NaNoWriMo + 
= #freewritemadness.
17 18 freewriters are gathering at the 
Today’s prompts are: habit and a Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
As usual I started with the freewrite prompt and used themostdangerouswritingapp.com to write the first five minutes:
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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
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The many torments of Tiny Earl - Chapter 21
Tiny let them help him up the stairs and into the living room where he collapsed into a chair. There was a lot of fussing about. That Clare one threatened to call the doctor again and this time Tiny said if she phoned the fucking doctor he would cut her fucking heart out. That stopped her. He didn't understand this habit people had of the slightest sign of weakness and you call a doctor who will prod and poke you and give you "something" for the pain. They don't do nothing but harm. He looked at Glenn's face. He didn't look too worried. Curious, maybe. He kept looking at the one they all called Abigail, but Tiny could have sworn was his Janet. Maybe it was just the light, maybe it was the lack of sleep. Tiny wasn't so sure. It wasn't like with Eleanor. When he'd first met Eleanor she had looked like Janet had when he had first fallen in love with her. This Abigail, she didn't look so much like Janet as feel like Janet. It was weird. Tiny couldn't explain it, not even to himself. She came towards him holding a glass of water. "Would you like some water, sir?" she said.
“Thank you,” Tiny said, taking the water without taking his eyes from hers. Was that a shiver? She looked like she shivered. Of fear? Excitement? Revulsion? Tiny couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t of fucking cold, that’s for sure. “It’s fucking hot in here,” he said, trying to loosen his collar. “Can someone turn the fucking heating off, open a window or something?”
Glenn went off - presumably to deal with the heating - Clare to open a window. Tiny felt the cool air breeze on his face and felt better.
Perhaps the thing he could detect amongst all these women - Clare too if he thought about it - was what Janet used to call her “sensitivity”. She said she could feel things, see things that he couldn’t. Maybe that was what he could see in Abigail and the others. Even Eleanor.
Janet said her “sensitivity” increased after she used the machine to visit the other realities. But it didn’t seem to do anything for Tiny, except make him feel a little lightheaded, and a sick feeling in his stomach. Belmond said that would pass. For some people he said travel was more painful than others, he couldn’t explain why.
Tiny felt that Belmond was holding things back. Often when he would ask what he thought were fairly simple questions (for example, “how many realities could you access with this machine of yours”) he replied with a shrug, a “I don’t know” or “It’s impossible to tell”.
All the possibilities that this machine could provide him and his expanding empire did not immediately strike Tiny. At first he continued to use it as Belmond had to search for useful products unavailable in his reality or to smuggle ones that were across borders without being detected and therefore without paying taxes.
He also used it to hunt down and kill other versions of the Relwelds. Some of whom had already crossed over to this reality.
“They have a machine, don’t they?” Tiny said, one morning to Belmond, as they counted boxes of guns and explosives out of his machine (he very much thought of it as his machine, now).
“Yes,” Belmond said, his voice trembling, obviously as frightened of what might happen to him if he told the truth, as much as if he lied.
“How has this happened?”
“In one of the realities a Relweld struck a deal with a version of myself,” Belmond said, talking of other realities as if he were talking about a cousin from a city a few hours ride from here. “He betrayed my brother - shall we call him? - killing him in an argument over money and profits, and stealing the machine. That reality was crumbling fast, anyway so he need to escape as fast as he could. He traveled from reality to reality, often encountering other versions of himself that he either teamed up with or killed if they did not share his approach to things. Or if they wanted too much.”
“Too much?”
“Being similar to him,” Belmond’s face clouded over, and Tiny was pleased to see hatred and passion in the man he had hitherto thought of as weak. “A vicious, betraying, lying, murdering bastard, meant that often they wanted the power of the machine to themselves. They didn’t want to share.”
Tiny nodded. He could see that. He imagined meeting another version of himself. Part of him hoped they would be close, brothers from another reality. He had even thought about going from reality to reality making contact with his brothers to form an unbeatable gang. But realistically he knew he would never be able to trust them. He would betray them in the blink of an eye. So he knew full well they wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to him.
“We need to find that machine,” he said. “And we need to destroy it. Are there others?”
Belmond shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, and Tiny felt the irritation rise in him again - always with the uncertainty. “There are bound to be. With all the infinate possible realities that exist - or might exist - there is surely going to many thousand, maybe million of these machines.”
This news did not make Tiny happy. He wanted to be in control. He was not a man who took easily to sharing. How could he control the market if there were that many other machines out there? But TIny was nothing if not a practical man. Play with the hand you have. First things first: kill the Reywelds who had crossed to his reality. Find the machine, destroy it, or better yet take it: just imagine what you could do with two machines? More even?
With the possessions of guns Tiny had become the most powerful man in the country. The world, probably, but TIny cared little for the world beyond his small island (ironically as he was happily plundering other worlds, other realities. No one stood in his way, and if he wanted something done: it was done.
Within two days three Relwelds had been captured and brought to him, four others had been killed whilst attempting to capture them. Many of his men had been killed or injured, and Tiny wasn’t really bothered by this. There were plenty more men who would come work for the richest and most powerful man in the country. And if he ran out? Well, he could always find more in another reality. He was confident of that.
The authorities were far less confident. Suddenly, a new weapon had been discovered and there were bodies mounting up. They were under pressure to do something. Or at least be seen to be doing something. Now, a man as resourceful as Tiny had connections who were more than happy to give him the heads up if someone was asking questions.
The raid came without warning. Or certainly not as much warning as Tiny would have wanted. Someone had identified his sources and had kept them out of the loop until it was too late to do anything.
Tiny stood in a warehouse at the back of the shop, with three dead men. He was covered in the blood of the men and there was no way out. Of course, he could have shot his way out. But that way would have led only one way: to war with the state. One that he could have won, of course. But Tiny had no interest in the responisbilities of being a king.
But there was one way out. He could escape into one of the other realities. As his men stalled the authorities he made his preparations to leave.
“It is a shame,” Belmond said, although his face said otherwise. “Once you have gone you will be a wanted man. Even if we try to pin these murders on someone else,” he looked around him, probably hoping, Tiny thought, that there was someone more obvious than Belmond himself. “They know that the warehouse belongs to you.”
“It is in your name, Belmond,” Tiny said. “The shop and the warehouse have nothing to do with me. If they don’t find me here, then there is nothing to link me to being here, accept hearsay, easily dismissed as lies. If there is no evidence of me being here, they can not pin the crime on me. You, on the other hand,” he took a knife, still dripping with the blood of one of the Relwelds, and approached Belmond waving it at him. “You are the legal owner of the place in which three horribly mutilated bodies were found, and,” he moved quickly, grabbing Belmond by the collar and bringing the knife to his face. “You are found in the company of the bodies, covered in their blood!” Tiny wiped the knife over the clothes of a visibly shaking Belmond.
Belmond gulped and watched as Tiny stepped into the machine. By this time he had worked out how to use it himself (although he had not mastered navigating the different realities cleanly: it would not be certain that he could find his way back to his own reality without Belmond’s help).
“There is another way!” Belmond said, quickly. “What if we make the evidence disappear?”
It was a simple enough solution, and one that Tiny should have thought of of himself.
“Sometimes,” he said, climbing out of the metal box and clapping Belmond on the back. “The best ideas come to us when we are under the most pressure. You!” he barked at one of his men. “Help get these bodies into this machine.”
It took three trips, as the machine was only large enough to carry two people. Tiny didn’t trust Belmond to take the bodies himself and not disappear into another reality, leaving Tiny in the warehouse with awkward questions to be answered. Belmond gave Tiny clear instructions, on which levers and buttons to press in which order so he would return back to the warehouse.
Before the last trip, Tiny sent one his men up to the house. He wanted Janet to know what was happening, he wanted her at the warehouse if possible to keep an eye on Belmond, make sure he stuck to the script, didn’t say anything that could incriminate Tiny, nor put an end to their little enterprise. By the time the authorities gained access there would no bodies and no Tiny. There was, of course, a lot of blood, but Tiny stopped his men from cleaning it all up up. He told Belmond to tell them they had been slaughtering pigs, ready for the approaching WinterFest.
“But I’m a vegan!” he protested.
Tiny shrugged, “Say what you like, then,” he said. “It ain’t my problem,” confident Janet would arrive before the authorities and make certain Belmond towed the line, Tiny stepped into the machine.
The combination of levers and buttons he pushed were designed not to lead him to the same reality he had dumped the bodies: the last thing Tiny wanted was to be arrested by what ever passed as law in a different reality. He aimed to be clear of the warehouse for several hours, let the authorities examine the warehouse as best they could. All they would find was blood and a worried Belmond. They could not prove the blood was not animal.
By this time, Tiny had developed a pounding headache, and a pressing urge to vomit, which was the first thing he did when he opened the door of the machine.
The reality he found himself in was unlike any of the others he had so far been to. For one thing, it was dark - all the other realities had at least been in the same time zone (it was daytime in his reality, so it was daylight in the others. There was a strange green light that combed the sky. Tiny had the impression it was searching for something. He stood by the machine retching and looking up into the heavens.
At first he thought he might be hallucinating, another side effect perhaps from travelling through realities - he had never used the machine so often within a space of minutes. But as his eyes adjusted to the light he decided what he was seeing was real. In the sky there, what he first assumed, were birds. But they moved in a way that made him think they were artificial.
One of these things hovered before him and a green light came from where Tiny assumed were its eyes. The light moved from the top of his head to his shoes and Tiny had the impression it was trying to ‘read’ him almost as one would a book.
Uncertain of what to do, he stood completely still.
Then there was a voice, strange sounding, as though it were not entirely human
“Identification complete,” it said. “Augustine Flaherty Montgomery-Smyth, you are not authorised to be outside your pod. You are aware of the penalty for breaching curfew. You will be vaporised.”
“There is some mistake!” Tiny shouted, not entirely understanding what the creature was telling him, but certain it wasn’t an invitation to a tea party. “My name is Augustine Smyth!”
“You will await the vaporisation squad. Please stay where you are.”
“I’ll do no such fucking thing!” Tiny said, scrambling to get back into the machine. Hoping he’d remembered the correct combination he pulled on the levers and pressed the buttons.
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