This is the continuation of my freewritemadness/NaNoWriMo story.
Catch up with the previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23part1, 23Part2, 23Part3, 23Part4, 24, 25Part1, 25Part2, 26Part1, 26Part2
…
I am using 
Today’s prompts are: quarantine and a Photo by Asa Rodger on Unsplash
As usual I started with the freewrite prompt and used themostdangerouswritingapp.com to write the first five minutes:
The many torments of Tiny Earl - Chapter 27 (Part One)
Glenn heard the car start and the sound of the tires churning up the gravel on the drive, and knew it was not going to be good news. He ran to the window in time to see Tiny's Rolls speeding down the drive, sending up clouds of dust. He grabbed his communicator and barked some orders into it, but he knew it would be too late. The guys on the gate wouldn't be able to stop Tiny. Not without hurting him, anyway.
Or someone else.
And as far as he knew that wasn't part of the plan. But then Glenn seemed a lot less certain of what the plan was than he had a few hours ago. Abigail had run down the stairs, as soon as he began to speak into the communicator, and now, he followed. She stood next to Tom, who looked pale and worried.
"Shit," she said looking at tire marks in the gravel. "We were supposed to keep the fucker in quarantine. Now he's out... anything might happen."
Given what had happened so far, Glenn wasn’t convinced the quarantine had been particularly successful. His communicator vibrated in his hand. He read the message then looked at his car and then at Abigail.
"You fancy a ride?" he said. "The shopkeeper apparently has an idea of where he might be heading."
This time Abigail didn’t make any smart arse comments about the state of his car, she just nodded and ran to the passenger side.
“The others will be coming,” she yelled at Tom. “Just stay where you are. Don’t go in that fucking house. And don’t touch anything.”
Tom nodded, stuck his hands in his pockets and stood there looking forlorn. As Glenn jumped into the driver's seat and started the engine, he realised Tom reminded Glenn of how his father looked, at the crematorium just after Glenn’s mother’s service. He looked lost, shocked and vulnerable. Welcome to the club, Tom, he thought. Welcome to the fucking club.
Glenn
“The shopkeeper has sent a map through. Apparently, Tiny met Eleanor at a church at a little village a couple of hours from here. The shopkeeper thinks he’ll be heading there.”
Even with his eyes on the road, Glenn could see Abigail’s expression out of the corner of his eye.
“Church?” she said. “Tiny doesn’t strike me as the religious kind.”
“The shopkeeper thinks there is something there. Something important to him.”
“And, did he tell you what he thinks that something might be?” Abigail said, checking her communicator.
“No,” Glenn said, slowing down as they entered the village, driving past the pubs with people still sitting outside oblivious to what might about to happen to their reality. “He didn’t share that with me.”
They drove in silence for a while. Then Glenn cleared his throat.
“I’m aware you didn’t give me a straight answer,” he shifted his eyes to look at Abigail, her eyes fixed on the communicator in front of her. “Before, when I asked you if you were from this reality.” He flicked his eyes back to the road, and for a moment thought he saw a stag strolling beside the road. He had the impression it turned its great head and looked at him as the car passed. Glenn checked the rearview mirror, but saw nothing. He shook his head. He was tired. He must have imagined it.
Aware Abigail hadn’t replied, he said, “You didn’t say of course I’m from this reality, just This is my home. An odd thing to say, I thought.”
He could see Abigail shift. She was looking at him now.
“I’ve been here, a long time,” she said. “A very long time. I don’t belong anywhere else.”
Glenn felt his grip on the steering wheel tighten. Aware he was holding his breath he let it out through his nose and took a slow deep breath in.
“You are probably owed some truth, Glenn. After all, I know most of your secrets. It probably is a little unfair you don’t know mine. I wasn’t born here. But I was brought here as a very young child, and it is all I have ever known. Tiny visited my reality, and caused some things to happen there. Bad things. There are weak points, in all realities. You know that. Sometimes, people see things that they assume are ghosts, but they are just looking through the threads of one reality to another. Sometimes, people even slip through by accident. People go missing, vanish all the time, because they have fallen from one reality to another. And sometimes, people appear, too. That is normal. But Tiny was using a machine. A machine that should never have been created, and one that should never have been used as it was. Everytime it was used it ripped through threads of reality. Sometimes it didn’t matter. Other than to create another weak spot, where ghosts could be seen, or people could fall through. But sometimes, the threads in a reality became so fragile, so damaged it began to unravel. That is what happened to my reality. It unravelled. It doesn’t exist anymore.”
“But…” Glenn tried to get his head around what he was being told. “But, how did you escape?”
“My mother and father helped me,” Abigail said. “They knew Tiny. They were betrayed by him, fought him and almost died because of him. When he escaped their reality - in that machine of his - they figured out a way to slip through, to escape. They couldn’t save their world, their reality, their friends, their family.”
Glenn glanced over at Abigail. She was staring out of the window, a glazed look on her face, a single tear streaking her cheek. She reached down and pulled out a packet of tissues and wiped it. Glenn realised it was the first time he had seen Abigail look vulnerable.
“We’ve been trying to contain Tiny ever since.”
“But I don’t understand,” Glenn said. “Tiny has been here for years. He’s stopped travelling. Hasn’t he?”
“Yes. He found a reality he was relatively safe in. He killed his doppelganger, and lived his life. The shop was set up to monitor him, to make sure he didn’t cause any more threads to unravel.”
“But something changed…”
“Yes. Someone is coming for Tiny. And they are not just affecting our reality with their meddling. With the damage they are causing with their meddling, they are threatening to unravel the whole fucking multiverse.”
...
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