Estrange No When: Will the Moon Still Hang in the Sky?

By Timothy D. Forsyth

In theoretical physics, there is a place where the laws of the cosmos break down. This place is called No When. In these pages you will sojourn through the dark recesses of the human experience from encounters with the devil, vanity, war, witchcraft and the hapless victims of excess and brutality. The collection raises the awesome specter of our extinction as a species at our own hands! Brace yourself! These dark tales stand as a WARNING FOR THE FUTURE!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781467854177

Timothy D. Forsyth

Timothy D. Forsyth Timothy D. Forsyth is a semi-retired college professor. He is a graduate of the State University of New York, College of Arts and Science, Plattsburgh, NY, and the State University College, Potsdam, NY. He currently lives with his companion in Vermont. Mr. Forsyth is also the author of the anti-war novel, The Promise of the Seed.

Book preview

© 2012 by Timothy D. Forsyth. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/24/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4678-5416-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-5417-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012920111

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Jonathan’s Deal

Sebastapol

The Day the War Ended?

The Painting Mirror

Dream Machine

The Other Dimensional Me

Tales of the Fire Witch and Her Only Sister–the War Witch

Irony: That Which Was Hoped for Is Returned Inverse

Punching Bag

An Olde Womane and Hir Cats

Angels In the Night

The Last Neanderthal

Dinosauroidess/Humanoidess

Conclusion to Estranged No When

Foreword

Estranged No When

Turn the pages and open the door to an alternate reality that coexists with our own, Estranged No When. You may find pieces of yourself, as well as what the author has imagined as doppelgangers in this Rod Serlingesque world.

For physicists and philosophers, no when refers to a point in time from which one has an unrestricted perspective of time, indeed where time does not exist. Estranged No When does not disappoint: it begins with a deal with the devil during the Potato Famine, and then moves back and forth through history, touching on the atrocities of World War II, the present time, and, in one story, even featuring a highly trained scientist with a dinosaur double in the other dimension. Yet the book is also fun—challenging, yet accessible.

This is Timothy Forsyth’s third book. After publishing a anti-war novel, The Promise of the Seed, and a collection of poems, The Alien, Forsyth has crafted a series of interrelated short stories. He characterizes his work as dark, and these stories are no exception. Estranged No When encompasses parts of the real world, but the reader can find himself in a magical realm where Karmic balance is restored between injustice and justice, war and peace, evil and good. Allusions to Rod Serling, to popular culture (as in the line from Jefferson Airplane’s You and Me and Pooneil,Will the moon still hang in the sky?, and the dinosauress Martha) coexist with traditional fairytale archetypes.

It is up to the reader to find commonalities among the stories. The land beyond our Einsteinian laws of time holds a hell for war criminals, as well as a heaven for innocent victims of war and other forms of human abuse. Although Estranged No When holds horrors, it also seems to house a power that works for good, as the helpless, dejected, and dying sometimes find safety. In Punching Bag, Justice is dealt to an abusive spouse. One of my personal favorites, An Olde Womane and Hir Cats, holds out the same hope of personal redemption as The Other Dimensional Me. Even Jonathan, who makes a deal with the devil in the first story, which foreshadows the strife that follows in the twentieth century, manages in so doing to save his family—at least in his present time. Bu in the end, will No When and our more familiar world collide—and if they do, what will be the result

Again, although what Tim writes is very dark, he does so not sensationalize but for them to stand as a warning for the future! If we ignore his admonitions, we invite disaster—if not Armegeddon.

So readers, enter these pages at your own risk—and enjoy!

Dr. Maureen Kravec

Empire State College

Waterown, NY

October 12, 2012

WELCOME

Welcome to Estranged No When, a place where time does not exist—a place of imagination and nightmares. Walk carefully through this dark illusion, for your worst apparitions might assail you! At the end of the day, hell hath no fury like our own imaginations! Brace yourself for the hecatombs to come, and then think deeply and carefully about who and what we really are.

Jonathan’s Deal

It is September 15, 1848, Wicklow, Ireland, the second year of a catastrophe we have come to know as the Potato Famine. Enter an indigent tenant farmer named Jonathan Byrne, a man whose potatoes have now failed twice in two years. His wife, Kaleen, is dreadfully ill with the pox, and his two little girls, aged nine and five, are on the verge of starvation. He is so desperate for his tiny family that he would do anything to save them. A deal will soon be made in the blackened corridors of Estranged No When!

Dr. O’Leary and Father Casey sit at the deathbed of Kaleen Byrne. Jonathan, her husband, merely stares on and quietly wept to her that he loves her with all of his immortal soul. Kaleen’s sister, Maureen, is with them—all awaiting what seems inevitable. What ribald slight of fate might lead this young hard-worker of twenty-six to a point of familial oblivion, Jonathan Byrne cannot sound. For him, it is a sounder from a nightmare netherworld—challenging his Catholic faith in hope!

Jonathan speaks up, What kind of God allows this hor’r? I’d be say’n, Saints preserve us, Ahe caan’t, for it aint to be, and I shallt, lass, lad and father, we without kin—wife and childs. The lord of the manor will not pay our way to Canada or America, so I’d be best to call farth the Father to be giv’n us all last right and be hire’n us a brace of funeral wailers!

Fr. Casey responds: Ya must be havin’ the faith that the Loord will de doin the right thing, be He takes her into His home or be leavin’ hir here to live a full life.

"Father, why does the Almighty allow such evil as those in London to torment us