rest of my final beer, and went to up my room.
I unlocked the door and flipped on the lights.
And then—suddenly, violently—the lights went out.
Consciousness returned in a whirlwind of blurred vision, the room spinning clockwise. At first I thought I had downed a few more beers than I should have… and then I saw him, The Watcher, a solid figure in the background of my swirling mind, like a dark shadow on a psychedelic painting. “You’ve awakened just in time,” he said, his face without a grin, without any emotion.
I heard music—I couldn’t be sure if it was real or imagined. It was an old song, one I couldn’t quite place until I heard its familiar chorus: “To everything, turn, turn, turn…”
“What the hell?” I shouted, and tried to sit up. I couldn’t move—not only was I too dizzy and weak, but I was being held down by something, as well… belts, tied around my wrists and ankles.
My chest hurt. I looked down, and realized that I had been tied facedown on the bed—and even worse, the mattress had been removed. My chest was scratched from the raw, exposed coiled springs of the bed’s frame. I wondered how the hell I could see these things—looking down at my chest, sighting The Watcher in my mental whirlwind—if I was strapped down on my stomach, when I made the connection.
The bed had been lifted and propped up vertically, perpendicular to the wall, with the mattress and several pieces of luggage used as counterweights to hold it in place. A tricky balancing act—he must have rigged it all with me strapped on the bed frame in order for it to work. And that meant that this psychotic, Charlie Brown-looking freak was very strong.
I closed my eyes and tried to regain balance… and sanity.
He prodded my eyelids with a finger, forcing them open. “Listen, Mr. Bus Driver. You will not go to sleep, do you hear me? It is very important that you stay awake for the change. The adjustment must be precise.”
I heard my voice reply, as if someone else was doing the talking: “What change? What the hell do you mean?”
“The change. Turning back the clocks.” He lit a cigarette—I thanked God that he hadn’t prodded my eyes open with
“I see…” I tried to stay calm as I searched for the clock in the room. It was 1:46. Fourteen minutes till the change he was talking about. And what else?
“Since we have a few minutes, let’s talk.” I yanked on the looped belts, trying to pull myself free. He just watched, as if curious, head cocked like a dog’s. “Save your energy, Mr. Bus Driver.”
Panic was exchanged with anger. I knew I was in trouble. “Just what is this all about, asshole?”
“This,” he said, drawing on his cigarette and puffing out a smoke ring, “Is about what it’s ALL about. Time. And space.” He paced as he spoke, wrapped up in his world. “We all have a biological clock, as it were—a life that ticks away as we age. Basic biology tells us this.” He checked one of his watches before continuing. “But society… people like
I just stared at him, trying to follow. The circulation in my hands and feet was weak, numb as my mind.
“You see, Mr. Bus Driver, I am not going to be a victim of that. I won’t have my batteries run out just for Daylight Savings Time. No, my body and mind are very delicate instruments, not to be tampered with by the likes of you. I will not gain an hour of sleep—I will not lose an hour of sleep—I WILL NOT alter my metabolism for ANYONE!” His left hand was fiddling with something on his belt. A sheath. A rounded nub of plastic with a compass—or perhaps a watch face—on its tip. A survival knife.
I suppose that at this point, I should have been scared witless. But I wasn’t. I felt amazingly calm. I thought of Julie, of the few moments of pleasure I was lucky enough to have had in my life.
The Watcher rushed up into my face, staring at me through the springs of the bed frame. He looked, oddly enough, as if he were imprisoned, not me. “Do you understand, Mr. Bus Driver, why I must do this?”
The muscles in his face loosened, and for a second, I thought I had him. But he just shook his head and “tsk”-ed, as if disappointed with my ignorance. “You just don’t understand the laws of space and time, do you? When time is displaced—like it is each and every year by the change of the clocks—the body’s metabolism, too, is displaced. For half a year! But not me, not my metabolism. I make sure of that.” He put out his cigarette. “Wait there,” he said, as if I was going anywhere. “I’ll prove it to you.”
He left, apparently, to get something from the bathroom.
The clock read 1:53. Time was running out. I tried pulling back forcefully on the bindings on my feet. The bed frame rocked in the air with a rusty creak, and for a second, I thought I might fall flat on my back, crushed beneath the frame’s heavy metal weight. It was a worthless attempt—even though my legs were fairly strong from years of working bus pedals, I couldn’t budge free.
The Watcher returned with a paper grocery bag. He held it up for me to see—it was wet, stained like a sack lunch left in a locker for several days. And it stank, too. A strong fishy odor. “This,” he said proudly presenting the bag to my eyes like a gift, “you will see when the time comes. Then, perhaps, you will understand.” He ceremoniously set the bag down next to the clock radio on the bedside table. “Hey,” I interrupted. He faced me, curious. “Why don’t you just let me go, huh? I’m not gonna stop you from changing the clocks, or anything. There’s no reason in the world that you have to tie me up like this…”
He acted as if he were seriously contemplating my request, but then looked coolly in my eyes. “There is all the reason in the world for this, Mr. Bus Driver. You see, because time is displaced, space must be displaced, as well.” He raised his eyebrows, as if he had no choice in the matter. “For every hour I lose, I must take an hour from someone else, to make up for it. To make the change in not only time, but space—life itself—too. There is no alternative.
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, Mr. Bus Driver. I must take an hour of your life—your final hour.” He rechecked his watches. “And I will have to do so slowly, precisely… so that not a second is gained or lost. It is no easy task; but I have done so before.”
He moved behind me. I could hear the knife being slid free of its sheath—slowly, purposefully, the jagged serrations on the back of the blade rhythmically plunking against the leather. My eyes roamed the room involuntarily, looking for impossible escape. I scanned the room: a blank wall faced me, an insanely mellow pattern in the wallpaper; the clock on the bedside table had red digits that warbled and mutated in my mind like red coals, unreal; and that ugly paper bag sat on the bedside table like something in another room altogether…
The tip of the knife was against my back. No pain—it just tickled, cool like ice on my spine.
His voice whispered into my ears, carried on a hot cloud of stench that crept over my shoulder: “As I said, there is no such thing as luck—just perfect timing. Being in the right place at the right time. And you—yes, you, Mr. Bus Driver—were lucky enough to have brought me here to St. Louis. After all… it was you, wasn’t it, that brought me to Denver last April? It was you, was it not, who carried me from Central to Mountain Time, so that I could make my last adjustment?”
I frowned, looking at the clock. “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”
“No matter. It happened. In time you would probably remember that you had seen me before. I cannot afford to have that happen.” He ran the blade from shoulder to shoulder across my back, then down, as if enscribing a rectangle, a door on my back. My skin made a sound like shredding fabric, its pierce faint, numb… it was not a deep cut. He was playing with me, warming up his sickness, lubricating his blade.
“It is almost time to begin the adjustment.” I could hear the spit in his cheeks crinkle as he smiled. I could only imagine the look in his eyes—a hungry, eager look. “As I have discovered over the past few years, it must be done accurately, with the utmost precision. It will be slow, Mr. Bus Driver. Slow… and painless. For exactly one hour.” He wetly licked his lips. “No turning back now!”
I swallowed a mouthful of spit. My muscles were shaking with a fear that had not yet registered in my mind.
“And the beauty of it all, Mr. Bus Driver, is that I will get your job! I will create a vacancy in your fleet of bus
