Thirty Minute Guarantee
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Thirty Minute Guarantee
Barrett O’Donnell
Copyright 2012 Barrett O’Donnell
Thirty Minute Guarantee
Cover art by Barrett O’Donnell
Copyright 2012 Barrett O’Donnell
If you had met Eric Hayes a year ago, you would have been introduced to a very average looking twenty-four year old man who didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. He had been ordinary since birth. As a kid he played street hockey with other kids on the block or rode his bike to a friend’s house to hang out. In high school he would go to Como Park when he skipped school to go bridge jumping and go swimming. Sometimes they would even cook up some hotdogs on one of the grills in the park, washing them down with beer they had stolen from one of their parents. After high school, which he barely graduated, he thought about going to college but decided to take some time off, save up some money and do some traveling. At twenty-four, he was still taking that time off and the only traveling he had done was up to Canada to see the Canadian ballet. Now he slept during the day and worked at night as a delivery boy for the only pizzeria that still had a thirty minute guarantee. His car was a beat up Plymouth that he and his father had split the cost of when he was sixteen. They made an agreement that whatever money Eric could save up in one summer cutting grass his father would match dollar for dollar. His father was very surprised to find that he had actually saved up more than half of what he would need to buy a car.
Eric didn’t have much of a life. After work he would go out with his friends to their favorite bar to throw darts and shoot pool, or go home and play video games all night by himself drinking energy drinks and eating potato chips. He didn’t have a girlfriend, no pets, just him. His family had all moved away, for one reason or another, but he couldn’t bring himself to go with them. His parents had argued with him over this several times, trying to get him to move with them but their arguments were useless. He was adamant about staying. He liked it here. Loved it really. He loved the quiet, the convenience of everything. Just about anything he would need was within walking distance and everything else was no more than a twenty minute drive away, even if he hit every red light on the way. After they had left, his family still tried to get him to leave, telling him he would be better off living closer to them and that things were just going to get worse for him there. Now, with hindsight being what it was, he thought he should have left with the rest of his family.
It was shortly after he found a small apartment above a cigar shop on Broadway in the village and his family had moved away that he had the encounter that would change the rest of his life, maybe even be the end of it. He received a gift from a stranger, or what he thought was a gift at first, but eventually realized it was something he wished he had never received. In the end, if someone asked him how he felt about what he was given, the only way he could think to describe it was, “It’s worse than any nightmare you can possibly think of. There is no one word to describe it. Think of all the things that scare you. No, better yet, think of all the things that terrify you, make you sad, make you angry, put them all in one experience. That’s close but you’re still not quite there.”
It was the day after Thanksgiving. The snow had started falling early that year, laying a smooth white blanket over the ground. Eric thought the trees looked like they had come out of a Bob Ross painting that he had seen on PBS as a kid, with their “happy snow covered branches”. The town had cleared the roads and put down enough salt to keep them from freezing over. He was on his last delivery of the night, driving out to the edge of town to deliver a large pepperoni and a double order of Buffalo wings when he almost ran over the old man.
Out away from the village the streetlights became fewer and farther between than they are in the middle of town, and the roads rise and fall like the waters of Lake Erie on a windy day. There was no need for him to speed, it was a slow night, no one else was on the road. It was the biggest shopping day of the year and everyone was still out shopping. He would make his delivery well within the pizzeria’s thirty-minute guarantee. When he came over one of the rolling hills of rural Lancaster he saw the ghostly white face of an old man in his headlights. Eric slammed on the brakes and turned the steering wheel hard to the left then even harder back to the right. The brakes engaged and the tires squealed as the car swerved around the pale figure.
Eric stopped the car on the shoulder of the road. His heart racing, hands white knuckled on the steering wheel, his feet pressed so hard on the break pedal and floor of the car his toes began to go numb. He sat there a moment, wide-eyed, trying to convince his lungs to start breathing again.
Hesitant to take even one hand off the steering wheel, afraid he might have to quickly maneuver the car again, he put the car in park and pulled the emergency brake lever up. His knuckles ached and popped from the use. His other hand loosened as he leaned his forehead on the wheel, closed his eyes and exhaled. A wave of lightheadedness washed over him while stars danced behind his eyelids. He took his foot off the brake pedal and relaxed his legs, the car rocked gently and settled. He could feel the blood rush back into his feet as the pins and needles feeling came into his toes. He let it pass while his head stopped spinning and he caught his breath.
“Fuck.” He sighed.
Once his legs felt like they would be able to keep him vertical, Eric turned off the engine and got out of the car leaving the lights on. He turned to look for the old man but didn’t see him anywhere. He knew he hadn’t hit him. There wasn’t the loud thump associated with a body being struck by a car, not that he had ever hit someone before, he only assumed the movies had the sound right. Eric looked to the sides of the road for any sign of the old man but found nothing. Still out of breath and his heart still pounding faster than it really should have been, he turned to walk back to his car.
As he turned he found himself face to face with the old man. He had came up behind him, arms out stretched as though he was reaching for his throat. Eric had just enough time to recognize the face before the old man was on him, his thin wiry frame clothed in nothing but a brown terrycloth bathrobe that flapped open revealing his blue boxers and yellow stained undershirt. He reached out with both hands and grabbed the sides of Eric’s head. Eric grabbed at the old man’s arms trying to free himself, but his hands held. The old man’s grip was stronger than he expected. His fingertips felt like they were burrowing under his scalp trying to penetrate his skull and poke him in the brain.
The old man began to mumble as they struggled, all the words seemed to come out as one. In the commotion, the only words Eric could make out were “bequeath”, “see the unknown” and “keep it safe”. Eric’s body became rigid and his eyes rolled back in his head. An enormous pressure pushed from within his head, like his brain had grown three times its normal size. His eyes seemed to push forward in their sockets, on the verge of popping out and dangling on his chest. The old man released his head and Eric collapsed to the ground, the pressure fading, and his eyes settling back in their proper place. He remained still; lying on the asphalt in the middle of a poorly lit rural road with his eyes clenched shut. Later, he would recall thinking he was going to die here. Not because the old man was going to kill him while he lay there but because someone else on this road ordered a pizza for delivery.
When he finally opened his eyes and stood up he found it had started snowing again, his coat had a light dusting of the white stuff on it. The old man was gone. He looked around for him but he didn’t see him anywhere. No crazed, half naked old man running down the street with his bathrobe flapping in the snow behind him. The only sign that he had ever been there was a brown terrycloth bathrobe belt lying at his feet like a dead snake.
Eri
c returned to his car, started it up and turned on his windshield wipers to clear the droplets of melted snow from his field of view. He made his final delivery of the night but had to pay for it from his tips because the old man had taken enough of his time for him to miss the thirty-minute guarantee. But that was only the beginning of what the old man would cost him.
Eric finished his delivery shift at eleven o’clock and decided he needed a drink. He reached into his pocket for his cell phone to give his friend Bill a call. As his fingers wrapped around the hard plastic casing of his phone, a feeling like nothing he had ever felt hit him. It felt like someone had taken off the top of his head and was using a blow-dryer with the heat