Study the first two chapters of this unpublished work.

See what captures your attention in the beginning.

Can you tell what the story is going to be about?

What have you learned about the main character in …

Chapter1? In Chapter 2?

What do you like about the main character?

What flaws do the characters have?

What makes the minor characters interesting?

What did you find funny, amusing, or entertaining?

Time Rifter 1:

Heather Gwyneth Wellsworth

TRFC (Time Rifter First Class)

By

Eugene Orlando

≈≈ Chapter 1 ≈≈

What’s Behind Door Number One?

“Now, you do what Mr. Bickles says, Gwynnie,” Mr. Wellsworth warned his only daughter, “and don’t go near that museum storage room.”

Oh, Dad, haven’t you learned by now? Heather Gwyneth Wellsworth thought to herself. When you tell me not to do something, it's like telling me to do it.

“What's in there, Daddy-W?”

Mr. Bickles, the curator of the Baltimore Museum of History, coughed and took over for Heather's father by pointing down a long side hall to an old, beat-up, wooden door. “That first door is where we are storing the artifacts for the upcoming Jewish Holocaust exhibit. Admittance is strictly by invitation of the museum staff.” He gave Heather a look that could only have come from Satan himself. “And that won’t be happening anytime soon.”

“That's fine with me, Mr. Bickles,” Heather said, putting her hands behind her knee-length skirt while rocking on her feet.

We'll just see about that, Heather's thoughts added.

Mr. Wellsworth and Mr. Bickles walked toward the main hall featuring the current “History of World War II” exhibit, while Heather quickly dashed down the side hall to the old door. When she arrived, she looked up at a sign in the middle of it that showed an open door inside a circle with a line drawn through it at an angle. Under the drawing it read in big, bold red letters, “Absolutely No Admittance. And that goes double if you're under fourteen years of age.”

“On December 21, just a few days from now, you'll be twelve, Heather,” she said to herself. Heather always liked to do that when she was solving her problems and no one else was around. “Surely they are not talking physical age by number of years since birth. Why, your teachers have said that you're as intelligent as any fourteen-year-old, and a museum is a place of intelligence, not age. So …” she looked up the hall to find it empty, and then turned back to the sign again, “it can’t refer to you, Heather. You're older than your years.”

She reached for the doorknob and turned it.

“Gwynnie!”

After jumping out of her skin, she turned around. The door was still closed, and her father was way down at the end of the hall with both fists rammed into his hips.

Heather tried to blink the frightened feeling out of her eyes. “By Saint George's dragon, Daddy-W, you scared me nearly to death.”

“What did we tell you about that room?”

Heather was about to answer when she heard Mr. Bickles' voice come from around the corner. She couldn’t understand it, but relief calmed her a bit when her father disappeared from sight.

“Now's your chance, Heather. Get on in there and see what they're hiding.”

Without wasting another second, she opened the door, stepped in, and closed it behind her. Immediately a musty, dry smell invaded her nose and almost made her sneeze. No lights were on, but the windows against the far wall, even though their blinds were drawn, still streamed out enough light to see fairly well.

Mounds of stuff seemed to grow everywhere. An old desk rested closest to her, and it was piled high with old books and papers. A three-candle candelabra looked as though it sprouted from the desk's scratchy, wooden surface, and a brass six-pointed Star-of-David teetered unsteadily against the books.

Heather walked over to discover that the books were all ancient. Faded and stained, many had frayed threads of cloth sticking out the top and bottom of their spines. Picking one up, she sniffed it. The musty smell that haunted the air doubled, and it made her wrinkle her nose and put the book down in a hurry.

She moved farther between two racks of clothing. One rack had gray uniform tops, and as she flipped through them, she noticed that each had a big yellow Star-of-David sewn on it.

Then she picked up a photograph of someone's arm. On it was a tattoo of six numbers. “By Saint George's dragon, Heather. What is all this stuff? What was the Holocaust anyway?”

Standing at the end of the rack facing the door she had come in, Heather knew that any second her father and Mr. Bickles would probably come lumbering in and yank her out. “You've got to move faster, Heather, if you want to see more.”

As she started to wade deeper into the piles of stuff, something darted in from her left.

“Excuse me!” bellowed a scratchy voice, just before a body slammed into her knocking her off her feet.

“Hey!” Heather yelled, still sprawled on the floor. Without looking at the figure, she sat up and straightened her skirt.

“Tough luck, kid-o, but you were in the way.”

When Heather looked in the direction of the voice, she let out a scream at what she saw. The owner of the voice bolted over to her and clamped what looked like a hand over her mouth, though it was blue, leathery, and slimy!

≈≈ Chapter 2 ≈≈

The Interstellar Neutron Internal

Time-Rifting Apparatus

“Keep it down, Girlie Girl!” The ugly creature said, keeping it’s hand secure over Heather’s mouth. “Do you want to be discovered?”

Heather's voice quieted, but her heart beat as loud as a herd of thundering horses. Standing in front of her was a six-foot tall creature that barely appeared to be human. It did have a head, two legs, and two arms—although they were all blue like the hand. Its fingers were long, stringy, and sticky. The gooey feeling against her face made her try to back out of the creature's grip.

“What are you doing in here?” the creature asked, clamping the second slimy hand behind Heather's head to keep her from backing out of the other. “You're under fourteen. Haven't you learned to read yet?”

Heather pulled free and suddenly smelled rotting eggs. “Peeeeuuuu! You stink!”

The creature grabbed her head again and shook it mildly between its hands. “Hey, don’t you make fun of my aftershave. That stuff's awfully expensive.”

“I—I—I'm S—s—sor—r—r—ry—y—y,” Heather stammered, slapping her hands to her head trying to hold it still.

The creature removed its hands and sprang back a step as Heather tried to wipe the sticky feeling off her face. She put a hand out to discover it slightly stained with blue slime.

“You're a very rude woman,” the creature said.

What is going on here? Am I nuts? Did I fall asleep, or what?

Heather examined the creature closer. Its diamond-shaped head had fluffs of orange hair sprouting out at the sides like tufts of stringy, orange grass. Three eyes perched above a pair of small holes where the nose should have been, and the mouth was shaped like a small oval.

What a freaky dream I'm having!

“I'm not a woman. I'm a girl. You even said I was under fourteen.”

The creature tried to touch her blonde hair, but Heather pulled away. “Don’t girls become women at twelve years of age?”

“No way.” She touched her chest. “Look at me. My chest is flat.”

The creature put a hand on the side of its face. “And what about me? My face is flat.”

“It's not the same thing.”

“Maybe I came to the wrong world.”

Heather cringed a bit as she could feel the goose bumps multiplying on her arms. “By Saint George's dragon, you're an alien!”

“Only because I'm on your planet. If you were on mine, then you'd be the alien.”

Heather flipped a hand at the alien, and the alien flipped one back. “I'm just dreaming. I bet I sneaked in here and fell asleep.”

The alien turned her around and swatted her on the buttocks. She jumped about two feet away, turned, and rubbed her backside.

“Hey!” Heather howled. “That hurt.”

“You felt that, didn’t you?”

“What'd you do that for?”

The creature pointed a leathery finger in Heather's face. “I read your thoughts. Parents do that to children, don’t they?” It leaned back and struck her father's favorite pose: hands planted firmly on hips. “When the little cookie munching rug rats are really bad, it's whack, whack, whack!”

The alien lifted the hem of her skirt high enough to reveal her white panties. Heather quickly swatted the ugly, blue hand away.

“By Saint George's dragon, hands off, you beast.”

“So, you're not a woman after all. You're just a pup.”

“I'm a child, not a pup. Pups are baby dogs. Anyway, my parents don't hit me or my two brothers.”

“Pup, child. Child, pup. What's the difference? You're both inferior species.”

Heather pointed a finger at the creature. “That's enough. If you're not a dream, then tell me what you're doing here?”

The creature gripped a white belt on which was attached a small black box no bigger than a few inches square. “I'm time traveling, thank you very much … searching your past to see how nasty your species can be. And so far, it doesn’t look good.” The alien slapped a smart salute at her. “I'm a Time Rifter First Class.”

“Well, my father's going to be coming through that door shortly.” Heather pointed to the exit. “Then you'll find out just how nasty our species can be.”

She started walking around the creature. “I find it hard to believe that I could dream up something so weird. You look like a blue Grinch. Did you steal anything lately?”

Heather must have hit a tender spot in the alien’s feelings, because the blue creature took the same angry pose her father liked so much. “How dare you! My species doesn’t steal. Stealing was invented right here on Earth … the only place in the galaxy where it exists by the way.”

“How can you talk my language so well?”

The alien pointed to the black box. “My Interstellar Neutron Internal Time-Rifting Apparatus comes complete with a Digital Universal Language Translator.”

Heather stopped. “What? What are you talking about?”

“The Interstellar Neutron Internal Time-Rifting Apparatus, better known as the I.N.I.T.R.A.,” —the alien pronounced it e-nee'-tra as if it was a word. “It's what makes time travel possible.” The creature removed it and held it out to her. “And it also translates your language.”

Heather took the box and immediately noticed that it was cold to the touch. Three inches square and an inch thick, it was pure black with two buttons mounted on its front surface: one white and one green.

When Heather looked up at the alien creature, it's mouth bowed wide from side to side.

I wonder if that's the way it smiles.

The creature took the I. N. I. T. R. A. from her and set it on a table. “Fenix blairnby doon neeb fetchula,” the alien said.

“What did you say?” Heather replied, scrunching up her shoulders.

The alien pointed to the black box, and shrugged its shoulders—which really weren't much of a pair of shoulders, because the angle of the neck sloped directly into its arms.

“Oh, I see. If you don’t have the box on you, then we don’t get the translation of the language.”

The alien picked up the box and held it out toward her. “Now you can understand me again. Just be sure it’s exposed and not covered up, like in a pocket. You push the white button when you want to time travel, and the green button when you want to return to your own time. And as long as it is exposed on you somewhere, it will translate for you.”

“How do you set it to time travel?”

“Are you kidding?” The alien placed the I.N.I.T.R.A. on the table again. “Loomey tusula farg beniga grinsommer wasage.” It pointed to its mouth and then to the black box.

“You just tell it where and when you want to be? Is that what you mean?” When she looked at the alien, it was shaking its head up and down.

She picked up the Interstellar Neutron Internal Time-Rifting Apparatus to hand back to the alien, but it disappeared.

By Saint George's dragon—