Time Trap

Seven years of work here in the KT and the worst that’s happened to me is that I lost a fingertip in a time trap. It’s still there, falling to the floor in a three second loop over and over again for eternity over in Cardiff. The victim is still turning to look at me every three seconds before the trap springs. I reached out for her and my finger tip was caught in the field when it went off. She’ll stutter her half pirouette with wide astonished eyes for the rest of time. My fingertip will brush the shoulder of her coat and hang there until gravity pulls it down where it will almost touch the floor before the loop starts again.

She was Laney. We were set to be married on a summer’s day just like in the song.

Simon was killed last week after only six weeks of active duty. We’ve put him at a desk alphabetizing until we can find a way to get him back. Elaine was aged from 16 to 49 over the course of six seconds. Julie lost an arm. Ted got two more. Peter’s head got twisted the other way around but wasn’t killed.

They still don’t know what to say to me. They look at me like I got the worst of it.

All the mage science and laughterlife we know isn’t going to bring her back. The worst part is knowing that I can catch a flight to Cardiff right now and see her turning towards me over and over again with a questioning look on her face that I can never set at ease.

The trap was set for my DNA. She triggered it because she was pregnant with our child. The baby had my DNA in it. The trigger was sensitive but not smart.

We found the bad guys. I killed them myself.

Three seconds. I go back to Cardiff less and less and I die more and more. There’s a blackness inside me that’s making me reckless on duty.


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Crowclown

He was a crowclown. Small dark eyes glittered like a bird’s deep in the hollows of his face. Six more and he would have looked like a spider. Big black circles surrounded his eyes. The end of his nose was a ravaged black that looked like frostbitten flesh. The black around his mouth was perfectly edged but still looked like a stain. It wasn’t makeup. It looked tattooed. It looked dyed. A mirrored clown make-up rorshach birthmark on his face. He had little triangles above and below his eyes.

Black matted hair sloped down around his ears like Victorian royalty. His ruffled collars looked ludicrous above his black and white thick-striped oversized long-sleeved shirt. He was wearing starched black overalls that were dirty from the climb from his grave. His oversized shoes sparkled with an obsidian finish. Sharp fingernails of polished jet poked out from the fingertips of his ragged black gloves.

He was a circus raven. He was a zombie mime. He was a shaman from the crow tribe of juggling Iriquois. He was a spirit of revenge. He was a Hell-oquin.

Back from the deadpan.

He perched up in the ceiling ropes and surveyed the floor of the big top’s center ring. The monochrome pattern of his clothes kept him hidden in the play of light amongst the rope’s shadows like a tiger’s stripes in tall grass. If one did see him, one could be forgiven for thinking that it looked he was at the center of a web.

Every circus has one. They are unsettling but necessary.

They infest the rooftops of clowntown like pigeons.

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Virus

It wasn’t the blood or their still-staring eyes that did it. It was the smile I could feel fading on my cheeks. My throat hurt like I’d screamed myself hoarse and the muscles in my face hurt like I’d been laughing for hours. Everyone in the department was dead except for me. That kind of narrowed down the list of suspects.

I sat down hard and ran slippery hands through my hair and tried to ignore how red the room was. I tried to figure out what had happened.

I was promoted to Special Ops Admin back in ’18. I remember thinking was a juicy bit of promotion that was. I couldn’t wait to have all that access to national secrets. I was a bit naïve for someone so intelligent.

Let’s back up.

Every morning, I download my brain. Every night, I upload it to the computer. I am two people that are identical in every way except that during the day at work, one of me knows what only 8 other people in the world know; every single unclassified, need to know, off the books, super secret mission ever. My head is a filing cabinet along with the others. We sort, update and access the world’s secret files for people who, quite simply, need to know. We found it couldn’t be left to computers alone so we were chosen. We’re smart people with the right kinds of brains to be wired up and bright.

At the end of my shift and also before I go for lunch, the back of my head is jacked into the computer and the security-sensitive contents of the day’s events are encrypted and uploaded into the main computer. My work week is basically a series of lunch hours as far as my memory is concerned peppered with some scattered fragments of banal conversation that the memory techs think are allowable.

I was picked for my absurdly high IQ and specific brain makeup by my bosses here at the CityMP. I suppose whatever chose me for this attack picked me for the same reason. Or maybe it was just roulette.

According to the clock on the wall, my day started twenty minutes ago.

There are 8 bodies in the room. I am the only one left. Something must have hacked into my brain while I was off duty and lay dormant, waiting for me to download it in the morning.

I’m piecing it together when I feel my eyes squint and my cheeks tighten with a smile that doesn’t belong to me. My hands fly up to my throat and break my own neck before I can even scream.


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