THE TIME EATER
By
Aaron J. French
JournalStone
Copyright © 2017 by Aaron J. French
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ISBN: 978-1-945373-36-7 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-945373-37-4 (ebook)
JournalStone rev. date: January 27, 2017
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016962438
Printed in the United States of America
Cover Art & Design: 99designs - Hortastar
THE TIME EATER
“Now you must only dare to be tragic human beings, for you will be released and redeemed.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
“The tremendous world I have in my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me.”
—Franz Kafka
Chapter One
What can you see looking through a half-full glass of whiskey? A scrawny orange-and-white alley cat trying to scratch his way through the window. Why the hell would he want to get in? There’s nothing here for him. There’s nothing here for anyone.
At that moment, the smartphone rang. A husky but intriguing voice said, “You don’t know me. My name is Annabelle. James Steiner is dying. You’ve got to meet me at Grand Central Terminal. Bring a suitcase.”
I was long past caring what happened to me. What the hell? Why not? I packed my things and headed out.
I was jarred awake as the train pulled into the station. My heart sped up and I noticed my left hand was twitching. As I stepped onto the platform, trying to get my bearings, I saw a tall, slender woman standing beside the ticket machines. She had long black hair and the face of a watchful hawk, wearing a leather coat and stiletto heels. Sinister class. She was Carolyn Jones as Morticia Addams. I had no idea how she knew me, but she came right over as I exited the train.
“Roger Borough,” she said.
“How’d you know?”
She shrugged. “James showed me pictures of you at Ohio State.”
Annabelle took my hand, clasping it in her own. A brazen act, which seemed to fit her character. A shiver passed through me. She had gorgeous eyes, big almond-shaped globes full of dazzling blue.
“Good thing you recognized me,” I said. “I’d’ve wandered around this place like an idiot.”
Instead of responding, she just stared at me. My hands and feet quivered with nerves and emotions. Finally she relented.
I appeased her with pleasantries and platitudes, though in my mind I was asking myself what I was doing here. I had given up on James Steiner long ago. Prolonged isolation and creeping madness made a person do strange things. Perhaps I’d known this day would come.
We took a taxi to her car, then she drove us through the city in her silver Toyota Camry, leather seats and tinted windows, footwells and a backseat exploding with Starbucks containers, food wrappers; buildings, cars, and people flashed by in the glass.
I don’t need to see James.
I don’t.
We headed in the direction of the Queens Midtown Tunnel, and I suspected we were on our way to Brooklyn. Why she hadn’t asked me to drive there myself from Oyster Bay, avoiding the trip to the city, I had no idea. Probably felt this would be easier, or maybe she wanted to scope me out before bringing me to her home. I asked her about James to break the ice, hoping to convince her I wasn’t crazy.
She said, “He wants to end his life as he began it.”
“Which means?”
Annabelle shrugged. “I think he wants people around who care about him.”
Doubtful. I knew what James fucking wanted, the son of a bitch. He wanted to talk about what happened that night.
He and I began this ignoring-each-other game immediately after college when James married Celeste Roughen, the artsy stuck-up, party-and-painting darling, poster-girl for some HBO mini-series. I married the psychotherapist Jenny Morgan.
I could never stand Celeste. I thought James married her because of what we experienced, like it had influenced his decision. After that night he’d wanted flowers, dancing, roses, weddings, traveling. He’d wanted nothing more to do with darkness.
Me, I was a glutton for the stuff, always had been. I got married to the dark.
We attended Ohio State together, graduated, and then went on our separate, married ways. James majored in business and, as far as I knew, became a hotshot corporate executive for some company that manufactured stereo equipment. I wound up teaching humanities at NYC Community College, basically a reform school disguised as an education institution. It was thankless work, but it kept me gainfully employed. Jenny and I bought the house in Massapequa straight out of college. After the divorce, we sold it and she moved away, while I clung to what sanity I had left and salvaged the apartment in Oyster Bay, riding the LIRR to my teaching job, reading obscure Edgar Allan Poe stories and fantasizing about draping my body across the tracks.
Neither of our marriages lasted long, though theirs had seemed lovey-dovey and successful. Mine was over in about five years—five steps into hell, with each year worse than the one before, and yet I couldn’t leave. I was addicted, like an alky with the DTs. Five years trapped in a Dostoevsky novel, with Jenny playing Grand Inquisitor.
The experience was so nerve frying and traumatic that afterward I became isolated. I’d sworn off women completely and hadn’t dated since, which basically served to disassociate me from the world. I’d tried repeatedly to change my attitude since the divorce, but I was living in a nightmare, the famous raven croaking “nevermore” inside my head. The whole period of my life post-Jenny had become surreal, dreamlike, viewed from the bottom of a whiskey bottle. That probably sounds hard to believe. I find it hard to believe myself sometimes. But that’s the way it went down.
James’s marriage lasted longer. Eight years. I heard about their divorce from a mutual friend, the kind of friend who sends you Christmas cards even when you’ve never returned the favor. This friend didn’t know the cause of their separation, but mentioned offhandedly that the relationship had dissolved. I never found out why James and Celeste separated, and to the best of my knowledge, James never remarried.
Now this sudden request for contact, this terrible news that James is, what, dying?
What was I doing here?
He could be fucking this Annabelle woman.
Terrific.
I shook my head, trying to banish the thoughts, telling myself I was here because James was my friend, I cared about him, and that’s what you did when friends got sick, you paid them a visit.
And yet… I’d always wondered, what would happen when one of us—James or I—died, now that we had seen what we’d seen, and done what we’d done? Would death bring an end? Or—and this made my skin crawl—did it officially begin with death? Could death be where the horror became real?
Annabelle
pulled her Toyota onto the black asphalt drive, got out. I’d been so lost in the ocean of my past that I hadn’t noticed the confirmation of my suspicion. We were indeed in Brooklyn—the nice part of Brooklyn. Every house here looked the same: stately, two-story, redbrick, white trim, spotless. Flatbush Avenue ran before the houses, split down the center by a median resembling a small park. Benches and a walkway lined with grass, towering oaks.
“Nice place,” I heard myself saying.
“I own it,” she said, popping the trunk. “James moved in after he was diagnosed. At my request.”
I reached in to collect my suitcase. “And the doctors are okay with that?”
“When the tests determined he had less than a month to live, they consented. That was three weeks ago. It’s my wish for him to die peacefully in the company of his friends.”
“A week? That’s all he has left?” I was in shock. “What is his diagnosis?”
“Let’s discuss that once you’ve seen him,” she said. “I want you to take a good look at him first.”
We headed up the stone walkway, pausing on the stoop as Annabelle searched for her key. There was a loud click as the door unlocked. She glanced at me, bumped the door open with a knee, and we went inside.
“I have a confession,” she said, taking off her coat, gesturing for mine and hanging them both on a hook. I set my suitcase down by the door.
“A confession?”
“Follow me in here.” We passed under a wooden arch to enter the living room. Most of the interior was redwood, covering the walls in heavy panels. The house gave the impression that it was very expensive. Maybe it was. Maybe she had money. The furnishings suggested as much: big leather sofas, oak bookcases with leather-bound books, stylish glass tables, a plasma screen TV.
“Do you like it?”
“Classy,” I said.
She smiled. “Thanks. I try.”
“You mentioned a confession?”
She paused a moment; then: “James didn’t ask you to come. This was my idea.”
The news hit me like a rib-punch. “What? He doesn’t know?”
She shook her head.
The fear was getting real. It seeped into the walls, the furniture, reflecting in the glass front of the plasma TV, a yawning abyss. I thought of turning around, grabbing my coat, and marching the hell out of there. If James didn’t want to see me, I sure as hell didn’t want to see him.
But… he’s dying… don’t forget that. He could die any day…
“Are you angry?” she said. “Are you going to leave?”
I sighed. “No, I’m not going to leave.”
“Oh good.” She seemed to visibly relax.
“But what makes you think he’ll see me? And what about his wife?” Now I had lots of questions.
“Ex-wife,” she corrected.
I cleared my throat. “Yes, that’s what I meant.”
“That bitch Celeste will not be allowed near him. She’s already getting his house. Don’t ask me why he left that cunt’s name in his will. My guess is that he forgot to take it out and now he’s too far gone to care.”
Her emotional outburst excited me. I found myself wanting her; strange to feel this, actually embarrassing. A long time had passed since I felt that way about any woman. Not since Jenny.
“Don’t worry. James will see you,” she said. “He needs to.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he screams your name at night, a terrible scream that echoes through the house. At first, I would jump out of bed and rush into his room when it happened. He’d be sitting in there, covered in sweat and muttering your name over and over.
“But I’ve stopped going. It does no good. I only make myself more upset. Look. Whatever happened between you two, whatever caused you to stop being friends, James hasn’t dealt with it. He hasn’t resolved it. That’s how I know he needs you.”
She paused, then added: “What did happen, if you don’t mind?”
“I do mind.” That memory I kept locked away in the catacombs, and I wasn’t about to let it out. “I’ll see him,” I said. “If that’s what you want.”
“And you’ll stay a few nights?”
“But you don’t even know me. Aren’t you afraid?”
“I’m terrified,” she said, “but of James, not of you. Please, I’m desperate.”
I let out another sigh. “I’ll stay,” I said.
She straightened and came around the couch, came so close, and took my hand again.
“Thank you,” she said, gazing into my face. “From the bottom of my heart I mean it, Roger. Thank you.”
Forcing myself to look at her, I nodded.
She grinned reassuringly. “You seem very uncomfortable.”
“I…” But I couldn’t bring myself to finish the words. Mercifully, she let go of my hand and I was flooded with relief.
“He’s up here,” she said, heading for the stairs. “No sense delaying.”
Chapter Two
The room upstairs was much darker than any sick room I could remember. Annabelle led through the gloom, stooping over the bed. There lay a thin, gaunt figure in the corner. Daylight was strangled by thick beige curtains.
“How yah feeling?” Annabelle asked.
A soft moan floated up from the bed.
Is that James? My god, this is what he’s been reduced to, a thing tucked away in a dark room?
It was a sick guy lying in a bed. So what? Why did I want to get out of there so badly? After all, I felt sorry for him. Once, he’d been my best friend.
Annabelle came toward me, blue eyes glowing like sapphires.
“You can sit with him,” she said. “I’ll get dinner started.”
“Couldn’t we have some light?”
Her eyes flicked to the bed then back at me. She shook her head. “James prefers it this way.”
“What for?”
Her face narrowed. “Because, Roger, he claims he doesn’t wish to see it, anymore. Do you know what that means? What it is? I imagine you do. Perhaps you could talk to him about it.”
She left us, closing the door, and a silence formed. That funereal light from the curtains made my head throb. I wanted desperately to let in some fresh air. Anything to rid the room of that faint smell of death, beneath which lurked another odor, reminiscent of sweat or urine.
I summoned my courage, crossed the carpet to the single chair by the bed, and sat down. The chair groaned beneath me.
I couldn’t bring myself to look, so I surveyed the room. Shelves stacked with various books. A filing cabinet, half open, contents overflowing. Dirty clothes piles, appliance boxes, a collection of board games, even old cassettes.
“It’s where you store things that you wanna forget about,” James said from the bed. His voice was husky, weak, unnerving.
He continued. “You put things in here… well, because there’s nowhere else to put them. They got to go somewhere, right? They once seemed so great, so important and useful, and so you can’t bring yourself to throw them away. You just shove them in here, hoping they won’t go away—hoping they won’t get in the way.”
I found the strength to face him. He was a silhouette in the dark. I noticed flashes of pale skin, nothing more. “Is that how you feel, James? Like you’re forgotten?”
There was a long silence. Then he said, “Hello, Roger.”
I released the breath held hostage in my chest. “Hello, James.”
“Caught me at a bad time.” He chuckled. “How the hell did you find me?”
“Your friend Annabelle.”
“Friend…” He released a sigh that sounded like a dying wheeze. “Why’d you come?” He shifted in his blankets, propping himself up. I could make out a little more: shoulders, torso, arms. He was deathly thin, slouching with such dedication that, at a glance, he appeared insubstantial.
When he spoke, his outline shifted, rattled. “Why the fuck did you come here, Roger?”
I jumped. I was increasingly
on edge around him. For one, we hadn’t seen each other in a long time; two, he was terminally ill; and now: anger.
I don’t care how long he has to live or how soon he’ll be in the ground with rain falling on him…
…He’s gonna talk first.
Despite the bravado, I said, “Same reason all these lights are turned out. Same reason you wake up screaming every night. Same reason Celeste left you—same goddamn reason Jenny left me—”
James sprang forward on the mattress, a shadow come to life. The darkness grew arms, legs, and darted through the air, tackling me. I got a glimpse, just a snapshot of the thing he had become. The projecting jaw and nose, bony appendages, the contours of a rat. His eyes hollow, full of rage. I didn’t know who the hell I was looking at, but my friend from college, this creature was not.
He landed on my lap without knocking me from my chair, chuckling as he leaned into me, applying the whole of his weight (which wasn’t much). He felt like cardboard, stiff, like holding a corpse.
He pressed his scraggly face against me. His thick brown hair, cropped short back when I had known him, was now grown out, greasy, stringy.
“What do you know about my reasons?” he growled.
I met his sunken blue eyes. “Give it up, James, you know why I’m here. My life is hollow. I have to remember what happened, just like you. We can work together. It’ll come back little by little, piece by piece—”
He spit into my face.
Wiping it away, I said, “You’re upset because I mentioned Celeste.”
He clambered off, back to his bed. I felt infected. I smelled his sweat, and my thighs burned from where he’d touched them.
Whatever he’s got, I don’t want it.
The door burst open and Annabelle appeared. “I heard noise, is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” James told her. “Just two friends catching up.” He grinned, his face like a rodent’s.
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