The Longest Road

Up by the river, where the road is slanted upwards, I saw Lisa Reeds and she had been picking flowers.

It was dark in the alleyway between Mason and George streets. A lot of water was running down the middle of it from faulty drain pipes of the restaurant on the right and the hotel on the left that made up the alleyway. The restaurant was Ruben's Take-out, an all-night joint where you could take a girl to have a nice time because they had a karaoke machine and karaoke night was optional.

Renee' and Franky were riding in their skateboards and were about to pop some M-80's in the alleyway.

That was when he came.

He was a cowboy with a brown hat like in the old movies and a brown overcoat. He was in blue jeans and black and red checkered shirt. He was hiding a shotgun on his left hand. It was inside the jacket-coat pocket. The man was called The Time Bandit.

From the third floor, I could see them and I yelled at them, "Holy sh**, Frank, what the hell are you doing!"

The man was at least fifty-feet from them but it was so dark none of us could see him, not even me. Maybe, it was because he was wearing a hat or walking so creepily slow.

"Shut-up, wooz! I toldz ya we had some firepower!"

"Yeah, right, ain't no way you going to get them turned on in all that water!"
"The heck I ain't!" Franky snapped back, waving a red Zippo lighter in one hand.

Renee was Franky's sister, and was one year younger. She was standing back a few feet.

Franky was in his usual black jeans and oversized Crazy Me black t-shirt. Renee was wearing a yellow ribbon on her head and a blue school dress with the typical white socks and black shoes. Me and Franky had been pals since the second grade. We were in sixth now and knew a lot about the messed up world. It was closing in to around seven-thirty at night and it was dark in the alleyway of Compton. In about ten minutes, the junkies and the drug pushers would show up, so it wasn't a good idea to stick around much longer.

"Hey, Renee!" I said.

Renee smiled and waved up at me.

"Ha, got one, cover your ears, cover your ears!"
Then, we heard him and the whole world seemed to go silent like in one instant. I had been in an airplane before and your ears feel all weird when you're so high up in the air. This time it was different like all the air had decided to just stop making noise. It was surprising because he was talking and I could hear him from the third floor

"It's time Franky."

"But I wasn't done, Ramirez! I wasn't done!" Complained Franky.

"You must do it," said The Time Bandit.

What were they talking about? Even Franky's sister looked confused.

"Steven!" Franky yelled up at me and his voice seemed to echo.

I just looked at him.

The Time Bandit handed Franky his shotgun, except I saw it wasn't a shotgun but a shotgun with a circular device on the end, a blue glowing disc with a hole in the middle like a music disc.

"What are you guys doing?" Renee asked, both concerned and confused.

"This has nothing to do with you," Franky snapped back at her.

Renee took a step back from her brother, scared.

The Time Bandit laughed and his laughter was crawling on my skin like maggots.

Then, Franky pointed the shotgun up at me with a smile and said, "You should learn to follow the rules, mother****!"

I heard a distinct sound like when you break a window and, suddenly, I saw Lisa Reeds up by the river where the road was slanted upwards and she was picking flowers.

Compton city was gone. Instead, there was a river, and I remembered where I was for some reason.

The earthquake had separated California into a north and south. There were no more complaints by immigration because the United States declared that since the earthquake was a natural disaster, it had no responsibility for the repair of a large piece of land that now belonged to Mexico.

It was 2015 and I was twenty-three, a fisherman now, thanks to the proximity of my dad's old cabin to the newfound river. It had been formed in 2010 but the people of upper Mexico still called it "El Rio Nuevo." The river ran like a crack all across California (lower) up to where the two parts of the state were separated by the San Francisco bridge. Somehow the bridge had stayed but the upper parts of California had gone.

It was a relaxing day. Some of my flies had netted me three or four fish.

Up near the pass, Lisa was still picking flowers by midday when the fish had been more adamant about swimming with the stream than biting. I began to sing, "Oh, my woman she done me wrong..."

"Well, well," said the eighteen year old Lisa, who heard me. She wasn't so far away that normal talk wasn't possible, "You again. Why do you always show up in front of me?"

"Oh, have I been here before?"

"Yes, you have," said Lisa.

"Oh, well, round the bend of the hour, I guess I'll be going back home."
"Odd thing to say, wouldn't you rather know why you don't remember."

"I figure remembering is for people always worried about their past."

"You're more of future man, I suppose," said Lisa, almost laughing out loud. A few bees passed by her sight but she just flicked her hand back and forth.

"Mind you, I been fishing here, well, ten odd-some years now, only seen you down here twice."

"Twice, eh?" Lisa asked, ripping a yellow tulip hard from the roots. "Wouldn't say much when I seen you the six times I been here. Guess two times is enough for some people."

"I guess," I said, averting my eyes.

"Now, you wouldn't be hiding anything from me, would you?"

"Ha, what could I hide. The Time Bandit already took everything I loved from under my feet."

"Yeah, well," Lisa said, "He might have done both of us a wrong turn. It ain't so bad, is it?"

"I like the fish," I said, with some sincerity.

"Don't we all," she whispered to herself.

I began to gather my things, including my bucket and fishing rod, along with a small black suitcase, with various lures along the walls. "May I see your rod?" She asked me, a basket of flowers in her hand. She was like the most disgustingly perfect vision of beauty you could ever imagine. She was even wearing a white dress and had the audacity to wear no lipstick, just the way I liked it.

Most of that wasn't right.

I answered her, however, with the greatest calm, "Not today," I said, "Gotta do some cooking before long. It's been a long day."

"I can imagine," she said, with a smile, "Maybe, I'll see you along the river tomorrow, you can show it to me, then."

"Oh, right, maybe," I said, hurriedly, hoping she didn't notice

She hadn't, which was why I didn't love her.

The cabin ran up the river and was surrounded by trees. Everything after the earthquake had become forest. It was in science or something of the sort that one learned about how great disaster followed great rebirth because the seeds of trees fell to the ground and became fertilized when needed. So, trees popped up, seemingly out of nowhere like in a wizards book. My life had become like a scary book because they thought I didn't remember but I remembered quite well. I had to pretend or else they would ruin it and I couldn't have that, now could I?

It might be only two minutes or three but I would see her. It wouldn't even matter if it was just glance, if it was just two seconds. They had been kind to me in the previous era, almost more kind than I deserved.

The Time Bandit would come again. The irony was that he was always on time to interrupt and ruin everything.

The cabin was quiet for three days.

I wasn't in it.

It wasn't until Lisa came to visit that the Company found out I was gone. By that time, I was sailing undercover beside a barrel of molasses in the storage hold of a supply ship, going up north. It was very convenient for them that The Time Bandit had put me here this time because they could put a great distance between me and her. They didn't know I would follow; and that their stupid tricks couldn't stop me.

I sailed with the ship for days. At around the middle fourth day, Captain Larris O'neal found me. He kicked the sack I was in, supposedly to make sure I wasn't dead but he had got me so hard, I had his boot mark branded on my skin. "Must be hungry just lying there for days and whatnot?"

The captain was a tall round man, with a beard and mustache. He wore a white captain's uniform and he was mostly inside the driver's wheel because it was raining at night.
He fed me, mostly raw fish and oysters. They had a cook but he liked to open cans and experiment and he had said that it was not time for dinner yet. I ate whatever they gave me gratefully. Captain O'neal, it turned out, was a pirate for the rebels and there were was a Time Bandit after him, as well. "Oh, aye, been around most of my life in the seas, though. Somehow wound up in 1929 last time with the extorting of alcohol and all them things. I was about ten years old at the time. Rough seas in those times, lotta ships being built for the wars but still got a nice little job as a ship's mate. Captain O'hara loved me, said I was extremely well-trained for a beginner, almost made captain then, too, before the broken glass ruined it."

"Do they only take away the things you love?" I asked the captain. He was like me, so I had to ask. I had always wondered if there were others like me in this life. My original time, 2062, was the time of the rebels and since they were all shot by the Time Bandits, I didn't get to meet most of them or know the reasons for their misfortune.

"Can't say, kid," the Captain said, "Yous about the only one I seen from my day. 'Course they talked differently in those times, don't they, got more control over everything. First, it was the south, so concerned with borders and wars and oil, then it was people. I hear there's talk of a watchamacallit, hero, or whatnot, going to come back and save us all."

"I say be concerned about the future not the past," I said.

"Ha, that's a good one, kid," said the captain, "Here take the wheel, drive for a bit. I suppose you're going back to the thing you love most."

"Yes, a girl."

"Oh, aye, that's the worst type, ain't it, always searching for her and always in the wrong part, but my love for the seas, ha, they couldn't take it away. I been in this era a good six years now, darn near started a family, if I wasn't so suspicious that them corporate types might be watching me."

The next six days he talked to me about his would-be wife, the color of her hair, her pretty green eyes, how old she was and young she looked. We sailed to the north, where I suspected the company had taken the Renee of this time. He was happy to help me and we talked about the future, although he had experienced the injustice at around 2025, when the rebellion had first began.

"They didn't even care when you ended up back then and they hadn't figured out that it was only going to send you between the times when you lived. They thought that some people might be transported to the origin of time and they could finally get some answers but no one had been alive for two-thousand years. They were mad as a rabid dog when they found out they had limitations and doubly so when they found out that the people were still not part-way in their control; that's about the time that I began to see them shotgun people. I relived seventeen different periods of my life so far, thanks to those a*****. At first they were just shooting the old out of courtesy, said it would make them live longer, but the rebels, those who were smart, they knew their time was coming, didn't want to take part in it, made them do it anyways, said it would be good for them in the long run, all that stuff started messing with peoples heads, can you imagine? If you go back there, won't be the same, lotta suicides from the Bandits efforts, and thanks to that some people weren't born, thus creating all sorts of paradoxes, proly undoing the world itself. Only way to fix it is to go into the future and stop them from shooting them people. Hey, we're still alive, so I figure someone must have done it already."

"Looks like land," I said, when he was done speaking.

The captain smiled, "Just like everyone else, only concerned with the one's we love."
"Hmmm, I intend to get a hold of one of those guns," I said.

"What, eh?"

"I figured out how to be with her."

I spent three days inside a Starbucks, doing the same thing over and over again before an agent from corporate finally noticed me and made the call.

The Time Bandit came at night like they usually do and was about to shoot me through the glass, except he hesitated because it wasn't me.

I had made sure I was sitting by the windows in the same spot. I paid some guy to act like me and sit there when I realized an agent had noticed me. The agent didn't know I had seen him but I knew their type. They wore suits all the time; dead giveaways. Their phones were always ultra rare and super-advanced. To anyone in the Starbucks it had looked like the corporate genius had just wiped his nose with a sleeve. He didn't make a noise but it was a call for The Time Bandit.

I came from the side, catching the Time Bandit off-guard. A sailor, a worker for captain O'neal, had been paid off and told this hot-shot in a brown overcoat was trying to rob a local coffee shop because it was an easy target.

The gun shot him first, for they were extremely fast, but I had hit him so hard, the gun dropped from his hand. Then I kicked him while he was down but as soon as the gun hit the ground, the Time Bandit vanished and so did the gun.

It was sad to see the sailor vanish. He was a good kid. Moments later I saw him again, behind me and he was holding the Time Bandit's gun.

"I know what you were trying to do," he said, "But I had a plan of my own."

"But the gun fell and vanished!" I complained.

"He's not the only time bandit on the payroll," said the sailor with a smile, "Here, take it. I intend to continue living my life. It's not for me to save the world. By the way, there's a girl, lives around the corner, here's the address, check it out."

The sailor gave me a piece of paper with Renee's address on it.

My plan had worked and it was all thanks to captain O'neal.

I walked through a street of panicked people, who were looking at me funny because I was carrying a shotgun in my hands. Most of them were scattering out of my way.

I feared to shoot any of them because that would ruin their lives and probably my own. Maybe, instead of coming back to help me, the people would come back for revenge, thinking I had robbed them of their future by giving them back their past.

I went around the block and knocked three times on an old wooden door that creaked and made loud noises when I banged on it.

Franky opened it slowly and he was holding his sister by the mouth. He was pointing a forty-nine at my face with a threatening expression. "I paid them!" he screamed. "You aren't supposed to be here!"

Franky had still not noticed that I was carrying a time gun.

"Poor little Franky," I said, "Why don't you shoot me, I mean if you're really that jealous of your sister."

Renee, who still wore her yellow ribbon, but was in a blue dress and white slippers, was in tears and yelled, "Nooo!"

I didn't want to shoot Franky because he might take her with him.

Franky was really intent on shooting me. I saw his fingers move in that moment and my hands shook on the shotgun.

Suddenly, the gun went off but I had turned my face. I felt the heat of the bullet as it whisked past my cheek.

Thankfully, the presence of the Time Bandit that showed up behind me, distracted me from his gun. I turned to look at him when I heard the gun go off.

He fell on the floor and dropped his gun, disappearing like before, except this time he was dead.

Franky looked at the dead corporate officer, who he had just shot in the face and dropped to his knees, releasing his sister, who ran at me.

He didn't even stop her.

I finally got a clear look at a bandit's face and he looked no different than your typical police officer. "Hmm, it comes with the job, I guess," I said, even if it was the first time that anyone had killed a time bandit but it wouldn't be the last.

Then I pointed the Shotgun at me and Renee.

"What are you doing?" She asked, shocked.

"I'm no longer a character in their story, Renee," I said, "Now, I'm the hero and I need to save my people."
And that was how I got started on my long road.