“Wheeler will be my downfall, um…”
“*I’m* Wheeler,” spoke the person across from him, not wearing a red dress but we’ll assume she’ll be in one soon enough. At the Red Dress Diner. In New Eden. Probably.
“Right, right, I remember now. Like a wheel. 12:37.” He looks at his left shoulder. No spark. He was up too high.
“Man About Time,” spoke Wendy/Wheeler, saying the correct name the first time ’round. “Do you (even) know where you are?” She stared at him, red hair if not red dress. Very red.
“Downfall,” MAT muttered, noticing the same. “I’m MacDonald. I did something to the Ind– indigenous people of this great land.” Now: red on my hands, he realized. Blood on my face, yech.
“We’re not in Canada,” measured out Wendy/Wheeler. “That’s Toddles and Peet Archer, traveling across (its) frozen Heartland, waiting for a chance. And now they have it. The wife said, ‘pick a town, pick *one* town’. And so Picton it is. But after the Green Yard, er, Yarn in the middle of town…”
“Picturetown,” MAT recalled. “I remember that much.”
“Don’t forget it. Because it won’t change back.”
MAT then saw too much at the crossing. Twins — he had picked the wrong one to converse with today. Someone had warned him about the wrong dress. The one without blood. Without blame?
“End of Time,” Wendy/Wheeler said after the moment, about the place they were in. “We have crossed over.”
MAT looked past his left shoulder at the askew windows of the treehouse they sat in, remembering that too. A spark of memory. 12:37. Dinner time.
But Wendy/Wheeler couldn’t cook worth shite. Fast food hamburgers it was again.
