cologne and museum

I am continuing a story I began a couple of weeks ago (this is part twenty and twenty one). _{_{You can find parts one and two and three and four and five and six and seven and eight and nine and ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen and fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and Seventeen and eighteen and nineteen if you are interested}}

You can also see and hear me read the first 7 parts here: https://steemit.com/dtube/@felt.buzz/i0p0jyj7

and the second 7 parts (8-14) here:

https://steemit.com/dtube/@felt.buzz/vm23ot2g

…

For the next six weeks we worked down in that basement, preparing for our mission to locate and kill the man called Slug.

We learned many things about the man. How he poisoned our timeline, destroying the fabric of our world, enabling things that should never have happened to happen. We learned that he favoured a certain cologne. The smell was unique to him, Marie said, as the perfume he used was from a time and a place that did not exist now. He had the last bottle, he wore it as if to taunt all the universes, as if to say, “I have the power to destroy you.”

He was originally from our world, our timeline, Marie told us. But he discovered the method of travel we were about to employ. He controlled it first. By traveling from universe to universe he could steal what was useful and destroy what was not. Or destroy what was useful to others. Those who sought to stop him.

He is a man, Marie said. He is stoppable. But he has learned to control whole worlds.

You must pay special attention to the Shades, she said. If they touch you, you will die.

…

Marie taught us how to fight the Shades and other creatures that lived - if that is the correct use of the word, perhaps it should rather be existed - in the world he was hiding in.

She taught us about his world, "it is like a museum," she said. "He has collected things from other worlds, times, universes. Some of them are wonderous. But most of them are dangerous, outside of where they should be."

I was starting to get a bad feeling about the whole trip. I wasn't best keen on visiting museums at the best of times. A museum that was a whole world, full of dangerous creature was definitely not on my to-do list.

France and I continued to flirt. I caught Marie looking at us, disapprovingly, often, but she never said anything.

Chip was our muscle man, Marie was the technical woman, I was the finder. I wasn't quite sure what it was France was there to do.

I never did ask.

I only found out when it was too late. Looking back, I probably should have taken more of an interest.

It might have increased my chances of survival.

...

As usual I started with the freewrite prompt and used themostdangerouswritingapp.com to write the first five minutes (and then popped it into google docs to check for errors and tidy it up a bit):

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I had a comment left on one of my freewrites and I have to say, it made my day!

“Hey I got the book and want to tell you how much I enjoyed your story! Loved the twist at the end… you somehow nearly always manage to produce an unexpected twist... . Love the care you take with your characters, intertwining them.” Hive account@owasco