Time And A Word| TUA

009

009: DALLAS, TEXAS

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After the world ended on April 1st, 2019, and the seven people who caused it managed to escape to another time, Harper Karpman face planted in an alleyway, as she fell from the electric portal above her, landing in an alleyway, and spitting her nose. 

"Ow." She muttered, as she got to her feet, and looked around the alleyway. "Guys?"

None of them were there. Not Five, complaining. Not Klaus speaking to the air. Not Luther holding an unconscious Vanya. Not Allison with her bandaged neck. Not even Diego was around, pretending the fall didn't hurt. 

She was alone. Completely and utterly. Even the portal vanished after a few seconds.

She stood there for a few minutes, staring at the empty space, as if maybe it would just . . . open back up? And throw the siblings at her.

But it didn't. She remained alone in the alleyway. 

She could hear a road behind her, and turning around, ignoring the blood now begining to spill from her nose bridge, and sure enough there was a lively street behind her, cars driving either way. 

She walked towards the street, looking around. It looked great, and clean, but unfamiliar. She knew that she was used to the dirt of the city, but looking around this place appeared . . . too clean. The cars were colourful, as was everything else, but the cars were the old models her uncle loved so much from the 1950s and 60s. Men walked around in button-ups and rimmed hats, women in dresses that reached their calves, hair styled, lips mostly bright red. Across the street, the theatre had the old letter signs with a large light-up logo above it, the film being advertised - Rio Bravo. 

Stadler's restaurant, Dallas Deli. She made her way down the street, looking around at all the stores and cars. She wasn't just in Dallas, one of the last places she wanted to be in America - but it wasn't 2019. It must've been the fifties or sixties. 

Across the road, a very small store stood out to her - a newsagents sign on the window. 

She crossed the street, rushing inside, past the candy-lined shelves, and made her way to the shelves along the wall, lined with magazines, grabbing the first she could get her hands on after pushing past a man, and ignoring as he complained. 

Journal. Ladies' home. The magazine women believe in. Spy thriller condensed novel: complete in this issue. August 1959, 25 cents. 

She froze. August 1959. 

She grabbed another magazine.

"Women have no respect anymore!" A man behind her practically yelled, cigarette in his mouth, as his friend nodded. "This is public indecency!"

Harper was focused on the magazines. August 1959.

"Ma'am? Ma'am, can I help you?" The teller asked.

Five had sent her all the way back to August 1959. 60 years back. 60 years until the apocalypse. She would be dead by then. There was no way she was making it to 50, never mind 90.

Her nieces. Her nephews. The Hargreeves. Klaus. 

She looked back out the window at the alleyway. No one was there. People walked past it like it was nothing.

She glanced at the teller, who was still questioning her, as the man complained. "What?"

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Sorry! Short one this time just to get it started, similar to the start. Plan is to post it with chapter ten, but I haven't published any chapters of this as of writing this, so I may forget, so if you're reading this note and I haven't publish chapter ten, please comment to let me know I forgot! If you've read anything else I've written, you probably copped that I have really bad memory, and I'm sorry about that, so yeah just let me know if I didn't post it lmao