My Drinking is in the Past

 

Stepping through the time portal had seemed like a good idea at the time.  It was year three of the Covid-19 pandemic with gas prices climbing and inflation seemingly attached to its heels.  A visit to the Ohio History Museum was a welcome distraction despite the weird weather pattern that had swept in on that balmy summer morning.

Being there was like being in a time outside of time where I could imagine I was back in my childhood or my grandparent’s time by wandering through impressive era-specific exhibits or even back to the late 1800’s at the outside village where traces of my family tree were disjointed and more of a brush pile in my mind.  Grandpa’s dad?  Vague.  His dad?  No idea.

Stepping out the back door of the museum I was met with a chilly wind racing out in front of a coming storm.  The village was a few hundred yards away down a gravel path that traversed a bridge.  I tried to gauge the situation by wind direction and location of dark clouds but what seized my attention was the greenish hue of the sky.

The reasonable thing to do was to go back inside the museum but I consider myself a bit of a risk-taker.  I set out in a jog towards the village until a sudden deluge of rain forced me under the bridge for shelter.  Thunder rumbled overhead shaking the wooden planks above me and a lightning strike hit simultaneously but was absorbed by the metal frame.

I felt a prickling sensation over my entire body and the hair on my arms and legs were standing up like the bristles on a brush.  The storm sped past and I was left trembling under the bridge with a loud humming noise in my ear.  When it did not abate after a few minutes I climbed back up to the path and was met by an inexplicable sight.

The path half way across the bridge was shimmering.  I approached it with a sense of heightened curiosity and found the closer I got to it the harder it was to move freely, like walking through a kind of thin jelly.  Something was off about the village from this vantage point and I’d read enough SciFi to know I was looking at a bona fide time portal!

***

Energized, I practically threw myself through fearing it would close and I would lose my chance of escape.  And sure enough the sensation ceased and I turned to find a horse drawn cart was bumping over the boards of the bridge.  The horse stopped abruptly and nervously pranced at my sudden appearance.  “Whoa, whoa, settle down” begged the driver.

I stepped to the side of the bridge and grasped the iron railing to steady myself due to some sudden vertigo.  The man turned out to be a boy whose eyes went wide when he saw me.  “Gee mister, where did you come from?”  I wasn’t sure if he was referring to my sudden appearance or my appearance in general.  I asked him his name.

“Josiah.”  I asked if he could take me into town and hopped into the back when he agreed.  “Where’d you get that funny hat, mister?”  I took it off to look at it myself and realized a baseball cap of this size would look odd to someone approaching the twentieth century.  I told him it was the newest thing back East and left it at that.

The streets of the village were bustling with what appeared to be period actors but I knew the Ohio History Museum’s budget could not account for this number of people and besides, they mostly stank to high heaven of BO.  I wandered in and out of the stores wondering at the various wares and ended my explorations at the inn.

The inn included a bar where I befriended the bartender who was bored and happy to hear my exotic tales of the future and provide the fuel of storytelling by filling my cup with whiskey.  Others wandered in over the course of the afternoon and early evening and my cup remained full as I described flying machines and speedy motorcars.

***

The next several days blurred as I drank by cajoling my new found friends into funding my new found habit.  My peculiar appearance and outlandish stories mixed with whiskey transformed me into a kind of visiting circus clown.  The innkeeper allowed me to sleep in the horse stables where I made more friends but of the equine persuasion.  

At about the two week mark there was a marked fall off of the regular customers and then the bartender failed to appear.  I helped myself to some of the bottles behind the bar becoming increasingly oblivious to the strangeness of my situation.  That night I stumbled back to the stables and slept a solid two days in an eery silence.

When I finally sobered up and had dunked my head a time or two in the horse’s water trough I realized the village was deathly still.  The parlor and bar in the inn was empty.  There was no one in the streets.  An abrupt breeze sent a suspended store sign swinging and the creaking noise startled me out of my trance as did the chill of the wind.

A saddled horse was secured to a post and I mounted it after untying it.  With a few starts and stops I got the hang of it and made my way down the dirt streets of the town.  “Ahoy!  Is there anyone there?”  The only answer was the loud caw of a crow coming from behind a house.  I circled the house and from my high perch I saw a body lying in the grass.

Two bloody-beaked crows were feasting on it and I promptly vomited off the side of my horse.  I recognized him from the bar.  After that I mostly found bodies in homes lying in beds with no signs of struggle or trauma.  In a moment of clarity I realized that I had brought Covid to this far flung place and doomed its inhabitance.

***

And days passed as I emptied bottles sip by sip until a wave of strong winds heralded another storm blowing in.  I was not in my right mind when I stumbled out of the bar and into the pouring rain only half noticing the peculiar hue of the clouds.  I made my way to the edge of town and noticed the bridge off in the distance.

Something that might have been hope drove me forward in the rain and booms of thunder.  I half expected to be struck by lightning which might almost be a reprieve from my isolation.  Before I knew it I was at the bridge and a crash of lightning knocked me to my knees.  My vision was blurring out but I crawled on like a man possessed.  

When I awoke the sun was beating down on my face and I had a pounding headache.  Someone leaned over my fallen form mercifully shading me from the sun.  “Are you OK dude?”  I forced my eyes open and saw a young man with a baseball cap and a Ohio History Museum t-shirt haloed by the sun.  I was back.

He helped me to my feet and I swayed unsteadily feeling a wave of nausea that sent me to vomit over the railing of the bridge.  “Dude, you can’t be drinking alcohol in the village.”  It struck me as morbidly funny as I envisioned the bar and my drinking buddies who were now long dead and gone.  I barked out a laugh and assured him, “My drinking is in the past.”