The Time Travel memoirs: Lost And So Alone

I think dismantling the pocket watch was the hardest thing to do.
The Majestic was home, don’t get me wrong, it was just a ship, but the time travel part somehow completed the perfect ship. I had travelled in time for long enough now, I had seen more than any mortal had seen and I was still hungry for more. I’d seen the planet fall, I met kings and queens, rebellions and if I died, it would all be over; Susie’s prediction had to be wrong.

I hoped.

I unscrewed the screws and bolts holding the dashboard in place, it was one of those jobs that were tedious but relaxing at the same time. Lloyd and Stryker were taking time to guard the perimeter of the Majestic, whereas Sachar worked inside the Majestic boxing things that may have given any clue of the crew’s existence, our possessions for example, even a single hair would give us away.
As I got off the glass cover of the dashboard I carefully put the screws in a plastic packet and put them in a box of my own. I saw Sachar behind me with a shovel, he began work. We were going to bury all of this stuff and come back for it, if we survived anyway. The Majestic computer went in first, it had taken a while to take the microchip out of it, Lloyd knew his stuff about electronics and he was from 1912 for Christ sake.

Lloyd, like me of course, hadn’t aged much, I noticed, over the years he had begun to wear his tie looser; he also wore different colour ties now and again. He was a different man to when I had first met him. When I met him he was overcome with grief, but he had hidden it better than anyone I had ever met, never play poker with someone like old Lloyd, he’ll rip out your soul and throw it on the pile.
I was all alone as I grasped the pocket watch out of its rightful place. This was the thing that started the feud, if I hadn’t stolen the knowledge in the first place then... I would never have pissed the devil off, on the other hand, I wouldn’t have ever seen what I’ve seen, met who I’ve met. All’s well that ends in disaster. That was my favourite saying.

I gripped the pocket watch in my hand for the first time in decades, the cool metal still felt the way it did that day in the war. I remembered the smell of smoke and the sound of the damn Messerschmitt. The prospect of time travel was groovy, why did I have to die now.
“You don’t have to die yet.” I whipped my head to the side and there sat Damian. I smiled, well grinned, I never thought I’d be pleased to see the evil little bastard ever again. “I’m surprised he let you out to play Damian.” Damian snorted, he did so whilst grinning, and he had almost human teeth, with only a little point to them. “Who said he let me out? He won’t miss faithful Damian, who will do as he is told.” I sniffed and rubbed an eye smiling. Damian crouched on the rock he sat on and lifted a cigarette to his mouth. I put the watch in my pocket and turned to face him once more.

Damian looked sad. He gestured at the cigarette, “I’ve never really been able to taste these any more, when he makes you into a demon, you get all of the cravings, but you can’t do anything about them. The drink doesn’t satisfy, the cigarettes don’t relax me and the sex certainly isn’t up to scratch.”

I blinked.

He waved a hand at me, “don’t listen, I’m moaning. I hear you’ve got the army up and running.” I nodded, “just about, this is the way to get them into hell.” Damian nodded, “the portal. He realised something and looked me in the eye. How the hell do you expect to get back?” I grimaced, “We’ve decided that this is practically a suicide mission, so if we complete the mission successfully, we’ll have to use our intuition when we’re there.”
Damian smiled, “you’re one in a million Georgie, hey, if you kill him, I’ll be free, some other demons will too.” I frowned at him, “others, why others, why not all of them?” Damian sighed, “Technicality dear Carter, if you’ve technically not done anything ‘sinful’ then you are free, that means you’ve been taken by Beelzebub for a reason personal to him, when he dies, you can be set free.”

I was interested now, I told him about Zach.
Damian mused, “I remember him, because the boss told us about him. If he’s dead Georgie, you’ve got no chance. Even the devil himself can’t re animate bodies and control them. That is classed as necromancy.” I shrugged my shoulders, I was pretty sure Zach was dead when he left the ship; there wasn’t any way for him to survive. Was there?
Damian stood up and yawned, his fangs were few now, I was guessing he had been beaten and had his teeth knocked out for insolence. “Okay, here’s the thing Georgie, in about ten hours time Beelzebub is going to contact you. He is going to offer you a chance to surrender; of course he wouldn’t expect you to surrender, because not many people do. His alternative offer, his only alternative offer mind you Georgie, is a duel, one on one, to end the war between the two of you.”

Five hours later I still sulked.

A duel between the two of us was unfair. He would offer the duel because there was no way for me to win. The dagger and holy water Damian had given me was an enigma in itself, how to administer the holy water quickly, there wasn’t a way if he was sleeping, that wasn’t going to happen, we weren’t going to catch the demon king off guard. Beelzebub knew about the weapon, the last job of the Majestic computer was to tell us why Beelzebub’s weakness is holy water. The reason made me frown.
The weakness of the Beelzebub was chosen at the coronation of the great king of the demons, the heir to the throne of the great Beelzebub always took over. It was always a king, a male; never in recorded history was it a female. Chosen, the only rule is that the chosen object had to be clever and within reason obviously, for example the weakness couldn’t be hit by a flying double Decker bus, although it is possible, I saw one once. Honestly.

The current Beelzebub had picked holy water as a sort of irony, to make the humans look small. The irony was that humans thought the way to ward off vampires and beasts was to use holy water, ask for the power of God to help against the peril that stood before you. Of course in the modern day world, holy water wasn’t openly believed to be all that powerful, religious people may disagree, but I bet many people would favour a gun as opposed to a the blessed liquid.
Stryker had worked as a blacksmith from the age of fourteen to the age of twenty- six. Stryker could make his own weapons, swords, daggers, guns, you name it. I was surprised when he solved the enigma of administrating the holy water into the bloodstream of Beelzebub. He stood over me smiling, he knew the answer. I grinned, “Go on, enlighten us.” Lloyd sat in his armchair smoking a cigar; he lowered the copy of colloquial language weekly to look at us. I have no idea where he got a copy of colloquial language weekly, but it amused me to see him read it with much interest.

Stryker rolled the dagger we had given in his hands and smiled. “When I was twenty, a customer came into the Blacksmith’s and told me in confidence that he was to commit an assassination. I told him that was fine and asked him what weapon he wanted. He was a different kind of madman though, he wanted a way to build a syringe into the dagger, poison would be in a hollow point of the dagger and when the dagger dragged through the skin, he would press down the handle of the dagger, which is basically filled with the poison in question. The poison would be pushed through the hollow point of the weapon and would come out of the end of the dagger.”

That was one hell of an idea, the holy water would be our obvious poison and we would hollow point the dagger and use the air to push the holy water into the demons bloodstream. It was cleaner than ripping him open and rubbing it in his blood. I was still curious about Stryker’s story though. “What happened with the assassin?” Stryker grinned, this story was a story he was fond of. “Basically, the victim was a royal prince; he was disguised as a servant in the household and hid the blade with the cutlery. When he woke the prince up he simply pretended to stumble and he caught him with the dagger. The prince of course beat the servant and sent him on his way. Later in the day the poison kicked in whilst the prince was giving a speech to his people. The poison took him whilst he was on a balcony and he fell dead onto the floor from the palace. I nodded slowly, “so the killer would never have been suspected, what was the official cause of death?” Stryker lowered his head and smiled, “heart attack I think it was.”
We had Beelzebub, we had him good. Three hours later whilst I was sipping a small glass of bourbon, we were contacted by Beelzebub.