The Time Eater

by Aaron J. French

  “You believe them? You take their word? You lay down and die?”

  Silence. He was thinking. He had stopped looking like a rat. Now he looked like a child.

  “The old James—the one I remember from Ohio State—wouldn’t be put down like some sick dog. He would fight.”

  “But our past,” he whispered, “is dead.”

  “Bullshit. You’re lazy, you’re depressed, and you want to die. You can’t fool me, James. I’m the most depressed and bitter bastard on the planet, at least I was until I met Annabelle. Now you tell me what happened.”

  He exhaled a deep, weary breath. “Fine. I’ll tell you about Celeste.”

  “I had the feeling it was about her,” I said. “Start at the beginning.”

  He nodded. “It began that night, didn’t it? I’m not going to sit here, blame you, lay a guilt trip on you, because I followed you into that darkness. I was a willing sacrifice. Shit, Roger, why do you think we were friends all those years? We had nothing in common. You don’t realize that I actually looked up to you.”

  “Did you? No way. Yours was the picture perfect life—a sports scholarship, money. You were physically fit and attractive, popular with girls. You got invited to all the parties. You could snap your fingers and get whatever you wanted.”

  “I envied you. There was something about you… all that stuff you were into. It intrigued me. I know it seemed like everything always worked out for me, like there was never a problem, but in reality I knew that that right there—in and of itself—was a problem.”

  I chuckled. He asked why. “Because at least you were aware of it. That shows signs of intelligence. The fact that you suspected something was wrong not to have anything wrong shows you aren’t a complete idiot.”

  “Thanks, I think,” he said. “Then there was you. Man, you were fucked up. Nothing ever went your way, huh? People made fun of you. You couldn’t get a date. I remember the first time I met you, I thought, God, what’s wrong with him?”

  I could only shake my head.

  “But it was a good thing. I was attracted to it. You were the opposite of me, and you were far more real than everyone else. I wanted to know why.”

  “You mean, you didn’t hang out with me because of my great personality?”

  “The more time we spent together the better I liked you. Eventually we got to be best friends. But I was aloof, I know it; I won’t apologize. You freaked me out, man. I had regular social activities I wasn’t willing to give up: sports, girls, parties. I wasn’t willing to give you up, either. I watched from a distance. Feigned ignorance. When you started casting spells, I feigned ignorance harder. It’s a game: to pretend that you’re stupid. People play it all the time. It can give you the upper hand.”

  “But I knew you knew!” I exclaimed. “Whenever I tried talking to you about my occult interests, you waved me off and told me I was acting crazy, but I would think, He knows and he won’t admit it.”

  “Yeah, so we both knew. I still didn’t want to talk about it. Talking about it screwed up my partying life because I couldn’t imagine both realities existing at once. Only one was allowed to be real. So I chose the party.

  “But I watched. I paid attention. I analyzed everything you told me, all the weird shit that I witnessed while we were roommates, the people who started coming to see you asking for help. I thought it was strange, and I couldn’t take it seriously. I’d say to myself, Roger is only into that stuff because he can’t get a girlfriend.”

  “You used to tell me that.”

  “That’s right, I did. On the one hand, I believed it, but on the other, I suspected that what you were up to was more real than any of my social escapades.”

  “Nice to know that after I spent all those years feeling like a freak, like nobody understood me. I felt isolated, James. I was happy we were friends, I looked up to you, but I knew you didn’t like me. I was a pity friend, the one who’d do your homework for you, and who you fell back on when everyone was busy.”

  He shook his head. “All true, guilty as charged, but I’m telling you that I also looked up to you, pal. My life was superficial. I was scared to live it any other way.”

  We sat in silence, in the swirling dark, and I gazed into the distance toward the dim, rolling planets and soaring, starry lights. The orb above James’s head pulsed. The house in Brooklyn, with Annabelle sleeping soundly in her bed, seemed very far away.

  “So you did come that night, all on your own,” I said, suddenly understanding. “It was your chance to experience something real.”

  He nodded, almost sheepishly.

  I felt ready to move on. “Okay I got it, now tell me about everything you experienced after that night. Tell me about Celeste.”

  Her name seemed to produce a sound in the room, a rustling of leaves in wind. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I half expected her to come shambling out of the darkness like a fiend.

  James’s face had gone ashen. I could hardly believe it. James, lying there, was clenching his fists so tightly that blood was trickling down his wrists. He uttered a single word, expelling it with a rancid breath, “Bitch.”

  Again the rustling leaves. And then a gust of wind swept over us, fluttering the blankets on the bed. The darkness intensified, sucking the last of the color out of the room.

  He grinned. “It’s here.”

  “What is?”

  “The Time Eater. It gets into everything, you know: the walls, the floor, the bed, the chair. It’s in you, the same as it’s in me. There is no escaping.”

  My fear level was rising, but I determined to get through this conversation without it turning into a metaphysical freak show.

  “Celeste, James.”

  “But it’s here. Eavesdropping.”

  “I don’t care. I have to know.”

  He sat up straighter, losing his childlike quality and recovering his adult bearings. I found it strange how he could morph into so many incarnations right before my eyes.

  “It’s funny,” he said. “That night galvanized me into getting serious about Celeste. She and I were dating, but it was mostly partying and sex, and I had been totally satisfied with that. But after our experience with the Time Eater, I realized how terrified I was, and I wanted to hide. I wanted to return to the world as it had been—before the sky cracked apart and madness leaked through—back to the comfortable things, like school, sports, and girls. Those things made up my world, not some beast in the sky, not some thing lurking beyond the veil. So I ignored it, refused it, and jumped headlong into a world of normalcy and safety. In short, I got married.”

  His last statement made me laugh. He looked at me confused. “What’s so funny?”

  “That you equate marriage with normalcy and safety. For me, it’s the opposite. For me, marriage was harrowing, insane, unspeakable. I couldn’t imagine getting married while I was in college, but when you moved out and got serious with Celeste, I followed in your footsteps. Although my marriage was anything but normal.”

  “That’s because you married Jenny Morgan. Everybody knew she was nuts. I remember hearing stories of her bringing guys home from the bar, but instead of having sex with them she played twisted mind games with them. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

  “She was serious about her career.”

  “She was seriously nuts. When you two hooked up, I thought you were perfect for each other.” He laughed bitterly. “I wanted nothing to do with it. The amount of weirdness generated by you two was not something I wanted in my life.”

  “You stopped associating with me.”

  “I did.”

  “You moved out and wouldn’t answer my calls. You ignored me around campus. You stopped going to the bars we frequented. I blamed Celeste.”

  He stayed quiet.

  “I had an idea, I suppose, that you were scared, that our experience that night drove us apart. You wouldn’t even talk about it. I hated you for that. It made me realize I couldn’t have real rel
ationships doing what I was doing. No matter how many people I helped, there were twice as many I freaked out. If I did want to join society, I couldn’t be involved with the occult, because it only enabled my alienation. So I gave it up. I stopped going to the library, the bookstores, stopped taking people’s calls. I burned my papers, sold my items, trashed the rest, found a new place to live. I did the same thing as you, but for different reasons. I escaped reality. With Jenny.”

  James smiled. “It’s like we pulled out of each other into these women, isn’t it? Crazy. And away with these women we went, never to speak again. Until now.”

  “And now, again, we’re alone.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it. I could see sadness in his eyes. He hated being alone as much as I did.

  Lifting his head, his eyes brightened. He had a sudden recollection, saying, “It was wonderful at first. Celeste and I found what we were looking for in each other. I wanted escape into a normal life, and she wanted to marry the big man on campus.

  “Back then, she had all these funky interests like poetry and art, but she was no artist. She was only trying to find herself. When she decided to double major in English and Education, not Performance Art Studies, I told her it was the right thing to do. She liked kids, so I suggested she teach K through 5. She went with that. In turn, she persuaded me that sports was not a real future and helped me get involved in computer science. We were the perfect American couple.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Time passed. Routine set in. She found out she couldn’t have children. The days started to get really, really long. We were happy because we had each other. Maybe it was good Celeste couldn’t have children because it allowed us to focus on our careers. But then the trouble began.”

  He inhaled long and deep, his thin frame expanding with breath. I could imagine him shattering like a mirror dashed onto the floor, thousands of shards scattering, each containing a piece of James.

  “When she stopped having sex with me, I just didn’t get it, you know? Sex had been our strongest connection. We had no children, no adventurous dating life, and so we lacked the inherent spark that united us in the beginning. We had been married five years. What do people do in that situation?”

  I shook my head, not really knowing what a couple would do.

  “I’ll tell you what we had been doing,” he said. “Fucking. All the time, like bunnies, and I don’t think we stopped fucking until Celeste stopped for good. Sex was our thing. We relied on it to get us through the bad times, and we did it to celebrate the good times. In the morning, once at night, sometimes in the afternoon, day after day after day—”

  “I get it, you had a lot of sex.” I felt annoyed, but didn’t know why. I suspected it had something to do with the amount of sex Jenny and I had during our marriage, which, from the sound of it, was considerably less.

  James shook his head. “No, we didn’t just have a lot of sex. You’re not getting it. We had a freakishly obsessive amount of sex. On the rare occasions when a day passed without us having sex, it was like an earthquake tremor had rumbled our foundations. It left us both feeling sad and confused. I would brood in anger, thinking in my head that she was a cold, frigid woman, a tease. I would imagine smashing her face with dinner plates as she washed the dishes.”

  “Jesus. You’re sick,” I said.

  “Oh it gets worse. When a day passed without sex, Celeste would turn introspective and self-hating. She would think that I didn’t love her, that I was having an affair, or that she was just a worthless human being no one could love. She’d cry, withdraw, appear wounded. This is when we had our really bad fights. In retrospect, I think we might’ve caused those fights simply so we could have makeup sex. After that, everything felt better. Except it wasn’t. At that point, it was like fear kept us having sex, because we knew to stop was to invite the darkness, and so it was a race—a sex race—to outrun the bad feelings.”

  I thought, Jenny and I talked about this. She said a lot of couples who were caught in a similar cycle came to her for therapy.

  James was looking me. “What are you thinking? Do you think it sounds crazy—the sex thing, I mean?”

  “Of course it sounds crazy. But it’s not that uncommon. Jenny told me stories about her patients—couples—who did that.”

  “She did?”

  I nodded.

  He considered a moment then said, “That makes me feel about this much better.” He held up two fingers an inch apart.

  “When did Celeste stop having sex with you?”

  “I already told you, five years into the marriage. I came into the house after work one day and she was there on the couch, turned to the window, curtains open. It was summer and so the trees were bright and full, leaves ripe with color. She was just staring at them, like a zombie.

  “ ‘Hey, aren’t you gonna ask me about my day?’ Yeah, I think that’s what I said. She had always asked about my day when I came home. But that day she just stared out the window.

  “I approached her angrily, was gonna grab her shoulders, whip her around, and demand that she say something. But when I got within a foot of her, she looked up. She had been crying. Bags under her eyes, mascara down her cheeks. In a tired, weak voice she said, ‘I’m not going to let you rape me anymore,’ and that’s when I noticed the blood. There was some on the sofa, on her arm, her jeans. In one hand she held a small knife encrusted with blood. Her arm was slashed and gouged with a particularly nasty cut along her bicep.

  “With a shock of horror, I realized she’d been cutting on herself. I once watched a documentary about cutters; usually they’re teenage girls who come from terrible parents. Most had been sexually abused. But this wasn’t some sickly teenage girl bleeding all over the sofa. It was my fucking wife.”

  The darkness in the room intensified, the orb over James’s head fizzling out completely. I could barely see him now. A ghostly wind swirled between us.

  I said, “That’s really horrible, man. I’m sorry.” And I meant it.

  “There’d been signs, but I blocked them out. Celeste had taken on a gloomy disposition, especially around sex. She’d just roll over and sigh and then we’d fuck like that, not facing each other. A couple of times she’d told me no, but I didn’t listen because I was trying to outrun the darkness. You understand.”

  I wasn’t sure I did. Whenever Jenny and I had sex and she asked me to stop, which was frequently because she often experienced memories of her father molesting her, I stopped. I never pushed it.

  “I’d been seeing bloodied tissues around,” James went on, “but I assumed they were from her period. Instead, they were from her cutting and I just put the pieces together a little too late. It all came crashing down that day I found her on the sofa.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “After adjusting to the shock, I swept her up and carried her to the car and then drove us to the emergency room. When the nurse asked me what happened, I had to tell the truth, that my wife had cut herself. ‘Had she ever tried to commit suicide?’ they wanted to know. I about broke into tears at the question. ‘No,’ I told them, firmly. ‘She never had.’ They put Celeste on suicide watch even though her wounds were superficial. I spent the night in the hospital waiting room.”

  I was startled by a gust of air pressing against my face, and I turned to find two glowing eyes in the dark.

  Celeste, I thought. She’s come to listen.

  James spoke in a low, grave voice. “When she was released the next day, bandages up and down her arms, I was very angry that she had done this to herself, humiliated us, and kept me at the hospital. I got her home but she refused to talk. She stayed like that for days. I didn’t know what to do. I still had to go to work, get the bills paid. Celeste took an extended leave from teaching. One day I came home while she was talking with her insurance. After she hung up, she turned to me and said, ‘We are seeing Dr. Stetson on Monday.’ Those words kick-started almost three years of marriage c
ounseling.”

  The eyes crept closer, like a cat stalking its prey at night. I wasn’t sure James noticed, but I wasn’t about to say anything. I kept watch in case she decided to attack.

  James recounted his therapy sessions, his struggle to get in touch with his emotions. He and Celeste sat in Dr. Stetson’s office, talked about everything from sex to their childhoods, all in an effort to get at the root of the problem. Meanwhile, Celeste refused to have sex and started sleeping in a separate bed.

  “We would’ve fought more if Celeste wasn’t so withdrawn,” he said. “She hardly spoke to me outside the therapy sessions. When she did, it was like talking to a robot. Drove me crazy.”

  “This lasted three years?”

  “Just about. The marriage fell apart the day I came into Dr. Stetson’s office and found Celeste and her new lover.”

  The glowing eyes inched closer.

  “New lover? Holy shit, who was he? You make her sound sexually dysfunctional.”

  “She was. Except for that robot she could turn on. That’s how she went back into teaching, by turning on her robot. Dr. Stetson even encouraged her, said it was a proper defense mechanism. It was the robot who had attracted this new lover, some snot-nosed kid.”

  Even closer.

  “This the guy she left you for?”

  James nodded. “Almost immediately after they hooked up, she moved out, got her own place and Chris moved in with her. A month later she filed for divorce.”

  “Didn’t waste time. Got to appreciate that. Jenny dragged it out for almost a year. It was emotionally draining.”

  Closer.

  “The part that was most infuriating was how Dr. Stetson goaded her, even encouraged her to divorce me and move in with Chris. ‘She needs to free herself of your oppressiveness,’ he told me. ‘At this point,’ he said, ‘Celeste has got to do what’s best for Celeste. There’s been too much irreparable damage.’ Can you believe that? What a bunch of shit. ‘What about me?’ I asked him. ‘What the hell am I supposed to do?’ You know what he said?”

  “What?”