of passage. But for an adult, it was trespassing. A surefire way to attract unwelcome attention. The last thing he needed was one of the nosy neighbors calling a Fillmore County Sheriff and trapping Mike in nineteen eighty-four before accomplishing the first goal he’d had in years that didn’t involve getting high, getting laid or finding someplace to sleep.  

His time was running out and the Bolden’s made it clear, when your time’s up, it’s up. There’s nothing they can do about it. After that, lots of bad things happen. 

He checked his phone again, having forgotten to toss it the pond like he’d planned. He was down to eleven minutes. If someone called the sheriff, it would take them at least five to ten minutes to get all the way out here. But still too close. He could go another quarter mile down the road, where the tree line bends closer to the houses and hope no one saw him. But that was five minutes he didn’t have to spare. If the boy wasn’t directly behind the house, Mike was in deep shit trouble and who knew how long it would take to hunt the kid down.

A bright flash filled the sky. The thunder clapped. The rain changed from a drizzle to a downpour. There was no time to waste and no turning back. 

So he made a break for it between the houses and hoped for the best.  

Trotting alongside the creek, Mike knocked one branch away and ducked under another. His clothes soaked against his skin as one of his shoes nearly got sucked into the mud. Everything was so much easier as a child, he thought. 

He found the boy sitting on a rock, his short legs dangling over the water. His hands holding something that Mike couldn’t see. Quietly, Mike inched closer and from fifteen feet, he recognized it right away. It wasn’t a Playboy. It was a book. A paperback. A Brave New World. A tough read for anyone, let alone a child. And to think that at this moment, Charlie the Mechanic was busy devising sadistic ways to break this boy. A boy whose greatest sin was the love of books.

 A part of Mike wanted to go back to the garage, shove the nose of the twenty-two into Charlie Dysinger’s mouth and blow the bastard’s brains out. But that wouldn’t make the pain away. It would make it grow worse.

But damn, it would feel so good. 

He pulled out his phone. Nine minutes to go. Even if he carjacked a car, assuming another bothered to pass by, and floored it all the way, he wouldn’t make it on time. The Bolden’s would have him back by then, something he feared more than dying. 

He spiked the phone into the muddy ground like a football and gouged it deeper with the heel of his shoe. 

“Hey, mister. What’s wrong?” 

Mike froze. The angelic face of a soul yet unscarred stared at him. 

“Nothing,” he said. 

“Who are you?”

“Just a friend.” 

“Really?” The kid’s face shone with hope. Until like a switch, that hope dissolved. Mike desperately wanted to find that switch and flick it back on. But he couldn’t. No one could. Then the kid mournfully shook his head, went back to reading his book and said, “I don’t have any friends.” 

It’s not your fault, Mike wanted to say. It was this shitty world’s fault. A world where a hooker gives you the blow job for free because she spotted the scars on your arms as she goes to her knees and a world where a dealer doesn’t break your legs when you’re short on cash because your mom’s suicide made the front page. Worse when those were the two nicest things anyone had ever done for you.

He grabbed the twenty-two from behind his back. Held it in his rain-slicked hand.

No, kid. It’s not your fault.  

“Cool gun,” the boy said, looking Mike’s way again. 

It wasn’t cool. It was cowardly. So he changed the subject. 

“How’s the book?” 

“A little hard to understand. But my teacher says it’s her favorite.” 

“And you want to impress her.” 

The boy blushed and hopped off the rock. Held his hand out. 

“Can I see?” 

“The gun?” 

The boy nodded. 

“It’s not a toy.” 

“I know. I’ve just never saw one in person. Only on TV.” 

He started to show the kid but stopped. 

This was all wrong, he thought. He wasn’t here to be friends. Or to bring hope. He had a plan. And the longer he dragged it out, the higher the probability he’d fail. And the Bolden’s had made it more than clear that failing was not an option.

So before he could talk himself out of it, he pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger. 

And all his pain went away. 

*****

Thirty-nine years, three failed marriages and two unsuccessful trips to rehab later, former Fillmore County Sheriff, Luther Oswald thumbed through a brochure. It was all the Bolden Brothers had to read in their sterile, little waiting room. It was all he’d needed to convince him. 

The anticipation made him smile, something he hadn’t done in so many years. 

Next to the brochure sat an inch and half thick folder on the glass table. The one that haunted him. That made him a drunk. That cost him his job. That cost him his marriages. The one bloody case he couldn’t solve. 

So many questions. And he was sure the answers resided behind that perfectly white door. 

After that, the rest was a formality. He’d present his evidence to the current Fillmore Count Sheriff. The sheriff would arrest the Bolden’s. The District Attorney would press charges. The only unsolved murder of Oswald’s career would be solved. And his tortured soul would be healed. 

Finally. 

He inched up to the edge of his seat. Pushed the brochure aside and flipped open the folder. 

To everyone else, was an open and shut case. There were smudged finger prints on the gun. A note at the scene. And a body. Six-year old Mikey Dysinger had committed suicide. Everyone said so. A tragedy, yes. But not a crime. 

Only, Oswald didn’t buy it. Not for a minute. 

He turned a page. 

The image of the dead boy’s lifeless body covered in mud stared up at him.

He turned another page and swore.  

Yes, there were smudged prints on the gun. The kid’s prints. But they were big. Too big for a six year-old. The rain must have distorted them, they’d said. Bullshit. Prints don’t distort. 

Then there was the note. 

I’m sorry I did this. But it was the only way for me to nip the pain in the bud. The only way for me to avoid a worthless life, where no cares about me. And no one will miss me. 

What six-year old writes like that? And in an adult’s handwriting? When Oswald showed the kid’s schoolwork to his boss and matched it with the note, his boss didn’t care. A kid from the wrong side of the tracks blew his brains out. No one gives a shit. Not even the kid’s dad.  

That wasn’t good enough for Oswald, though. It never was. 

But he had nothing to prove otherwise. 

Until now. 

“Mr. Oswald,” a woman called out. 

He stood. 

“Follow me.” 

“Gladly,” he said. 

He threw back his shoulders. Strode behind her filled with a confidence he hadn’t felt since the moment he’d laid eyes on the boy. Redemption was so close at hand he could almost taste it. 

The woman handed him a contract and led him to another sterile, white room with three chairs and a foot-tall table, arranged more like an interrogation than an interview. Two against one. And in a way, it was an interrogation. But not the way the Bolden twins anticipated. 

“Please take a seat,” the woman said. “They’ll be right with you.” 

It felt like a doctor’s office until two men entered. Doctors usually made you wait much more than a minute. 

“Please have a seat,” the twin on the right said, gesturing to the chair. “Do you have any questions about the agreement?” 

“Not about the agreement.” 

The twins glanced at each other and sat down. Oswald did the same. 

He curled his lips into a smile. He’d waited thirty-nine years for this moment. His chance once and for all to make things right. 

“I want to talk about a former client of yours. Michael Dysinger.” 

The two stared blankly at him. 

“You sent him back to 1984.” 

“Doesn’t ring a bell.” 

“Doesn’t ring a bell?” Oswald set the agreement on the table. “He was a man you two sent back to nineteen eighty-four to kill himself as a six year-old boy.” 

“If you say so.”

“I do say so!” He dropped the folder on top of the agreement. Pulled out the fingerprints. Pulled out the suicide note. Held the up the image of the boy’s dead body. “Are you telling me you had nothing to do with this?” 

The left twin shrugged and said, “We’re telling you we’ll have to take your word for it.”

“You’ll take more than my word for it, pal. This is evidence.” He tapped the image of the dead boy. “You’re both accomplices to murder.”

The two simultaneously smiled in a way that told him they knew something he didn’t know. 

“Mr. Oswald. If this Mr. Dysinger was a successful client, and nearly all of them are, then he died in nineteen eighty-four.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Unfortunately for you, everything.”

Sweat rolled down Oswald’s temples. “I don’t follow.”   

“If this Mr. Dysinger died back then. We wouldn’t have any record of him now.”

“Are you telling me that you don’t keep records?” 

“What we’re telling you, Mr. Oswald,” the right twin said, “is that if this person successfully terminated their pain thirty-nine years ago, we would have never met him in this timeline. The closest thing to a record would be,” he nodded to the electronic tablet, “an occupied time slot with no name attached.” 

He pushed back in his chair and raised his hands in surrender. “That can’t be. There has to be something.” He pointed to the contract. “Dysinger would have had to sign one of those?”

“We’re sorry, Mr. Oswald.” 

His mouth was so dry he couldn’t swallow. He searched his mind for something. Anything that they might have that he can take to the sheriff. Follow the money. 

“How do you make money? If you let your clients keep killing themselves in the past, then there’s no way make money from them in the present?” 

The twins exchanged glances, as if they were waiting for him to put the pieces together. 

Oswald thought about it and wondered who benefitted most from the elimination of people society wanted least. Then the answer became obvious. “Your clients are undesirables who become drains on the system. By eliminating them, you’re saving the government tens of thousands of dollars per, whether it’s Medicare or court costs or prison costs. Heck, the savings might be in the hundreds of thousands per.” 

Another exchange of glances. 

“Well, fuck me. You’re just a pair of leeches sucking off the government tit.” 

An uncomfortable silence hung in the air. 

Oswald stared at the twins in disbelief. He’d been certain that Mikey Dysinger hadn’t committed suicide. And he was absolutely right. The kid didn’t do it. The government did, with the help of these two ghouls. But he could never prove it because there were no records. Everything was nice and clean. Except it wasn’t. Because he was absolutely wrong. Michael Dysinger did commit suicide. All the evidence said so. The prints. Even the note. The only difference was that Oswald now knew how. 

And had come to the crushing conclusion that redemption was lost. There would be no arrest. There would be no trial. Luther Oswald would always be the cop who cracked after the death of a little boy. 

The Bolden on the right reached down, extracted the agreement from beneath the folder and laid it across his lap. 

“Is there anything else, Mr. Oswald?”

He dropped his head. “No.” 

“Do you have a date in mind?” 

“A date?” he said looking up. 

The left twin nodded at the agreement.  

If he couldn’t solve the crime, maybe he could prevent it.  

He said, “How about August twenty-ninth, nineteen eighty-four. One in the afternoon.” 

The Bolden on the left ran his finger down the tablet and stopped. “I’m sorry. But according to our system that time is already taken.” Then he tossed Oswald a knowing smile.  “Though, I suspect you already knew that. How about something in the morning? Perhaps nine am to ten?” 

Oswald slumped in his chair. His defeat was complete. 

There was only one thing left to do. 

He reached over. Snatched the “Nip Your Pain in The Bud” Client Agreement from the right twin’s lap. Pulled a pen from his pocket. Scrawled his name at the bottom without reading a word and dropped the document on the table. 

The Bolden on the right said, “Do you require cash for a weapon?” 

Oswald stood, patted his sidearm. 

And less than sixty minutes later, he ended his pain. 

Nipped it right in the bud.