Chapter 8

What I want to show through the chapters in the past is that Mark has been reinvigorated by the impossible circumstance he's in, compared to the more sullen Mark from earlier chapters.

E4, Chapter 8

When Mark came to, he was on his knees in the middle of the street. He blinked and stared at the pavement, wondering what in the hell had happened.

His whole mind was suddenly blown by a loud, repeated explosion of noise and he realized after a bit that it was coming from the car stopped directly in front of him.

“Hey,” shouted a gruff voice from the car’s window, “move it or lose it, fella.” The driver honked the horn again.

The barrage of noise sent slivers of prismatic colors creeping back along the corners of Mark’s eyes. He felt like he was glued to the blacktop. His knees were bent tight like they were composed of broken and rusted sprockets but thankfully that feeling was quickly fading. Mark grabbed the car’s bumper and hoisted himself up. He couldn’t make out the driver’s face through the car’s tinted windshield, but he could see that he was tapping thin fingers on the steering wheel. Probably thinks I’m the town drunk, Mark thought. He made a quick “Thanks for not running me over” gesture and stumbled back onto a sidewalk. The car jumped forward as its driver kicked the accelerator and Mark noted as it went that it looked like a modified blue dune buggy. He shook his head and looked around.

The last thing Mark remembered, it was night and he was falling backwards off a bench in front of the Lone Penguin Diner. That was three years before the day he was supposed to be in, chronologically. As opposed to chrono-illogically like things had become.

At the present, Mark was standing in a one-storied, cubic business district on a slate blue afternoon in what was undoubtedly the onset of fall. He recognized the road as Main Street Boulevard in his hometown and he was standing in front of Fabruzzi’s, the worst and only pizza place in Tempest, N.J. The diner was a mile down the road.

“The date, I need the date,” Mark told himself, picking his baseball bat up from where it had rolled against the curb. He touched his right shoulder and felt that his backpack was still on.

Mark turned to Fabruzzi’s, its large windows covered with faded, outdated menus and ads for lost dogs. Mark hoped they were not connected. He marched forward, swung open the door of the greasy pizza place and headed right for the cash register. Absently, he cut in front of the first person in a short line, although he remembered to excuse himself.

“Hey,” Mark asked the tan, mustached guy behind the faux wood counter, “What day is this?”

The man wrinkled his brow and pointed at Mark. “You in line?” he barked.

“No,” Mark said, “I don’t want any pizza.”

“Okay,” said the man gruffly, and hollered, “Next!” The mousey man behind Mark squeezed by him and began to rattle off an order consisting of items from the kids’ menu and cheeseless pizza. The burly man behind the counter began furiously scribbling it on a receipt book and hollered the order in Spanish to the chef behind him.

“Hey, wait,” Mark calmly interrupted. He leaned in towards the man behind the counter and tapped the register. “What day did you say it was? I just need to know-”

“I’m taking order,” warned the man, waving Mark away. “Now quiet!” He pointed to the mousey man and asked, “Anything else?”

“Dude,” Mark pleaded, refusing to budge.

The pizza guy’s face was becoming as red as his tomato sauce. He bent over, grunting, and snatched something from under the counter. As he did this, Mark took notice of the digital clock duct-taped to the lime green paint on the back wall. “Here!” the man shouted, tossing a newspaper at Mark. “Now get out unless you want to order a pie!”

“Hey, thanks,” Mark told the steaming mad pizza guy. He stepped back from the line and examined the paper. When he found the date and day, he smiled.

“Back again,” he muttered happily. “This is all starting to make sense. Sort of.” Mark realized he needed a pen and looked over at the guy behind the counter. He then thought better of asking him for it and stretched his right arm around to the backpack’s outer pocket. Mark undid the zipper so he could pull out a red Sharpie, bit the cap off and began making marks on the newspaper. Crudely, he scribbled a math problem on top of a front page photo of a kid smearing pumpkin pie on his face. He tried not to use his fingers, as he completely sucked at math.

“The difference is once again the same as last time minus about two hours,” he figured out loud, thinking about the time on the clock. Mark had been completely freaked, excited and confused when he had first woken up in another year. A few day’s worth of blipping back and forth between his past and his present had given him a chance to calm down, however, and figure out that there was a pattern to the madness. Each time he appeared in another year, the duration of his time there was cut by two hours. This meant that he had about 20 hours in the present this time before he returned to the past. It seemed to be counting down to something. Mark was pleased that it would give him enough time to take care of what had become his personal mission since he realized he was being given a chance to correct something. He felt there was a purpose to the X-File he was living, and considered it a blessing, no matter the how nor why. Fate was favoring him.

“Very good,” Mark said, satisfied. He absently tossed the newspaper on the floor and left the pizzeria, content to be back where he belonged for a bit. Grand time traveling goals aside, his guiding desire now that his mind had settled down was to finally address the matter of a friend in need. And to take a shower.