Continuing Whispering Jack's epic work of fiction:-

A HIGHWAY OF DEMONS by Whispering Jack

CHAPTER THREE – PITY THE POOR IMMIGRANT

"I pity the poor immigrant

Who tramples through the mud,

Who fills his mouth with laughing

And who builds his town with blood,

Whose visions in the final end

Must shatter like the glass.

I pity the poor immigrant

When his gladness comes to pass."

Bob Dylan [i Pity the Poor Immigrant]

I may almost have forgotten about the old necktie but recollections of it still jump out at me every once in a while, bringing with them unexpected memories I thought long buried.

These are memories of long, hot summer days, of trips to the city with uncles, aunts and cousins. Sitting on Santa's lap, squirming there with him sweating away in that ridiculous red outfit in century plus heat, and me accepting my cousin’s dare to grab a handful of white beard, tugging hard as if it was somehow an affirmation of my own identity to reveal the pale white skin of the man's face behind the mask. 

Did we really hear Santa say, "shit"?

I can laugh about it now, but that was a time less than a decade removed from the liberation of my people from the death camps, of the bombing of Dresden, of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Cold War was upon us. People who were different in this land were welcomed after a fashion but still looked upon with suspicion.

And I had been alive for less than the span of that decade.

There had been a journey across a wide ocean, landfall at Fremantle a day or two short of my second birthday, a joyful reunion with family a week later, settling down in a new land, hardworking parents, new businesses, sharing homes with strange new people whose faces I no longer remember. The sad death of a long-awaited baby sister at just two days of age was almost more easily forgotten than the bloodied nose I received from the next door neighbour because my folks spoke a strange language and we ate unusual food at the dinner table.

Those events were well behind us as we emerged through the glass doors of the Lonsdale Street exit of the Myer Emporium, squinting into the blinding sunlight.

It was one of those hot summer days when the mercury passed through the century mark on the Fahrenheit scale and the northerly wind blew hot Mallee dust at my face and eyes. In my hands, I lovingly clutched a pale blue necktie. My cousin held its identical counterpart and, as we sat on the green tram that rattled down Swanston Street and pushed its away across a bridge that traversed the murky brown river, we marvelled at the image emblazoned on the silky surface of what was clearly the fashion statement of 1954: a man wearing black shorts and a navy blue guernsey with red yoke in the shape of a "V", kicking a leather egg-shaped object long and far into the distance.

So this was the beginning: a random decision by my mother, who had worked so many hard hours on a factory floor, to spend some of the pennies she earned on the purchase of a necktie. She could not know how important a moment  this was to become in the life of her young son. If you live in this city, ownership of such a garment is the ultimate determinant of friendships, acquaintanceships, timetables, celebrations, commiserations, remembrances and every other conceivable aspect of a person's life cycle.  

I looked down at the tie and rolled it up towards my face. I noticed the imprint of the man whose muscular right leg was pushed so high that the toe of his boot pointed towards the heavens. 

                  

...

A HIGHWAY OF DEMONS by Whispering Jack

CHAPTER FOUR - TIME OUT OF MIND

"The end of time has just begun

Oh honey, after all these years you're still the one

Well I'm strollin' through the lonely graveyard of my mind

I left my life with you

Somewhere back there along the line."

Bob Dylan [Time Out Of Mind]

Looking out through the glass windows of the Tardis and into the mist of the million galaxies through which we were now floating, I recalled the tram ride home. I remembered the necktie and the way I rolled it up to my face and how the man's boot pointed to the skies. It occurred to me that it might have been angled in the very direction of our spaceship as we swirled through space. 

We were spinning in much the same way as a well-directed punt kick but there were no goalposts in our sights. We seemed to have no direction at all as we headed toward unknown destinations, spiraling backwards and forward through space and time.

And yet, the destination wasn't entirely unknown. I was not trained in the mysteries of the laws of physics despite the fact that the great Albert Einstein and I have shared birthplaces (but that's another story altogether). The Doctor knew where we were heading. I was his passenger and we were not alone.

Back on the Tardis after the Las Vegas fiasco, I discovered that the Doctor had other companions with him. There was the tall, leggy Romana, a magnificent Amazon of a woman who wore slinky leather outfits and looked at you with dreamy eyes that sent waves of soft pinkish light piercing through your brain. She joined the crew from Calufrax Zanak, an outpost in a distant galaxy. I was fifteen years old and in love. 

Then there was Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, a member of the Scots Guards who we called "the Brig". He was a tall, stiff upper lipped, professional soldier seconded to UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) which apparently is an international organisation that defends the Earth from alien threats. 

I was never informed as to how the Brigadier came to be a member of the crew; it was all top-secret stuff and would remain that way. He often communicated with The Doctor by way of what they described as a "mobile phone" which was a small slender version of a walkie talkie. The Doctor advised me that if I survived into the 21st Century I would learn all about mobile phones.   

Early in the piece, I learned that it wise to give Lethbridge-Stewart a wide berth, particularly when there were threatening alien creatures in our presence. He was clearly a madman whose motto was, "shoot first, and try to ask questions later if those blasted things are still alive!" This rather gung-ho attitude philosophy often led to some messy outcomes.

The other member of our crew was the Doctor's pet mechanical dog known as K9. He was supposed to be a lifelike facsimile of a dog and he certainly befriended me from the very beginning. Indeed, the little mutt rarely left my side which could be somewhat annoying because the Doctor had never found the time for toilet training. This would inevitably cause problems when K9's batteries ran low. He once wiped out an entire race of desert dwelling androids which had an intolerance to moisture, and led us, rather embarrassingly, to abort an important mission to thwart the Black Guardian. Of course, it's no longer politically correct to make any reference whatsoever to that calamitous episode.

Despite all of their oddities, my new companions and I soon formed one big happy family and I enjoyed the subsequent period of exploration which took us to the outer reaches of the cosmos, or, as the Doctor correctly put it, the "time-space continuum."

Once, when we were enjoying our days in the suns of a binary star system in the constellation Orion, the Doctor suddenly became agitated and called us all into the Tardis. He hurried us into the craft and we took off without even saying farewell to our kind hosts on the Planet Epsilon where we had spent what seemed like at least a month of blissful rest from our hectic adventures. An hour into the flight our craft began to shake uncontrollably and the Doctor began working frantically to steady the ship. His face showed concern.

"Damn, it's been broken," he said.

"Newton's First Law. It's been broken. We have to get back to Earth. Right now!"

At the mention of Newton's First Law, I took the opportunity to demonstrate to the Doctor the fruits of my fourth form education in the field of the sciences.

"Newton's Law. That means that if an object is moving along, untouched by a force of any kind, it will continue to move along in a perfectly straight line at a constant speed…" 

The Doctor pulled a lever on the controls of the Tardis, paused and glared angrily at me. The tremor of his voice barely concealed a touch of panic.

"No, not Isaac Newton. I'm talking about Michael Newton. Someone has broken Newton's First Law of Natural Selection. They've gone and picked him to play for that football team of yours and we have to do something about that or else …"

"Or else what?"

"Or else time could come to an end. That's what!"

[TO BE CONTINUED...]

A totally unexpected finish to Chapter IV WJ. Can't wait to find out how that unravels!

A totally unexpected finish to Chapter IV WJ. Can't wait to find out how that unravels!

Is there any chance you can get an unemployed talking horse into the storyline?