The Crazy Old Man And A Series Of Stranger Happenings.

PLEASE NOTE: This is the continuation of The Crazy Old Man And A Series Of Strange Happenings

The Lady and The Man Who Was In Fact There On Time. 

"I am your father." said the naked man softly.

She stared at him in awe and disgust. How can this wild beast be her father, she thought. 

"What.." she said quite unconsciously, still recovering from the awesomeness of the events that had happened. "So..you..no.. are you...No.." she stammered

"I am sorry?"

"My FATHER?" gathering herself and trying to play along with the madman "So where were you? Hiding in the jungle? For your scientific.."

"What jungle?" he interrupted.

"How do I know?" she retorted back half angry at her so called father and half not believing a single thing that has happened so far.

"I need some clothes" he said. He looked around. He saw a wide variety of clothes that any man without clothes on, can wear. "How odd? Here I am in a textile store just when I needed some clothes." he said to himself. "Odd? I wonder how she feel about all this", he thought.  He proceeded to select one of them, to wear, while the woman disgusted by the naked man's nakedness and stench shouted out "You might consider having a nice shower".

"And a shave. I don't suppose I can do all that in here." he shouted back.

"Maybe we'll just warp in to another store."

"Can't do that. One does not simply warp into another store."

Half an hour later from the darkness of the store came a man, wearing blue shorts and a T-shirt that says "Do I look like your therapist?".

"Nice..choice.." she said obviously without meaning a word of it.

"You don't like it?"

"It's fine?"

"I found a pair of scissors in there so I cut the hair and the beard"

"So..... WHY HAVE YOU BROUGHT ME HERE? WHO ARE YOU?". It echoed through the empty dark store.

"Hey! Calm down. I told you it's a bend in the space time continu.."

"Yes you did. But, sorry to disappoint you, BUT I LIVE IN THE REAL WORLD AND NOT IN SOME GEEKY SCI-FI MOVIE!!"

""You are in the real world. As real as conveyed by your senses. But not the one you used to be in."

"Oh really? So this must be some alternate universe. Fancy that."

"Very good. Exactly".

She considered this for a moment and then ran towards the exit. She shouted "HELP!! louldly and knocked several times on the glass doors hard. She had done the same thing exactly 35 minutes ago and had decided to not do it again as it was indeed useless.

"Look. I don't want to be locked up in a store either. Lets find a way get out of here." he said.

"So why don't you just bend your space time fabric just like you said you did then and get us out of here?"

"One does not simply bend the space-time fabric."


Later..

It was 3.00 am by her watch. They had decided to do something, that did not involve breaking open the doors with something really hard and trying to lift the shutters which has been locked from the outside. Something like, getting some nice sleep. She tried to sleep. She could barely sleep. What if this psychopath wakes up, grabs her and do unspeakable things to her? What if this psychopath really is her father and could do all those impossible things? And so went her thoughts. The psychopath on the other hand was sleeping like the dead and snoring.

She got up and went about in search of a restroom. The Old man's snore sounded as scary as a new born rabbit did not. On the contrary, new born rabbit-like creatures of Vrequira , Ursa Minor are just about the scariest things to have around in the darkness because of their insatiable hunger. A swarm of them can eat an entire blue whale within 2 hours, including the bones.

Meanwhile the old man woke up with a sudden realization that he does in fact smell like a rotten pig and decided to have a shower if he could find one here. He too went in search of a restroom.

The woman's quest was quite successful and was returning quite relieved. She told herself that the old man meant no harm. "If he had wanted to harm me he would have already." Then she thought about his strange behavior back at the Hotel. "Stop thinking about it. Go and get some sleep. Tomorrow I'll get out of this place." She returned to where the old man was sleeping like the dead and lied on the floor about three feet away from him.

The old man trudged on and on and found the restroom. He looked around and saw nothing of any use to have a shower. He looked at the mirror and saw just the toilet cubicles behind him. "Oh no!" he said and floated back.

Later..
The day light crept inside the showroom. The old man was wide awake. He felt a little uneasy with his body. He woke up his daughter. At the sight of his dear daughter sleeping he felt long forgotten emotions welling up in him.

'Where am I?" she asked while yawning.

"Exactly where you were yesterday my dear girl." he said and felt a little awkward about adding that "dear girl" in the end.

"Oh God!" she said, pretending to have ignored the warmth in that "dear girl". "Now what?" she asked as she sat up.

"We hide and wait until someone opens this store and we sneak out."

"Sneak out? Nobody is going to notice us, I presume. I mean look at yourself! Do you realize how bad you smell?"

"If you'r thinking I like this, you're wrong. I wish I could..."

"You said we are in an alternate universe didn't you?" she interrupted, suddenly believing everything the old man had said, but then, feeling awkward about having asked that, she turned herself into a skeptic by adding a bit of sarcasm in the form of "So how do you suppose we get back?" with suitable sarcastic expressions. Fail.

"I am afraid we will not get back until we've done what we came here for." he said.

"WE? What did WE come here for DAD?" she asked still holding a neat layer of sarcastic expression over pure fear.

"Thank you for calling me dad. But I don't deserve to called that."

There was silence.

A part of her fear subsided following a series of internal conversations.

"It cannot be. Not him. He doesn't even look like my father" she thought.

"My real father. My mother said that he had died in an accident at where he used to work."

'She said that" he asked with sadness.

"I have seen his pictures and he would have looked nothing like you if he had a beard."

"It might take some time for you to digest this, but this bo.."

He was interrupted by the sounds from the shutters being opened from the outside. The daylight suddenly filled up the whole place. A man walked in followed by two others. They hid and waited of the opportune moment to sneak out.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't scream out and tell them that I am being held a mad man." she whispered.

'Because you know that I am not going to hurt you and it wouldn't make any sense to them that we are inside."

To make things further odd the opportune moment came quite swiftly and they sneaked out, oddly, without much difficulty.

"That was easy." she said as they walked away from the place to the city not entirely different from the one she used to be in, but did however look odd. Everything about everything looked very odd but wasn't entirely different from how she knew them to be.

"Is this.....?....This is!! It can't be that...That building wasn't there yesterday. There is no such thing as..a..ggg..Garlands?" she stammered.

"Now you do believe me, don't you?"

'It can't be! It just can't be!! I must go." she said and began to walk away.

"Go where? To your house? Are you sure it would even be there?" he said.

'Of course it would be there".

He went and grabbed her arms.

"LEAVE ME ALONE YOU MAD MAN!!" she screamed.

"This is not your world. Can't you see?"

She struggled further to remove herself from his grab.

He let go of her.

She stopped struggling and was puzzled at this.

"Look child. I am your father."

"No! You're not!

"Technically I may not be. But I am."

"What does that mean?"

 The reason I don't look like him is that.. is THIS" pointing to himself.

"What?"

 "This is not my body!"


To be continued...