SFSD-X Short Story Smackdown

2.4 What You Wish For

Two carbine rifles from the MatterCubicle, seven beers, three tequila shots (apiece) and four hours later, we were on the banks of the Delaware read to travel back to the moment the Hessian soldier shot at the professor.

But this time we were strategically placed behind a really big tree that might have been a sapling 240 years ago.

"Hey, homie, can you shoot?" Carl asked.

"Shoot what?" I asked. I blinked a few times at the rifle in my hand until my eyes focused and I remembered why we were there. "How hard...how hard can it be?" My words were all blurring together.

"We gonna stay low to get these Hessian bitches and don't forget – heroes get killed." He whooped and fired a shot in the air.

That seemed like a bad idea, but I was too busy standing upright to worry. I set down the planter which was programmed to bend time to the moment it had last curved from. After trying twice to find the commencement control, it began streaming lights around us. "Don't touched the field," I said. "No matter how pretty the light is, you don't touch. An' remember – the guys getting out of the boats are our friends. You don't shoot them. You shoot the guys hanging out on land. They're the illegal German immigrants trying to make us use bad stuff, like the metric system and drink dark beer and sing God Save the Queen, but we aren't going to let them, are we?"

"Shit no, man!"

"Shit no. Let's get 'em!" I waved my rifle, nearly breaking the field.

The lights around us grew brighter as time was bent until the light was blinding. The sphere burst apart. It was cold enough to freeze the ball off of a polar bear. Ice crunched and broke nearby and men whispered in amazement from the riverbank.

Carl and I were in a copse of young trees. I stumbled one step the heavy snow, trying to figure out where the other me and Professor Hallard were. Carl whooped and raised his rifle.

"No, you can't shoot!" I cried.

"Whatchoo talking about I can't shoot? It's my Constitutional right!"

"No, you can't shoot, yet—"

The flash from my cell phone went off two dozen yards away. The white imprint on my retinas confirmed where the professor was standing. Washington was several feet behind him.

A shot thundered. Men were yelling and then the sphere bloomed. The Hessian needed 20 seconds to reload his musket.

"Ready..." I said.

The sphere began to flicker.

"Aim..."

The sphere disappeared.

"Fire!" I shouted. Carl sprayed the area back and forth with carbine rifle shots. I wasn't sure why I told him to aim at anything in particular. From a scream and several thuds, I could tell he got the Hessian.

"Yes! Yeah, man, you did it. You—oh, shit..."

Torches appeared at the top of the hill. By the looks of things, the entire Hessian army had heard us and were coming. Washington's troops had lost their advantage of a sneak attack.

"We are so screwed."

Carl turned his rifle towards the oncoming horde. He fired. "Yo, mo-fo's, you like that? Yeah, this ain't gonna be pretty! Run away or die, bitches, this here's our hood!"

At the river bank, the Revolutionaries squatted in the ice and mud to load their rifles. Drunk as I was, I could see they would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

I stood. "Yeah, you want some, you Hessian mo-fo's?" I yelled. It was time! Time! I laughed and pulled the trigger of my carbine rifle. Bullets rained on the wave of soldiers and they fell like wasps covered with Raid. I laughed some more. I was an American hero! I reloaded. "Too bad I've only got this one life to give, but I'm keeping it, suckers!"

George Washington and the Revolutionary soldiers began firing from the river, but it was Carl and me who were wiping them out. My hands and arms were numb from vibrations and my legs were frozen from toes to balls from the cold before I could empty the second 50-round magazine.

The Hessians were down to less than half. George could take it from here.

"Carl! Carl! Let's go, that's good enough, let's get out of here!"

"Whatchoo mean? Lose our turf? You crazy, man!"

"No, we can't change real history, this has to be a victory for Washington, come on!"

I tried to crunch in the correct numbers for the Planter, but my fingers were all over the place. Finally, it announced a little after the original departure date with the professor. That would work.

"Stand still, no more shooting," I warned Carl.

The Planter bloomed around us, bending time. When the light died, we were in the modern day park, breathing heavy and grinning like fools.

"We gotta get back to my place to see if that worked," I said, running for my car. The driver's side had corrected itself. So far, so good.

Carl found the tequila and drank a gulp, passing the bottle to me. Under normal circumstances I would have refused, but I needed the heat. He whooped and stuck his head out the window, Labrador style.

Squealing into my apartment complex's parking lot, I hadn't even stopped before Carl was out of the car and firing in the air. He must have only had a couple of bullets left. I joined him jumping and shouting and promising to go find some ho's for the evening. We made it to my apartment without falling down or up the stairs. It was stuffy inside and the food had molded into freakish colors in the fridge, but it was the same as before. I flipped on my laptop to make sure we were truly home while Carl raided the liquor cabinet.

Pounding on my door interrupted Carl's festivities.

"This is the police, come out with your hands in the air!"

"What the—"

"Damn, the cops!" Carl hissed. He headed for a back window, shoving it open and jumping to the balcony below.

"What the—"

The cops busted in, guns trained to my head. I held my hands up. Quicker than I could quite comprehend what was going on, they were handcuffing me and reading me my rights.

"But what...I didn't do anything," I said. It sounded too slurred and shrill to be entirely true.

One of them laughed. "You know we've been looking for you for two weeks, since you and Professor Hallard disappeared. Looks like now we'll be questioning you for his disappearance. I hope for your sake, you've got a good lawyer. Driving while under the influence, possession of illegal and unknown arms, and quite possibly a murderer. Take him in, guys."

"But I didn't...I wasn't...I can explain," I mumbled. What the hell was happening? "I just saved America."

"Tell it to your lawyer," he said. "The recently saved United States of America will provide you one if you can't afford it."

Everything I had fought for was biting me on the ass. I had given up a job that paid money, a girlfriend who loved to shag, and buddies who went on pub crawls and all for a jail cell. Plus Carl had bailed on me.

Everything I had wished for was back. I was so screwed.

***** The end of my entry for round two! Hope you enjoyed! For this round of Alternate History and Anti-Heroes, my prompts were George Washington crossing the Delaware and Carl Johnson from GTA. For Carl's dialogue I borrowed heavily from actual text in the game. Thanks for reading! *****