Suddenly...Nothing Happened
A dark tale by Casey Douglass
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| Image used freely courtesy of Splitshire |
A thick plume of smoke
erupted from the delicate container, the glass emitting a worrying
cracking noise as the internal pressures tried to become external as
quickly as possible.
Lance shied away behind
the thick tome propped open in front of him, hoping for some kind of
protection from the possibly imminent explosion. Sweat dripped from
the tip of his nose, which he briskly wiped on the back of his hand.
He looked down at his hand, wondering if it was sweat glistening on
the back of it, or snot, his mind weighing the odds before a
particularly loud crack brought him back to the room.
‘Focus Lance focus!’
he muttered to the empty room. The mental image of a photographer
fiddling with a lens stole into his mind, words like "aperture", "white
balance" and "ISO quality" floating around the periphery. In a movement
so swift it somehow surprised even him, his hand shot up and
deposited a stinging slap on his right cheek. His glasses flew
swiftly from his face and clattered to the floor. He uttered a strangled
cry, his face red, his teeth gritted, in a mask of pure irritation.
The fumes from the beaker started to reach his nose now, the particles tickling and
tugging at his nose hairs. He sniffed and spluttered as he sank to
the ground, his hands desperately pawing at the floor. His finger
knocked something skittering away, which to his ears sounded like an
expensive visit to the opticians if ever he’d heard one. He
scurried further along, the thick base of the bench always pressed to
his right shoulder. He reached the end and felt a gust of air around
his now exposed side.
‘Blast!’ he shouted
as he turned about face and headed back the other way. His ears were
pricked, listening for the sound of breaking glass and the early
signs of a manifestation; the sort that cost you your career and your
license to experiment. Not to mention the body count that would likely be involved.
His head bumped against
the leg of his chair. Muttering he heaved himself up and sat on it
panting. His eyes were blurry, the room indistinct. He had no idea if
anything was in there with him, or if he was even in there with
himself any more. He could have changed multiverse, he might be a
colour in some painting of the room, or the tattoo on a prostitute's
back in the early twentieth century. The reaction going on in the
container had slowed somewhat now, the crackles and occasional pops
coming at less regular intervals. He coughed in his hand, and with
unfocussed eyes, attempted to check that there were no spiders,
pixies, rats or Djinn. You only got that blasted Fairytale flu once,
and it haunted you forever. He sighed away the tension at the sight
of his empty palm.
***
Lance sat for some
time, the flask not reacting, the room silent around him save for the
slow ticking of the clock behind him. His heart fluttered as he
pondered, an involuntary grin on his face.
‘Oi oi!’
Lance flinched.
‘Oh...hello Barnham.’
‘Make you jump? Ha!
Too easy! Don't know why I bother any more.’
‘Some people are just
bastards I guess.’
Barnham stood behind
him now and smacked him hard on his back. ‘Too true too true. What
are your glasses doing over there? Been looking for pennies again? Or
have you been looking up that Miss. Curmudgen’s skirt again!’
‘Well I never!’
Lance exclaimed, his fists bunching.
‘Stay there. I’ll
get them.’
‘Thank you,’ seeped
through Lances clenched jaw.
‘Here.’
‘Thank you.’
‘So what were you
doing?’
‘It was a sequence of
mishaps. It isn't important.’
‘I see you have a red
hand on your cheek! It was Mrs. Cur-’
‘NO! I was trying to snap myself out of something, a reverie of sorts.’
‘My word, what will
the master say! Spying on that poor Miss...’
Lance’s face relaxed
and he grinned.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Well, the master
will be promoting me soon, so I don't care what lies you spread about me and the aforementioned lady.’
‘Promoting you? Why
in the hell would he do that?’
‘Oh I don't know,’
Lance said in a singsong voice. ‘Perhaps because I did an
experiment and nothing happened!’
Barnham’s mouth
slipped open so suddenly it made a popping sound.
‘N-Nothing?’
‘Not a single thing.’
‘No manifestations?’
‘No.’
‘No mythics?’
‘No.’
‘No matrix like
inversions?’
‘No... nothing!’
Barnham grinned, his
eyes glistening. He launched himself at Lance, his arms wrapping him
in a tight bear hug. ‘At last! At last!’
Lance alternated
between tittering and sobbing as he returned the hug.
‘You know what this
means?’ Barnham said as he leaned back and looked in Lance’s
eyes.
‘Yes!’
‘If we can apply what
you did to everything else, we don't need to live in fear again!’
‘Yes!’ Lance nodded
like a cat watching a butterfly.
‘We can make a cup of
tea and not be afraid what might fall into the cup! We can run a bath
and add some perfume and not need to have two harpoonists on hand in
case something surfaces. My dear fellow! What did you do? How?’
Lance pointed at the
book behind him. Barnham leaned over and burst out laughing.
‘Of course! Of
course! Why didn't anyone else think of it!’
Lance grinned. ‘Good
old Tome of Statistical Evaluation, nothing brings outliers under
control like probability tables!’
‘What... this isn't
the Tome of Statistical evaluation!’
‘It’s not?’
‘No, it’s the
combined collection of Harry Potter, the book that got all those kids
into reading hundreds of years ago, before they found that magic did
indeed exist!’
Lance stood up and swayed a little in a stunned
silence, the tuna sandwich he’d subdued and eaten over lunch
threatening to make another appearance.
Barnham laughed. ‘Of
course! What better way to bring about nothing of interest than
applying the techniques in a fictional book. When everything switched
after that Large Hadron Collider “unpleasantness,” the sciences
became mythical and magic became our reality. Pity we still don't
know how to use it, but at least now we might be able to live a
normal life without strange creatures manifesting every time we turn
a light switch on!’
Barnham slapped him on
the back again and rushed from the room shouting, ‘Breakthrough!
Breakthrough! Get the Master!’
Lance exhaled
for the first time in what felt like at least five minutes, his
thoughts chiding and berating him. What a fool, what a fool! He
hadn't discovered anything on purpose, it was just dumb luck, that's
all it was, dumb luck! How on earth had he managed to mistake the contents of the two books? How? No doubt Barnham would soon be telling
everyone that it was he who’d added two and two together, and come
out with four, for the first time in decades.
Lance slammed his fist
down towards the bench top, missed, and ended up hitting himself in
the thigh. His leg buckled as the feeling left it. Falling forwards,
he hit his head on the wooden edge in front of him and blacked out. The last sound he heard was the old bell being struck in the distance, cheers swelling around its chimes.
And thus, he slept through the dawning of a new age.
THE END
Thank you for reading. This story was written some time ago but is only now being published in the hope that it will spur me on to get back into the swing of writing fiction again. It may be a little rough and ready but on the whole, I think it's sound. If you enjoyed this short story, please tell your friends and share a link to it on social media. Getting eyeballs on writing is an ongoing struggle, so every little helps. Thank you :).
