“Yes, well. He can transfer time from one person to another, you know. Like, you can live longer if he takes time from a person and gives it to you.”
“So you’re talking about a time vampire. Yes?”
“I … I guess so.”
“Okay,” Freya said. “Time vampire. Got it. Go on.”
“My question is: would you do it? Would you live longer, if you had the chance?”
“What’s the point of living longer?” Freya said, gesturing carelessly with a hand. “Immortality is overrated. I’m seventy-one. Seventy-two next week. When you get to my age, you understand that if you want to really enjoy life, you take it one day at a time without asking how many tomorrows you have left. It spoils the fun of living.”
Alfred pondered that. “What if you could do other things? Like rewind time, for example,” he said. “What if you made a mistake and you could correct it before it became a big deal you’d have to live with for the rest of your life? You could have a second chance. You could craft the life you always wanted. You would never have a meaningless life.”
“What’s meaningless?” Freya asked. “What’s meaningful? Give me a simple definition of both.”
Alfred struggled for a moment and failed. “I guess I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Let me tell you something.” Freya pointed behind her back. “There’s a homeless guy who has being living a few steps away from my store for the past two years. Name’s Marco.”
“Yeah, I saw him,” Alfred said. “He was sleeping outside.”
“Right.” Freya shoulder-checked and passed a car in front of them. “You would never imagine it, but he’s one of the happiest people I know. He doesn’t own a damn thing except a collection of garbage, but he wouldn’t change it for anything else. Can I judge the way he lives? Can you? Having more time, or the power to rewind it, doesn’t make your life more meaningful. It just proves you can’t make do with the time you’ve been given.”
The car stopped so suddenly that Alfred was pushed back by the seatbelt.
Freya stared ahead angrily and hit the horn like it was a punching bag. She stuck her head out the window and yelled at a person who was crossing the street. “Are you color-blind?” she shouted. “Red means stop, asshole! If you want to die, do everyone a favor and get it over with on private property. My tax dollars shouldn’t be used to wipe your brain off the street!”
Freya hit the accelerator and closed the window. “What’s up?” She looked at Alfred, who was silent. “You lost your tongue?”
“No,” Alfred said. “I’m just thinking.”
“Think loudly.”
Alfred looked at the time displayed on the car. “Do you believe in fate?”
“Fate?” Freya repeated. “Like, before I was even born, we were destined to have this conversation? That kind of fate?”
“Something like that.”
Freya shrugged. “Nah,” she said. “Too plain and simple, you know? It makes for a boring life, knowing everything had been decided. I prefer to drive with the hands on the wheel instead of sitting in the back, waiting to get wherever I’m supposed to go. Now this time vampire of yours. Are you asking me that question because you think fate wanted you to meet him?”
“I guess so.”
The car stopped once more. This time Freya turned off the engine.
“Main and Clayfall,” she announced triumphantly. “We made it!”
Alfred looked out the window. That had felt like the longest ride in his life.
Freya noticed Alfred’s conflicted expression. “Look, son,” she said in a soothing tone. “About your question. I don’t know if there’s a force out there that controls our lives, or if it’s all a fucking mess of choices that pile up on one another. I don’t know. What I know is that I’m a member of the free will club, and I believe nothing is inevitable. Ever.”
Alfred looked at the web of wrinkles that framed Freya’s green eyes, and was comforted by her warm look. “Have you always been a liquor store owner?” he asked her.
“Nope.” She shook her head vigorously and smirked. “But that is the most successful thing I’ve ever been.” She leaned back in her seat and gave Alfred a knowing look. “To tell you the truth, sometimes I feel more like a shrink with no paper to show for it. I guess it’s something that helps with my job. You know, the listening bit.” She laughed at her own joke then grew serious. “Look.” Freya considered Alfred carefully. “I don’t know you, I don’t know what your life looks like, and I certainly have no idea what are you dealing with, but I can definitely tell you need a long night’s sleep. And a shower,” she added, pinching her nose. She smiled, patted Alfred’s shoulder. “Talk with a friend tomorrow, or talk with your family. It’ll help.”
“I don’t have any friends,” Alfred found himself saying. “I don’t have any family.” He looked at the old lady and nodded. “Thanks for the ride. And for the pep talk. Really. It helped a lot.”
“I’m glad to hear it, tiger.” Freya pointed at the bottle of rum Alfred was holding. “Now go get some of that sweet lava inside your belly. It’ll help way more than my babbling, I promise you.”
“I will. Thank you.” Alfred opened the car door and went outside. Then a thought jumped out at him, and he whirled on the spot and called her out before she could start the car again. “What is your store called?”
“It’s called Providence,” Freya said proudly. Then she added, with gleaming eyes and a theatrical voice, “Where we sell the finest spirits the city has ever seen and don’t judge people for indulging in booze before eleven in the morning. Think of me not as a store owner—think of me as your spirit guide. Thank you very much for your business at Providence.”
And with that, Freya closed the car door, waved Alfred goodbye, and drove away in the growing darkness.
12
Gunfire
By the time Alfred got home, it was well past nine o’clock. He put the bottle of rum on the kitchen table and realized how hungry he was. He only eaten a Thai crepe the entire day. He opened his refrigerator and found it deserted, so he ordered Chinese food.
While he waited, he took a very long shower. He felt a lot better after.
The food arrived one hour late, cold and wet. Alfred ate it anyway. He was famished. When he was done with the box of noodles, he found a fortune cookie he hadn’t noticed before. He broke it, picked up the slip of paper, and read out the content.
“Be careful what you wish for.” Alfred snorted. “Aren’t we a bit predictable, destiny?” He threw away the cookie and went to his bedroom.
He had decided that he needed answers, and the Internet was a good place to start digging. He grabbed a notepad and a pencil and opened his laptop. But he stared at the blank screen for a long while before finally turning on the device.
He fidgeted with his hair, wondering what was the best way to start the research. Then, tired of just thinking, he typed the first thing that came into his head.
He typed the word Satan into the search engine. The Internet answered with a multitude of results. Alfred snapped the pencil he was holding. “Shit,” he said, staring aghast at the number of results. “This is going to be a long night.”
After over an hour of reading, he decided he knew much more about sinister cults and rock music but nothing more about Pacific.
Then he remembered something. He closed all the open tabs and started over.
He typed Samael in the search bar.
Far fewer results popped up this time.
Alfred started reading. After less than half an hour, he had learned something interesting.
According to many sources, Samael was an archangel featured in Jewish beliefs and stories, as well as Christian tradition and demonology. He was a guardian angel, an evil spirit, the Grim Reaper, a fallen angel, and a warrior. Samael was said to be the Angel of Death.
Alfred bit at his fingernails thoughtfully. “The Angel of Death,” he whispered slowly. Wasn’t that what Fath
er Jude had called Pacific?
Alfred spent the next couple of hours searching and learning. Then something else caught his eye. According to one source, “as one of the seven archangels, Samael is imagined as having a special assignment to act as a global zeitgeist, a ‘time-spirit.’”
Alfred crossed his arms, deep in thought.
He looked over the notes on his notepad.
The Grim Reaper.
Angel of Death.
Time-spirit.
Alfred stared at the screen blankly, his eyes far away.
Pacific had said he wasn’t Samael, just like he wasn’t the Devil or Satan. They were just names, he had said. But what if all those names described the exact same thing?
What if Pacific was, in fact, just a fallen angel who preyed on people’s lives to get time out of them?
Why had he denied those names so fiercely? Was he lying?
It made sense, Alfred thought. Pacific believed that lying was a virtue; he had said so to Alfred. If he could spread defamatory misinformation that affected a person’s livelihood just to get a crepe faster, he could lie for any reason.
Alfred tried to picture Pacific as a supernatural being. It explained a lot.
And yet something didn’t add up.
Alfred stretched his arms above his head. He let them fall to his sides with a satisfied sigh. His eyes were itchy. He had been staring at the screen for over four hours. He decided he needed a break.
He went into the kitchen and brewed some black tea. His gaze wandered to the table, where the bottle of rum seemed to be staring back at him.
“I did not forget you,” he said.
He looked at his steaming cup of tea then looked at the bottle. He had once heard about a drink called Gunfire, a British cocktail made with black tea and rum. He brought the bottle with him into the bedroom.
At the table, he poured the rum in the steaming cup and sipped the contents. It wasn’t as strong as he had thought. He put in some more. Better.
Alfred cracked his knuckles and opened up his laptop again.
“What next?” he asked himself. Alfred drummed his fingers on the table, looking around aimlessly. His eyes caught the wall clock above his bed. “Right.” He typed the words time harvesting. He got a lot of good juice on the best time to harvest garden vegetables and marijuana buds, but nothing relevant to him.
He tried buffer of time, economy of time and time reaper. No luck.
He abandoned that line of inquiry. He sipped at his tea and snorted. He poured more rum in it.
“Think.” He tapped his temple with his pencil. “Come on. Something more down to earth. Something searchable.” He looked back at the screen. “Something people would notice, like …” Alfred trailed off hopefully, his eyes lingering on the TV across from him sitting on the other side of the table. “Right! The news!”
He typed in recent weird deaths.
It was well past three in the morning when he found something that caught his attention. News from a local newspaper. It was about a death at the Saint Expeditus Hospital one year before. The journalist had dubbed it “inexplicable.” The patient had been hospitalized for a simple case of appendicitis, and the surgery went well. He had died for no apparent reason. The last person who had seen him alive was the hospital’s priest. Father Jude.
Weird thing was, the day after his death, the family found a life insurance policy and a will hidden in a safe. He had never told them of this. But the wife should have known. Why would her husband have hidden that information from her?
That sounded like a time deal to Alfred. Time in exchange for an important favor. Maybe the man was destined to die. Maybe he had been made aware of the fact and decided to give the time he had left to Pacific in exchange for a way to take care of his family after his passing.
Alfred dug deeper. He read websites, forums, and social media. That was only the first of many weird deaths that Alfred discovered in the following hour. Some of them had happened to patients hospitalized at Saint Expeditus. There weren’t enough to get the general public suspicious. After all, people died in hospitals every day. But for Alfred, it was different. He knew what Pacific was capable of, and he could see his devilry at work in every piece of information.
The more stories he found, the more he sipped his tea, and the more he sipped, the more he felt like there wasn’t enough booze in it. So he added more. And then some more. After a while, as he read, he automatically poured just enough rum to make the tea interesting enough.
Alfred wondered if he was reading too much into those stories. If he was imagining things.
He sipped at his cup and winced. There was only rum left in the cup.
He lifted the bottle of rum and found it very light. “Wow,” he said, running an unsteady hand through his hair. “You are a bad boy.” He pointed at the bottle of rum as if he were scolding a mischievous kid. “Very bad boy.” Then he realized he was swinging on his chair. The world was spinning around him.
“Oh,” he said, trying to steady himself. “Okay. Slow. Down,” he said. “This was not supposed to happen, damn it.” He needed to search for more information. He was so close to getting his answer.
But he felt bone tired. He could barely keep his eyes open.
He took his phone, set the alarm, and put his head on the desk. “Just a couple of hours,” he mumbled as he closed his eyes and let oblivion wash over him.
13
A Grain of Sand
There was a familiar man in front of him. He was wearing a blue suit. For a moment, Alfred thought the man was standing as still and rigid as a statue, defying gravity. But he’d gotten everything wrong.
The angle was wrong. His position was wrong. Alfred had been staring with his head cocked to the side, his left ear almost touching his shoulder.
Alfred straightened and looked once more.
The man was sprawled on the ground. His eyes were half-open.
He knew that man well, of course. His name was Steve Rowsons Junior, and Alfred had watched him die.
A crow came from the sky and landed just a few feet away from Steve’s corpse. The crow looked at Steve and made a jerky head movement. “Cras,” it croaked, spreading his wings wide. “Cras. Cras.”
“Go away,” Alfred said to the bird. “You hear me? Go away!”
“Cras,” the bird answered, twitching his wings. “Cras.”
Alfred picked up a rock and threw it at the crow. He missed it.
“Cras!” The black bird screeched louder and louder. “Cras! Cras! Cras! Cras!”
“Shut up!”
The crow shut up. It looked at Alfred, its eye gray with a red rim around the pupil. The eye of a demon.
“You are supposed to stamp on it, you know.”
Alfred whirled on the spot. A tall figure clad in black was looking at him.
“What are you waiting for?” Pacific said impatiently. “Don’t you know that time is of the essence? Do what you’re supposed to do. Fulfill your destiny.” And then Pacific smiled a wicked smile, clapped his hands, and disappeared into nothingness.
Alfred jerked awake. He looked around and found the light of a new day creeping through a corner of the window.
The back of his head was throbbing. He touched it with both hands, and a headache bloomed from the base of his neck.
He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and pushed off the keyboard. He looked around, in search of his phone. He found it on the floor, as silent as a dead fish.
It was just one hour before noon. The alarm had never sounded. Instead of pushing the number two once, Alfred had pushed it twice. So much for a quick nap. He had slept well over six hours, and now had less than one hour to get to the Spear. He rose on unsteady legs and walked to the entrance door before realizing he was still in pajamas.
“Right,” he said, eyes half-closed. “Clothes first.”
Alfred dressed and splashed some water on his face. He looked in the mirror. “I’m ready,” he said. “You’re ready.”
Alfred went out feeling weary and vaguely nauseous.
The city was quieter than usual. The air, too, felt heavier, as if the world itself were waiting for something to happen. Alfred looked for a cab, and found none. He decided to walk down Main Street. He still had some time before noon.
As always, the newspaper street vendor was yelling the latest news. “Woman wakes up from coma!” she shouted while waving a bunch of newspapers to passersby. “Her twin sister commits suicide on the same day!”
Alfred slowed down and came to a full stop. He looked over his shoulder, his heart skipping a beat. For a full minute all he could do was remain on the spot, staring at the lady. He managed to shake himself out of that trance and walk back. “Give me one,” he said.
The woman handed him a newspaper, and Alfred took it with unsteady hands. He picked a random bill from his wallet, gave it to the woman, and started walking away.
“Hey, wait!” the woman yelled after him. “This is way too much—”
But Alfred wasn’t listening. He kept moving, his mind deep into the reading.
As he kept walking, his breathing became shallow and irregular. He stumbled on his feet several times, and almost fell twice. He read fast, skipping entire sentences, then went back and tried to make sense of what he had missed. After a few minutes of that unfocused reading, he got the gist of the article. Sophia had killed herself the day before. It had happened just after Pacific and Alfred had left the hospital. She had sliced both her wrists and bled to death.
Alfred read the piece several times, hoping every time to read a different story. But the story remained the same.
He folded the newspaper, put it under his arm, and kept walking.
He should have known.
It was obvious, after all.
One life for one life.
If he were the Angel of Death, he could never have passed up on the opportunity.
Alfred was startled to discover that he wasn’t as surprised as he should have been. The thought unsettled him. It was almost as if a part of him had known that Sophia was going to die.
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