A Time Traveller’s Fable - Chapter 2

Jack Of Hearts

A Time Traveller’s Fable - A novel by Pete Brennan

Chapter 2 - Jack Of Hearts

Lily’s room was like any other kids at the orphanage. A tiny box of a room. A comically small open plan living area, bedroom and kitchen with a tiny bathroom opposite the front door. This old hotel room, which would have been available for a song in the time before the war had been retrofitted to house ‘Empowered’ children who had been orphaned by it. And there are a lot of such children. Tens of thousands in fact, holed up in thousands of makeshift orphanages like this one all around the world. 

The building itself, which had been a budget hotel before the war, was falling apart in every way a building can. Plaster falling off the interior walls in massive clumps. Leaky and frequently blocked plumbing. Mouldy and flaky paint in every corner and on every floor. Everywhere you looked you saw that same putrid yellowed quality that decrepit buildings seem to have. 

The fact that it was a cheap hotel in another life was also inescapable. You could still see some of the tacky, cheap artwork on the lobby walls and the whole place was furnished with what Lily was convinced was the ugliest carpet on planet Earth. And the smell of this place was something Lily had never gotten used to in all her time here. It stank of mould and decade old cigarette smoke. 

Everytime a plug was pulled or a toilet flushed anywhere under the roof, the water would rush through the plumbing that seemed to completely surround Lily’s room with a booming cacophony of cascading water that made her think she must live under Niagara Falls or something.

After collapsing as she did every night onto the army cot that was her bed she pulled an old and withered playing card out of her jeans pocket and twirled it in circles around her index finger. The card was all she had left of her father. The Jack of Hearts.

She stared up at the damp stained ceiling and thought of her old room. The one she missed. The room she would do anything to sleep in again just one more time. She often mused over the idea that her old house was still there. That house that her parents worked so hard to afford in the middle of that nice, suburban  neighbourhood. She wondered if her toys were still there on her old floor, the ones she never got around to putting away in spite of her mother’s repeated requests to do so. She wondered if the house was even still standing given its proximity to Ground Zero. Her father was a soldier and had been stationed at the military base there since before she was born, requesting the transfer when he and her mother had bought the house. Lily knew he had been a soldier, ‘Special Tactics’ or something, but she couldn’t really remember much more than that about his job. 

She had been only nine when it all happened. Her parents had avoided talking about the news whenever she had been within earshot, but she had a fair idea about what was going on in the world. She had a phone as lots of nine years old did at the time and social media accounts where she saw pictures and videos of ‘Empowered’ people doing crazy things all over the world. Her parents thought she only looked at the kind of content that they thought nine year old girls like, dancing tutorials and puppy videos, but she saw everything that was happening on her planet. The heroes, the protests, the fighting, all of it. 

The day before the fateful morning her father got his summons to fall in at 06:00 sharp. The Liberator had promised his siege would start at sunset the next day and all hands were promptly called on deck for preparations for all out conflict. 

Lily can recall every single tiny detail about that final day. The sight of her father looking like an action hero in his uniform. The picturesque image of her mother stood with her father, her blonde hair blowing in the wind, as she watched their last sunset together. The smell of the bacon and eggs breakfast she made for her husband the following morning before he shipped out. Everything was cemented in her mind for all eternity, as real as the day they had happened.

When her mother woke her up her father was already dressed and eating. He turned to hug her with a piece of toast still hanging out of his mouth, picked her up and spun her around right there in the dining room. Lily’s mother would have normally put a stop to such tomfoolery, but not this morning. This time she just stood there drinking her coffee with a half smile that was somehow devoid of any joy. Instead, it was a sombre, bittersweet and almost sad smile. 

After breakfast, Lily's mother sat outside on the porch as she always did when her husband shipped out to see him off. He had already kissed them both goodbye, told them he would see them soon and boarded the military transportation bus. 

Lily and her mother watched the bus drive down the road and out of sight from their front patio. There was a little bench that the father had made by hand on the deck that Lily sat on next to her mother. She awkwardly fiddled with a pack of cards her father had given to her when she had asked him to teach her how to play poker. Her mother started to cry. 

[Lily] ‘Dad’ll be okay. Mama’.  Lily offered this consolation, knowing even at such a young age that it might not be true. 

[Lily’s Mother] ‘I know he will’.  Her mother played along with Lily’s lie.

[Lily} ‘Wanna see a magic trick? Cheer you up?’

Lily snapped out of her daydream and back to her dank little room in the orphanage, twiddling the musty old card around and she realised she had been crying. She wiped the tears away, told herself to grow the fuck up already, picked her backpack up off the floor and walked over to a tiny writing desk that was positioned by the only window in the whole room. The view she saw on the other side of the glass was the same as it ever was; the rustic and chipped brickwork of the next building over. It never changed, but she stared out that window every day all the same. 

She sat at the desk, opened her notebook and tried to do her homework. But in a matter of a few minutes, she was daydreaming again. She was back on her old porch with her mother, waving off her father who, just as they were, was crying. 

Lily couldn’t remember ever seeing him look scared or even nervous before but, on that day, he was visibly anxious. He blew a kiss to his two girls and stepped onto the Army bus. As the bus drove around the corner, Lily and her mother saw him for the last time. 

[Next: Chapter 3]