International Legends

Chapter 5 - Jasper

Sitting in the back of the ship thinking to myself how I got myself into this position again. A job is a job, I should not complain, but the hours pass at Bar Midnight and I feel as if I had been here before. Which is insane, because I just started my job yesterday.

I had run into Bar Midnight during the middle of Jackie and David's wedding to their spouses. For being two siblings that are nearly half a decade apart, the two act like twins. They don't need to be having a wedding together. There's no logical precedent to having a double wedding. They could have had help with the money. I guess when you're dealing with an inter-dimensional tree, you make do with what you have.

Like this wedding. Being bossed around by two siblings that might as well be twins in spite of being years apart in age - constantly making remarks about the food or the drinks. "Get my wife another bourbon" from David, and "Get those women away from my husband" from Jackie had me running around this party like a chicken with its head cut off. The bar patrons were no better, hunched over in their seats and bemoaning the booming loudspeakers of the music that was upstairs.

Then Roberto, Jackie and David's sibling from that other universe or wherever, sat himself in front of eagerly waiting customers and stared me dead in the eye, saying, "I'll have a whiskey neat, please."

"Coming right up," I say, finishing up another customer's cocktail.

"This was supposed to be a better takeover than it had turned out to be," said Ronaldo. "Really, I am saving them from the clutches of Mr. and Mrs. DeAngelo, from Vortex City! They should have been more grateful!"

"I think they were gonna handle it fine," I say, "Except the military, or the time travelers that got lost."

"Oh, they're fine," says Roberto. "My buddy Joseph has them in a ship nearby, all tied up and ready to man the ship should I have to make these ones walk the plank."

I would take this man more seriously, but he's already drunk as a skunk with the smell of alcohol off his breath. There is not a lot of time to contemplate this either, as a child stares at me.

She has tiny wisps of black hair on her head and a stern expression on her face. She looks like she just learned how to walk from the way that she wobbles around. She climbs her way to the top of the chair, sits down, puts money on the table, and says, "Wawa."

The shock nearly Roberto off the stool saying "Shiver my timbers! What's is there a toddler doing here for?"

I am getting her water, unable to imagine her drinking without a sippy cup top, putting her water on the table when Claire thuds a giant book on the table, nearly twice her weight, titled "Saving Time." "What's they you got Claire?" I ask then I am instantly slammed in the face by the book. "Ow!" The book repeatedly hitting me in the face nearly blacks me out until I see stars, and I have to be helped back to my feet. I am staring at the bar, not knowing what to do with myself.  "Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer," I grumble, rubbing my head.

"I am the beginning and the ending, the complete and the incomplete," says a voice. "I am without face, without form, but I am smarter than the rest of them. I am a wizard of time and space. I am the epitome of everything."

"Where is that voice coming from?" I ask, looking around.

Roberto, speechless, and Claire, deadpan both point to the book.

I rub my head frustratedly. Trying to recollect my thoughts through the throbbing pain. That's impossible. A book cannot talk. I say

"Yes, I can talk," says the book. "I have been talking for a long time. In fact, I have been here so long that I cannot remember how I got here. All I know is that SOMEONE had forced me into this book to protect their skin!"