Stormy Weather (#TimeTravelingGhost Side Story)

#Wss366 #Blues / #BillieHolidaysBirthday #MastoPrompt Citadel #TimeTravelAuthors How seriously do the characters take time travel

I watched my time-traveling friends leave. It was the second time spirits had visited me. First, a visitation by my mother, and now I’d met myself accompanied by a strange, abrasive woman. They were a serious pair. If only they had shared the results of my experiments. There was information they were withholding, as ominous as Erebus’s silent #citadel.

“So, what do you think, Rindy?” I asked the papillon plushie sitting in the guest chair. My visitors had dislodged its green St. Patrick’s Day hat. I straightened it and then gave Patroclus some more rat food. While I was at it, I poured myself a second drink.

“Alexa, play some Billie Holiday. Something soft but not too sad.”

“Carelessly,” came on.

I turned the picture on the desk toward me. Ms. Sarah Lockwell smiled back. I wondered what would happen if I traveled back in time and tried to make things work with her. She was already cheating on me by the time we traveled to Ireland, so probably not much. I would just relive those desperate times again, wallowing in self-loathing while desperately refusing to give up on someone who had tossed me aside. I would have been okay with sharing her, but she didn’t want that. Nor was she brave enough to tell me to get lost, just as I hadn’t had the self-respect to give up.

“All of Me” came on and I sang along. “You took the best, why not take the rest?”

The last of my drink burned as I swallowed it in one gulp, and I poured a third.

“Sigh, guess this is it,” I said. My visitors hadn’t been very informative, but I could read between the lines. “Stormy Weather,” I announced to Rindy and Patroclus.

Alexa switched the music to that track.

I picked up the silly red sunglasses I, the future me, had left behind, opened the middle drawer, and dropped them on top of my copy of the Mad Arab’s book.

1937 HITS ARCHIVE: Carelessly - Teddy Wilson (Billie Holiday, vocal)

#TootFic #MicroFiction #NMFic #BillyHoliday #Jazz