Foston Slacks - Time's Flies

18

"What. The hell. Just happened?" Clara turned around walking backwards away from the traffic cones and that evil, evil queue.

She grabbed Foston, pulling him between her and the queue, looking around him every so often to ensure that the queue was, indeed, receding into the distance. After a decent, but still worrying, distance had inserted itself between them, she turned back around.

"I don't know. Somehow the author became aware of you and, in that awareness, began incorporating you into the story." As if nothing had happened, he wondered away to the side of the corridor, finding a shop selling fruit. He picked up a large peach and began a staring contest with a worm, wearing a Panama hat, poking out of the peach. "Thanks to my, frankly amazing, quick thinking, I saved you from a fate worse than death. The Eternal Commute."

He shuddered, returning the peach to the basket outside the shop and, pushing aside the shopkeeper who had looked at him with the eyes of someone hoping for a sale, continued to walk along the pavement as if he were engaging in a morning stroll.

"Well, now that's over," She snapped her head around, making certain that it was, actually over. "We can toddle on to find this 'Time' thing. Person. Whatever. I just hope they, it, can help us."

"Oh, I don't doubt it." Another shop and Foston stopped again, smelling a loaf of bread shaped like Tower Bridge. "I mean, it's only an incarnation of Time, one of them, but they should be able to, at least, give us an idea of what we're facing. No matter where Time pops up, you can be certain they know everything that has happened, is happening and will happen. It's in their nature."

"Are you sure your surname is Slacks?" Clara, instead of cherishing the smell of fresh bread with Foston, looked through the windows of yet another shoe shop with envious eyes. She may have dribbled a little bit, but she'd never admit it, wiping her mouth discreetly. "Maybe you should be called Foston Exposition, instead."

"Why, do you think it'll help me be less conspicuous?" He seemed genuinely interested in her idea. "I've never been quite satisfied with my name. I was found in a tailors on Savile Row. Once I learned English, it was the first thing I read. It seemed like a good name at the time."

"How long did they keep you in a tailors that you could learn English? A year?" The tale seemed apocryphal to her, probably a tall story he told to get the girls, or lemurs. What kind of creature would a six-foot tall, anthropomorphic lemur be attracted to, anyway?

"Oh, about ten minutes. Took me much longer than normal because English has so many strange quirks. Don't get me going on all the variations of 'there', 'their' and 'they're' and such-like!" Foston found an outdoor café, dressed to look like something from a France only seen in cheap British comedies, with strings of onions hanging everywhere and a waiter with a black, half-apron, white shirt and comical, waxed moustache. "Two coffees, please. I have no idea what the lady wants."

"Vodka. Make it a double. No! Triple! With a dash of lime." She sat across from Foston as he sat, adjusting his waistcoat and crossing his legs. "Better yet, bring the bottle and a pint glass."

The waiter rolled his eyes, tutted and muttered 'Rosbif' under his breath. You couldn't get more cliché, Clara thought. In fact, pretty much everything in The Corridor seemed to be a combination of cliché and tame surrealism, with little true originality to it. She could understand why the author kept putting off writing the story.

After a few moments, the waiter reappeared, holding a circular tray with one splay fingered hand, a white towel draped over his forearm. With a forced smile, he placed two, strong coffees before Foston and then, with a look of undisguised disgust, slammed the bottle of vodka and a tall, straight pint glass before Clara. The waiter glowered at Clara, before 'harrumphing' and reentering the inside of the café.

"He's pleasant." From somewhere, Foston had found a pair of sunglasses and placed them over his eyes, even though the brightness of the strip lights had not increased.

"Pleasant? You couldn't get a more stereotypical French waiter if you did an image search for 'most stereotypical French waiters'! This author, whoever they are, is a hack." Clara poured a good amount of vodka into the glass and sat back with the pint in her hand, taking a sip. It tasted of nothing. "And this vodka tastes like water!"

"Well, you have to understand, the author started this story when they were twelve years old. At that time, they didn't know any better. Over the years, the majority of the story stayed the same because they kept rewriting the first chapter." He took a sip of one coffee, made an exaggerated gagging face, took a sip from the other and smiled.

"Twelve years old? So, how old is the author now? Fifteen? Sixteen?" She hated the vodka. She drank it anyway.

"Fifty. They've been procrastinating a long time." Reaching over the table, Foston grabbed the bottle of vodka and topped up both coffee cups.

"How do you know all this stuff, Foston? Everywhere we've been, it's like I've had a walking wiki page talking to me." She leaned on the table, hoping for, but not expecting, a straight answer. "It's kind of cool, but also kind of the absolute most annoying thing ever. Like a kid saying 'Why?' for days on end when you explain something to them. Only worse."

"Honestly. I don't know." For the first time, Clara saw an expression on his face that didn't seem forced. He looked sad, mixed with a little nostalgia. "I just go places and there it is, all this information in my head and if I don't get it out, I fear I might just explode with trivia. Just, literally, head gone. Boom! I have no memories from before being found in that tailors, thirty years ago, except for all this information. Nightmare."

"I couldn't imagine what that could be like." She totally could.

There had been more than a few occasions, the day after a mammoth boozing session for instance, where she would have horrifying flashbacks throughout the day, triggered by a simple word here, an image there, finding a strap-on in the drawer of a desk. The usual. What Foston was describing, however, was that times a million. The sheer amount of information that spewed forth from his mouth, at times, couldn't come from reading about something. These were all things he had experienced. Or so it seemed to Clara.

"The worst thing is meeting one of the ex-spouses and not recognising them. Embarrassing!" He made a theatrical look of terror, waving his arms around, as Clara spat vodka everywhere.

"Ex-spouses? Spouses? Plural?" She grabbed the towel from the comedy, cliché waiter as he passed, receiving an eye-twitching glower from him. Wiping her mouth, hands and the person at the next table, she couldn't take her eyes from Foston.

"Oh, yes! There was Gavin. He seemed lovely. A little too obsessed with plush toy ponies, but who am I to judge? Then Sylvia. Nice hair. Ooh! Kevin! He was tall. Umm ..." He placed a finger to his lips as he thought.

"How many times have you been married?" Clara could not grasp this at all. She tried. She failed. She tried again, which also failed, so she pulled up her socks, strapped on the old Blitz spirit and tried again. That failed, too.

"At the last count, over various timelines, alternate realities, alien worlds, time periods on the Prime Earth and various fictional, but really quite realistic, worlds ..." He counted his fingers several times, looked up, tapping his teeth, rubbed out an imaginary number, counted his fingers again and then tested the air with a wet finger. "Around one-hundred, thirty-five and a half spouses. I'm not sure I should count the half because, apparently, we left each other at the altar. Or, I should say, altars. We both went to the wrong churches. Or so I was told"

"You've been married ..."

"Yes ..."

"A hundred and thirty-five times?"

"And a half. Ish." For some reason, none of this seemed at all strange to Foston. He didn't seem to think anything of it, just carrying on, sipping his vodka infused coffees.

"And you can't remember any of them?" He shook his head and shrugged, smiling. "How did they all recognise you? You said you'd been a gecko at one point. Were you found wearing your telepathic watch thing?"

"Nope. I made that about twenty years ago. When technology caught up. I have no idea how any of them recognised me. Infinite universe, you see. Anything that can happen, has happened, is happening and will happen. Often."

"Is there anything about you that is not completely bonkers?" Foston thought about that, grinned and shook his head. For once, remaining silent.