drivers… and, naturally, I will apply for the job just when they need me! They will think I am lucky, but I alone will know that it was just perfect timing! Ah, to be in control of time itself! To travel where I need to go—without anyone, anyone like
1:59.
He brought the blade to the base of my neck. “Let us begin…”
My mind was racing. For the first time, I realized that I was about to die, despite his sermon, despite the fact that he had just told me over and over that he was going to take my life slowly, draining me over the course of an hour in some twisted idea of turning back the clocks in order to maintain his balance.
And then I remembered what he had said about time zones.
“I, THE KEEPER OF TIME, WILL NOW COMMENCE THE ADJUSTMENT, THE BALANCE ON WHICH LIFE ITSELF DEPENDS! I, WHO ONCE DENIED THE SPRING AHEAD, WILL NOW DENY THE FALL BACK!” Unmercifully, he pressed down on the blade.
“Afraid not,” I said, my voice so matter-of-fact that I thought I’d crack.
He sighed. “It is truly sad that you are too ignorant to truly understand…” With a free hand he rubbed the top of my head. “Maybe during this next hour, you will.”
“No, YOU don’t understand.” I grinned, though I knew he couldn’t see it. “You’re an hour late. You’ve missed the adjustment.”
“Huh?” Now even his voice sounded cartoonish. He cautiously lifted his knife.
I shook my right arm, rattling my watch against the metal bed frame… the watch that I had forgotten to move ahead an hour for the change from Mountain to Central time. “According to my watch, you missed it. That’s what you get for talking so goddamned much.”
He raced around the bed frame to look at my watch.
And I rocked forward with all my weight.
The bed hit the floor with a thunderous thud. The Watcher was pinned beneath me, his face directly beneath mine ensnared by the metal springs, his face trapped in a look of terrified shock. His eyes clocked like fast pendulums, searching for escape through the metal mesh. His fingers strained in an attempt to reach the survival knife that had spilled out of them, but his arms were locked in place by the heavy weight of the bed—he could not reach the knife.
I could.
Two a.m. announced itself on the clock radio with an audible click.
I pass the brown wooden sign that reads WELCOME TO COLORADO—a square shape in mockery of the state’s real boundaries—and sigh in relief.
It is good to be back in Mountain Time. Real time. Even if I’ve lost two hours of sleep—more, if you count how long it took the cops to investigate my hotel room, asking me more questions than The Watcher himself ever had.
I’m not quite sure I want to sleep again, anyway. Sleep brings dreams, and dreams—because they try to make sense out of a nonsensical world—bring nightmares.
I’ve had a great deal of time to think about what The Watcher was really up to, what was really going on in his sick mind. And after ten hours of driving, watching the white lines of the road bead off moments of transient time, I still can’t make sense of it. He had his own logic—a ceremony, of sorts—true, but his way of carrying out his insane scheme still doesn’t quite add up, no matter how I figure it. It’s too irrational—like time and space itself, I suppose—abstract and senseless. One could go crazy just thinking about it all. And that, no doubt, is exactly what The Watcher did, long before he ever met me.
But he did say one thing that makes a great deal of sense, one phrase that I keep repeating over and over in my mind.
He muttered it over and over, chanting it as I freed myself from the belts, cutting the leather with his knife. His voice had drowned down into a whisper by the time the cops arrived… but still I could see the words quivering on his lips, a silent prayer:
Over and over.
My back still stings, the salty sweat that pools there from so many hours of driving a sweet torture all its own. But I am thankful for the pain, the reminder.
And I am lucky… so lucky… that it was—still is—Autumn, Fall. The woman whose head was in that paper bag, his Spring victim, long lifeless and rotten, was not lucky at all.
Spring, a head. Fall, back.
I pull into Denver late, and the passengers complain, one by one as they exit the bus. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s perfect timing.
APOTHEOSIS
by Carrie Richerson
I paused with my hand on the door of the tavern and took a deep breath. It didn’t help; it just bypassed my lungs and settled in with the icy knot that used to be my gut. This night had been a long time coming and everything,
I spared the interior a quick glance as I sauntered toward the bar. The bartender/owner watched my approach with a blank face and alert eyes—and one hand out of sight under the counter. I’d staked the place out long enough to know that he liked to run a well-behaved establishment. In my leather jacket, dark jeans and sneaks I looked like some biker moll wannabe: trouble on the hoof. I disarmed him with a tired smile and put a bill of a respectable denomination on the bar as I asked for my draft. My politeness and my money did the trick. As he moved to the tap to pull my beer, I wondered what his protection-of-choice under the counter might be. A scattergun? Or perhaps something more intimate—a baseball bat? He looked like the no-nonsense type. Probably a riot gun. And you could be sure it was properly licensed.
He could have no idea just how dangerous I was. If he had known, he would have emptied the pump gun into me when I opened the door. But then again, he didn’t know the greater danger that was already inside. If his luck held, he’d never find out.
He set a foaming mug and my change down before me. I left the bills on the bar as I moved to a small booth by the front window. By the time I had settled into the seat the money had disappeared and the bartender was wiping glasses again.
I dawdled over the beer and pretended to watch the winter darkness outside the window. The neon advertising attached to the inside of the glass pulsed in a tasteful and reassuring pink/blue double beat, but none of the few passersby were seduced. They trudged heads down and collars up through the cold, dodging scattered slush piles. No doubt thinking of warmth, of home. Well, so would we all, if we could.
This tavern was warm enough, cozy and dimly lit, all dark wood and old, heavy furnishings. It had a muted, untrendy class. Only a handful of people were in residence this early on a weekday night. The background music was an eclectic mix of light classical, progressive jazz, and meditative electronics, not quite frothy enough to be libeled as New Age. There was no TV, praise the powers, and the place was too far off the beaten path to be a hangout of
Giddiness welled up in me, and my hand trembled as I set my beer down on its coaster. To have my quarry, the man I had been tracking for so very long, so close was far more intoxicating than any liquor could be.
He’d half turned his chair to put his back to the room, telegraphing inaccessibility. From my angle I could see a burly longshoreman’s body and the profile of a sullen face: bristling eyebrows, a pugnacious nose, and an in-your-
