by Spike Black
Returning to the street, Tony approached the thug with the neck tattoo. The guy had his back turned to him. Tony took a deep breath, psyching himself up, and then gave the guy a hard shove.
The guy stumbled before spinning around, his face contorted in fury. “You’re dead, old man…”
“I don’t care for the way you treat people,” Tony said as the guy stood inches from his face. “Somebody needs to teach you some manners.”
The guy fumed. “Is that a fact?” Before Tony could respond, a huge fist came from nowhere, slamming into him. Tony crashed onto the pavement. The guy climbed on top of him, delivering a flurry of punches.
As Tony lay on the street and took the beating, there was only one thing on his mind.
He found himself back on the terrace of the Eldham Estate, once again in time to see Penny emerge from the side of the building. She sauntered over to him, taking his hand, and he led her around the main house to the private garden, an area of tall, maze-like hedges arranged around a central fountain.
They sat at a small wooden bench, nestled between beds of red striped tulips peppered with fallen cherry blossoms. He leaned into her, aroused by the scent of her perfume. Her long fingers stroked his hair. They gazed deeply into each other’s eyes.
Tony’s nose broke with a sickening crunch. He screamed as a bolt of crippling pain exploded through his skull.
His head hung over the curb, silver hair dangling in the gutter. He tasted blood. As his tongue explored, he realized that some of his front teeth were missing.
He thought about Penny again as a fist slammed into his jaw. Maybe if he kept picturing her, he’d go back.
But the pain was all-consuming. It was all he could think about.
His nose broke with a sickening crunch, a bolt of pain tearing through his head. Wait - how was it possible that his nose had broken a second time? And then he realized - he had traveled back in time several seconds, and was now enduring the agony all over again.
His heart lurched. He had to get off this train of thought immediately, otherwise—
Tony’s nose broke with a sickening crunch, and this time he passed out.
He came around a short while later, peering up through swollen eyes to see two police officers pulling the guy off of him. The brute fought as he was restrained and cuffed. One of the officers attended to Tony. “Sir? Sir, are you all right?”
No, he thought. Because I’m no longer with her. And I may never be again.
***
As the tumor reached critical size, the pressure inside Tony’s head caused drowsiness, and he slept most days and nights, dreaming only of Penny. He longed to be back there one final time. Waking refreshed one afternoon, he knew that it was now or never. Soon he would be too weak to time travel, and his chance would be gone.
He made it to the roof of his building and approached the edge, gazing out over the city. Let’s do this. Kicking off his slippers, he climbed gingerly onto the safety railing, supporting himself with one hand on the brick wall to his left. Then, stepping higher, he straightened his knees until the wall was out of reach and the heels of his bare feet balanced precariously on the top rail, his toes clenching instinctively but finding no purchase, his arms flailing hopelessly in the air. His stomach lurched as he gazed down at the tarmac and trees below. His knees buckled, then locked again, and he struggled to regain his balance. So what if he fell? He was dead soon anyway. So long as he thought of Penny on the way down.
A steady breeze buffeted him, carrying a distant tune to his ear. Concentrating hard, he recognized the song, and his mind filled with joy. He closed his eyes and let his memory take him.
He was there with her on the dance floor, hands around her tiny waist as Frankie Valli crooned Can’t Take My Eyes Off You. “Meet me on the terrace,” he whispered into her ear. Within the blink of an eye they were there, together on the terrace, and they walked hand-in-hand through the garden, finding the bench amidst the maze of tall hedges. He leaned into her, aroused by the scent of her perfume. She ran her fingers through his hair, and at last their lips met.
He brought his hands up to caress her delicate neck, then squeezed. Penny’s eyes shot open. He brought his fingertips together at the nape, strangling her. She fought him, but he was too strong, her screams dying as gurgling rattles in her throat. The more she struggled, the more he tightened his grip. As Penny’s eyes bulged hideously from their sockets, Tony stared into them, waiting, watching, and — yes! — there it was, that spark of terror in her eyes as she realized she was about to die. The look of abject fear that confirmed for him that he was, in that moment, the most powerful man in the world.
Oh, there had been many, many more after Penny, of course, but Penny was special. Because you always remembered your first time.
10:00
Everett Clay awoke to find that his alarm clock read 10:00.
A cold terror ripped through him. He sprang out of bed, the fog of sleep blown away by a blast of pure panic. No! Dear God!
The hideous reality of his situation shifted into focus: he was one hour late for a meeting with top brass about the Unilever account. If he missed the meeting, it was his head on a block.
He grabbed a clean shirt, his belly cramping with fear. Okay, think. What could he get away with? He sniffed his armpits. Touched the growth of stubble on his chin. You’re fine. Get dressed.
He threw on the shirt. Took a tie from the rack.
With any luck there’d been a delay. Maybe the clients were late, too. That happened on occasion, given the traffic in central London. If he could just get there as soon as possible…
Ugh. Adamson would go apeshit. They might even lose the account. Oh Christ, why? Why today? Why did my alarm not…?
He glanced over at his bedside clock. The digital display read 09:26.
Everett stopped dead. Blinking hard, he looked again.
09:25… 09:24… 09:23…
What the…?
For several moments, all he could do was stare at the display in blank confusion, watching as the bright red digits counted down the seconds. His bewilderment gave way to a sense of dizzy euphoria, however, as he realized (oh please God let it be true) that he may not have overslept, after all.
He marched over to the radio alarm clock and thumped the top of the casing. The display continued counting down. He picked up the gadget and shook it, inadvertently tugging on the power cord. The display blinked off, then on again.
The countdown continued, uninterrupted. 08:53… 08:52… 08:51…
Maybe a power cut in the early hours had fried the clock’s circuits, or the unit had simply come to the end of its usefulness. Electrical goods never seemed to last these days, and besides, it had only been a cheap model, purchased from a catalogue store several years ago. Why he’d been so moronic as to entrust such a flimsy piece of technology with a task as important as waking him up for work in the morning he didn’t know, but that was beside the point - he still had no idea what the time was. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true - there was a bar of sunlight through the gap in the curtains, so it had to be after six-thirty, at least.
He looked around for his phone and remembered he’d left it charging on the dock. Reaching over, he grabbed it and tapped the home button. The display came to life, the large white digits of the phone’s clock dominating the screen:
08:27… 08:26… 08:25…
Everett stared in open-mouthed, unbelieving shock. His gaze shifted from the phone to the alarm clock readout, then back again. The two were in perfect sync.
It’s some kind of electrical fault, it has to be. Something to do with the phone being connected to the power all night long.
He crossed the bed, pulled open the nightstand drawer and took out his new smart watch. 08:13… 08:12… 08:11…
No, no, no!
His mind swam, provoking an intense dislocation from reality, as if he’d awoken to a world gone mad overnight. Pulling up his trousers, he hurried through the ap
artment searching for anything that could be relied upon to tell him the time. All electrical displays were counting down in sync - his laptop, the office clock, even the oven timer. Neither an electrical fault nor a power surge explained it - both his watch and the office clock ran on their own batteries. Maybe there was some kind of magnetic field surrounding his house, making everything go haywire. And if that was the case, then maybe he wasn’t the only one affected. What if chaos had rained down upon the whole world while he slept?
He pulled aside the net at the living room window and peered out. It was a pleasant spring morning, and from what he could see from his vantage point the world had not yet gone to hell; there were no planes falling from the sky or buildings billowing smoke. The sun’s position in the east told him that it was still relatively early, but that was of little use; he’d relied on technology for his chronological needs all of his life, and without it he was lost.
With trembling hands, he scanned through the list of recent calls on his phone and found the number for Adamson’s secretary. He tapped it, checking his reflection in the mirror above the mantel as he waited.
The call connected. “Margaret!” he barked. “Tell him I’m on my way, okay? I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
In reply, Margaret’s voice came over the speakerphone. She sounded calm and pleasant, as always. “Five twenty-seven, five twenty-six, five twenty-five, five twenty-four…”
Everett went rigid, his veins filling with ice. “Margaret?”
“…five twenty-one, five twenty, five nineteen, five eighteen…”
“Margaret, Christ…”
“…five sixteen, five fifteen, five fourteen…”
With a startled noise he jabbed at the phone, ending the call. A shiver of terror snaked up his spine.
Everett could not allow himself to accept what had apparently just occurred. Were his senses functioning properly? Or had it been some kind of aural hallucination? Thinking about it too deeply would cause him to question his own sanity, and he wasn’t about to go down that road right now. But what was his course of action, here? He wanted nothing more than to return to his bed, to cocoon himself inside the bedsheets and pretend that none of this crazy shit was happening. And yet, the obvious question remained: what the hell is everything counting down to? And alongside that, another, perhaps even more pertinent question: what’s going to happen when the countdown hits zero?
He grabbed a Mars bar from the fridge and chowed down on it, thinking. There was really only one thing for it: he would go to work as normal. If he was late, then he’d deal with the consequences. And if he was early, well, then that would be one hell of a result. He had plenty of work on his desk to keep him busy until the meeting.
He straightened his tie, grabbed his briefcase and flew out the door.
Gazing down the street, he saw a neighbor a few houses down putting out the rubbish. On the path ahead of him, a postman stepped off his bicycle. Everything was reassuringly normal.
“Excuse me,” Everett called to the postman as he vaulted down the steps. “Do you have the time?”
The postman smiled pleasantly and checked his watch. “Three fifty-seven, three fifty-six, three fifty-five, three fifty-four…”
Everett’s face fell.
“…three fifty-three, three fifty-two, three-fifty-one…”
“Thanks,” Everett said, wanting him to stop. “Thank you.”
But the postman continued as he passed him. “Three forty-nine, three forty-eight, three-forty-seven…”
Everett crossed the road into the park, the most direct route to the tube station. Still able to hear the faint murmur of the postman’s countdown behind him, he picked up his pace.
A jogger passed him in silence. A man walking his dog cut across his path. A group of schoolboys in uniform hung from a climbing frame as he passed the playground.
They turned and looked at him, chanting in unison. “Two thirty-five, two thirty-four, two thirty-three, two thirty-two…”
Everett broke into a run. He slowed almost immediately when he got a stitch in his side. He’d quit his fitness regime when he’d started getting a middle-aged paunch a couple of years back, and now he deeply regretted it. He pushed on through the pain, thinking of Adamson and the meeting. And still he heard the boys’ chants.
He raced down the steps at the corner of the park and turned into the tube station. Commuters swarmed around him. The large digital clock that dominated the station concourse was on an inevitable countdown: 01:01… 01:00… 00:59…
He forged a path through the mass of commuters to the ticket barrier. Passing through, he heard a nearby attendant speaking on a walkie-talkie. “Forty-six, forty-five, forty-four…”
Everett made it to the escalator. He raced down the left side. A small woman blocked his path. “Standing on the right!” he yelled, picking her up and placing her down farther over. He continued his descent, thumping down the metal steps.
A three-note chime came over the sound system, and an announcer began speaking in a disinterested, slightly muffled drone: “Thirty-four, thirty-three, thirty-two, thirty-one…”
Suddenly Everett felt like someone was crushing his chest. He stopped, struggling for breath.
Oh, God. Is this it?
As if in reply, a bolt of burning pain shot up his arms and across his shoulders.
He cried out, the ridged metal steps of the escalator bending impossibly into view until he realized he was falling, and there was no time to put out his hands to save himself. His moan of alarm was cut hideously short as his face hit the steps with a dull crunch.
Commuters around him cried out. The announcer continued his countdown. As the escalator deposited Everett at the base of the steps, somebody turned him over. He opened his eyes to see a circle of concerned faces peering down at him. His mouth filled with blood, and as his tongue explored, he discovered his front teeth were missing.
The ring of commuters opened their mouths and chanted in unison. “Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”
The black descended.
***
Everett’s eyes snapped open. He sprung from the pillow with a wheezing gasp.
His radio alarm clock announced the time in bright red digits: 10:00.
No! He sprang into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Dear God! He was late for the meeting. And he couldn’t be late, because today… today was…
As the wall of disorientation lifted, the memories flooded back.
He clutched his chest. Checked with his tongue and found that all his front teeth were present and correct.
With a hollow feeling building in his gut, he shot a look at the alarm clock.
Just as he had feared, the display was counting down the seconds: 09:44… 09:43… 09:42… 09:41…
Shit.
He snatched his phone from the dock and unlocked it. The countdown continued in the corner of the screen, but he barely noticed. He was too busy tapping in the number for emergency services.
The call connected. A female operator spoke. “Nine twenty, nine nineteen, nine eighteen…”
“Listen,” he said, interrupting her. “I don’t know if you can understand me, but I need an ambulance. It’s urgent. I’m having a heart attack.”
“…nine twelve, nine eleven, nine ten…”
“Did you get that? An ambulance. Seventy-four Queensway, apartment one. Please hurry - I have less than ten minutes to live.”
He ended the call and sat there, watching his life ticking away on the bedside clock. His heart thumped hard in his chest - probably not a good idea in his current condition. But now what? Even if the operator had been listening, it was unlikely that an ambulance would make it here in time - unless, of course, it was already in the immediate vicinity. And he didn’t hear any sirens.
Leaping to his feet, he grabbed the robe from the back of the door, slid on his slippers and barreled through the apartment. He took a moment to tie his robe before exiting onto the street.
The house he needed was number seventy-eight, if he remembered correctly. Two doors down. He burst into a run, losing a slipper in his rush along the pavement. He nodded a greeting to the postman before vaulting the steps to his neighbor’s house. He rang the doorbell.
“Come on, come on…” He banged on the door. Rang the bell again. What if no-one was in? What then?
The door opened a crack. An elderly gentleman peeked out.
“Doctor Hooper! Please, you have to help me.” He clutched his chest and winced. “I’m having a heart attack. Do you understand?” The doctor nodded, throwing the door wide and ushering him inside. Everett felt bad for faking it - the truth was that right now he felt perfectly fine, but of course that would all change in about five minutes.
“Four twenty-seven,” Doctor Hooper corrected him. “Four twenty-six, four twenty-five, four twenty-four…”
He showed Everett to a chair in the kitchen, and then disappeared from the room for what seemed like a very long time. Everett felt the panic rising in his throat. His temples pulsed with the rhythm of his heartbeat. He looked around the room: a greasy stove, a pile of dirty dishes, a calendar displaying the wrong month. Was this the last thing he would see? Finally, the doctor returned with a stethoscope around his neck, lifted Everett’s wrist and checked his pulse. He placed the end of the stethoscope against Everett’s chest and listened.
The doctor’s eyes widened.
“That’s right,” Everett said. “It’s happening.”
“One nineteen,” the doctor grumbled, shaking his head. “One eighteen. One seventeen.”
“Please, I’m running out of time.”
The old man rushed to the rotary dial telephone mounted to the wall, picked up the receiver and dialed.
