STALKER

Chapter 60 - Weirdo

"Going to1905 to get a name. Do you want to come?" T

....

When I read Timothy's message it took a full minute for it to sink in. In amongst the billions of text sent around the world is there another message like this? I can't imagine there is.

Timothy Morrison is full of surprises. I am intrigued by him and not just his abilities. I'm attracted to him. It's been a long time since I've wanted anyone.

It has been a bizarre learning curve. I thought I had seen it all because of my family's lifestyle but with Timothy, I have to reassess everything I once thought impossible.

Originally, I naively thought it was me who was doing him a favour by introducing him to my grandmother so she could mentor him and help him tap into his preternatural abilities. Whenever I saw him he seemed a clueless kid, as far from otherworldly as you could imagine. He's only a couple of years younger than me but it feels more like decades. He is unpredictable and reckless. But now I have no idea what to think. He's still all those things but so much more.

When I took him to meet Nana it seemed a good idea at the time. On the day she appeared to be on her best behaviour, and I thought everything was going well. Timothy barely reacted to Maude and Agatha. He seemed to be taking it all in his stride and thankfully Nana Ovia didn't play one of her nasty tricks on him. After the awkward pleasantries over one of her horrendous herbal teas, I went to repair the roof feeling like he was safe and for once I wasn't going to regret introducing someone to my family.

Mum and Nana have never been good at trying to adapt to ordinary people. I should have known better than to take Timothy there. I just thought as he was special himself, he would cope with them and they would be better behaved.

When I was a kid, and not knowing any better, I brought friends over to my house, as all kids do. The result was that I lost all my friends. I never realised how strange my family was until it turned into my school's most popular source of gossip. Every kid, teacher, and parent seemed to have heard some crazy story about us and had an opinion....all negative. No parent wanted their child near me.

I thought that enough time had passed that things would be different. When I felt the house shake with Timothy's anger, I knew I was wrong. By the time I got down off the roof, all hell had broken loose. Mum was frantic and as for the indomitable Nana Ovia, she was a trembling mess, a crumpled old woman with her spiritual energy drained. Maude and Agatha, her spectral support team weren't at their usual posts and Timothy's anger was still bouncing off the walls. He was gone.

''He is a bad one. I FORBID YOU." Her voice cracking. ''I forbid you to go anywhere near that one. El iti va fi pierzania. În jurul lui este doar întuneric când vine vorba de tine. Nu poți simți cât de mult te urăște."  What...he hates me? What the hell brought this on.

Mum and Nana Ovia were beside themselves. Mum was screaming and running around the house like a mad woman. She finally stood breathless in front of Nana, her fists pressed against her chest. "The bastard has expelled them from the house." Nana nodded her head and started to cry. I don't think I have ever seen her cry.

She had met her match...as unlikely as it seemed in one fell swoop Timothy had totally undone Nana. Her lifelong and afterlife friends Maude and Agatha were sent packing to the other side without a by your leave, even though they were tethered to the house. Also, every embedded spell in the place was wiped clean. "There is evil in him that wants to hurt you."

....

At that point, I realised how much I underestimated Timothy. But that wasn't the end of it. I hadn't come close to processing all of this when the next bombshell dropped. Timothy's next surprise was far more terrifying.

Nothing could have prepared me for the shock of suddenly being transported from Timothy's cozy room to outside his house to watch a replay of the day we met. Not that he did give me a heads up. I'll give the idiot the benefit of the doubt that he was at a loss on how to explain his spectacular ability but in reality, I think it was the kid's knee-jerk reaction to what happened just before.

I never knew having my fingers slide into someone's mouth and licked could be such a turn-on. I have no idea where we would have ended up if he hadn't thrown us into the past, but I'm guessing he'd be on his back and he'd be revising his sexuality.

The thing, flipping, jumping, whatever he calls it, is firstly, extremely painful. Every muscle seized up, sparks ran up and down my spine. The worst was the burn in my lungs. I couldn't breath except in shallow breaths. No one with any sense would do it a second time, let alone as many times as Timothy has. I don't know whether to be impressed by his determination or horrified by how stupid he is. It's like the first person who ate a snail, what the hell made you do it in the first place and why would you do it again.

Secondly, it's disorientating, the sort of experience where you look at something and just can't understand what you are seeing. Trying to get your head around that it's real, you're not dreaming. I have to own up to being scared out of my wits. All I was conscious of was pain, breathlessness to the point where I thought I was suffocating.

.....

Timothy ended up telling me everything until it felt like my head would explode. He made all of Nana Ovia's stories reality. I saw then that he was part of that world that I wanted to get away from.

The icing on the cake was when he read one of my past life footprints, my jade ring, and found one of the earlier versions of me. Nana Ovia hadn't managed it but he read decades of stored memories in a few minutes. For him travelling back and getting a photograph of the man, of me, is just a fun thing to do, it's all a game. I honestly can't work out if he is dumb or if it comes so naturally to him, like breathing that he can't see that for the rest of us it's mind-blowing.

.....

Now he's sent me that message. What do I do?