Your Future Past
This story and all ideas, themes and original characters are the sole ownership and copyright of J.L. Scott. Any unauthorized use is actionable in a court of law.
To borrow a phrase: Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman and all characters and settings no mine, no permission, no money, no sue…….please?
She had a fever. From the rain and cold. How the hell do you get a fever from being cold? If Blake hadn't been nearly delirious with fever she probably would have asked. Dr. Quinn continued to talk to her never the less, telling her about the weather, the funny things Katie had done, how her condition was improving or not. Blake's mind rolled its eyes at these chirpy bits of information. I mean, who really cared if it was windy out again today? She drifted between the past and the present, or perhaps more accurately between the present and the future. In her mind she saw her brother on TV, her father smashing it, her mother tossing back another scotch. Her eyes flashed open, expecting to see him, ready to yell, and found only an empty room with a view of a prairie. The door would open and she would expect to see her mother, but instead Michaela would walk in.
Sweat drenched her pillow, her sheets, the blankets, her clothes. Blake was freezing. Voices from the hallway woke her out of a fitful sleep. Her father was growling at her mother in the hall. Or…no, that wasn't her father. It was Sully and Michaela. Now her mother was pulling another bottle from the linen closet. Or was that Michaela pulling out sheets?
"She has no where to go Sully"
"You don't know that"
"We can't just put the poor girl back out on the streets. She'd be eaten alive out there"
"We don't know anything about her, Michaela. The way she was dressed, the way she never answers a direct question. She could be crazy for all we know"
"She is a little odd, but she's still a helpless girl who is lost and on her own"
The voices went away after that. Blake wondered who this girl was and why her mother was so willing to look after her. Maybe she worked at a liquor store and could get the stuff for cheap?
After two days the fever broke and so did Blake. Her will to fight against the insanity of reality evaporated. It was finally apparent that she was where she was and, seeing as she didn't know how she got there in the first place, there wasn't any getting back to her original time frame. Did she really want to get back to that anyway? Back to a drunk of a mother, an abusive father, a missing brother, nasty looks from teachers and leering looks from college boys who thought that just because she wore a mini skirt with knee high boots she was just like all the girls she hung out with. Back to a couple hundred in her pocket, a quickly depleting gas tank and no where to go and no one to see? Oh, yeah, she really wanted to get back to that. Still, what was there for her to do here? Eighteen year old girls of this time knew how to do things, or were getting married soon. Blake sighed, sitting up in Colleen's bed. She didn't know hot to do anything except be a pain in the ass. Although, she was rather good at that. She had no way to earn her living, and she could only expect the doctor and her husband to take care of her for so long. She could run off and live with the local Indians, they generally took people in. But living in the wild without indoor plumbing, or sugar, or cotton clothes didn't exactly appeal. Beds, food she recognized, the use of English. Blake was unintentionally making a list of all the things about her new circumstances that were similar to the old ones. The things that made it no so different. Yeah, right. She couldn't focus on the differences, though. If she did, she would go insane. Well, more insane than she currently was anyway. I mean, what kind of psycho went running out into the wilderness in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm, bare foot and half naked? The same kind of psycho that had hallucinations about being transported back in time, obviously. Blake tried to imagine her body strapped into some hospital bed, asking the nurses where Michaela was and complaining about her rabbit stew. Somehow it didn't fit.
By the third day, her temperature was back to normal and Michaela came into the room smiling, a dress in hand.
"Are you ready to get up? I've brought you a new dress" the doctor said, "Colleen is waiting to go into town if you want to go with her" Blake resisted saying something snide, realizing she was going to need something from the woman. Plus, all of her witting one liners seemed to go right over the good doctor's head.
"Dr. Quinn," Blake started. What was she going to say? I'm actually from the future and so obviously I don't have anywhere to stay, no money and no skills. Mind if I stay with you for a while? She might as well say, hi, I'm insane. And insane people of the era were not treated especially well. And yet, a good lie didn't present itself. Was she losing her touch? If she were home Blake would have been able to rattle off a great lie in no time. No thinking required, words of the most convincing nature would just roll of her tongue, congruent with any lie she might have told previously. She was known for her lies. Or, she would have been if she'd ever been caught in them.
"I seem to find myself in a precarious situation" she said. Michaela stopped fiddling with the curtains and turned around to listen. Did the woman have some kind of "I'm going to ask a huge favor" radar? She looked like she knew exactly what Blake was going to say.
"I don't have anywhere to go" She waited for the doctor to say something. When she didn't, Blake went on, "And I have no money. And no skills"
"I thought you might say something like that" Michaela admitted, "Sully and I have already talked about it. You can stay with us until we find something for you"
"I really can't do anything" Blake emphasized, "I can't cook or sew or ride a horse or…you know, anything"
"I couldn't ride a horse when I first got here" Michaela smiled, "You'll learn. Here, put the dress on and go into town with Colleen" And with that the doctor exited leaving Blake alone to figure out how she was going to make this all work.
As the days went by, she only felt more and more useless. Sure she could wash dishes, or keep an eye on Katie, but most of the time she felt like she was simply in the way, another mouth to feed with no good use. Sully barely spoke to her, keeping his distance very well. He didn't like her being there, she could tell. Well, she couldn't blame him, she was after all more than a bit out of the ordinary here. Michaela seemed happy to have her around the house. With three of her children gone and the fourth just barely walking it was a relief to have someone to talk with. Sully wasn't a big talker. Still, Blake didn't leave the farmstead. She didn't go into town. She ate as little as possible, made her own bed, was careful not to get dirty or smelly so she could wear this same dress for as long as possible without asking Michaela for a second one so this one could be washed at least. Blake was walking life on tippy toes, afraid of doing this or that, saying something crass or doing something inappropriate. She spent a lot of time in her room.
Two months went by like this. Blake tried to forget that another day had passed each time she went to bed. Her life was nothing but a walking dream. She couldn't complain, it probably would've turned out a lot worse if she'd never fallen off that cliff.
It was a lovely late morning. The family was staying in town for lunch, so Blake had hours to herself. She discarded the dress for her cut offs and tank top and headed outside. There was just a bit of grass in back of the house that she could splay on and let her skin soak up the sun. She slipped her earphones over her ears and closed her eyes. Soon she was singing along with her mix tape, aware that every second was precious because once she ran out of batteries that was it.
"I am beautiful! In every single way! Words can't bring me down!" Blake belted it out into the empty valley, "I am beautiful! No matter what they say! Words can't bring me down! So don't you bring me down, today!" The Christina Auguleria song had been running through her head all day for some reason or another. She didn't particularly like the singer, but she liked the lyrics. She didn't normally belt any song out, she tended to just sing under her breath, but she was all alone at the house and so she knew there wouldn't be anyone around to here her for miles. Anyway, it was too quiet. Too quiet to even think, and Blake felt like thinking. She had to think of something. Maybe she couldn't pay for her living, but she could help out. It was finding something she could do without burning the whole place down, or letting all the animals go, or doing some other disastrous thing, that was the problem. Michaela had told her it wasn't necessary, but what else was she going to do anyway?
So here she found herself, alone and singing as loud as she liked, really whipping it out. In fact, had she stopped to listen, she would've heard her voice echoing. But she didn't stop, which was probably why she didn't hear Colleen until the woman said
"Your singin's real pretty" Blake stopped immediately and opened her eye, slipping her earphones off and pushing herself up onto her elbows.
"I like that song you were singin'. I never heard anything like it before" Blake swallowed hard.
"Oh, yeah" She squirmed a bit under Colleen's steady gaze, "Uh, there's tea in the house. It should still be hot"
"Come have a cup with me?" Colleen offered. Blake didn't want to have tea. She didn't want to sit there in her shorts and tank and watch Colleen avert her eyes but not say anything. She didn't want to sit there and pretend that she even sort of appreciated the girl trying be nice, a friend for Blake that she didn't want.
"Yeah, sure" she said and followed Colleen in. They took their tea onto the porch though.
"I see you don't care much for Dr. Mike's skirt"
"It's not that, it's just...well to tell the truth I hate wearing them and I figured if no one was around it wouldn't offend anyone if I wore my own clothes" Blake replied with half a smile. Colleen laughed.
"Well, I won't tell" she said and sipped at her tea. She gave Blake a sideways look.
"So, where did you get that voice from?" Blake thought she had escaped that one. Dang.
"Uh, guess my whole family is musically inclined" she answered with a frown, "My brother..." her frown deepened at the thought of Zander, "Where I come from, my brother's real famous for his music"
"Well, you certainly have a talent" Colleen told her, "Did you ever take lessons or anything?" Blake almost laughed.
"Nope. My school councilor always used to tell me I should try out for American Idol but my Mom hated it when I sang." Colleen had a confused look on her face. Blake rolled her eyes.
"Uh, it's this kind of...choir. Very famous where I come from" she explained.
"You should've! I know, you should sing for the Church talent show!"
"Oh, no! I'm not that good. I'm not singing in front of all those people and making a fool of myself" Blake replied adamantly.
"But you are good! What would you sing? That song you were singing? I bet you could sing Amazing Grace beautifully! Oh, you really should, Blake!" Colleen urged.
"Nope. Out of the question" Blake said.
"It'd be a great way for you to meet some people. They're all starting to talk about the girl that's staying with Dr. Mike that nobody ever sees" Colleen was smiling but Blake had a sneaking feeling that her trying to stay out of the way was causing Michaela more trouble than it was helping.
"It's coming up here in a few weeks. The whole town is going to show up. There's a big party afterwards" Colleen urged.
"Well, maybe I could come to the party. But I don't want to sing" Blake gave up. Colleen smiled and nodded. Blake had a bad feeling about this.