Untitled Collaborative Story

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Would any of you wonderfully smart, creative and talented people be interested in building a collaborative story with me?  I need to stretch my writing muscles much more often than I do and I thought this might be a fun way to do a little bit of that.  All registered users, Overlords and Ministers are, of course, welcome to participate.

The Rules:

1. Each contributor makes a new post and can write as little as one sentence or as much as three paragraphs or ten lines of dialogue.
2. If no other contributor reacts in two days, the same contributor may write another section.
3. That's it.  Do not get attached to characters or threads; the next contributor may kill them.

I will try to keep this post updated with the cast of characters as they develop and probably major loose ends that require resolution as well.

The Characters:

1. Ashley Wilkes
Invented a faulty time machine to prevent his wife's death.  Reappears from time to time with (almost) no memory.

2. Izzy Wilkes
Ashley's daughter and wrangler.

3.  Anastasia
Perhaps a character; perhaps a thing; Ashley managed to remember the name and a few other details during his most recent absence.  Possibly for the first time.

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Fifth and Green, Anastasia, Seventh June.  The words echoed in his head as though uttered by someone else.  He had the sensation that they were in his voice, but he couldn't recall committing them to memory.  He repeated them to himself over and over, a litany devoid of meaning and yet, sacred.  He knew that it was important.

He knew nothing else.

Well, that's not entirely true.  He knew that he was naked, wet, cold and in an dark alley in a city of some size.  Nearly everything else, though, eluded him.  He had no recollection of his own name or what purpose had led him to be in his current state.

[Kris Johnson]

"Mister?"

He turned to see a bum—his face and clothes so covered in grime that he seemed to be stepping directly out of the dirty brick wall—holding out a ragged bundle. The only color to be seen in the midst of the various shades of brown and grey were two points of stunning, sparkling blue. The bum blinked and...no, his eyes weren't blue at all, but just as muddy as the rest of him.

The bum shook the bundle. "Take 'em," he said. "They're Reggie's, but he died last week. Cold. So cold. You'll freeze, too, you don't get some clothes on." He shook the bundle again and repeated, "Take 'em."

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He had to fish around in his mind for a moment to find the part that made vocalizations happen.  He finally managed to blurt out, "T-thank yu-you," and realized that he was shivering.

He accepted the bundle and his senses came alive, although he soon wished they hadn't.  The filthy rags he'd have to put on to stave off the cold were steeped with the smell of filth and decay.  He tried to suppress his revulsion out of gratitude, but was only partially successful.

"Yeah," said the bum, "You know; when a body dies, things come out.  I tried to clean 'em up, but," he trailed off with a shrug and gesture indicating the lack of laundry facilities in the vicinity.

[Chris Miller]

A jagged streak of lightning split the sky, followed by a roll of thunder.

[LolaJ]

The sound of an engine drew him out of his reverie. A dark blue SUV turned into the alley from the street ahead. It pulled up near him, stopped, and, leaving the vehicle on, a middle-aged women stepped out from the driver's side door. She was scowling, and shook her head in obvious disapproval at the sight of him.

"You pass through intact only to freeze to death before we even get you ... damn, it's cold!" she pulled the collar of her jacket close to her neck. "Next time pass into Tampa or Cairo or ... anywhere but friggin' Dutchville, Minnesota."

"Anastasia?" he ventured.

She rolled her eyes. "Get in the damn truck! We can talk on the way. Call me Izzy." the woman turned, muttering something about an afghan she kept in the backseat.

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He spied the afghan sitting in the vehicle and handed the bum back his wad of foul clothing.  "Thanks anyway," he said quickly and climbed aboard, wrapping the knitted blanket around himself as he sat.  The warmth of the vehicle's cabin helped him overcome his reservations, or at least rationalize them away.

Izzy climbed in a moment later.  "Drive," she said in a commanding voice.  The driver immediately obeyed and the SUV sped toward the end of the alley.

He looked over his shoulder to see his erstwhile companion slumped uncomfortably over a dumpster.  "Did you..?"  he asked, suddenly concerned about his choice.

[Kris Johnson]

Izzy rolled her eyes. "I swear I never get tired of answering the same questions every time we do this," she said. "No. I didn't kill him. There's about a one in ten million chance that he'll have an undocumented reaction to the drug, but the chances of it being a fatal reaction are pretty slim. And before you ask 'what drug?', I'll tell you: it's a little chemical cocktail that'll make him forget everything that he saw or heard in the last hour. Give or take."

She reached into her pocket and withdrew a small case, which she opened to reveal a silver object that looked an awful lot like a tire pressure gauge. "The injection's painless, which is amusing, 'cause he's going to have one hell of a headache when he wakes up."

She snapped the case shut and put it back in her pocket. "The next question you'll want to ask is 'who am I?'. That one isn't so straightforward, I'm afraid."

[LolaJ]

His need to know his identity was urgent, but could not compare with his need for food. His stomach cried out to him, and he suddenly remembered the smell of an orange and sticking his fingernail in the peel to pull it back and expose the juicy sweet segments within. "I'm starving."

Izzy pointed to a paper grocery bag on the seat next to him. "You'll find all you need in there. Remember: eat small meals, two hours apart, until your system adjusts. You're like a baby again, Father, but there's no one to nurse you."

He opened the bag and pulled out a small can of liquid nutritional supplement, a folded map, and a gray canvas wallet with $200 cash and a Discover card imprinted with the name "Ashley Wilkes." 

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He was half finished with the nearly flavorless yet strangely satisfying can of "food" when the importance of her choice of words struck him.

"Wait," he said quizzically, "Father?  Are you my daughter, Izzy?"

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"Biologically speaking, yes," she said with a put-upon sigh, "but you made an orphan out of me when you turned on that damned machine."

Ashley started to speak, but she cut him off.

"We're going to do twenty thousand questions early this time, eh?  Fine, but finish your drink."

As he raised the can to his lips, she continued.  "Mother died twenty-three years ago -- an auto accident.  I was four, you were twenty-seven.  You then spent the next six years creating a device so that you could go back and prevent the accident.  What you succeeded in doing, however, is bouncing around the upper dimensions of the universe, dropping back in on your life every few weeks or so.  The machine tells me when, and roughly where, you'll reappear.  I go and fetch you -- heaven knows why -- and we repeat this process."

[Kris Johnson]

Understanding—or what he took to be understanding—skimmed across the surface of his thoughts, and he reached out for another answer.

"Your mother," he said. "Is her name Anastasia?"

Izzy sighed, and for the first time he saw something soft emerge from where there had been only exasperation, frustration, and bitterness.

"Was," she said, slumping a little in her seat and turning to look out the window of the SUV. "Her name was Anastasia, Father. Why can't you just let her go?"

[LolaJ]

Back in the alley, the bum suddenly sat up and shook his head. It was pounding, as Izzy had predicted, but he decided everything else about himself seemed all right. Especially his memory. He thrust a grimy hand into the pocket of the filthy trenchcoat and pulled out a cell phone. It was the very latest -- and most expensive -- model available and had been designed primarily for use by top level agents of the U.S. government. He opened it and pushed a button to make a call. After a few seconds, he coughed to clear his voice.

"Good evening, ma'am," the accent was now British, aristocratic, "the so-called Mr. Wilkes has been collected. ... Just moments ago, ma'am. ... Yes, I am quite sure. ... No, they did not recognize me. ... Just a bit of a headache. Shall I transmit the vehicle's ID? Very well. Bennet, out." Agent Bennet pushed a few more buttons on the phone to send the brief video he had managed to record before Izzy's injection took effect. Now at least they would be able to track Izzy and Wilkes. Bennet wished his superiors at the Agency would have permitted him to simply eliminate "Ashley Wilkes," but they had a master plan and he was only assigned this small role -- to follow.

Bennet gazed up at the darkening sky and chuckled. "Izzy, my sweet, I will find you. And in time your mind, your true self, all your heart, will be restored to me. And Ashley Wilkes, Bruce Banner, Thomas Sawyer, John Adams, or whatever the hell he wants to call himself next ... will be stopped."