The August Editor's Pick writer is Shaun Meeks

Please feel free to email Shaun at: shaun_meeks@msn.com

SHIFTER
By Shaun Meeks

The streetcar jerked to a stop and woke Miles up with a jolt, his forehead banged against the window frame. He groaned as he sat back and looked out the window to see how close to home he was. Work had been hard for him over the last week and a half, most nights he passed out on the streetcar and missed his stop by one or two, which made him have to back track five minutes or more on foot. He hoped that he hadn’t missed it again.

When he looked out the window, the street was dark and a few people walked around in their normal daze, but nothing was familiar to him. He knew the stores and shops along his route as well as he knew his own birthday, yet there was nothing that called to him. He cursed as he stood up and walked to the front of the streetcar, sure that he had overshot his stop by way more than usual. He swayed as he went, held the bars to keep from falling on anyone else and went to the driver.

“Excuse me, but did we already pass Lansdowne?” Miles asked.

“Lansdowne? You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I fell asleep and think I missed my stop.”

“Sure did, pal. By twenty years or so. What are you, a Shifter?” The driver chuckled and looked over at Miles who was confused by what the man had just said. “I hope you’re not serious, buddy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I come this way all the time. Lately I have been so tired from work that I miss my stop, so I figured it was the same today.”

“Lansdowne? That’s where you’re going?”

“Yeah. Queen and Lansdowne.”

The driver laughed again.

“Okay, now I know you’re messing with me, guy. What are you, some kind of class clown looking to relive your heydays?”

“What?”

“Neither Queen nor Lansdowne have been named that in over twenty years, so either you are joking or you need to go back on your meds.”

“Twenty years? What do you mean; they haven’t been named that in twenty years?”

“Cool it, pal. I ain’t biting. This here’s Queen and Lansdowne, or what used to be that. Get out and have a good night, idiot.”

The driver opened the door and Miles stepped out, unable to understand what the driver meant by all that or why he got mad at him when Miles had only asked a simple question. He stepped off and turned to say something to the driver, but the doors were already shut and the streetcar was in motion. He shook his head, thought how strange that whole conversation was, then decided to just go home, eat and get some sleep. Miles turned to the street to walk home, but had no idea which way to go, nor did he know where he was. He didn’t recognize anything.

What the hell is going on?

Miles walked over to the street post, looked up at the sign and saw that he was on the corner of Ford and Norton, which he had never heard of. He looked up and down the street, tried to figure out where he was and there was nothing to help. It also didn’t help that he had lived in Toronto for all his life and in those thirty-three years he had never once heard of either of the streets he stood at and knew that no streetcar ran along ones by that name. Which left him to ask, just where in the world was he?

A man in a black suit with a briefcase clenched in his hand came towards him and Miles stopped him. He hoped the stranger could give him a hand.

“Excuse me. Sorry to bother you, but I think the streetcar driver let me off at the wrong stop. I’m trying to get to Queen and Lansdowne. Do you know which way it is?”

“Only if you have a time machine. Damn tourists!” The man said rudely and continued on his way.
Miles watched him leave, and felt as though he had just landed in some nightmare where the world had changed but he didn’t. He looked around at the buildings and the stores, tried to find something that would make sense, but there was nothing there that called out to him. Not a single shred of the familiar stuck out or called out to him. He felt lost.

This makes no sense. I know where I live and I know that the streets I am looking for are real. I just left my place this morning and there is no way it disappeared while I was at work.

The driver had said the streets hadn’t been named that in twenty years; the passerby had all but ripped his head off and called him a tourist and said he would need a time machine. If life was like the movies, he would swear he had travel through time, but that was the stuff of science fiction, not reality.

But what if it is true? What if this is the future and this is where Queen and Lansdowne used to be?

He wanted to shake that line of thought, tell himself that it was stupid, the thoughts of an insane person, but it was hard too when the world around him looked so different and even the streets had different names. There was no way a hoax could be so elaborate, so it was either true, or he had somehow lost his mind. He hoped it wasn’t the latter.

But if it was true, if he had somehow gone into the future, then he could go up the street, north on what had once been Lansdowne and he would get to the place he lived. If he did that, he could see if any of it was true or not.

He walked the three blocks as fast as he could and saw that none of the houses he remembered still stood where they once had. Every one of them was new to him, a sight unseen and it made him sure that there was something else wrong, something that would be easier to accept than time travel. Strange things happened in the world all the time, but that didn’t mean that travelling through time was possible. There was no way.

Miles stopped.

He had no idea what to think as he stood in front of the place that should have once his home, if he were to believe that Norton had been Lansdowne over twenty years ago. His mouth felt dry and he could feel his body shake slightly as he looked at the near empty space that went from the corner of where his house should be, all the way up the street for what looked like four blocks. There were no houses on that side of the street at all, just a strange black wall that spanned the empty lots. Miles slowly walked up to the wall and with the help of the streetlights above; he saw that there were silver words etched into the shiny black surface. He went to it and before he got right up to it, he saw that it was covered in names, like a memorial.

A memorial for what?

There was nothing in the spot to tell him that, but he could see a plaque further up the street and went to go to it. As he turned to go see it something that caught his eye. It was his name, Miles Krieg.

Bile burned the back of his throat as he felt the ground wobble beneath his feet, but he knew it was just his own body that fought to stay upright.

He reached out and put his hand on the wall memorial to keep steady, and as he did, the street came alive with a terrible scream. The loud sound tore into his head. It sounded like the amplified scream of a woman and Miles let go of the wall and covered his ears. 

The scream continued and he backed away from the black wall, and saw that people in the houses across the street had begun to come outside. As they did, many of them pointed at him and began to yell things, but he couldn’t hear them over the racket.

Miles backed away from the wall as the screech that pierced his ears and nearly tripped over his own feet as he tried to get away. He caught himself and turned to the street to see a wall of people behind him, all eyes in his direction. They pointed at him and stared, whispered to one another. He saw fear in their faces, and hate, but he didn’t know why.

At the thought, he saw flashing lights from up the street headed towards him and could tell it was a police cruiser. He wanted to get out of there, but where could he run? He was still not sure that he was in an area he knew, let alone the right time line. With everything around him as confusing as it was, he didn’t know much of anything anymore.

Still, with the alarm sounding and the police car’s approach, Miles knew well enough to get out of there because he was sure he had caused the sound. Whatever he had done, he figured he had breached some invisible line.

He turned and ran; the sound of the screaming wall faded as he turned on to a side street, found an alley and hid behind a dumpster. The night was filled with the cries of police sirens and he was sure that one of them would find him, though he still wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t done anything so bad other than to touch a wall. There had been no signs there to tell him not to, so how was he to know not to do it?
He hid until he felt it was safe to move. He left the spot behind the dumpster and walked towards the street. He walked in the opposite direction of the wall and hoped to find someone or something that would give him answers.

Less than ten minutes later he stopped at a street and knew it, but couldn’t believe it. He stood on the corner of Dufferin and Ford, what should have been Dufferin and Queen, which was only one major intersection east of where he lived. That meant the street he had been on, the one with the shiny black wall must’ve been Lansdowne, even if it said it was Norton.

His head felt heavy with confusion as he tried to make sense of it all. He thought back to the morning, when he had woken up, ate breakfast and went to work. He remembered his shift at the plant, when he ate lunch and checked the clock repeatedly as the day was close to an end. He could also remember when he left work totally exhausted and walked to the streetcar. He got on, paid his fare, and then fell asleep only to wake up in a work that had gone mad while he was unconscious. How had that happened?

I feel like Rip Van Winkle, he thought and walked over to a newspaper box. He wanted to check the date. His eyes fell on the front page and he saw the date was twenty-two years later than it should have been. His heart sank and he felt faint. 

He backed away from the box and as he did, he crashed into an older man with grocery bags in his hand. Jumpy from the way everything was going, Miles spun around and bit back a scream. The old man dropped one of his bags and Miles instantly felt stupid for being so high-strung. He leaned over, picked up the bag and handed it back to the old man and apologized as he did.

The old man opened his mouth, as if to say thank you, but as he did his eyes shot open and he looked terrified. Miles let go of the bag and backed away as the old man shook violently. Thin, black lines weaved unevenly up the man’s face as he shook; reddish light began to pour out from the strange fissures in his face and hands. More light came from his mouth and his eyes. 

People around them started to scream as the out man let out an electronic sounding scream before his face was engulfed by the cracks and the lights. Miles stared as the man’s body jerked one final time before he simply vanished in a brilliant red stroke of light. Miles had no idea what he had just seen.

“It was him!” A woman screamed and pointed at Miles. “He’s one of them!”

“He’s infected!”

“Don’t let him touch you! He’s a Shifter!”

Miles looked around as people screamed at him and warned others as he backed away from the scene. People yelled and pointed, accused him of being the reason the old man had exploded or disappeared, but all he had done was hand the man back his bags and try to apologize for bumping into him. He hadn’t done anything to hurt the old guy.

He could hear police sirens again and knew he needed to get away. The people there would no doubt tell the police that he had done something to the old man, that he had hurt him or that he was a terrorist and there was no way for him to prove he wasn’t. As much as he would love to get some answers to what was going on, he didn’t want to stick around and speak to cops about it and get thrown in jail. Or worse.

He ran, and headed south towards the lake. As he did, people that had seen what he had done quickly got out of his way as though he was on fire. He was afraid and confused, unsure as what was real and what wasn’t. He wanted nothing more than to go home, have a drink and get some sleep, but he had either lost his mind or…

Or what? I have to be crazy! There’s no other explanation than that. I’ve lost my mind or I traveled through time and ended up in a place where people spontaneously combust and blame me for it.

The further he ran, the less people seemed to want to get out of his way. He nearly crashed into a few of them, but avoided people as best he could. He thought he should get off the main streets as the sirens echoed behind him. As he did, a group of teenagers came out of a store and he collided with one of the boys, where they both fell to the ground. 

Miles hit hard, his head smacked off the sidewalk and his knee scraped the concrete and stung. He moaned and winced as he went to stand back up, but as he did, he heard people yell and scream close by. Miles looked over at the boy that he had run into and saw him jerk in what looked like an epileptic seizure. Only he knew it wasn’t that when he saw those black lines, thin veiny cracks in the flesh, spread across the boy’s skin, followed by the red light.

Miles stood up and backed away as anyone close by moved away from him and the gyrating boy. He turned towards the kid’s friends who looked back and forth from the kid to Miles and back. Some had fear in their eyes, while others just looked shocked and slightly in awe.

“Oh my god!” one of them shouted as he looked at Miles. “You’re a fucking shifter, dude!”

“Why do you call me a shifter?”

“Right, like you don’t know,” The kid said and then pointed to his friend. “You’re a bad dude; look at what you did. Don’t touch me, man.”

The cops were close. Miles turned down the street, and then weaved in and out of alleys in hopes that he wouldn’t be followed. He gasped, nearly out of breath as he stepped out of one alley with the intentions of crossing the street so he could disappear into the next alley. That was when a police cruiser slammed on their breaks and stopped within an inch of him.

Two cops jumped out of the car, gun’s raised and came at him.

“Get down on the ground!”

“Hands where I can see them!”

“On the ground you piece of shit! Do it!”

Miles followed the orders, dropped to the ground and lay prone. He looked up at the cops that looked almost as nervous as he felt, their guns shook slightly, but neither one of them approached him. The younger of the two used his radio to call in that they had the suspect, which Miles knew was him, and then, they waited. But Miles need answers.

“What is going on? Why are you stopping me?” he asked them, pleading for an answer.

“Shut your mouth, Shifter. You know damn well why we stopped you,” the older cop said.

“No I don’t. I saw what happened to them, the old man and the boy, but I don’t know what’s going on. Please.”

“He said for you to shut your pie hole!” the younger one said and took a step forward as though he meant to strike Miles, only to think better of it. “Just stay on the ground, hands and legs spread, and your mouth shut and you may live through this.”

Miles felt strange and despite what the cops ordered, he touched his own face. Suddenly his body vibrated and throbbed. 

He took his hand off his face and looked at it and saw the same black lines spread over his flesh that he had seen on the old man and the teenager. He nearly screamed, but when he opened his mouth to do it, all that came out was a strange electronic sound and red light. He looked at the police officers and to beg for help, but they had lowered their guns and began to back away from him. 

He wanted to tell them that it was proof he was innocent, that he had nothing to do with what happened to the other two. He wanted to say that he was a victim too, but nothing would come out of his mouth other than the strange noise and the light. He shook all over as other cops showed up, nobody moved to help him. He felt cold spread from his chest, creep along his skin to his limbs, and then he closed his eye.

*****

He was fine. The quake he had felt in his body had stopped and when he opened his eyes, he saw that his skin was normal again. From his knees he raised his hands back up, afraid that the cops might shoot him anyway, but when he looked at them, they were gone. The entire street was empty in fact. Slowly, he stood up, checked both ends of the small, tree lined street and saw nothing to cause alarm.

Miles followed the street north to a main road and saw cars fly past him and people walk by, none were afraid of him nor did they show concern.

“What just happened?” Miles whispered to himself and looked up at the street sign and saw that he was back on Ford Street. To his right, about six blocks away he could see Dufferin and in the other direction was the street that used to be Lansdowne. Miles walked towards it, determined to make some sense out of everything that had happened.

He walked up Norton to the black wall again; saw a few people near it. He watched as one woman reached out and touched a name and he winced because he expected an alarm to sound as it had for him. Nothing happened and he moved closer. He passed the elder woman that touched the wall and she sighed quietly, and then glanced at the spot where his name was. He shuddered at the sight of it, but didn’t want to linger. He passed it and walked to the one place he thought there might be an answer.

The plaque.

A man and woman stood in front of it, hands held and when they were done and had walked away, Miles stepped up and read it.

In 2015, tragedy struck the Parkdale area of Toronto, Ontario. An explosion caused by an experiment done by renowned physicist, Jean LaRouche destroyed a forty block area and caused the displacement of 18,234 people in the area. LaRouche, famous for her work in dark matter and wormholes, that won a Noble Prize in 2010 for her work in Quantum Physics, had taken up residence in a loft in the area. What she was working on is still unknown, but it caused an explosion that wiped the entire area out. The buildings, houses, stores and people were not destroyed, but were removed from the current time line and it is unknown where they went. This memorial is for all those that went missing, for their families to remember them and to help us not forget what we lost.

Much thanks to John Norton and Richard Ford who donated the wall and helped rebuild Parkdale. Their time and efforts will always be remembered.

Miles stepped away from the plaque and felt ill. He couldn’t believe what he had just read, but it made sense. He walked away from the wall, headed back to Ford Street and as he did, he heard the couple say something that caught his attention.

“It’s screwed up, but now that we know what those people can do, it’s even worse.” the male said as Miles stopped next to them.

“It’s not their fault though, Shane. Aren’t they victims too?” the woman said.

“So what, Shelly? These people are a menace.”

“I don’t know. I just feel like it’s kind of sad for these Shifters to be hunted down for something that they have no control over.”

Shifters. There’s that word again.

“Excuse me,” Miles said when he had an idea. “I’m just visiting the city and I may have missed something, but what’s this all about? What are Shifters?”

“Didn’t you read the plaque?” Shane asked and seemed annoyed at being spoken to by a stranger.

“Yes, but it doesn’t say anything about Shifters.”

“Man, you must live under a rock. The people that disappeared started to come back, pop up where they had gone missing years ago. When they got zapped, they didn’t disappear really, but got pushed through time and ended up in different times in the future. And when they came back, they were sort of infected.”

“Infected? How?”

“Anyone they touch gets zapped too. I think it might have to be skin to skin, but I don’t really know. Never saw one myself.”

“Can you tell if someone is a…Shifter?” Miles asked and felt anger build in him at the man’s ignorance.

“Not really. They don’t look any different, but if they touch someone, you’ll know it. And if they touch the wall here, there’s some built-in alarm for them that can detect whatever it is wrong with them. It’s kind of cool.”

Miles considered what he had said and as crazy as it sounded, the whole thing had somehow started to make sense. He had obviously been on the streetcar when the explosion happened and the shift through time was instantaneous. He would have had no way to tell that anything had gone wrong. 

And when he had touched the old man and the teen, he had obviously damned them to his own fate, infected them and sent both somewhere else in time. Even when he touched himself in front of the police it had done the same thing to him.

“I’ll tell you what though,” Shane continued to talk and Miles only half listened.  “If I saw one of the damn Shifters, I wouldn’t run and scream like half the chicken-shits in this city. I’d take him out.”

Miles looked at him and hated him for that. Shane had no idea what he had gone through, no idea what a shock it had all been. His girlfriend or wife had been right; he was a victim in it all. Without a thought of what he was doing, Miles walked away and as he did, he laid his hand on Shane’s shoulder.  As he turned the corner, he heard screams echo in the night.

*****

Miles checked the newspaper and saw the date was not twenty-two years in the future any more.  It was seventeen. He had gone back instead of forward in time when he had touched his face. He looked at the date for a long time, just stood in the street and thought about it, tried to make sense of it, then he had an idea.

If he touched himself and could move backwards or forwards in time, all he had to do was keep jumping until he could go back and find a time where he was still there, a time before the explosion and he could go to wherever he was and convince himself to stay away from Parkdale on the day of the explosion.  It was simple, so he wasted no time. He placed his hands on his face and shifted through time.

And again.

And again.

A twentieth time.

Fifty times.

He spent close to twenty-four hours shifting through time, yet each time he failed and with each failure, he became more and more frustrated; angry. Then, he considered something. Miles realized he could only move in time from the moment after the explosion on, not before that. He could never warn his past self, could never stop his fate. He was doomed to be a Shifter, an enemy to the world.

Anger filled him, a rage that made him feel like he wanted to scream, yell and even hurt someone. Miles stalked through the street, looked at people that lived normal lives, could touch others and themselves without fear of damning them through time. He hated them all for the gift that they would never appreciate and wanted to take it from them. The more he walked and thought about what had happened to him, the more his grip on morality and reality slipped.

He walked into a building on Ford Street and went into an elevator with five other people. As the elevator rose, Miles touched each of their faces; quick so none of them could react. He smiled when he saw the thin black lines spread and the red light bleed from their skin. As the elevator came to a stop on the penthouse, Miles was alone in the elevator and then stepped out onto the floor. He chuckled to himself and walked down the hall, ready to be the worst door to door salesman the city had ever seen.

Try to hate me when you’re all in the same boat. Then, he knocked on the first of many doors.

Shaun Meeks lives in Toronto, Ontario with his partner, Mina LaFleur, where they own and operate their own corset company L’Atelier de LaFleur. Shaun is a member of the HWA and the author of Shutdown, The Gate at Lake Drive, Down on the Farm, At the Gates of Madness and Brother’s Ilk (with James Meeks). He has published more than 50 short stories; the most recent appearing in Midian Unmade: Tales of Clive Barker’s Nightbreed, Dark Moon Digest, Shrieks and Shivers from The Horror Zine, Zippered Flesh 2, Of Devils & Deviants and Fresh Fear. To find out more or to contact Shaun, visit www.shaunmeeks.com.