The Pocket Watch

by Michael Shaw

  “And your evidence?”

  “He wasn’t that kind of man.”

  The pace increased.

  “That kind of man?”

  “The kind like you.”

  “This was not his first injustice.”

  “You’re all liars.”

  “George Ashe was a killer…”

  “I know my father, and he-”

  “You don’t know your father!” Howard exploded. He got in my face with the exclamation, leaning as far forward as he could. He knelt on one knee in front of me. A finger in my face.

  I felt knocked back by his words. My chest rose and fell as a journey through mountains and valleys. My trembling ceased.

  “You don’t know your father,” he repeated. “You never did.”

  The room was still. David’s grip on me loosened, and I wondered what I could really even trust anymore.

  Howard’s eyes continued to speak his condemnation toward me. The longer I stared into them, the more I felt that they weren’t really lying. His face was one of a man who had really lost someone. His daughter. David and Jacob, their wives.

  But they were not the only ones who had lost someone. And Howard’s gaze did not make me forget that.

  I coughed, and water droplets splattered into the tub. “What about Jason Spade?” I asked.

  Howard’s mouth closed. His eyes maintained their anger while simultaneously widening into a state of confusion. Misunderstanding.

  “Jason Spade,” I repeated. “My guardian.”

  He furrowed his brow.

  David Kemp cleared his throat, giving an air of discomfort.

  Howard shook his head, his eyes narrow. “Jason Spade was murdered by Jonathan Ashe. You killed him.”

  “No!” I jerked forward, banging my chest against the table. David wrapped his calloused claws around my arms and subdued me.

  “Don’t lie to me,” I growled. “Why did you kill Jason?”

  He shook his head with genuine ignorance on his face. “I’m not lying to you. That was not our…” Suddenly, he stopped. His tongue rested on the edge of his bottom teeth. His lips ceased in their movement.

  I felt a twitch from one of David’s hands.

  Howard’s eyes hesitantly escaped mine and drifted up to find another target. They glided vertically and stopped at the person behind me.

  His fingers tightened around my biceps.

  “David…” Howard mumbled in disbelief.

  “He hid what we needed. He hid the watch from us,” David explained. “And he withheld information about Jonathan’s father from the public. He was complicit-”

  “I gave you orders!” Howard yelled, enflamed.

  David bit his tongue.

  The room went to silence once more.

  Howard pressed his lips together. His chest rose with a deep breath. Then he shook his head, glaring at David. “Toss a pebble in, and you get ripples.”

  The fingers around my arms trembled.

  “Toss a rock, and you get waves.”

  “I’m trying to fix the past,” David muttered.

  “What you’re doing is getting revenge.”

  “I want revenge!” He bellowed. “Don’t you?”

  Howard did not respond. He only glared.

  I found myself restless. The watch was so close, but unattainable. The ropes, now wet, constricted and held me. The watch teased me. My arm pulsed, and my palms grew clammy.

  I needed the pocket watch.

  “Tell us where it is.”

  I looked up at David. “I don’t know what you’re talking about-”

  “The energy source!” He demanded, grabbing the back of my neck. “Tell us where it is now!”

  Howard shook his head. “David. Stop.”

  It was clear at this point that Howard was done. His two eyes, which this whole time had held nothing but contempt and judgment, now held something different. Just the slightest sense of mercy. He was finished doing this.

  David Kemp wasn’t.

  He threw my head inside and held it down. I inhaled another gulp of water, but this time, I didn’t struggle. I didn’t resist. My mind started to fade.

  He yanked me by the hair and pulled me out of the tank. As my head reemerged, I heard Howard’s brisk objections.

  “He doesn’t know!” Howard yelled.

  “He’s a liar,” David roared. “Always has been.”

  “You’ve already jeopardized the timeline by eliminating Jason.”

  “We’re going to go further back! We clean the slate by rewinding. Nothing we do here will have mattered-”

  “It matters now!”

  He squeezed my neck and exhaled a raspy breath. “Ashe knows how to power the watch.”

  “Let go of him.”

  “David…” Jacob said fearfully.

  He gave me another dunk. I could barely see when he brought me back up. I was about gone.

  “That’s enough!” Howard advanced toward David.

  David threw me to the side and stood up. My head hit the tile. I sputtered out water.

  “We came here with a very specific agreement, David.”

  I opened my eyes and peered at the two of them. Coughed up more water. Tried not to lose myself.

  Howard was digging his finger into David’s chest. David held his hands behind his back.

  “That agreement was that you two followed my directions.” Howard turned around and walked toward Jacob. “Hand me the briefcase.”

  David’s hands emerged from behind his back. He held a pistol.

  I opened my mouth, but I said nothing.

  Jacob reached for the case.

  “You can leave now, David. Jacob will take care of the rest here. I can’t handle your foolishness anymore. We have to make sure our new destinies are established.”

  David exhaled a shaky breath and grit his teeth. He lifted his pistol. And with trembling hands, he pressed his finger down on the trigger.

  “I write my own destiny.”

  Chapter 23

  Howard did not die with grace.

  David shot him three times in the chest. At the first shot, Howard’s eyes and mouth opened. Complete shock. At the second, he grasped his chest and staggered back. The third fell him as a tree. His head slammed against the bathroom wall on his way down.

  My senses continued to fade, but I heard Jacob’s screams.

  “David!”

  I shook my head and flexed my fingers. Stayed focused. If only I could get up. I couldn’t even do so much as roll over. These ropes…

  “David, what did you-”

  “Don’t move, Jacob.” He turned the gun on him.

  Jacob froze. In front of him lay the watch and his own firearm.

  David breathed heavily.

  Jacob shook with fear. And now, agony. Howard’s blood spread across the floor, moving along the seams between the tile. It crept under Jacob’s feet.

  “Take out the magazine.”

  He reached forward.

  “Slowly!”

  Jacob picked up the gun and released the magazine. It fell from the pistol and slid into the sink.

  “Now drop it.”

  He did.

  “Walk away slowly.”

  Jacob took a step back.

  “Out the door, Jacob.”

  Reluctantly, he left the room.

  The place, already gray by the lacking presence of light, suddenly felt even darker.

  David took the chair, pulled it up next to me, and sat down.

  I closed my eyes and felt as though his breaths were creeping right down my neck. Over the past week, the watch had become my dependence. Without it, I was vulnerable. But now, I was more than vulnerable.

  Howard Miller, David Kemp’s only rudder, was dead. And David sat over me with a gun in hand. My body was still hindered by boa constrictor cords around me. In this moment, I was not just vulnerable.

  I was helpless. I was without hope.

  I’m going to die.

>   I had chased after a dream that at one time seemed so obtainable. Save my parents. Change the past. Change my present. But I wasn’t the only one with dreams. These people said that I would bring time travel to the world, ruin people’s lives with it, and worst of all, kill anyone that stood in my way.

  Is my desire to change the past really going to ruin the future?

  My eyelids opened. I looked upward at the man who had defeated me.

  Will the pursuit to change my past lead to David’s desire to change his?

  He stared down at me, breathing heavily through his mouth. His hands loosely held the pistol.

  I felt the breaths crawl over my skin. But the goosebumps were gone.

  Perhaps time itself really is a drug.

  He just stared at me. He soaked in the moment he had been waiting for. And at the same time, he fidgeted with anger. “I never… I never thought I’d be in this spot,” he exhaled. He chuckled. A shiver shot down my spine, and my hairs stood up once more. “I never thought I’d get to sit here in front of the man who ruined my life. My world.”

  I rolled my head over. Inches in front of my face, Howard’s blood spread across the floor. I could smell it.

  “But you don’t even know the whole story. How you destroyed everything for me.”

  I looked up at David. “You… You killed Jason.”

  His eye twitched, but otherwise, he didn’t flinch.

  “And that man in your memory…” I squinted. “You killed an innocent-”

  “If there is any word that is within itself contradictory, it is that.” He leaned back and let the pistol hang loosely in his fingers. “Innocence. Don’t you try to tell me about innocence, Ashe.”

  My eyes followed the pistol, then trailed up to the spindly fingers that cradled it. The callouses on his hand. In my mind’s eye, I could see blood on those hands. And then I saw something in his jacket. A small pocket with some object in it. The knife. Alan’s knife.

  “How many more people have you killed with that…” I straightened out and lay on my back. The ceiling stared down at me, but in this darkness, it looked just like the sky. “How many lives have you taken out of your own anger?”

  “Alan did not deserve to live,” he bit. “People that do nothing but take don’t deserve it. People that only care about themselves don’t deserve it.” He swallowed. “People like you. Look at yourself. You’re just a boy now; you don’t even know all the harm you’re going to do.”

  I heard a couple footsteps and craned my neck to see. Jacob’s shadow shed through the crack of the door.

  “I don’t know what you mean, ‘people like me,’” I exhaled. My mind was disoriented; I willed myself to stay alert. But my body had given up. Before it was all over, though, before David would kill me, I just had to get answers. “I don’t understand. You’re doing the exact thing I’m trying to do.”

  He objected. “I’m trying to save the future.”

  “I’m trying to fix the past.”

  He glared.

  “You call me a killer, but I’m not…. I’m not what you say I am.”

  “Yes you are,” he dissented. “You will grow up to be a murderer-”

  “Then what about you?” I nodded at the knife. “You’ve struck more than one person down with that.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Haven’t you?”

  He grabbed my neck. “This isn’t about…” His lips shook against each other. And then he just squeezed my neck more tightly.

  I jerked my arms to grab his hands, but I was still tied. It had become more than clear that there was something wrong with David.

  He lifted me and grit his teeth. “You don’t even know what you’re going to do. In my life, you’ve killed hundreds. Thousands.” He threw me back down. “Women. Families.” He reached inside his jacket and removed the knife. “I’ve only killed…” The steel gleamed even in the low light. He breathed out. Shaky.

  I felt the room spinning, and I squinted my eyes. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose yourself, Jon. A few days ago, I could have just left the pocket watch in that box.

  As I lay there, I realized David had stopped talking. He hadn’t killed me yet. I forced my eyes open.

  He sat still, staring at his shining blade. He seemed to look into it like a crystal ball. His expression was different from what I had ever seen. His breathing slowed. “I…” He licked his bottom lip. “A few years ago, in my life…” He looked up.

  I saw his eyes water.

  “A few years ago,” he repeated, wavering, “I started getting this… itch.”

  I watched his face change completely. A look of fear suddenly took over his countenance.

  “You really don’t know the whole story, do you?” He asked me.

  I looked straight into his eyes.

  He ran his tongue across the front of his teeth. “It all started with you, Jonathan Ashe. People murdered. People taken advantage of. Time machines ruining lives. I couldn’t take the injustice. I would see something that just - that just wasn’t right, you know?” He bit his lip. “People were doing all sorts of wrongs and just getting away with them.” He shifted his eyes at me. “People took what wasn’t theirs. Possessions. Lives…”

  He lifted the knife in front of his eyes. “And so I… I don’t know. You see the super heroes, and you hear about people who stand up for what’s right, and you start to think that you could actually change things.” He shook his head, his gaze looking off into a world I could not see.

  “So I acted on it. I tried to change the world. I did it in secret.” He rotated the knife back and forth, letting light reflect in different directions. “I used a time device to get close to my targets. It was just the lowest of the low. The true criminals.” He sniffed. “But then, I noticed that things started changing. When I walked down the street, I didn’t see… people, anymore.” He shook his head with deliberation. “I saw ‘deserves to live,’ and ‘doesn’t.’” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “My criteria became stricter and stricter.”

  It was almost an out-of-body experience at this point. As he spoke, it provoked memories within me. When David and I touched the watch, did I gain all of his memory? Maybe they were just embedded deep inside. As he spoke, images sped across my vision. Screaming faces. Bloody hands.

  He convulsed, and it brought me back. David Kemp’s tears fell to the floor. He wept in front of me.

  “I’m not a good person, Jonathan Ashe,” he said, quickly trying to compose himself. “I did not live my life the way I meant to.” And then he looked my way. “But I found a way to fix it.” He wiped the tears from his eyes. His red gaze fixed upon me. “It wasn’t nature, but the environment that had led me to this.” He pointed that cursed blade at me. “If time travel is never invented, then I will never use it for evil.” He huffed, louder and louder, each breath bouncing across the walls. “If Jonathan Ashe never makes the world wrong,” he squeezed the handle, “then I won’t try to make it right.”

  I put my hands on the floor. My fingers made contact with blood.

  “If Jonathan Ashe dies, then David Kemp will live a good life. He’ll be a decent man.” He smiled, a look of hope in his eyes. “His wife will live, and they’ll…” He sniffed. “They’ll have a family, they’ll go to church on Sundays, and vote in elections. They’ll be good people.”

  I didn’t know what to think. Was David right? Would I become the depraved man he believed I would turn into? And if I would, could I change that now that I knew?

  “And so, I’m going to - I have to - purge you from this world.”

  I swallowed. “And what about Howard?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was your friend. Why did you kill him?”

  “I haven’t.” He grabbed me by the collar and lifted me up toward him, leaning me against his leg. He brought the blade around to my neck. “If I change the past, you won’t sell the time machine. The people we love won’t be killed, and so we won’t go back in time
.” The cold steel pressed against my flesh. “If we don’t go back, Howard won’t die.”

  I squinted. How could that work? “You got rid of him so you could save him?”

  “Time’s running out, Ashe. You need to tell me what your power source is.” The knife pressed down closer.

  “But if you change the past by killing me, you won’t go back,” I realized aloud, “and you’ll never get to kill me.”

  David stopped. The knife separated from my flesh. I no longer felt his breaths. He hesitated.

  It was a contradiction. Go back to kill someone, and the circumstances that led you to kill him would be undone, which means you won’t go back to kill him, and so on.

  And that was when I realized that as irrational as David’s pursuits were, mine were just the same.

  “I’m tired of talking with you.” The knife pressed against me once again. “You ruined my life.”

  His breaths hit the back of my neck once more. Sporadic and filled with hatred. “You made me a killer.”

  I closed my eyes. Without the pocket watch, I accepted defeat. Without the pocket watch, I was just the college graduate that had gotten into a big mess. Without the watch, I was completely powerless.

  I hate that watch. I shivered as David took his time over his prey.

  But I loved the watch, too.

  “This is how it has to be, Ashe. It had to happen this way.”

  His words sparked something. Just then, an image came to my mind. It was of my bedroom back home. A figure in the night. A paper left at my bed. “It had to happen this way,” it said.

  I thought of Jason. I thought of Alex. All the things that had been ruined.

  In this moment, David Kemp said something I had only seen once before.

  “It had to happen this way…”

  My lips parted, and I felt like for once, I had some sort of closure. I exhaled. “It was you.”

  “Goodbye, Ashe.” He turned me around. I faced him, on my knees. He brought the knife down and pointed it at my chest.

  “Just like the man on the street,” I whispered.

  “There’s a certain way I have to do things.”

  Suddenly, I heard a different voice. Not David Kemp’s, not even Jacob’s. My ears perked up.

  “What about the power source?” The voice asked.