Places: The Hotel on Eighth Avenue (Places #3)

Chapter I: Outside

  Jone and Isabella sat outside and the cool wind blew Isabella's hair in different directions. Jone, on the other hand, appreciated the cold wind of the day. It was nearly December, and Jone hadn't travelled since the day they arrived back home, having picked up the McMahons and dropping them off at their residence. The ancient Earth Machine sat in the backyard, slowly but surely turning to dust.
  Jone stepped to the backyard, seeing his machine. He rubbed some dust off the large green door, which added color to the machine which was gray and rectangular over all. Jone seen the words Earth Machine engraved in the small piece of steel covered in dust and he wiped it off too. Jone opened the door and stepped inside. He seen two things. His blue drawstring bag that he had packed since day one, still containing the same contents, and the Magic Mirror.
Jone decided that he wasn't going to use the Magic Mirror, and he was just going to leave it.
  He still had that camera, that allowed you to go to a certain event. However he only used that to get a picture of everywhere he went. To show all those places to which he traveled. He wasn't able to get that large palace with the death clocks, but he managed to get one of the Reveal House.
   Jone dusted off the Earth Machine, and their mother had called them inside.
  It was cold, and Jone was developing a cough, so mother decided it was best that they not stay outside.
  Jone's father was far away but would be retuning soon, so mother cleaned their house.
  Jone decided to let the Earth Machine wait for a time when they actually needed it. When he needed it. When he and Isabella needed it. When he, mother, and Isabella needed it. When father-
  Sylvester Well's red SUV pulled into the driveway to their house on Eighth Street, which was difficult to adapt to now that it was Jone, his sister, his mother and his fath-
  His father opened the door, carrying his black suitcase which was full of legal papers, upon the building of a city, much like the one we seen a while ago, however it had a more fresh and nice smell, much like the one Jone visited on Father's Day of 1971.
"Hello dear," Sylvester said.
"Hello darling, how was today's day at work?"
"Many papers, my eyes are strained from reading so many papers."
"Ah, and what are you working on?"
"Something confidential."
"Oh."
  Sylvester was acting very peculiar, as he kept checking the time.
  The Wells family had dinner, now as a whole, with everyone present. Father checked the time, it was 9 o'clock at night.
"Alright," he said. "Why don't you both go to bed?" looking at Isabella and Jone.
"Alright," Jone said, heading upstairs to his bedroom, Isabella to her bedroom, listening to the worst conversation between them they could've possibly heard.
"This is going to be our last conversation, I'm afraid. I will be away for work, forever. I'll never be back, I'm afraid, I'll leave you money, for the family to get along, but this new project, is something we can't quit. Sure, perhaps you'll see me again, at the time when the world knows about this but that could be 8 or 9 years. You won't see me again. Tell the children, I died as by the time you may see me again I will have already been dead so therefore you're not lying. I must give you this," he said, handing it to Sylvia Wells, who was crying.
"This is their education money, and there is $100,000 in their for you all to get along. Bye."
  And that was it. He pulled the SUV out into the driveway and the kids knew it.
  They didn't regularly go to bed this early, but at 10:00. They watched it pull off into the distance where they no longer could see it.
  They heard their mother crying downstairs. They heard a loud shot, and their mother was dead. Sylvia Wells, age 44, was now dead. And this time for good. They couldn't find father, and so they were now orphans. And that was it.
"So, do we wait for the police to arrive?" Isabella asked.
"Yes," Jone said.
"Why aren't you sad?"
"Because I've seen this before, she has died before and no matter what I do it unravels another way. The fate of time, it unravels. Everything I try and do to help this world turns itself around. I can't do anything, why did she even give me that machine?"
"It's better than being an orphan, right?"
"I guess."
  They heard the sirens traveling down Eighth Street. Jone heard them twice, once having heard them from that early, fateful Saturday morning, where his mother died. And now, where she died again.
The police arrived.
  Jone and Isabella knew very well what to do. They didn't want to be interrogated upon something so tragic and they didn't want the police finding them. They went out the back window, on a ladder. Jone opened the door of the Earth Machine. And they were off.