The Tell-Tale Heart of Madness 5

Chapter Three: And on the Worst Night of His Life, No Less…

            Edgar stumbled down the western slope of College Hill, his laudanum-besotted mind struggling to cope with untamable passions that besieged his mind and heart. “She has rejected me…” the whole of Apocalypse in those four words. The only woman he had ever loved (well, there was also dear Virginia, but she had had the gall to up and die on him, leaving alone and adrift in the cruel world.  Sarah was, alone, the only bright and shining thing left in his desolate and storm-ravaged world. But like a cruel and false island to a drowning sailor, she had tossed the flotsam and jettison of his love back into the merciless tides to inexorably drown.

            All of his heart, letter after several thousand-word letter, all of it had been so many feeble, ineffective waves dashed against her granite resolve. She would not be moved by anything he could say, and deed he could perform. Save one. Perhaps if he threw himself in to the river, then, then she would know how true his love was. Or had been. But what if then she realized what a prize she had passed on? What if his death broke her sanity and she joined him in suicide, hoping against hope they would find reunion in Heaven? No, for all his heartbreak, he could not consign her to such a fate. Her mother, yes. She could be thrown to the ravenous dogs for all he cared, or…or…walled up inside a remote dungeon!

            Torn between visions of deepest love and rabid dogs, Edgar was quite unready for the great machine that pulsed into view before his eyes. He looked furtively, up and down Angel Street for anyone whom he could call to for aid, but he was alone in the dark and rain-dampened night.

            The thing… (machine?) slowly came to fully inhabit the reality into which it had strobed, with a sound that could only be described as time and space reduced to sections and reassembled, only this time with a machine sitting in the middle of the street, at the top of the hill. It resembled a carriage of sorts, if such a vehicle was built to not go anywhere, for it lacked wheels or even sled rails. It had brass pipes and levers, flashing lights and tubes of all manner and otherwise creaked and groaned like a steam engine. A steam engine that slid sideways into reality, that is. At the, Edgar guessed, helm of it sat a man in clothes that were not the fashion of the day. More over his right sleeve was rolled up and his forearm bandaged from some great wound.

            “You are Edgar Allan Poe, yes?” shouted the man, in English, a fact that simultaneously comforted Edgar and yet, comforted him not at all.

            “Are you Edgar. Allan. Poe?” the man repeated, Edgar thought as if talking to an idiot. Sadly, all he could bring himself to do was acknowledge it with a shaky nod and an utterance that sounded more like “WUH?” than “Yes.”
            “Then get in,’ the man said, indicating the seat next to him.

            Edgar again said (sort of) “WUH?”

            “Do you wish to live? You are pursued by enemies you do not know.

            This took Edgar aback. Not that he had unknown enemies (he always had suspected so, but assumed they were jealous writers and dull editors), but that someone asked him a question about himself to which he did not know the answer. “I… uh, don’t know. If I want to live or die, that is” he tried to explain over his sudden feelings or great embarrassment.

            “Let me put it this way, then,” said the exasperated man, “Do you want your stories and poems to live on after you are gone?”

            “WUH, I mean, yes. Yes, I do want that.”
            “Then get it, man! There are unknown demons on our trail and we must be away!”

            Edgar wanted to ask how they would get away, or anywhere, without wheels, but then felt himself, for lack of better words, being sectioned and slid sideways across Time. He had managed to lean over the railings before throwing up his dinner into the swirling eddies of… whatever. The swirl was like the spinning of a room when Edgar drank too much, except not just the room, but the whole universe was spinning. Edgar threw up again. When he looked up, wiping his face on his sleeve, the man was looking at him with a grin and the strangest goggles Edgar had ever seen. The man had his hand out to him in greeting.

            “Nice to meet you, sir. My name is H.G. Wells.”

Interlude No. 2

            The Year is 1978 and Neil Perry has just had a series of dreams over the previous few days, each worse than the one before. It’s not even the lucidity of the dreams that plagued his nerves so, nor was it entirely due to the undeniable presence of some vast deity, its hideousness hidden behind a veil of stars, that caused him to urinate in his bed just to think of the dark, bat-wings that spanned the distance between galaxies. This was followed each night by the gaining of massive erection, followed by orgasms that shook his entire frame, his thrashing limbs sending waves of bed sheets in various directions. The orgasms kept happening until he was ejaculating blood. On the third morning, he didn’t even bother to disentangle his legs from the ruined sheets, but dragged them behind like some lunatic wedding dress, until they fell off and away. He then stepped up on a chair, looped the wire around his neck, which was attached to the top of the door jamb, and fell to the side, off the chair and barely felt the wire separate his head from his body.

            In 2002, Alexander Hartdegen is found slumped over in the driver’s seat of his own time machine. It appears he simply passed, perhaps from a heart-attack (though he was so young) but an autopsy is performed at the insistence of the insurance company. He is found to be quite empty of all his organs.