They’re so close, and so tall. This whole street… It’s an alleyway. Long and thin and dark, the other side only a few metres away from me. There’s nothing but a sliver of silvery moon peeking over the edge of tall gables above to light the way, and as my eyes adjust, it’s with a sickly, sinking feeling.
I don’t know this place.
I’ve never been here.
And this is no trick. This is real. This…
My heart squeezes so hard it sends a tremor to my fingers and a sweat to my brow. I fling around to reach for the cafe door but… it’s gone.
There’s nothing but a tall wooden door, beaten up and mouldering. None of the modern industrial steel and glass of the cafe, no stylish oversized entranceway to warmth and sustenance.
It’s completely disappeared.
A full panic attack flares up, making itself known in my tight chest and shallow breaths. But that’s not going to help. I try to suck in long and even gasps as I spiral.
There has to be a way to fix this. Something must have happened. Did he drug me? Did I fall asleep somehow? Then wake up here?
I pound on the door before I know what I’m doing.
How the fuck has he done this?
“Hello?” The word sounds raw in my throat. Again I hit the door until the splintering wood digs into my knuckles.
I slide a hand up the wet stone wall to steady myself, then turn back to the alley.
There has to be a way out of here.
It’s okay.
Even if I don’t know where I am, I’ll just walk until I find someone and…
A sound off to my left, like… the sound of carriage wheels, from those horse-drawn carriages tourists pay a fortune to ride about in. It echoes up the sides of the buildings, punctuated by the sharp clop-clop of horses’ hooves hitting the cobblestones.
Perfect. I’ll ask the driver where I am. Maybe I’ll even get a ride. Not that I can afford it, of course, but it feels so wrong to be here. The smell, besides being disgusting… it’s deeply unfamiliar in a way I can’t put my finger on. The air itself… it’s like it’s clawing at my spine.
It’s taking everything in me to not run away, but logically, I know that would be stupid. Help is right down this alley.
There it is. A dark shape, the silhouette of a man in a tall hat at the top of a black blob growing ever larger as it speeds towards me.
My heart’s racing so fast now—faster than the horse—but I can’t even say why. I need help, but something just feels wrong. Wrong about this carriage. Wrong about everything.
I have to force this down, so I take a breath, and I’m just about to raise my arm and call out, when I feel two warm hands slide over my hips, and a deeply unmistakable voice warn me, “Don’t interact.”
I turn my head towards August, but he pulls me so tight against himself that I can’t move my body, and I feel those hot lips brush my cheek when he hastens to add, “You’re in a time slip. Just stay calm, and it will pass.”
“A time slip?”A fucking time slip? This is too ridiculous for words. But these buildings and this street…
I look down again, and now that my eyes have adjusted a little, I can see it’s all cobblestones. The gaps between are full of old and festering mud, stuffed with straw and refuse. That’s the smell. Mud and garbage and… horse manure.
The horseman himself is upon us. My sliver of pavement is so thin I have to press back against August to avoid being hit by the carriage, and he draws me back too. He’s half hiding behind me, half guiding me. And the cart man… his eyes lock onto mine.
He’s wearing an old brown coat, long and dirty. It comes right down to his scuffed knee-high boots. He’s got on a vest underneath, a dirty white shirt poking up from behind it. This is none of the polished tourist-trap historical costumery I’m used to seeing. But he still looks historical. And despite the alarm bells clanging down my veins, I have enough awareness to understand there’s only one reason for that.
This man’s from the past.
The living and breathing past that’s right here, right now, in front of me. That I’m a part of.
Probably a mirror to me, there’s a look of unreality right there on his face as he clocks me. My modern hoodie, my track pants, my hairstyle. He doesn’t know what to make of me at all, and I suddenly have the oddly humorous vision of him going home and trying to explain to his wife and kids what he just saw. ‘Some strange man in foreign clothes, staring at me like…’
