Timelines: Stories Inspired by H.G. Wells' the Time Machine by Jw Schnarr Page A

She didn’t live in an apartment like Kathleen’s mother, but a real house with a chain link fence and a gate.
    Jameson brought money back with him, making sure all bills and coins were dated from that time or before. He stayed in a hotel a few blocks away and followed her. Sometimes he sat in a nearby park to relax. Finally, he saw his moment and it was so much simpler than he had anticipated. He didn’t have to hit her with a car like he thought he might, merely let loose a puppy into the street, just quietly drop it from his rented car into the middle of an intersection. She swerved, other cars swerved, and while she didn’t die there was twisted metal and blood.
     
     
    “ How did my father woo you?” Jameson asked. He was rocking his mother and singing Someone’s Rocking My Dreamboat during the commercials of COPS .
    “ This again?” she sighed.
    “ I’m sorry mother,” he said.
    “ He read to me,” she replied. “Your father was always such a bastard later, but in the beginning, he read to me. He tried to love me, but didn’t know how. Not like you. You love your mommy, don’t you?”
    Jameson pulled the blanket up to her neck. She held on to the remote and unmuted the television when the show came on. She giggled every time a policeman slammed someone into a car or sidewalk. This episode had her in hysterics. When the commercials came on again, she muted the channel and Jameson sang once more.
     
     
    Jameson found a time he liked, five years before he caused the miscarriage of Mari. 1971. It was far enough back that the prices were lower than his time, but close enough that he could still convert his paycheck to dollars from that era or before with no problem. His money went farther there. He rented an apartment just a few blocks down from a park, the one where his mother and father would get engaged later that year. Theirs was a quick courtship.
    “ He was dashing,” his mother would say on occasion, running her arthritic fingers through Jameson’s hair. “And smart, like you. He used big words and I liked that. Made me feel smart.”
    He still worked, still cared for his mother and listened to her stories and sang to her during the commercials.
    Jameson liked the park near his new apartment. There was a fence of twisted black metal entwined in morning glory. Inside, it always seemed to be green or in bloom. The park wasn’t big, encompassing one small block amidst the apartment buildings that allowed only slivers of the sun to come through. However, at noon, when the sun was directly overhead, the flowers within the park practically glowed. Pink and yellow roses reflected the light and attracted bees and butterflies and ivy wound around the four park benches that lined the little walkway through the park.
    He never thought of himself as a park-goer, but there he was, every Saturday afternoon after he brought mother home from physical therapy, every Sunday before he brought her to church, and every other moment he could slip away from work or mother.
    One day she was there. Black hair cascading down her back, the wind blowing soft tendrils across her cheeks pink with the slight bite in the breeze. Winter was coming, its voice heard in the crackle of the leaves as they began to fall from the trees, in the crunch of frozen morning dew and the ice felt on the breeze.
    Jameson didn’t mean to fall in love, but he thought it was the only word encompassing how he felt.
    “ I see you here a lot,” the woman said. He was reading the paper— history. “Mind if I sit here?” she asked, gesturing next to him. The morning air covered the blush that sprung to his cheeks. He looked over at her; she was dressed simply, in jeans and a corduroy jacket. In her hand, a book.
    “ What are you reading?” he asked.
    “ Beowulf ,” she said. “Well, trying too. It’s not really a book I can understand, which is why I wanted to give it a try.”
    “ I like the quiet,” Jameson said. “It’s so quiet