Devour

Chapter 34 -Errol

"Do you want to talk about what he said?" I ask Cora, as we trudge around outside a power plant. No, this is nothing like a good plan. Yes we are doing it anyway.

"Who? That little space-time freak?" Cora asks.

"Mostly the part where he said we have a child together, yeah," I say, tightly.

"I was thinking that he was trying to get a rise out of us just like every other thing that came out of that human version of a migraine headache's mouth—but why? Were you in a relationship with the alternate version of me?" she asks, shining a flashlight on me a bit.

"No----we kissed once---we'd raised five children together for Christ's sake there was an affection there," I say, painfully, "As you were my handler of course any relationship was off the table we'd have never see each other so we knew to leave it at that."

"Okay," she nods, she believes me, or figures I'm polite enough to be nice about it and she doesn't really believe anything the crass American said anyway. I can live with that and go on. "From reading his mind---was---any of what he said remotely true?"

"I tried not to look because it did seem to bother him--- but no, even trying I really couldn't see anything---not like he was blocking me I do think that was true he didn't seem to be psychic, it was like his brain was so full it was going to explode---like when you think about science or any of the clever things you do I don't know what that is it might as well be in a foreign language---some of it is in a foreign language I think—"

"That's probably Latin but go on---"

"Okay yeah---with him it's like that but times about fifteen, different languages, way too memories and too much knowledge to even allow present thoughts to come through," I explain.

"If he's been alive for hundreds of years through time travel that would follow," Cora says, stopping at the chain-link fence, "Here, where are the wire cutters?"

"Why do we need wire cutters?"

"Because your face is still bleeding, half-wit," she takes them from my bag and shoves my hands down, "And we need to save your strength."

"Hi, it's me, your patron saint of poor decision making and lack of impulse control."

"Is there---any chance that's not him?" Cora sighs, leaning against the fence.

"Nope, looks like there's only one crass American time traveler in Oxford," I sigh.

"I love you guys too. Really I do---what part of 'wait I'm gonna come back' was confusing may I ask? Just---just for future reference---"

"Save it, okay? We didn't have any reason to believe you would you sort of just broke into our house," Cora says and while it's completely irrelevant to the current conversation it makes me want to cry every time she says our house because she's claiming me as living there and no place I've lived has ever been considered mine.

"Well, I said I would so there's that," he got his jug of coffee back. Yes, what this child clearly needs is caffeine.

"Yeah, well we don't know who you are, so," Cora says.

"I ought to have told you my name's Bowie. I usually do. If I was being an ass earlier: I'm Bowie Fredrick Breeden, I'm kind of in charge of making sure the entire universe doesn't collapse into chaos and madness," he says, not looking up from his book, but waving a little when he says his name, "It's been about five years for me since our last wonderful conversation but I do remember you weren't fond of me and wanted me to leave and if you still feel like that you can kiss my ass because the universe is not collapsing with or without your participation because clearly I have to do everything around here. Here being the universe."