Foston Slacks - Time's Flies

8

It looked like a house. Not like any house she had ever lived in, or visited, or seen on tv. Except maybe one of those weird science fictions shows, she may have seen something like it on one of those, but she doubted it. It did have that feel of a house, though. Despite all the furniture appearing to be stuck to the walls, rather than the floor.

She should be shouting at Foston, right now. Screaming at the lemur. Him and his suit. And his watch. And his shoes. And his big, bulging lemur eyes. She should scream at those eyes. Perhaps poke the watery buggers, just to annoy him. She couldn't scream, however. She wasn't even certain she could whisper. It didn't seem appropriate.

After all, the last thing anybody having sex needs is two people appearing from nowhere into their house and screaming. Especially people that looked nothing like you. And Clara and Foston looked nothing like the people clearly having passionate sex on the sofa attached to the wall. Or the thing that looked like a sofa. If sofas had claws.

"I've never seen a creature with seven limbs before." Clara whispered from the corner of her mouth.

"Oh, they only have four limbs." Foston appeared absolutely fascinated by the lovemaking skills of the creatures. "The other three are, shall we say ..."

"If you're going to say 'sexual organs' you can stop right there."

"... sexual organs. The Kapakapururu have an extremely complicated method of impregnating each other. Each gains a portion of the fertilised eggs with which to nurture in a sack behind their eyes. When it comes time to give birth, the pressure on their eyes makes them blind. Which is really useful, because Kapakapururu child birth is quite horrible and bloody."

"You heard me when I said 'stop', right? I didn't just imagine saying 'stop'. I said 'stop' and you just carried on to spite me." Clara looked around, trying to find anything like a door.

The only thing she could see that could possibly lead out of the 'house' was a small tunnel in the corner of the room. Trying her very best to remain as silent as possible, Clara fell to her knees and began crawling towards the tunnel. Realising that Foston wasn't immediately following, she turned around and tugged upon the legs of his trousers. He stopped tilting his head, watching the Kapakapururu mating, and looked at Clara. She hooked a thumb towards the tunnel and turned back around to crawl through.

Upon reaching the outside, emerging into blazing purple sunlight, Clara jumped to her feet, ready to give Foston not just a piece of her mind, but the entire three pounds of grey matter. This, she had come to the conclusion, was not home. He'd lied and if there was one thing Clara hated, it was liars. Liars and cheats. Liars, cheats and people who drove cars with loud exhausts. Well, liars, cheats, ... Alright, she caught herself before the list went down as far as 'far too friendly plumbers' and 'rich tea biscuits'. He'd lied!

"You lying basta ..."

"This isn't London. Why isn't it London? Have you broken the multi-verse?" Foston emerged, bounding to his feet, his tail sticking upright in frustration. He poked Clara in the chest, then lifted her nose, glaring into her nostrils. "What have you done?"

"Me? You think this my doing?" Clara pushed his hands from her nose and slapped his stupid lemur face. "It's you, you bloody freak! You lied to me! You said you were taking me home."

"I was taking you home! It's you! You've broken the entire Breach network. Somehow." Foston rubbed his cheek, then looked down, his eyes widening. He pulled the sneaker and the flip-flop from somewhere and pushed them into Clara's hands. "Quick! Put these on. The grass is hungry."

When Clara stopped to think about it, the bottom of her feet were feeling a little painful. As if a million tiny paper-cuts had appeared on her soles. She looked down and saw blades of grass leaning toward her feet. Screaming, she hopped from one leg to the other, trying to put on the sneaker and the flip-flop. When she managed it, she looked at the tiny droplets of blood on her hands.

She slapped Foston's chest. When that felt satisfying, she slapped it again. That felt too good to leave at only two slaps, so she hit him several more times, even throwing in a couple of punches, but she'd never learnt how to punch properly and each punch hurt her wrists, so she continued slapping instead. Foston merely looked down at her, bemused. She soon tired herself out and stepped away.

"I don't know why you're so angry. I'm the one who has to fix the multi-verse, but no, please, be upset because you can't get home. The whole, entire stretch of reality, time and space may be collapsing in upon itself, but, yeah, Clara has to get home. Let's slap the lemur." Foston brushed the lapels of his jacket, adjusted the hankie in the breast pocket and tugged on his shirt sleeves. "Finished? Or would you like to kick my shins as well?"

"Well, fix it!" Clara seethed with barely restrained anger. She was past miffed, now. She was well on the way to being put out.

"Fix it? Fix it? I have no idea how to 'fix it'!" Foston looked at a passing group of young Kapakapururu and held up his hand, apologising for their outbursts.

"But you said ..."

"I said I 'had' to fix it. I didn't say I knew how." He held up his wrist and started tapping furiously upon the face of his watch. "If we can get to the Prime Earth, I can open a Breach to the Nexus. From there, I might, (might!), be able to find out what exactly has gone wrong."

Clara needed to sit down. She looked around and saw a boulder a few feet away. Sloping that way, the flip-flop slapping against her bloodied foot, she dropped on to the boulder and tried running her hand through her hair, only to find herself frustrated by the concrete nature of the hairspray. The boulder moved.

Jumping up, she turned to see the 'boulder' rise, unfurling until it turned into a tall, four legged thing. It turned a featureless face towards her and barked several times. The bark sounding like pebbles falling down a hill. The 'boulder' looked at Foston and barked again.

"Yes. Sorry. She's new." Again the 'boulder' barked and Foston's face appeared shocked. "No need. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"

"What did it, he, she, it say?" Clara watched as the 'boulder' walked away in a huff.

"You don't want to know." Foston caught her with a very serious gaze. "You really don't. Look, according to my Temp ... watch, we have three days to fill before a Free Roamer opens up. I don't know where it will take us, but if we get back to Earth, an Earth, at least, we'll have a better idea where to go from there."

"Wait. So, this isn't even Earth? Not, like, a weird version of Earth like the instrument one, but another planet entirely?" Clara looked around, perhaps for the first time. Properly looking around.

Of course, the Kapakapururu should have been the first clue. The second should have been the purple sunlight giving everything the strangest tinges. The boulder creature, of course, should have been the third clue. She'd never been any good at detective stories. She took in the sights. The two suns blazing in the sky, their two forms of sunlight combining into the purple rays that surrounded them. The mountains, in the distance, floating in the wind. The wind, itself, taking on the form of a large head with puffed out cheeks, blowing air from itself. All quite, quite alien.

It was a lot to take in, even with her state of oblivious ignorance she had held onto through the other jumps through the breaches. She had thought she had taken everything in her stride but, instead, she had just been tumbling down an increasingly weird rabbit hole. The only thing missing was a white rabbit, a blue waistcoat and an oversized pocket watch. Once again, she considered whether she had gone mad, then she looked at her feet, with the sneaker on one foot and the flip-flop on the other and decided no-one was mad enough to wear those deliberately.

"Three days." She said in a meek voice. "We have to stay here for three days? What are we going to do for three days?"

"I don't know. Sight see?" Foston held up a finger, turned in a full circle upon his heel and pointed in a direction. "Come on. It's lunchtime."

Clara had nothing better to do and she did feel hungry. She followed Foston as he strode purposefully across the carnivorous grass, her flip-flop flip, flip, flipping with every other step.