The Abnormal Life of Al Norm by Cody Knox - HTML preview

Chapter Six: Back To Normal

The darkness faded, and I found myself back in the lounge of Death. I felt insanely tired. Every part of my body was screaming in pain. But I couldn't stop now. Grim was still frozen. Without knowing what I was doing, I pushed a random button on the time remote, and zapped Grim. Then, I collapsed to the floor.

As I began to lose consciousness, I saw a bony hand reaching for a scythe.

…

I came to in a hospital bed, surrounded by the other supernatural leaders. Daybreak was there. Vlad was there. Dawn was there. And Ruby was there. Ruby, my new werewolf wife.

“Al, are you alright? We were so worried about you,” Ruby said.

“I'm OK, I'm just dizzy. Is everything OK with all of you? Is the building OK?” I asked.

“Yes. The whole building was on fire, but Grim came in at the last second and saved everyone. The building's somewhat damaged, but we can fix that pretty quickly. Luckily, nobody was killed. Grim told us what he knew, about that dastardly time traveler and what he did. But perhaps you can help us fill in the gaps,” Ruby said.

“I will, later. But for right here and now, I just want to celebrate being alive here in the present, with the people I care about. That's all that matters to me right now,” I said. Ruby embraced me in a tight hug, almost crushing me. She let me go when she saw I was struggling to breathe.

Eventually I explained the whole story to them, about the future version of Normal, about Arabella, about everything that had happened.

“So Arabella could come back to attack us some time in the future?” Dawn asked.

“I don't think so. I changed the timeline so that the supernatural task force never burnt down,” I said.

“But you're not certain about that,” Vlad said.

“No,” I said.

“It would be nice to be certain,” Daybreak said, pulling out the time remote, “we found this near your body. You could always go back to the future and see if you truly fixed things,”

“Give it here,” I said, and Daybreak handed over the time remote. With all the strength I could muster, I snapped the cursed thing in half. Ruby raised an eyebrow.

“We'll worry about the future when the future comes,” I said to Ruby, planting a kiss on her left cheek. I felt tears dripping down my face. Tears of joy. Real joy, not the synthetic, bland joy that Gordon

Johnson had wanted. I didn't know what the future might hold, and I preferred it that way. I was happy to live in Normal, a place that was unpredictable and sure to change. And so, everything went back to normal, as normal as a weird world could ever be.

THE END