Roan hung back in the doorway, reluctant to get too close. “You're not Gum. Who are you?” He could think of no explanation for the look-alike casually seated before him; he had to be an impostor. He backed up a step, judging the time it would take to get back out of the door.

  "All things are possible until proven otherwise," the Gum look-alike answered. "Test me. Ask about the phone box."

  Roan knew Gum had knocked over a big, red phone box in his younger days, pulling handbrake turns in his Ford Fiesta. He hesitated, then groaned out loud, throwing both hands up to his head. Roan was a sceptic at the best of times, but this was impossible. Disbelief rushed in like the tide, crashing onto the sure belief that this couldn’t be Gum.

  "The best way to play hide and seek is with everyone blindfolded,” Gum offered. “I hid on top of my own fridge. Look, it is me! How else would I know this stuff? We played for hours. That dodo figurine on your mantelpiece, it’s from Tunisia. Its neck is glued because I broke it. Do you want more? I’ve got loads of this stuff; I can go on all night…”

  "You got anything else glued?" Roan tried.

  "My own tooth. Home repair job."

  “I just watched you drive off!" The possibility that he was simply seeing things floated into Roan's mind and he began to edge forward.

  As he did, the doppelganger Gum jumped up as if to prevent him, but Roan saw her. "Mist?” Roan felt a rush of panic as he saw his wife lying on the sofa.

  Concern overrode caution, he stepped forward, but Gum held out a hand, "Hold on," he breathed, "I told you this would be hard to hear. I hadn't wanted you to see her yet. I wanted to explain first. She's asleep, but..." He threw his hands up in frustration.

  "What have you done to her?" Roan barged past Gum and knelt by the sofa. "Mist!" he pressed her gently, meaning to wake her.

  “She's alright, but she won't wake until... until she's… out.”

  “What do you mean, out? You've drugged her!” Roan had his phone out and was dialling.

  “If you call an ambulance she still won't wake until she's ready, they'll decide she's in a coma and the police will get involved. Trust me, I know.”

  “You’ve done this before?” Roan jumped up and took a swing at Gum.

  “What? No!” Caught off guard, Gum staggered, falling over the coffee table. “I just know what I'm talking about. She's alright,” he repeated, rolling out of Roan's reach. “She's only dreaming - deep, deep dreaming.”

  Roan clambered over the table, brandishing the dodo ornament, yelling, “Who are you?”

  “Who are you?” he repeated. “I know you're bigger than me, but... Oh, look! Its head's come right off again!”

  “I'm your friend. I'm… Look, if I say too much…” Gum left the sentence unfinished. “Possibilities,” he muttered, searching for words. Seeing Roan raise the headless dodo higher, Gum tried to explain, “I didn't do this to her! Time is…” He seemed to give up. “Like I told you, she will be alright. You have to trust me with this. Honestly she's alright.”

  Roan slid back off the table, breathing heavily and went to Mist's side once more. “This is insane. I don’t believe any of it,” he said as he brushed his wife's hair back from her eyes. As Gum sat up, it struck Roan that he looked distinctly cooler than normal – darker, slicked-back hair, little, round sunshades, air of special operations chic. He even had what looked like swords strapped to his back. “Who really are you?” he repeated, kneeling at Mistletoe's side and holding her hand.

  “How about you call me the Kapucha? Does that work? I'm just trying to get everyone back safely.”

  “What, like the monkeys?”

  “What? No! It comes from a word for a monk’s hood. Look, it doesn’t matter. I'm trying to help here.”

  “You are joking! I come home to find you sitting, watching my unconscious wife and you claim you’re helping?”

  “What? It's not how it looks. I’m not some kind of, of, sleeping-wife-watcher! I'm trying to… ”

  Gum took a deep breath. “I can't say too much, or I'll…" Emphasising the veracity of what remained unsaid, he flickered momentarily, electric blue light outlining his body. “Look, I don’t think I’ve got long. I have to see just how far...” Seeing Roan shrink back, disconcerted, 'Kapucha' Gum struggled for words. “There's a dream, dreamline, timeline, very far... I am meaning to get Mist back. But I can’t, until I see how far it all goes.”

  “Far?” Roan said. “You mean in the past or future?” Roan was straining to find anything meaningful in this flood of irrational information. He picked up the most important thread and waved the twice-decapitated dodo again, “Can you bring her back?”

  The shadowy Kapucha Gum sighed now, righting the coffee table, “Not really your future or past - more like parallel. I don’t know, perhaps I'll only be able to observe when I get there anyway. I don’t know how far I can interfere.”

  “Why not? You seem happy to interfere here! How do I know you didn’t interfere with Mist? You’re interfering with me and want me to inter…”

  “Stop saying ‘interfere’,” Kapucha Gum objected as another glitchy, blue jolt shook his form. “No! I have to go.”

  “Wait - you’re not going anywhere until Mist’s awake!” Roan sprang up and launched himself off the table at Kapucha Gum, who ducked so that Roan lodged on his head. As he swung round trying to shake Roan off, he made an attempt to explain, “Everyone has gone so far… Not you, you're where you should be, but Mist...” Drooping Kapucha Gum sighed, “She'll be okay.”

  He took a deep breath as if about to risk his safety and murmured, “Look, I think I can talk about here and what’s going on around us, but...” he searched for words, his eyes dropping to one side. “If I go beyond that... Things here happen… Have you noticed things happen as you expect? Of course you haven't.” Kapucha Gum looked like he was struggling to decide what to say.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Roan, reluctant to let go of normality, clung stubbornly to Gum's head, unable to entertain all of these brain-aching revelations. Gum wasn't making any sense, offering anything rational. Too unreal, too complex, too tangled. What did Gum mean by ‘what you expect to happen’? But Mist was out cold and this person was claiming he could help. He began to ask how exactly this Gum look-alike intended to bring Mist back, however ‘Gum’s’ face had turned very stern, his eyes darting as if thinking overly quickly.

  “I’ve said too much… I knew it.” he breathed. “If I don't…” Then his whole form flickered as if it were nothing more than a glitchy hologram, allowing Roan to fall through him. “I will get you...” He didn’t finish what might have been a promise or a threat before he vanished entirely. That helped Roan a little with his disbelief.

  *****

  Elmo from timeline three followed Rat-Elmo up the first flight of stairs in the old Victorian house. Behind and below, Heather could be heard muttering frustratedly to herself, something about cookies and the time not being right yet. Reaching the landing Rat-Elmo scurried ahead and peered into the different rooms - bathroom, bedroom, bedroom - then noticed a further flight of stairs leading to an attic room. Before Elmo could consider the wisdom of the matter, his rodent alter ego was off and scampering in an awkward, wave-like motion up to the third level.

  The door to Gum’s study, his inner sanctum, his refuge from the world, was open just an inch or so and on reaching the top stair Rat-Elmo could peep through.

  The room was a tangle of papers, pictures, books and strings. Someone had fixed hand-drawn charts, photographs, newspaper cuttings and scribbled drawings all over the walls. Some were on the floor and others littered the furniture, drawers hung open – more papers spilling out. Pieces of red string festooned the space between, pinned to the documents or held with sellotape or weighted down and knotted around books.

  A dark figure was sitting in an armchair midway across the room, apparently studying the way the strings intertwined. His eye turned to the movement in the doorway.

  “Ah, come in, come in!” he invited, leaping out of his seat and hurrying in the opposite direction to run his fingers along a particular cord that ran into a corner of the room.

  The two travellers stepped lightly, gingerly into the web of connected documents, frowning at Gum’s retreating back. He paused, hunched over a particular part of the tangle and then spun round.

  “She said you'd come!” he grinned with a peculiar glint in his eye. “Did you do the vase thing? Hmm? Hmm? Have you got it with you? The Rimgumbaldy article?” Rat-Elmo was about to answer but was distracted when Gum tilted his head and put a finger to his ear. Rat-Elmo noticed the Bluetooth earpiece when he took the finger away. Gum didn’t wait for an answer, instead he scurried across the room to examine a torn A4 page full of handwritten notes.

  “Yes, if he walks just over here and I unpin this string… no no… it’s that one – heh heh hmmm…” he trailed off, deep in thought and stood for a while silent; then another finger on the earpiece. “It’s all a bit like a weird TV show eh?”

  The two different-shaped Elmos looked at each other uncertainly.

  “We thought you might help us untangle this…” began the Elmo in human form before Gum impatiently cut him off.

  “Untangle? Untangle! No no no, hmm… take this.” He handed the end of a ball of red string to Elmo and began unrolling a generous length. “Let me have the article,” he rambled distractedly, hunting for a certain item taped to the wall. “I need to find out where this one leads, mmmmm…”

  Elmo frowned, most reluctant to hand the device over so easily and without even asking the first of his many questions.

  “We want to know how to get things back to how they were,” Rat-Elmo attempted, “not start out…” he didn’t get to finish.

  Gum had turned and was unexpectedly looming over him, “Elmo, Elmo… always wanting to undo what you started. The pursuit of Elmo’s everywhen, trying to get back to the beginning. No!” Gum looked big and threatening, bearing down on the puzzled rat, one eye gauging the distance to the door.

  “No,” he said again more softly, dropping to one knee. “No, young restive one. Do you know where all this is going?” Elmo felt hot and uncomfortable under Gum’s expectant glare. “I mean do you have an overall plan?”

  Rat-Elmo searched his thoughts; did he? Did he have any real strategy? He hadn’t anticipated this interrogation.

  “Well, I know where I want to go,” he faltered, “back.”

  “Yes, but do you have a stratagem? A scheme? A plan?”

  “Of course, I…” Rat-Elmo dithered.

  Gum was forceful again, a looming shadow over the nervous rodent, “Do you have a reason for the things you are doing or just making them up as you go along? Hev does, but she writes it all down; look at it all.” He gestured at the note strewn walls. The atmosphere had quickly become tense. Rat-Elmo didn’t know whether to challenge Gum’s way of dealing with them or to lighten the mood with a joke.”

  “Do you just try any old thing and see where it goes?” Gum pressed. A vein in Rat-Elmo’s temple twitched, his fur felt irritable and stuffy.

  He cracked. “Get it into your thick skull,” Elmo blurted, “I know what I’m doing!”

  Both stared for a moment, trying to read the emotions behind the other’s words. Gum looked about to either stamp on him or roar with laughter. The sound of footsteps clattering down the stairs broke the tension. The human Elmo was fleeing, with the device.

  Rat-Elmo was not sure what to do; he thought to chase after Elmo, but the complete absence, from Gum’s face, of any concern for his companion’s flight held him firmly where he was. Gum read the look of uncertainty in the rat’s eyes and offered him a cheeky, knowing wink.

  Elmo hurled himself down the first flight of stairs, swung round the bolster, and scuttled across the landing, struggling to keep his feet moving at the same rate as his terror-propelled body. The front door could be seen as he turned onto the first-floor landing, and in a flurry of flailing appendages, he hurled himself down the second flight towards the ground floor and the beckoning release from this lunatic’s asylum.

  Elmo’s mind raced ahead of his rapidly churning feet - he was not, by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, of athletic ability, and had already reserved, for a more appropriate time, a thought to congratulate himself for making it this far, this fast, without ending up in a heap of mangled body-parts and wild hair - so did not have the confidence to take any more than one step at a time, his little legs pumping like a pair of two-stroke pistons in an under-powered, over-revved motorcycle. Yet, he was confident that he would get to the door and make his escape: Heather was still cursing about cookies; the kid was still preoccupied with spoons (who was that kid?) - and the dog was just… the DOG?

  The vanguard of his thoughts had the horrifying experience of being ambushed by the, previously unaccounted for, and incredibly big, guard-dog. His thoughts were so unprepared for the appearance of this beast, that they wasted several steps worth of precious survival-seconds trying to reason away its sudden arrival: “Dog? There was no dog when we came in! Never mind about that: stop running, will we!” his subconscious implored. “But, if there was a dog, then we would have seen it when we came in!” his reason demanded. “Look Stupid! Stop running down the stairs or we will crash into it.” “BUT”, shouted reason, “Look at it! Look at the size of it! We would have seen that when we came in. In fact, I would not have come in had I seen it: it’s a BEAST!” “Get it into our thick skull, will we: STOP RUNNING!”

  Elmo’s reason refused to relinquish its point, and his mind was transfixed by the huge black and gold Rottweiler sitting, with a gleeful look, by the bottom step: a massive barrier of jaws and claws between him and the outside world. His survival-driven subconscious decided it was time to sever connections with his irrational reason, and make its own plan of evasion. It was impossible to stop all gravity-fuelled propulsion in the reduced space between his body and the dog’s mouth, so it was a case of redirecting motion, from downwards, to outwards. He flung his arms and legs sideways, striking contact with the walls of the narrow stair-way, and hoped friction would stop his descent in time. It was left to his reason to scream out that he, in this desperate effort, had let go of the device; the pounding of his laboured heart drowned out the bounce of the artefact as it headed dog-wards.

  As skin burned from his clammy palms and shoe-rubber smeared from his boots, Elmo held himself in suspension, his groin hovering but inches from the dog’s nose. The Rottweiler appeared to be smiling. It had, between teeth as big as elephant’s tusks, the device, and it was not going to give it back.