"Return to Hell Valley"
by Charles A. Murphy
PLOT: This story takes place one year after the start of the Back to the Future ™ trilogy
SYNOPSIS: Marty is about to get off work when a customer named Jan came in to buy a CD. Noticing that she had a black eye behind the sunglasses that she was wearing, Marty is concerned about her stormy relationship with her husband Jim Jandick. Later that evening, him and Jennifer go past the Jandick household and there's a fight going on in the house. Marty tries to intervene but a threat to call the police by Jim stops him, knowing that the Jandick family controls most of Hill Valley and have been doing so for decades. Wanting to get Marty's mind off that confrontation and what that poor woman was going through, Jennifer decides to have him and her go back in time to that day that they first met. Marty has objections at first. For one thing, he had a confrontation with that same voilent man on that same day. Jennifer doesn't know that, however. Mainly, because when Marty had that awful confrontation, he was still in the reality where his parents were nerds and Biff was his father's supervisor taking credit for his work. (Of course, that changed when Marty went back in time and interfered with his parents first meeting and had to get them back together by the most unorthodox manner-George McFly punching out Biff.) Jennifer insists and with Doc and his family out of town, they go over to his house and get into the DeLorean to go back in time. Arriving in 1978, they first stop off at Hill Valley High School and bump into a much younger Jan who is, at that time, Jim Jandick's high school sweatheart. After seeing Marty's confrontation with young Jim, Jennifer takes him to the cafe where they had their first snack. While watching their younger selves share a milkshake, Jim and Jan comes into the cafe and makes Jan sit at the bar while their car is being waxed. Jim goes out and Needles' younger self accompanied by his thugish friends come in. Young Needles threatens to call young Marty a chicken unless he does something indecent to Jan. Marty can't bear to look as his younger self goes over to Jan to do the deed to prove that he's not a chicken. Just then, Biff comes in and intervenes. At that point, Marty realizes the scope of his actions in 1955. Instead of Jim Jandick coming in and pummelling him like the first time, it's Biff coming in to stop him and scold Needles and his gang for putting young Marty up to it.
Then, Jandick comes in and gets Biff to go back and wax his car. Marty learns that even Biff is afraid of Jim Jandick. The people in the cafe began to resent this and encourages her to get away from him. Marty joins in only to have Jandick come back in and tell everyone to stay away from her. Marty refuses however, and when Jandick calls him a chicken, Marty, feeling like he doesn't deserve her, takes off with her and across the street. Jennifer, finally realizing the mistake she made in bringing Marty back to 1978, goes back to the future to get the Doc. Meanwhile, Marty finds a skateboard and takes off with Jan,using a two-on-a-skateboard trick he did with Jennifer, and hooks up to a passing truck. Jandick gets into his car in a middle of a waxing, leaving Biff standing and looking at Marty's skateboarding realizing that there's something familiar about what he's seeing. Jennifer comes back with Doc, forgetting to activate the cloaking device on the DeLorean and allowing Biff to see it. In recognizing Marty and Jennifer, recalling his past experiences with their "look-a-likes", and getting into the DeLorean and looking at the time circuits, Biff puts two-and-two together, sets the time circuits for the future and takes off. Meanwhile, the chase scene with Marty, Jan and Jim ended with Jim crashing into a whole row of motorcycles owned by the Hell's Angels. The motorcycle gang beats him up. Doc and Jennifer catch up with Marty and drags him back to the DeLorean which returns to 1978 just in time. After Biff sneaks out of the car, Doc, Marty and Jennifer get in and return to the future only to see that everything's been changed. Hill Valley has reverted back to Hell Valley-and Biff is once again the evil billionare who married Marty's mother after shooting her husband.
BACKGROUND: For the first time since I started writing BTTF stories, there are no actual historical events or historical figures in a story. (Unless you count the Hell's Angels
:-)) In my previous seven stories, I had Doc, Marty, Jennifer, Clara, Jules and Verne have encountered real people in history like the Beatles("Time Travel to a Hard Day's Night"), Howard Hughes ("Future Doc"), Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Brutus and the conspirators, Calpurnia ("Back to the Ides of March"), Mark Twain, H.G. Wells and Jack London ("Short Walk to Yesteryear") and have been to actual historical events: February 9, 1964 ("Time Travel to a Hard Day's Night"), August 29, 1966 ("Joyride to the Past"), October 30, 1938 ("Future Doc"), December 7, 1941 ("Day of Infamy"), the debut of the controversial Beatle Butcher Album on June 20, 1966 ("Yesterday and Today") and March 15, 44 B.C. ("Back to the Ides of March"). So with this story, I take a break from writing stories where our characters are really involved with the history books and just do simple time traveling. We also see, for the first time, Marty and Jennifer's first meeting and the "side-effect" of Marty's first trip to 1955 which turns out fine.
And now for our guest characters. Jan Charlow (pictured here) was a woman who inverveiwed me for my first job in 1980. Jim Jandick was someone in personal in that same company. But he's nice guy and the attitude I gave him was an invention of mine. The "husband and wife" idea originated during the days when I was into Star Trek. I wrote a fanfic novel called "The Return" where Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock etc. were accidentally beamed into the 1980's. The story takes too long to tell, but someday when I put up a Star Trek site I'll probably put it on.
Disclaimer: Back to the Future™ is a property of Universal Studios and Amblim Entertainment. I just hope they're reading this story too and either e-mailing or telephoning me for the story. The characters in this story are the creation of Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale and are purely fictitious. Any reference to any person living or dead or any mention of any actual event is purely coincidental.
