THE BLOODY NOVA
A very true story by Dave Caswell about Dave Caswell
Dave was drunk.
Several pints and a shot (or two) of raw hooch and he was standing on the curb outside of his favorite bar in South Norwalk. It was a cool Friday night, and his friends were inside howling with laughter from the continued conversation that Dave had just left. It had been a bizarre “what if” and “wouldn’t it be funny if” kind of conversation. Dave had come up with a good example not five minutes prior, but alcohol has a way of wiping his memory slate clean rather quickly. It’s safe to say, that when drinking, he has a lot in common with a goldfish. It’s just that he can never remember to tell anyone.
There was a mission at hand out here though. Dave, being an ex smoker, was still a smoker when he was drinking. On nights like these, he often found himself looking for someone to bum him a smoke outside. On this particular night however, there was no one outside, that is, until the 1979 Chevy Nova pulled up.
The huge car was mostly engine, slightly cockpit, and all sheet metal. It’s faded blue paint job wasn’t an aesthetic effect so much as just weathering from time. It was dented, the tires treads were nearly bald, and tentacles of rust were slithering out from under the chassis. The driver’s side window went down, a young, handsome guy in a sharp vest and tie combination, leaned out the.
“Good evening,” he said. “Are you David Caswell?”
“Dave Caswell. Who are you? Vesty… uh. Vesty Mc…”
Before Dave had time to work out his clever nickname, the man just talked over him. “I have something I’d like to show you,” gesturing to the passenger seat of his car.
“Maybe this is a leap but, I’m straight, so, sorry if you’re looking for love tonight. There’s a joint down the way though. You’ll have better luck there.”
The Stranger laughed at this. “It’s not my dick that I want to show you. I assure you.”
“Well alright then.” Dave nodded.
“You see, I was flipping through the stations and I happened upon the conversation you were just having with your friends. Something along the lines of ‘what if’ or ‘wouldn’t it be cool if’ scenarios,” The Stranger said, making air quotes when referring to the examples.
“You heard us on the radio? What the hell kind of radio’s that?”
“A very neat one, David…”
“Dave.”
“Dave, right. Jump in. I’ve been to a place where one of your, ‘wouldn’t it be cool if’ scenarios is very real.”
Dave was squinting at The Stranger. Thinking.
“You got any smokes?”
————-
Dave was swaying back and forth in the passenger seat trying to light the Lucky Strike cigarette that The Stranger had given him. The lighter’s flame kept blowing out from the breeze blowing in through The Stranger’s open window as he flew down the streets of South Norwalk. He was about to ask the man if he could close his window for a second, but from the corner of his eye, he saw the man pull an old-looking pocket watch from his vest. His face lit up with bright green light for a moment and then he shut it before Dave had time to get a good look at it.
“Nice watch,” he said through lips still pursed around the tip of the cigarette.
“Thank you. It goes well with this vest.”
Dave laughed like a goon, the cigarette bobbing up and down as he did. “Huh, huh, huh. Gaaaaaay.”
There was a flash of blue light and a deafening boom shook the car. Just as fast as it was there, it was gone. Dave jumped and the cigarette flew out of his mouth as his flapping mouth said, ”What the hell was that?! Lightning?”
“Not exactly.” The Stranger said.
He pulled the car to a stop in the middle of the main drag of South Norwalk… only, this wasn’t South Norwalk. It looked a lot like it and the buildings and streets were the same, but as Dave scanned the signs and building, he didn’t recognize any of the bars, restaurants, or businesses names.
“Where are we?”
“South Norwalk. Only… not the one you know.”
“But, what?”
“You see, David…”
“Dave!”
“There are worlds that run parallel to yours.”
“Alternate universes, got it.” Dave was talking as he looked out the windows, not concerned about where they were so much as…. “But how? Why?”
“Do you remember what you said at the bar you were just at?”
“I don’t even remember getting in this car, dude.”
“You said to your buddies, ‘wouldn’t it be funny if to be in shape, you had to drink and smoke, but to get drunk and have fun, you had to work lift weights and run?’”
Dave hiccuped. “I said that? Oh wait… yeah!”
“I thought it was interesting because,” The Stranger held out his hands. “That’s what happens here.”
Dave was just staring at him, blinking every now and again. Either putting things together or missing them completely. After a moment, it was obvious the tires were just spinning.
“Look over at that gym,” The Stranger said, pointing across the street
People were packing into a gym with a giant plate-glass window in the front. The place was called Reps and everyone looked like regular bar patrons. They were all young and well dressed, but each one of them had a weight of some variety in their hand. Controlled repetitions had replaced drinks being raised to mouths. People were even cheering on a tubby guy on a bench press toward the back. Guys and girls were talking to each other while stretching out in front of the place.
Dave rolled down the window to lean his head out and get a better look. A couple of girls swung the door open to go in and when they did, Dave heard someone shout, “Hey! A round of curls, on me!” and everyone answered with a cheer.
“What the hell? Is this for real? It’s like… it’s like a fuggin’ nightmare!”
“Not as funny as you’d think eh?” The Stranger asked.
Dave rounded on him in a fit of drunken, misplaced, anger. “What are you, guy? Like an angel here tellin’ me ta’ be careful what I wish for or something?”
“No, I guess I just thought it was interesting that I’d been to a dimension where that was a thing and that maybe you’d like to see it.”
A guy doing one-handed push ups in the bar collapsed to the ground. There was a roar of laughter and people started cheering. As soon as he was up, There was a line of mega babes waiting to message his aching muscles.
“Well, it’s horrifying.” Dave turned back and stared at the gym as he continued. “So what’s your deal, guy-bro? You travel ta’ different dimensions in a Chevy Nova? Is that, like, your thing? There… Vesty… uh Vesty Mc…
“Something like that. You could say that I am a traveler of both time and space.”
“Yeah, Led Zeppelin fan apparently too. Anyway, thisis’ bullshit and someone needs to put a stop to it. Maybe fate made you bring me here cos’ I’m the hero this world needs.”
Dave was grabbing for the handle. The Stranger tried to reach out and grab him.
“Do not…”
It was too late. Dave was already pushing the heavy door open and, like a fish escaping a bucket, he was clumsily flopping out into the night. He stood, wobbling a little, and was about to make for the gym but before he could move, he realized that everything had stopped. The street had gone as silent and still as a corpse buried in cement. Everyone in the gym was now staring out the window at him.
The stranger spoke low and slowly. “Get back in the car now.”
“What’s going on?”
“Everyone in this world has just been made aware of your presence. They are all thinking about the same thing at this very moment; how they are going to get a hold of you and rip… you… apart.”
Dave turned back. “What? Why?”
“David, get back in the car, right now.”
“Stop calling me Dav…”
A rusty hinge screamed as a door opened on the other side of the street behind them. Dave looked up to see every shredded up meathead from inside a bar called Pounders stepping out onto the sidewalk. At the head of the group was a man who looked like his muscles had been inflated like balloons. Dave thought that if he had time to focus enough, he could actually see the man’s sweat stained tank top quivering as it tried to hang on to his ever-expanding mass.
He had an alcoholics beard, the kind of long bushy crop where if you were to run your hand through it, you would only come back with a bloody stump. His eyes never left Dave, even as he upended a bottle of whiskey and gulped down the remaining sips. When he was done, he flung the bottle down at the sidewalk. When it smashed, all hell broke loose.
Whiskey Press and his army of drunken muscle packed nightmares started lumbering toward the Nova as fast as their swollen bodies would allow them. Cars poured into the nearby intersections in a fury of screeching tires and roaring engines. Every person on the sidewalk was sprinting out into the street and headed right for them. If Dave hadn’t been so smart as to go before he left the house, he would have made a shit deposit in his pants account.
All alcohol induced instability was gone now. Dave slid into the car seat and slammed the door in one fluid motion.
“Yeah, you know what? Fuck this place. Can we leave now?”
The Stranger stepped on the gas pedal like he hated it. The clunky Nova’s engine didn’t so much roar as make an ever increasing dry heave sound. It trembled it’s way into forward motion. Before it got far, a ten pound dumbbell sailed through the back window. The gym had emptied out and all the drunken twenty somethings were hurling their weights at the car. Lucky for them, it was “ladies do cardio free” night, so a lot of rubber coated two and a half pound dumbbells bounced off of the thick glass and heavy metal of the Nova.
The Stranger was shouting over the sound of bodies slamming off the hood and being crushed below the tires.
“Every dimension is like an organism. It protects itself from outside entities. You infected this one the moment you stepped foot out of this car. Now, it’s sending everything it has to destroy you. The Nova has enough metal to make you invisible at first, but once it knows where you are, there’s no way to hide.”
They were plowing through the advancing crowd, but beginning to slow as it thickened. Dave put his hands on the dashboard.
“Ooooh man! You better have another gear you can shift to!”
“I’m an adventurer in the space-time continuum, my friend,” he said calmly as he ripped the shifter back as far as it would go. “I’m always ready to take it to the next level.”
The car lurched forward and the engine’s husky whine deepened to an angry below. Some otherworldly function in the rickety machine came to life. Inter-dimensional nitrous oxide hit the fuel lines and their bout of vehicular manslaughter became a bloody blur speeding through the crowded streets of South Norwalk.
The Stranger hit the wipers and they swept away the blood from their view. The car coming up on the bridge that leads out of the downtown area. It’s was a two-part drawbridge that rose up in two halves when a large boat needed to pass underneath. To their horror, it was rising.
“Oh shit!” Dave screamed.
“They’re not going to let us out of the downtown area so easy are they?” the Stranger shouted.
He dug into his vest pocket and snapped open his pocket watch. A green hologram of a wire frame field sprung up from open clam shell styled timepiece. The center of the field was beginning to dip. Above it, a digital time display was ticking backwards from ten seconds. “This is going to be close.”
Something slammed into the rear of the car. They swerved a little but stayed on track. The Nova was a tank. Dave looked back to see what had hit them. There there were three cars that had matched their speed and one was coming in for another hit.
“Shit! They’re right on top of us! How’re we gonna get outta here?”
He turned to face forward just in time to see the wooden arm of the bridge gate snap over the Nova’s hood. They were headed straight for the rising roadway that was quickly becoming a giant ramp.
“Try not to freak out.” The Stranger said calmly. “This is going to be close.”
“No. Nope. No fucking way, dude!”
They hit the gradient, flying up the ramp at what felt like one hundred miles an hour and the three cars in pursuit followed suit. The motion forward and the increasing gradient made Dave feel like his insides were compacting in on themselves.The Stranger shot him a quick sidelong glance.
“Whatever you do, don’t throw up!”
“I uh..” Dave couldn’t finish. His dinner of corn chips and Mountain Dew had just piled into the express elevator and were pounding the button for the penthouse.
“Just don’t fucking puke, man! I hate puke. If I see puke, then I’m going to puke, and you don’t want me puking when I’m trying to hit the wormhole!”
Dave put his balled fist to his mouth and stuck his index finger up. In his world, this meant, Pardon me for one moment, sir or ma’am. I feel as if I’m about to be ill and need a moment before I’m able to speak. The end of that moment didn’t appear to be coming though. They were about to reach the end of the ramp. Dave’s life flashed before his eyes. There was a cheeseburger, a still frame from Sonic The Hedgehog, and a song from The Insane Clown Posse that he now loathed as an adult. It was a sad collection of life thumbnails, but it’s what he had and he really would have wanted to at least add a couple more before the big ‘lights out’.
The Nova left the lip of the ramp doing well over one hundred miles an hour. Right behind it were the three other cars. Their drivers, in a one track mindset to kill the invaders, never thought their actions through. The Stranger had.
He knew, that being of American make from an era where quality craftsmanship was seemingly measured in heft, the Nova was essentially a metal brick with wheels and thus, it flew like one. As he expected, it’s ascent from the ramp became a rapid descent toward the water almost immediately. The other cars, in their modern design, flimsy quality, and overall lack of weight, continued to climb into the air.
As the wormhole opened a few feet from the surface of the water and swallowed up the Nova, the three other cars smashed into the underside of the second half of the raised bridge. The explosions lit the South Norwalk skyline, masking the quick bright blue flash as the wormhole snapped shut behind The Stranger and tonight’s passenger.
——-
The huge car came to a squealing stop. They were headed the opposite direction as they were just a moment ago, but it was okay, because it was toward the right South Norwalk. Everything was just as they had left it before. Dave was trembling, but otherwise not moving.
“You can throw up now,” The Stranger said before quickly adding, “outside.”
“Cool. Thanks.”
Beer, corn chips and Mountain Dew hit the sidewalk as Dave leaned out on the open door. He was careful not to touch any of the blood that was now running in sheets down every exterior surface of the car. When he was finished, he sat back up and slammed the heavy door shut. The Stranger was staring at him. They sat in silence for a moment in the middle of the road, engine idling.
“What are you doing?” The Stranger asked.
“Uh, could you at least give me a ride back to the bar?” Dave gestured down the road.
“No, this isn’t a taxi service. What just happened was…” The Stranger broke off when he noticed Dave’s face had gone slack, looking out the windshield. “What? What is it?”
He turned his attention to where Dave’s was invested. Out in the cross walk, a couple of club rats and their meat head companions had stopped in the road. They were glowering in at The Stranger and Dave. Two cars in the intersection ahead of them came to a screeching halt at the same moment.
“We’re not in the right place,” Dave whispered.
“But, we’re in the car. How…”
“When I threw up. That’s how”
The Stranger slowly pulled out his pocket watch and snapped it open again. The same holograph sprung to life again but this time the timer was counting back from nearly twenty minutes. He closed the watch.
“This is the right place, just not the right time. The next window won’t open for another twenty minutes and it’s thirteen miles away”
Dave slowly pulled his seat belt across himself and clicked it in. “I hope you’ve got some moves, buddy.”
The Stranger was pulling his seat belt down now as well. “I don’t know this area very well.”
“I do. I’ll play co-pilot.” Dave turned to him. “Just keep your eyes on the road and I’ll tell you where it leads.”
The Stranger nodded and dropped the bloody Nova into gear.
END
