The Toilet Paper Caper: Chapter 18
By: Tommy Paley
Tags: Short Story, Toilet Paper Caper, Fiction, Mystery, Humor

The Toilet Paper Caper: Chapter 18

A Stark Mystery

Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash

Our motley crew must have stood out like a sore thumb trucking down the sidewalk of my home town. Looking like a below average Joan Jett and the Blackhearts cover band or some down-on-their-luck financial advisers who had let things go.

My stomach hurt, my head ached and my other body parts…not good. It was times like this I wished I had a better vocabulary.

All of this time travel and excitement and the fact I hadn’t had a square meal or a solid sleep in days was catching up to me.

The wonderful scent of lilacs and burnt rubber in the air brought back memories of my childhood. All of those confusing hours in a fishing boat with my dad just wishing we had money for fishing equipment and bait. Those long summer days sitting on the tire swing hoping my next door neighbor wouldn’t be angry that I borrowed one of his tires. Those sleepless nights, in my room, dreaming of a life outside of this hell hole of a town, fully aware that at least one part of that description was a rough estimate.

And then, there it was.

Radio Shack.

It had been such a long time.

So many of my formative moments of my childhood happened inside or in the close vicinity of a Radio Shack. My mom used to pack a light lunch and take me there on weekends to stare at the TVs we couldn’t afford while also taking advantage of our time together to harshly critique my math skills. My friends and I would skip school, smoke cigarettes, and hang out in the Radio Shack parking lot shooting craps. At least we thought we were shooting craps. Turns out we were gullible idiots who should never trust seniors, even if they’d defended our freedom in the war. We should have known better when their answer to “which war” was suspiciously vague and peppered with strangely non-offensive curse words.

And, I’d almost lost my virginity behind “The Shack” on three separate occasions if one used the loosest definition of the words “almost”, “lost” and “my”. Nothing is hotter than a girl in pigtails and braces wearing a Radio Shack uniform I’d always tell my aunt as she drank away her problems in front of Mary Tyler Moore.

“Stark!”

Someone had spoken, shaking me out of thoughts.

The others, aside from my dad who seemed to be trying to do his best “mime discovering he could in fact have been speaking the whole time which would have made the whole getting out of a box much faster” impression, were glaring at me with equal amounts of contempt and “check out how good we can glare on short notice”.

“We don’t have time for your trip down memory lane!”

“I thought I’d asked you to stop reading my thoughts!” I yelled a bit too loud.

“Shhhh…don’t blow this whole thing.” The broken device was thrust into my hands.

“I don’t care what you do or what you say or where you say it. Actually, scratch that last one, you must say it inside the Radio Shack. You’ve gotta get in and out quickly without raising suspicion. Absolutely no suspicion raising at all despite how fun guys like you probably derive from a good ol’ suspicion raising.”

One of the Whipples clearer his throat, while the other took a turn talking.

“Remember no device like this will be invented for another 50 years!”

“50 years?”

Dad spoke up.

“That’s right, son. This device is from the future. We all are. It’s too confusing to go into any more detail about right now which may come across as a cop out and a cover up that there is no adequate explanation, but, as your grandma always said, while revealing a bit too much personal information, tough titties.”

His ability to invoke powerful, yet unnecessarily crude imagery was as good as it had ever been.

“I was there, so was she, as were these damn Whipples. We built it together. Everything. It was perfect. We used to be a team. I wanted to call us “The Sunshine Gang”, but got voted down 3–1.

“We could have traveled through time, fixing mistakes, correcting errors of judgment, investing heavily in egg futures, protecting the world supply of toilet paper and none of this would have happened, but these Whipples got greedy and talked to the wrong guy on the wrong street corner. ”

He gave them a sideways sneer that, as far as sideways sneers went, was top notch.

“Look, son, we’ve all been back and forth and here and there so many time it’s done wonders on my gastrointestinal distress, so while inside, if you could grab me some dimen-hydrinate for the trip ahead as well as some diphen-hydramine for my allergies. And…”

He turned his attention to the others.

“Instead of in-fighting and name-calling and wanting to be the one to save the world, we must all work together. To stop him. The one who must not be named partially because I wasn’t listening when he said his name and was too embarrassed to ask him to repeat himself. For the good of humanity, let’s do this.”

I could see his words were having an effect as I turned from face to face to face. Either that, or everyone was experimenting with a wide array of different emotions because they were bored.

I must have looked less than impressed or excited, sort of how my date for Prom looked all those years ago. I’d never forget, mostly because she had her dad take a photo to capture the moment and had it professionally framed and sent to me as a parting gift.

“You’ll just have to trust me, son.”

“Trust you, Dad? Oh, that’s rich. Trust the man who…”

“We don’t have time for this, Starks.”

Darling sighed with exasperation while shaking her head like she was in a shampoo commercial.

“Go into the store. An old friend of yours is working there. She will understand what you need. Don’t look at or talk to anyone else. Got it?”

I nodded my head much the same way I nodded my head when someone asked me to demonstrate a superior head nod and I opened the door and entered the store.

And there she was.

Sally.

The one who got away.

She was hard to miss. Red hair cascading down her shoulders like water cascading down a waterfall, as if hair cascaded anything like water, which it didn’t.

Looking like she would on our prom night, only younger and less annoyed with how disappointing a date I would be in a few years.

I must have stood out, a middle-aged man who reeked of hot dogs and cheap liquor — and that was on a good day — gaping at a pretty teenage girl stocking shelves in the electronics department of a Radio Shack. How far I’d sunk.

And then I remembered, she won’t even recognize me in my adult form which would be a significant step-up from her pretending not to recognize me the rest of the time.

“Excuse me, miss. I was wondering if you could help me.”

Her head slowly turned.

“Wow, you’re really going to let things go in the future.”

“Why do people keep saying that! But, how do you…I mean, why do you…don’t tell me you are involved too.”

She sighed.

“I can’t believe I’m going to actually let you take me to prom in a few years. I could have done much better.”

Looking down as if looking at me any longer would cause permanent blindness or a vitamin C deficiency, she reached into her pocket and handed me the strangest gizmo I’d ever seen.

“This is the part you need. Say hi to the others. Wish them luck. I have to get back to work so as not to draw suspicion. Their spies are everywhere. You can’t be too careful. So, you’ve gotta run before someone notices the part is gone. Every second counts. Don’t f$%k this up!”

“You mean this little, odd thing here is going to do something?”

“That’s probably the same thing I’ll be saying to you on prom night.”

“Because I don’t see how this story doesn’t just keep meandering on and on forever with no end in sight. Each twist and turn, despite how intriguing, seems to be leading nowhere fast. You are tell me this is the answer. That after it’s inserted in our device everything will magically fall into place?”

“Yes.”

“Well, okay then. Nice seeing you. When you bump into the young Stark, go easy on him. He wasn’t intentionally being creepy, it’s how he was raised.”

And with that, I took the part, shoved it into my pocket and bolted for the door. I barely heard her call out.

“Say hi to 2032 for me.”

To be continued…

See also: Chapter 17 and… well, you know… all the way back.