Friday's Whims of the Time Traveler 41.1: October 7th, 2011

This is an untitled, unfinished novel that was technically left alone in late 2008. However, the last time it was modified and checked for errors was 2011, where upon I decided that the absurdity of the plot combined with the sloppy British research was too much for the story to continue.

However, seeing as this is Whims of the Time Traveler, it's a perfect example of my first attempt at long fiction, so I've decided to unabashedly display it.

Have fun.

Untitled: Chapter One
by Belinda Roddie

Many live their lives averagely. It’s not a crime. In a perfect world, we’d all live perfectly average lives. We’d work. We’d play. We’d eat, sleep, sing, dance, and laugh. We’d cry, scream, and regret things.

But in a perfectly average life, we don’t have to think too hard about what we do. We just do it. Such is the life many have dreamed of not having, but many others have desired it above all other things. Many who live normal, peaceful lives look at the complicated emotions of other people’s lives and thank their saviour for being completely and totally average people.

Alfred Engel was one of those completely and totally average people, and he was happy to be so. He grew up in Norwich, a town east of London, before they began to make it more of a tourist attraction, so it was a perfectly normal place to live. His father was a physician, his mother a seamstress. His two brothers both grew up to be salesmen and his sister married her high school sweetheart and popped out four lovely children in a span of seven years. All of them went to boarding school in London and were now attending different universities in Oxford, all of them Christian-based. Being born out of a Protestant family, Alfred was happy to see his nephews and nieces be practicing Christians even though he personally had stopped going to church; however, he still supported them as if they were his own offspring, as he never married nor took an interest in marrying anyone. For him, committing to a lifelong relationship was too risky and required too much vigilance.

Alfred Engel was not a particularly verbose or knowledgeable man; as said earlier, he was a totally average individual. But being average had its perks; he did decently in his studies and very well socially. He wasn’t renowned for anything spectacular, or for any particular talent or skill; he was known simply for his general charisma, charm, and all-around good-natured persona. He did his best to avoid anything that would invoke any sort of drama; teen romance was not his interest, although many girls’ mothers would say, “Why don’t you ask that lovely Engel boy to dinner?” And that was fine by him, because Alfred was just that to everyone: a lovely boy, nothing more.

He moved to Newcastle West, a town in west County Limerick in Ireland, after an average university life. Despite its importance in Limerick, Newcastle West was a small town, smaller than it is now. However, because of its size, Alfred was able to become close friends with the townsfolk, and he found a decent paying job at a steel-manufacturing site despite the long hours. His father had been one of the builds-your-character types, so Alfred was raised to tolerate harsh conditions and consequences when he failed to work hard. Because of his diligence, he was promoted from an average worker to an average manager of an average steel factory, and he retired early, at the age of forty-two.

Despite his friendships in Newcastle West, Alfred Engel decided that Munster wasn’t the right place for a Protestant like him to be. Limerick had been hugely Catholic in its history, and Alfred preferred to be back in England, where religious influences weren’t as strong. He settled for Reading, a more populated and urban city, but his sister lived there and he was able to visit her and her family often. Once in Reading, he moved to Purley-on-Thames, a suburb that was calmly situated near where the river Thames met with the river Kennet, and where he lived for the rest of his life.

It’s not a crime to live an average life, and although Alfred Engel may have asked himself why he was here or what he was meant to do at some point, perhaps he found a purpose in living a naturally human existence. For him, living in a basic environment was satisfactory enough; true, he felt loneliness and frustration like any other person, but he learned to deal with it, and he learned to enjoy a life that the youth of today would consider dull or boring. He even developed a routine, for he had many mottos, one of which was, “The greatest men may not know how the day will unfold, but they have a plan either way, regardless of what could happen.”

Alfred Engel’s totally average day was as follows: Every morning, he would wake up at seven o’clock, on the dot. He had set his clocks to Big Ben when he traveled to Westminster at one point in his life, and he believed Old Benny to be the heart of London, so why not follow its beat? He would dress quickly and eat breakfast approximately an hour later, normally consisting of toast and fried mushrooms; he abstained from eggs and bacon because he wanted to live a long, healthy life, even it meant a totally average long life. He was not a man who followed the movement of the second hand like a hawk, unlike the many people forced to do so in Ellison’s Repent, Harlequin! said the Ticktockman, which was a short story that Alfred had never read. However, he still liked to do things in a timely manner and not waste a minute on anything that he didn’t think deserved an extra breath.

Alfred Engel’s day would continue with a visit to his old friend Harold Heatherton’s house, and he’d ask if his friend would like to take a walk by the river Thames; if it was a Friday, he and Harold would go to a permitted fishing area with the rods they had used for so many years and see if they could get a catch. Even if Harold was a little weak in the knees on certain days and would have to say no to the walking—he never said no to the fishing— Alfred would still stroll past the muddy waters, watching for any sailboats that could skim the surface gracefully. He could also hear the occasional slap of a paddle as a rower would pass, striking the water as if it, too, had not been working as hard as Alfred Engel, Sr. would have liked. Alfred would watch the water recede at the oar’s touch and remember the times in which his father would leave a welt on the back of his brother’s hand with his buckle. But his brother learned, and so did Alfred Engel.

He would have dinner in the same pub every day, but unlike breakfast, he always would have something different. Sam, the pimply, pubescent waiter who frequented the place every summer, would strike up friendly conversation with the graying Alfred as the latter helped himself to the special of the day, and Alfred could not deny that he enjoyed Sam’s naïve observations and questions about being a grown-up and the working opportunities he hoped to achieve in the future. When it wasn’t summer, Alfred would eat quietly as Gerald, a thirty-year-old with a knack for spitting and saying as little as possible tossed Alfred’s meal in his general direction without as much of a smirk half-painted on his face. But in that sort of way, Gerald was another of your totally average people who couldn’t care less about a thrilling life.

After sleeping off dinner, Alfred Engel would go out walking again, only this time to the gardens where he would read one of his worn out books. He never bought new ones, and he didn’t bother to buy a television, but re-reading his classics pleased him anyway. That was why they were called classics, he said, so you could read them again and again and they still made you feel something. He was not an analytical person—as mentioned earlier, he was not a particularly knowledgeable man, either—but as the old sayings go, any literate person can be transported by a good book. He was also a relatively big fan of poetry, and even as a youth he could be seen reading Browning, Lord Tennyson, and, to people’s surprise, Poe. No one had really imagined Alfred Engel to enjoy morbid subjects, but he would frequently remind his colleagues that the poems were not quite as heinously frightening as the short stories Poe had conceived.

And every night, without question, Alfred Engel would have supper with his sister’s family. Every weekend, his nephews and nieces would come as well, and even at their older ages, “Uncle Al” was still a treat for them. Surprisingly, Alfred’s brother-in-law, not his sister, was the head cook, treating them to his special steak-and-kidney pie or vegetable stew. On rare occasions, Harold would attend, and it was mainly when he was around that Alfred would prolong his stay until around nine o’clock at night, as they would play cards or talk about whatever events that may have occurred in their day. All of them enjoyed calm, casual, and just totally average conversation. Then Alfred Engel would say good night, and he would wash up and go to bed around ten thirty.

This was Alfred Engel’s completely and totally average routine, and he endured it every day of his completely and totally average life. And he was happy, even if, deep down, his friends and family may not have been as happy as he may have believed. He was a good observer, above all else, and sometimes would notice if Harold looked weary on their walks or his sister would play with her food during a less eventful supper. But he would forget about it because he knew there wasn’t much he could do, anyway; people were people. People would get bored. So would he at random moments, but they didn’t last long and he would always remember the good things about his normal lifestyle.

Because, like the moments of boredom that he endured, his completely and totally average life did not last through his final days.

Alfred Engel woke up one Friday morning around seven fifteen instead of seven o’clock that day. Of course, he was puzzled about why he had slept through the alarm for the first time in decades, but he decided that it was just his old age getting to him; he was sixty-eight years old and he wasn’t slowing down. To the overly superstitious mind, however, this could possibly be an omen to something either horrendous or overwhelmingly spectacular.

To be quite honest, it was neither. In fact, what happened later was, at best described, bizarre; unnatural; unexpected; even perhaps, in the great way of Poe, absolutely morbid.

He dressed and ate his breakfast a bit faster than the day before and didn’t know whether he did it to save lost time or just because he was hungrier than usual. Then again, it was Friday, his fishing day, and he was eager to catch up with Harold.

Alfred put on his old fishing hat and vest, which were both adorned with the typical fishing trophies he believed he had earned throughout the years. He didn’t bother to button the vest over his belly, which was straining against his T-shirt due to all of the platters of fish and chips he had had over the winter. Then, grabbing his tackle box and old fishing rod, he headed out of his small cottage toward the river Thames.

When he stepped outside, Alfred sniffed the air and let the smells of the nearby bakery, cigarette smoke, and the English atmosphere pervade the nostrils of his bulbous nose. He smiled. Even more so today, summer in Reading looked, felt, and smelled as comforting as his old hometown of Norwich. It felt good and perfectly uneventful, just like yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, which had been summer solstice.

As Alfred headed toward the small flat where Harold resided at the end of the road, he couldn’t help but notice the children nearby, whooping and hollering as they played a simplified form of “Quidditch,” Alfred had never read the Harry Potter books—he didn’t think that he could go through seven entire books of a boy wizard duking it out with a snake-faced foe—but now, as he watched the children play this imaginary game, a game that had extraordinarily changed the childhood of millions around the world, he thought that maybe, if he had some spare time, he’d try to enjoy that sort of childhood again. Childhoods, no matter how normal of one he had, needed a little magic in them.

Harold opened the door to retrieve the paper before Alfred even knocked on it. He was a little more stooped than usual, his fresh crop of white hair sticking right out as if he had been hit by a fresh bolt of lightning. He hadn’t shaved, and his eyes seemed more sunken in his gaunt face. He looked much older than usual. Maybe, for the first time, Harold would have to say no to fishing today; he and Alfred were both becoming frailer, and although they had sworn not to succumb too much to old age, it couldn’t hurt to miss one day.

However, before Alfred could say anything, Harold looked up to see him, and all the weariness that could have encompassed him left, and his watery blue eyes shone like the scales of a rainbow trout as he hobbled over to give his friend an unexpected hug of greeting. As they embraced, Alfred finally noticed that Harold was wearing his fishing attire already and moved away before he could be pricked by any of the hooks dangling off of his friend’s vest pockets.

“You’re a mite early, chum,” was the first thing Harold said, a half smile on his lips.

Alfred furrowed his brow. “Nah, I’m a mite late. It’s eight forty two. Normally we meet a half hour before.”

Harold laughed. “Eight forty two! Well, aren’t you the timekeeper today! Well, then, it seemed earlier than usual today. Maybe because of the summer weather, but what can you do? “

“Harold…you haven’t shaved.”

“No, I haven’t. I’m growing a bloody beard, you dolt! I just needed a bit of a change, is all. Seasons change, we change. Bloody hell, maybe we’ll go fishing on Saturdays instead of Fridays. Hell, maybe we’ll go fishing every day. Who knows, Al, old chum? Who really knows?”

Alfred was startled. Harold had always been energetic and dramatic when he talked and laughed, even in his old age. It was one of the reasons Alfred liked him; Harold was a poet, having made his living publishing lesser-known volumes of rhymes and metaphors for a local bookstore. But today Harold seemed to have lost ten to fifteen years of deteriorating health. He was bouncy and lively even as they began to walk, with a light step instead of his usual slow, crooked walk past the river Thames. Harold was especially talkative today, barely allowing Alfred a word in edgewise as he conversed upon a new book of poetry he was composing.

“I figured I’d go a little more fluid this time, you know, be a little more free in my verses,” he was saying as the two trekked toward the fishing area of the river. “I mean, blimey, I’m an old bugger, I might as well write something about it, right? But no one wants to read some bloody pentameter about me nearing my turn to kick the bucket…”

“I suppose not,” Alfred managed to add.

“ So I thought, go back to being young, Harold, old man. Think of the poetry you read when you were a schoolboy. Think of meadows. Toy stores. Me mum’s lap and me dad coming home from work and me running into his arms before we sat down to dinner.” Harold chuckled and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, gnarled and veined from years of holding a pen. “I miss those days, Al, old boy. Those days of being a tyke romping in the grass. And I think, if I can’t relive it, then bloody Hell, I’ll write about it, won’t I?”

“Er…yes, that makes perfect sense,” Alfred replied. He stopped and looked at Harold meaningfully before Harold could say another word. “Harold, I dunno what you had in your tea, but you’re certainly…well…cheery this morning. Any particular reason?”

Harold looked at him and the weariness seemed to reappear in his face. Alfred paled; he shouldn’t have said anything. Harold had been cheerful, and that was that; he shouldn’t have questioned it. However, as he opened his mouth to apologize, Harold was laughing again, a light, wheezy sound like the summer breeze around them.

“No, no, don’t be sorry, chum, I know. I’m normally not like this, am I? No, I don’t have a reason to be happy. Don’t need one, either. I just think it’s going to be a good day today. Something in the air, Al, it’s different. As we’re changing, other things are changing. And I thought, bloody Hell, why not enjoy it?”

His overuse of the words “bloody Hell” and his laughter, in a way, were easing Alfred, and he walked a little slower as he now conversed full on with Harold. They were far from the valley now, where houses, still slightly damaged from last year’s flooding, were barely seen from their side. However, the area where they would fish was farther away, and on occasion, they could see couples taking their children to play by the water.

They arrived to find a group of about nine to ten young boys playing marbles in a drier spot nearby, using a circle drawn with a spare piece of chalk. Still talking, the two old men cast their rods, and though they did not receive any bites for the first two hours, they didn’t notice or care.

It was certainly a very different day than any other that Alfred had had for a long time. He blamed it on the summer, as the sun pressed a warm hand against his back and relaxed his temples. He felt calm and collected, watching the muddy waters ripple as the boys took turns attempting to skip pebbles to the other side and groaned and swore at every failed attempt. After a while, Harold and Alfred stopped talking, and it was pleasant enough to simply sit and reminisce, holding their fishing rods and watching their lures bob up and down.

As the sun rose higher into the sky, Alfred’s thoughts turned to dinner. Sam was supposed to be back at the pub today, fresh out of secondary school. They had already discussed the idea of universities while Alfred was eating, and Sam was quite nervous; who wouldn’t be, with the much higher expectations of students today? And now that it was summer again, Sam must have already decided on a campus, and Alfred was looking forward to their next conversation as he settled for another platter of fish and chips.

He could feel the weight of the sun against the back of his head now. His fishing rod remained unstrained as his line simply hung against the water. Alfred turned his head to see one of the older boys removing his shirt, much against the discouragements of his friends, and wade into the mud-filled Thames.

“The fish certainly aren’t biting today,” Harold said, breaking the silence.

“No, they’re certainly not.”

“Do you think we should call it a day?”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

Harold got up slowly, his knees audibly creaking as he did so. Alfred remained where he was, staring at the river.

“Al? You going, mate?”

“In a minute. I’ll catch up.”

Harold shrugged. “Your bloody way.” Then he headed back toward the road.

Alfred didn’t know why he stayed as he watched his friend leave. Something seemed to be begging him to remain where he was, a strange aura that was drawing him toward the river. He guessed it was his urge to actually catch something; he hadn’t failed to catch a fish in the Thames in weeks. He looked at his fishing rod and sighed as he heard splashing and yelling from the boys.

Then he felt a tug.

With a yelp Alfred struggled to his feet, his back popping as he strained to keep his rod straight, but it was coiling like a piece of rope. The line was stretched taut, and he moved the rod this way and that in order to get a better grip. All at once the thrill of a catch pervaded his mind and exited through his nose and mouth as quick gasps of breath and laughter. Alfred whipped his head over his shoulder and shouted to Harold.

“Harold, wait! I got one! I finally bloody got one!”

At this, Harold came hobbling over, his face flushed. “Then go get it, you great brute, go get it!”

The fish was obviously quite restless for the bait, and for a moment Alfred was worried. Harold was behind him in a flash, grabbing Alfred’s wrist and helping him despite Alfred’s protests of “I got it! I got it!” At once, the silence of their day was fading as they attempted to capture what could be the biggest fish in their lives.

And never before had they acted so much like boys. They laughed, they hollered, and they both wrenched the rod around, trying to get whatever it was on the other end. They didn’t even care what it was anymore, a tire or a fish. They were doing it for the fun and the game. They were no longer old Heatherton and old Engel. They were Harry and Al, from London and from Norwich respectively, and they were playing.

Something like fishing would cause anyone to feel young again, and something strange and extraordinary would bring anyone to the curiosity of children. For it was then Alfred’s fishing line snapped, and he heard one of the boys holler.

“Bugger and blast! What the bloody Hell is that?”

While Harold was cussing over the loss of a good catch, Alfred’s curiosity got the better of him and he stumbled toward the riverbed, leaving his fishing rod lying in the dirt. The older boy was gawking at something in the distant part of the river, his jaw half open and his dark hair plastered against his forehead, revealing his widened blue eyes.

“What? What is it?” one boy called from the shore.

“What do you see?” another screamed.

“Is it a body?” a smaller boy cried, a note of terror in his small, quivering voice.

At this point, Harold had made his way to Alfred’s side, still grumbling and having picked up and carried over both of their fishing rods.

“ ‘S probably nothing. Damn kid’s making a fuss,” he muttered. He looked to the boy standing motionless in the water. “Get out of there, boy, it’s nothing.”

“I’m serious, you old prune!” the boy shouted back. “It’s something in the water! Something big and dark!”

Harold opened his mouth to retaliate, but something caught Alfred’s eye and he shushed him.

“No,” he whispered. “I see something, too.”

The entire group was silent, staring out toward the dark object that was floating on what seemed like a crudely constructed raft in the murky water. The object was too big to be driftwood, and it didn’t look like a loose piece of cargo. There was something about it, besides the fact that it was perfectly balanced on a set of broken logs tied together with some kind of frayed twine, that made everyone stare and watch it drift, rather than just ignore it and consider it as rubbish in the river. It moved slowly, almost menacingly, as if it imposed some greater evil on the horizon. No one moved; they simply watched.

Alfred heard whimpering behind him as the little boy who had spoken up earlier shook at the sight of it. He bit his lip; it was not in his place, a big old man in fishing attire, to comfort him. The thing drew closer, slowly weaving through the river. The older boy gasped softly before taking large strokes towards it, his arms flaying as he swam. Immediately the boys began to holler, telling him to stay back, that it could be dangerous and that he should just swim back and watch it float by. But the boy didn’t listen. A moment later he dove under the surface, then popped back up again, clambering onto the side of the raft.

“What’re you doing, you bloody nitwits?” he sputtered, spitting water from his mouth. “Help me get this to shore!”

At his command the boys began to take off their shirts and leap into the water to meet him. Only the younger boy stayed, despite one of his friends’ taunting him before swimming after the others. Alfred looked down at him, and the boy made no move to look at him, instead using the front of his shirt to wipe off a bogey from his nose.

“The Hell are they doing?” Harold muttered in Alfred’s ear. “It’s probably nothing, just some piece of furniture, or some other worthless thing. Wasting time, those little buggers. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

“You can do that,” Alfred heard himself say. “That’s no ordinary thing floating in the river.”

It wasn’t. By now, the boys had lifted the object off its makeshift boat, pushing it onto the riverbank as the raft simply kept drifting until it faded out of view. It didn’t matter, because the object itself was the curiosity, not the vessel it had been propped on for its river voyage. At the sight of it, Alfred’s eyes widened, and he couldn’t stop himself from running toward it. Harold was right behind him, huffing and puffing, but the little boy was quicker, scurrying toward his friends who were now all coughing and spluttering, wringing the water out of their trousers. One look at what they had brought ashore and the little boy broke down crying.

“I kn-knew it!” he sobbed. “It’s a b-body! I kn-knew it was s-something bad!”

“Oh, bugger off, you little sod,” a lanky boy muttered. “It’s not a body. It’s just a coffin.”

And so it was. From what Alfred could tell, it was relatively smaller than an average casket, and it had been covered by a thin black cloth that the older boy peeled off the resin surface like a layer of onion. The wood didn’t seem to be waterlogged, but it had cracked from the heat, exposing long, gray splinters on its sides. All but one of the boys moved away, while the one who stayed, a fat, grubby looking bloke, ran a large hand over the surface of it.

“Blimey,” he murmured, “I wonder how long this ruddy thing’s been floating along the river?”

The other boys seemed curious as well.

“Yeah, and how could no one’ve seen it before to pick it up?” one boy demanded.

“I wonder more about the boats. How come no one saw it or hit it or anything?” another boy piped up, his red hair disheveled and his eyes lit with intrigue.

Then, to Alfred’s chagrin, Harold spoke up. “That doesn’t matter. What matters that it’s a coffin, and that’s something the police should be dealing with, not you mites.”

The dark-haired boy, who Alfred guessed to be the leader, turned to face Harold, his eyes flashing. “We weren’t talking to you, you old sod. Go back home and clean your dentures.”

Harold’s face turned into a fresh shade of purple. “Now, you listen here, you little bugger—”

“Stop!” the littlest boy squeaked, and the two stopped arguing to look at him. His eyes were watering, and his lower lip was trembling.

“These men want to help,” he said with as much courage as possible. “So don’t bug them.”

The boys all looked at each other in confusion, but the leader seemed touched. The muscles in his face relaxed as he looked at the kid; from what Alfred could guess, this little guy was his favorite.

“All right, Luke,” he muttered. “They can stay and help.” Then he turned back to Harold, growling, “But I don’t want some old geezer telling me what to do.”

“I’m just saying you kids shouldn’t be messing with this,” Harold snarled. “Besides, probably just some empty coffin floating around. I bet nothing’s inside it. Most likely some boy thought it’d be funny to pull a prank with it or summat.”

But the fat boy was knocking the side of the coffin, shaking his head. “This thing isn’t hollow, mister. I think there’s actually a body in there!”

At this Luke began to scream and cry again, sobbing, “I knew it! I knew it! I told you!” before the leader shushed him. With a wave of his hand, he directed the redheaded boy to go get the chief constable; then he looked at the fat boy, who sat up abruptly awaiting orders.

“Bryce, that thing shut tight?”

“Nah,” the boy Bryce said, shaking his head. “Looks like there are some spaces to let some air in.”

“Crack it open,” the boy leader ordered.

Bryce stared as Harold stepped forward. “Now, see here, kid, you can’t just tamper with some coffin you found—”

But it wasn’t the leader who snapped back. Alfred seized Harold’s arm fiercely, his eyes burning. From the very beginning of the day, he knew something was going to be different, and he wasn’t going to let Harold just turn it over to the police, even if it was what they were supposed to do. He was like one of the boys, too curious to let this thing just sit there.

He must have been thinking this for a while, for he heard Harold clear his throat and felt his own fingers tightly gripping his friend’s bony arm. He thought of a better way to channel what he felt.

“Let’s just open it,” Alfred whispered. “Just because. There could be something important, and we shouldn’t get in a lot of trouble.”

“Are you off your bloody rocker?” hissed Harold. “We shouldn’t be here; you should be at the pub, and I should be back home, reading me paper. This isn’t normal.”

“No. No, it’s not. That’s why I want to figure this out.”

Harold stared at Alfred as if he were sprouting roses out of his ears. Alfred knew this wasn’t like him, either, but this was too phenomenal to pass up. In the meantime, he watched Bryce fiddle with the coffin’s latches. After a few failed attempts at opening the thing, the lanky boy grabbed a lone stick and stuck it into one of the cracks in an attempt to cry it open. When the stick broke, the leader used his belt buckle. That did it; the locks snapped open, and the eight remaining boys, excluding little Luke and the redhead, rushed over to lift up the lid.

“Oh, wow,” one of the boys breathed.

Alfred looked and his breath caught in his throat. Inside the coffin was a young, slight girl, her body deeply nestled in the folds of a tattered blanket. She didn’t look to be any older than ten, maybe eleven years old, her hair half-loosed from what looked like a braid and her skin completely white. As Alfred looked closer, he saw what a gentle face the girl had, and even if others may not have considered her face “radiant”, he thought it was very beautiful in its youth. It was also very sickly and contorted, as if all that had been good in her life had been drained out of her in her final days of undeniable pain and agony. Something about her drew him closer, whether it was the awe of the situation or the knot in his stomach of seeing such a horrid sight.

However, two things were unsettling about her as he looked upon the small girl. For one thing, her body and face looked as if tortured by something. Normally when one was put into a coffin, they were made to look peaceful; it almost looked as if this girl had died trying to get out as the coffin was moving down the river. However, she didn’t look like she had suffocated, considering that coffin hadn’t even seemed to touch the water. The second thing that unnerved Alfred was the large wound on the side of the girl’s head, red and brown and swollen, along with the fact that her fingers were coated with dried blood, looking like aged, peeling paint.

He was torn from his thoughts by Luke’s new fit of sobbing. When he turned to look, he saw Harold holding the boy in an awkward embrace, letting him cry against his belly. “She’s dead, she’s dead, oh my God, she’s dead, oh my God, take me home, please take me home!” Luke was moaning over and over through his tears, while Harold was murmuring, “Hush, hush, it’s all right, it’s all right, we’ll take you home.”

Then the storm cloud above them all broke as Bryce, who had been inspecting the body this whole time, jerked up as if in shock, his hand holding her wrist. For the first time, Alfred noticed the deep scratches on the lid of the coffin.

“She’s got a pulse!” Bryce hollered. “I don’t believe it! She’s got a bloody pulse!”

At that moment, the redhead came running back over, so the worry of an uproar was diminished at the sight of the burly chief constable. He looked more dignified than ever in his uniform as his deputies walked behind him toward the coffin. Harold released Luke, and the young boy, tears streaming down his face, scampered to the police to show them what was there. The boys reassembled in a cluster just beside the coffin, while Alfred merely stared at the unconscious girl, lying so quietly in its confines. It couldn’t be; this coffin had to have been floating down the river for at least a couple of days, with her in danger of losing air…and yet, here she was, hanging onto life.

“It’s a bloody miracle,” he muttered to himself.

Everything else for Alfred was literally a blur. Even the constable’s face seemed to lose all of its features as he asked Alfred questions. Alfred didn’t even hear or remember his answers. Things only started to slow down again when Alfred found himself sitting on a bench nearby, watching the police pull away from the river and an ambulance, which he presumed from his distorted thoughts carried the girl, follow the cars into the distance. Every one of the boys, even Luke, had disappeared, as Harold sat down grumpily beside him.

“Whole thing’s nuts,” Harold said. “Never seen anything like it in my life. Now how could a live girl end up in some ruddy unnoticed coffin floating down the Thames unless it was some crazy trick? ‘Less she got in there herself, which still wouldn’t answer for the bloody bop on the head and the fact that she was knocked out cold. Plus the whole idea that she’s still alive in the first place. It’s unbelievable.”

“I believe it,” said Alfred, still a bit disoriented. “Er…Harold, where did they take her?”

Harold frowned. “Why d’you want to know?”

“I dunno. Just curious.”

“Well, I’d say, according to me logic,” snorted Harold, rubbing at the side of his nose, “that they took her to the closest hospital. Royal Berkshire, I might’ve heard. So?”

“You better get on home,” Alfred murmured.

“Me? What ‘bout you? It’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon.”

“I’ll catch up,” Alfred lied. “Just go home.”

Harold, looking offended, stood up and started to leave. As soon as he began to walk, all the vigor and livelihood he had had during their walk had faded, and he was struggling to walk again, stooped and bent. Harold was acting old again, and Alfred noticed this and called to him.

“Er…Harold, thanks for fishing with me, even with…well…what happened.”

“Me pleasure,” said Harold gruffly, and he turned the corner and disappeared.

The first thing Alfred did was call a taxi. The destination was, indeed, Royal Berkshire Hospital. Why he was going there, he didn’t know very well himself. After all these years of mundane existence…no, not mundane, that was too harsh, he thought…no, his normal existence in the world, he was doing something out of the ordinary. He was going to see the girl, or at least try, judging that they may not let him into the room. He was going to find out who she was, and if she had been hurt, or attacked, he would do everything he could to help her get back to whatever family she had. Even if he wasn’t a policeman or investigator, he wanted to become involved.

But why, he wondered, why now am I doing something extraordinary in this life? Why am I involving myself in this girl’s predicament? Different answers cropped up in his mind: he was like Bilbo the Hobbit, and he was being forced by different aspects of his life to actually seek out some sort of adventure; he was restless and he had wanted to do something as strange as this for a long time; or even he was doing it for a greater cause, because he felt it was necessary for him to be a concerned citizen and help this fellow individual in every way he could.

But even then, despite all the reasons, Alfred still asked himself why he was doing it, and why her. The true answer was hidden deep in the back of his head. He was drawn to her in a fatherly way, even if he didn’t realize it. All these years, he had watched his nieces and nephews grow, never having his own children because of his fear of commitment. He had never wanted to do anything that required any sort of heavy-handed obligation. But he was doing it anyway; the part of him desiring to be a father to someone was opening up, even if he was unaware of it.

Alfred stroked his mustache. He watched the different streets of Reading whiz by him as if he were on a racetrack; everything was going too fast, and yet the ride seemed so slow. He remained in his thoughts until he arrived at the hospital, which he would visit once every day each month in order to see this girl.

It was on that summer day that Alfred’s completely and totally average life came to an end, and at sixty-eight, he was doing something out of the ordinary.

Now, I bet you’re wondering not just what the Hell a girl was doing unconscious in a coffin floating on a raft in the river or how she was still able to survive. But I also bet the main question you have is who the girl exactly was.

And you know what, I think you can already guess.

I really hope you saw it coming.

The work you see here has not been edited nor modified since October 7th, 2011.