I Travel Inn

Chapter 1

The lights flickered to life in the game room.  The pinball machines and one-armed bandits whirled into noisy life around the walls.  The overhead light above the pool table came on to illuminate the centre of the room.

I loved the sight, sounds and smells of this room.  Switching on the power transformed it from a pokey little nothing into Las Vegas.

I went over to the bar at the back of the room.  It took up half the wall opposite the entrance.  The other half of the wall was taken up with a line of five fruit machines.  I got behind the bar and poured three drinks.

It had been a tough, emotional day.  Three of us were just back at the clubhouse after attending the funeral of our fallen leader: King Victoria Pepper.

She was a remarkable woman.  No, not just a mere woman – a witch.  She had authentic control over supernatural forces.  She could make people float in the air and she herself could fly.  I’m not making this up.  I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the truth.  I’ve seen it with my own eyes.  Many times.

Sadly last week we got a report that a mad woman had chopped her head off with an axe.  We were told that the island she was working on was too remote, and the woman was still at large, so they couldn’t bring the body back.  We had to bury an empty coffin.

It didn’t stop it from being deeply poignant, even if she wasn’t physically in that casket.  Just a photograph, the books from her to-read pile and her white leather jacket were buried.

It was quite a strange sight to see so many tough biker chicks in white leather jackets crying as they sat on their bikes.

That was our gang uniform.  We always wore a white leather jacket.  No other insignia or anything was needed.  The jacket was enough.  After that you could wear whatever you wanted.

We all had names based on our ranking within the gang.  Our names could change based on where we were in the pecking order.  I was among the newest members; so was Pawn Annabelle.  The rankings went up through the pieces of a chess set.  At the top of the heap was of course King Victoria.  Now she was gone there would be a reorganisation and some promotions.  Most of the top people would expect to leap up a rank.

The logical choice to take over was King Victoria’s own sister: Queen Vanessa Pepper.  It was the obvious move.  Queen Vanessa should have been a lock for King, but Bishop Melissa was agitating for a place at the top table.

Everyone was waiting until the King was buried before openly breaking into separate factions and backing their favourite. 

The official wake was to be held here in the games room.  There was going to be a delay of an hour or two before it started as most of the gang would want to crawl through a couple of bars they might happen to pass on the way back.

In through the door walked Rook Charlotte and her superior Knight Tina.  This probably proved that the three of us were the only members with any measure of unfashionable self-discipline.

‘That was depressing,’ said Knight.

‘Almost like it wasn’t any fun at all,’ replied Rook.

They sat down on the sofa facing the pool table.  I brought over the drinks they had ordered in the car park.

We talked about the service and we rehashed some old war stories.  I had only been in the gang for a little over a year so I was mostly silent as I listened to the repeated stories from before my time.

We then got onto the topic of why King Victoria wanted to be a celebrity and go out to that island to make a movie.  The sort of attention it was going to bring to our little world would not be wanted.  No good could come of it when your main business is running drugs.  Any attention is bad attention.

Supposedly the money would let us close up shop and go legit.  I didn’t see it.  Why did we want to give up this incredible lifestyle?  Drug running on motorbikes while wearing leather wasn’t a job, or even a hobby.  It was a way of life.  Moving packages was what it was all about.

Without the packages, what was the point?

Life would be boring and mundane again.

Rich people are mostly bored.  Why would we want to become the idle rich?

Curiously the police attention we got was not by the drug enforcement people, but from the cult division.  We were considered to be a religious cult.  Our outside image wasn’t that of a biker gang, but as a coven of witches.

Madness.

Where did these people come up with this stuff?  Maybe they’ve been taking too many of our drugs to notice that only one of us was a witch.

We were all mostly clean by the way.  We supplied the drugs but for the most part we didn’t indulge.  We weren’t girl scouts or anything when it came to snorting or sticking needles in our arms.  It was just considered bad form to make a habit out of it.  We sneered at the weaker people who allowed themselves to become addicted.  Alcohol, tobacco and weed were preferred for social reasons.

Anyway, the cult thing.  Just because we had a witch as our leader, and we performed the odd black magick ritual, it didn’t mean we had formed or conformed to a religion or anything.  None of us took it seriously enough.  We could go weeks without mentioning the occult. 

For the most part it was just great imagery, having pentangles and stylised goat-heads on our walls or on the back of our jackets.  It was more fashion than religion.  Like how other women wear vintage band T shirts for groups they obviously never listen to.

King Victoria kept her occult powers and interests mostly to herself.  Apart from an extensive library of spiritual books she kept in her room, you wouldn’t know she was so into it unless you hung around her for weeks.  All I ever saw the King do was levitate things and people as a party trick.  Everything else, like the rituals, was just theatre. 

Queen Vanessa had a little witchery in her blood but it was much diluted.  She couldn’t do anything useful with it. 

I’m digressing here.  I was going to tell you my story.  Not the story of The Witch and her Biker Gang.  That’s a different book.  Although I suppose it makes for good background information that helps you understand the strange tale I’m about to unload upon you.

It really started with the phone call.

Ring, ring.

The phone behind the bar was ringing. 

I was sitting on the arm of the sofa.  I got to my feet and walked behind the bar and collected the phone.  As I lifted the receiver off the cradle I walked around the bar and sat on one of the four stools in front of it.

‘Hello.’

‘Is this Annabelle?’ asked this male voice on the other end.

‘This is Pawn Annabelle,’ I confirmed.  ‘Who is this?’

‘You don’t know me but I know you.’

‘Good for you.  So why don’t you introduce yourself.  That way we can know each other.’

‘No.  That wouldn’t be appropriate.’

‘Why’s that?  Scared of women and this is a pervy nuisance call?’

‘It’s like this Annabelle.  I’m from the future.’

‘Uh-huh.’  I wasn’t bothered by the weird turn the conversation had taken.  I liked whackos.  Most of my boyfriends have been at least a little nuts in the head.  One was even the full set of standard paranoid clichés.  He was scared the government wanted to read his mind.  Like there was anything going on in there that was worth the effort.  Followed with fears that aliens were experimenting on him.  His body was well worth experimenting with, but I doubt aliens wanted his body for the same reasons I did.

Whackos didn’t scare me.  I humoured him and didn’t hang up.  Although he would probably argue that I didn’t have a choice.  Everything was set and we were just moving along the tramlines that were already laid out for us.

‘You’re from the future, huh?  That’s interesting.  Any predictions you would like to make to blow my mind?’

‘No.  I don’t need to prove anything to you.’

‘Is that right?  In that case, why should I believe anything you say?’

‘You don’t have to right now.  In time you’ll simply come round to my way of thinking.’

‘Maybe I should come round to you right now and stab you?’

‘You can’t stab me.  I’m not here.  In your time I mean.’

‘Let me get this right.  You’re not only from the future, but you’re in the future right now?  Is that what you’re saying?’

‘That’s correct.’

The girls were wondering what I was doing wasting time on a crank call.  I was enjoying it.  His nonsense was amusing and it showed signs of creativity.  I waved them off.  ‘So how can you project your voice into the past and talk to me?’

‘By magic.’

‘I know a thing or two about magic.  The police think I’m in a coven of witches.  So don’t play the magic card as though that explains anything.  What’s your trick?’

There was a pause before he said, ‘Boring technology stuff I don’t understand.  I didn’t invent it.  I’m just the end user.  I press a few buttons and it happens.’

‘That’s weak, but it’s better than magic I suppose.’

There was a lull.

‘So?’ I asked.

‘So what?’

‘Prove to me you’re from the future.’

‘That’s a bit vulgar isn’t it?’

‘Is it?  I don’t think so.  You made the claim right out of the blue.  Not me.  If you can’t back it up then you’re just a crank.  Why should I take you seriously?’

‘Do I need to be taken seriously?  Do I not amuse you on some level?’

He had me there.  He did amuse me.  I wasn’t going to admit it though.  ‘I don’t know.  You had me intrigued with the opening future claim.  But now I feel you’re just playing for time as you’ve shot your one and only bolt.  Out of curiosity, when in the future?’

‘When?’

‘What year is it?  Are you hundreds of years or days from now?’

‘I’ll have to think about that,’ he said after a brief pause.

‘You don’t know what year it is from where you are?’

‘No.  It’s not that.  It’s just that time is a tricky concept for me.  This stuff can get confusing.’

‘Okay.  Get back to me when you figure it out.’

I put the phone down without waiting for a response.

Knight Tina asked me who it was.  I said I didn’t know but it was some guy who said he was from the future.

She wasn’t into it, didn’t see the point of making crank calls.  ‘That’s a real small way of walking on the wild side of life,’ she said.

Rook Charlotte called him a loser shut-in.

I said, ‘I don’t know.  I think he has a story to tell.  Fiction or not.  I wouldn’t mind hearing from him again.’

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I can’t believe I forgot to mention this.  The gang went by the acronym GAME.  It stood for Girls Against Maturity Extreme.  It was a stupid name looking back on it, but that was kind of half the point.  It wasn’t an intellectual thing for snooty book readers like you to laugh at.  If anyone in the real world laughed, they got something serious to wipe that smirk off their faces.

I don’t like to think we were a violent gang, but I guess we must have done more damage than it seemed at the time.  A part of me feels like apologising.  Then another part of me thinks, nah, sod it.  If you kept out our way then you didn’t get hurt.  At least not directly. 

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A week later and I was hanging out with my girls outside a bar.  We were sitting on our bikes chewing the fat when the barman came out and told me I had a phone call.

Me?  Here? 

I went back inside and it wasn’t on the phone behind the bar, but on the payphone near the back.  Now that’s unusual.  Who calls a public payphone? 

Apparently it had been