Little Green Pills
By Patrick Whittaker


Lee put his foot down. Ahead of him was open road. No traffic lights, no cops. Just a narrow lane slicing through the English countryside.

It was 4 in the morning and the engine sang as its pistons pumped.

It had been one mother of a party. The booze, the birds and the music were above par but the pills had topped them all. Triangular and green. ‘What the hell are these?’ he’d asked examining the two that had just been placed in the palm of his hand.

‘Like nothing you’ve tried before,’ said the girl, getting out of bed and starting to dress.
He didn’t bother to ask what they did. When it came to drugs, there was no substitute for experience.
Lee washed the pills down with whisky.

Incredible, he thought as he headed home. Who knew time could run backwards?
He saw he was up to 60 miles an hour. The hedges on either side of the lane blurred into a continuous green line.

The girl led Lee into a bedroom.
He unbuttoned his shirt. She dragged him onto the bed and teased his nipples with her tongue.
Just like before.
I’ve gone back in time, he realised. It’s the pills.
The pills I haven’t taken yet.

Lee washed the pills down with whisky. And the world stopped.
The girl froze in an impossible position: one leg raised, half in her jeans. Gravity should have floored her but she remained upright and motionless.

The thump-thump of music from the room below stopped.
The moth circling the ceiling light was arrested in mid-flight.
And then time ran backwards. The girl discarded her clothes. She flopped slowly onto the bed and remounted him.
He experienced a burst of pleasure as his semen flowed back into his penis.

66 miles an hour now. He hadn’t felt this good in a long, long time.
Having the same sex twice had been a blast, but doing it in reverse beat even that.
If the girl hadn’t disappeared without so much as a goodbye, he’d have offered her a lot of money for as many pills as she could supply.

He tried to find out who she was but nobody seemed to know. They hadn’t seen her and had no idea what pills he was on about.

Lee hung around, hoping the girl would return. Every now and then, time would speed up, slow down or run in reverse.
He smoked the same joint three times.

The needle hit 70.
An hour ago, he’d been driving down a motorway at 20 miles an hour. It felt more like 100.
As he took a bend, something was suddenly in his headlights. He hit the brakes.
Time slowed.
A man stood like a mannequin in the middle of the road, arms raised to protect his face.
Lee’s car crawled towards him, an agonising fraction of an inch at a time. He tried to hit the brake pedal but his foot felt like it was immersed in syrup.

The bonnet touched flesh. Metal crumpled. The man rose into the air at a leisurely rate.
And then time returned to normal. The man rolled across the roof and landed in a lifeless heap on the road behind.
Lee didn’t stop.

I didn’t see him. I had no chance. What was he doing standing in the road like that?
I should go back. See if he’s all right. But he can’t be. Not at that speed.
Death must have been instant.
I’m loaded with booze and God knows what else. They’ll do me for manslaughter. Lock me up and ban me from driving.
Got to keep moving. Get out of here before they find the body
There’s nothing I can do for him now.

Something caused the pistons to stop pumping. The car glided to a halt and its headlights went out.
Lee felt calm. As calm as the night.
When he tried to restart the engine, it didn’t so much as splutter.
He thought about the man he’d hit. Pictured his broken body lying in the middle of the road.
If I ring for a mechanic, they’ll see the dead man and the dent in my bonnet and that’s me done for.
I have to go back. Hide him in a ditch. Then I can get the car fixed and head on home.
He figured the accident had happened about a mile away. With luck, he’d be there and back in less than an hour.

A full moon aided his progress.
He’d been walking for about twenty minutes when he found himself getting out of his car again. The little green pills weren’t finished with him yet.

As he set off once more, he wondered if he could go back to before the accident and stop it happening.

Lee reached the accident scene. There was no sign of a body.
He checked the hedges and the ditches and the fields they defined.
Nothing.
He walked along the road, keeping his eyes peeled. Still nothing.
Had the victim survived? Perhaps limped away or crawled off in search of help? If so, it was a miracle.
But where’s the blood?
Lee wondered if he had the right place. He went back and stood where he thought the victim had been hit. Then he pictured the impact and tried to work out the body’s likeliest trajectory.

Lost in thought, he didn’t hear the car until its headlights hit him at full beam. Instinctively, he raised his arms.
Time slowed almost to a halt; the car was inches away and he had no chance to avoid it.
During the last and longest moment of his life, Lee saw his own startled face. It was behind the wheel of the car that was about to kill him.


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Patrick Whittaker is winner of the British Fantasy Society's Short Story Competition 2009. He has directed a number of short films, several of which have garnered awards for him.
He currently resides in Blackpool, England where he works as a government phone monkey.