Back To The Future, Part II

'What?' Marty was completely confused. What was Biff talking about? His father was a success now - a published author and everything - or at least he had been in 1985! Had the future changed things again? ‘A loser?’

‘That’s right.’ Biff seemed to be really enjoying himself now. ‘A loser, with a capital L.’

But Marty refused to believe it. ‘That can’t be!’ he insisted. ‘I happen to know that George McFly is no longer a loser!’

Biff looked up at the ceiling, as if he couldn’t believe Marty’s stupidity. ‘No,’ he explained even more slowly than before. ‘George McFly’s never been a loser. But I’m not talking about George McFly. I’m talking about his kid - your old man! Marty McFly. Senior!’

Biff shook his head. ‘He just took his life and flushed it completely down the toilet.’ Biff’s smirk faded for an instant, as if even he couldn’t believe how far Marty senior had fallen.

Marty senior? But he was Marty senior! And he had flushed his life away?

‘I did?’ Marty asked. ‘I mean, he did?’

Behind Biff, Marty noticed a beat-up old convertible lowering itself - actually lowering itself, without wheels - into a parking space outside the window. A minute ago, he would have been fascinated by that sort of thing. But that was before he learned his life had gone down the toilet!

Four people got out of the car. three guys and a girl, and one of them walked directly into the Café 80’s. He was a big guy. Huge. He wore black pants and a wicked-looking jacket over a black chain mail shirt. Each of his boots was adorned with a sharp, metallic rhinoceros horn. A cap full of sharp metal spikes was strapped to his head.

‘Hey, Gramps!’ the newcomer yelled at Biff as he crossed the restaurant. ‘I told you two coats of wax on the car, not just one.’

‘Hey,’ Biff answered just as belligerently. ‘I put the second coat on last week!’

Yeah,’ the younger man smirked, ‘with your eyes closed.’ He jerked his thumb toward the door. ‘Come out here and scan it. It’s a lo-res job.’

Marty knew that smirk. In fact, he knew the newcomer s every move. He had seen all those moves before, when he had met the teenage Biff back in 19551

It was just like Marty’s son looking exactly like Marty. This new kid looked all too much like - he didn’t want to think it. Still, Marty had to ask - even though part of him really, really didn’t want to know.

‘Uh, are you two related?’

Biff frowned back at Marty. He lifted his cane again, once more knocking the silver fist against Marty’s head.

‘Hello?’ he yelled even louder than the last humiliating time. ‘Anybody home?' He waved his cane at the boy. ‘Whaddya think, Griff just calls me Grandpa for his health?’

Oh, shit. Marty looked over at the teenage-Biff l

ook alike.

‘He’s Griff?’ he whispered. The Griff that he had to face up to, to save his son? Doc Brown hadn’t warned him that the future would be this bad!

Griff elbowed Marty out of the way to glower down at Biff.

‘Gramps ’ he muttered darkly as he pointed toward the door,‘nuke the bab-sesh and get out of here 'orrita! What the hell am I paying you for?’

He turned and looked at Marty, with a gaze that held no kindness, no humour, no mercy - only contempt that something as low as a McFly should sully the face of the earth.

’And McFly- ’ He pointed a pudgy finger at Marty’s chest. 'Don’t go anywhere. You’re next!’

Marty got the strangest sense that this had all happened before. He remembered how, back in 1955, Biff used to rap his father George's head with his knuckles as he yelled 'Hello? Anybody home?’ ]ust like Biff had rapped on Marty's head with his knuckle-headed cane! And Biff's attitude back in 1955 was almost exactly like his grandson's, here in the future. Apparently, when you were a teenager in Hill Valley, you either did what a Tannen said, or you paid. Marty might be standing here in 2015, but it was just like the past, all over again!

Biff waved in Marty's direction as the two of them walked toward the exit.

‘Listen Griff,’ the old man muttered, ‘don’t you go loanin' that McFly kid any money - even though he probably needs it - him and his old man both.’

Biff smirked back at Marty as his grandson led the way out the door.

‘Hey kid! Say hello to your grandma for me!'

The door shooshed closed behind them.