Because you’re a psycho? I almost replied. Instead, I tried to think logically, to, perhaps, convince him that he had made some sort of mistake in his reasoning. “Wait a minute,” I said, my voice surprisingly strong. “What’s the difference to your biological clock or whatever, if you turn the clock back to where it was each year? It all evens out in the end. You don’t really lose or gain sleep either way.”
The muscles in his face loosened, and for a second, I thought I had him. But he just shook his head and “tsk”-ed, as if disappointed with my ignorance. “You just don’t understand the laws of space and time, do you? When time is displaced—like it is each and every year by the change of the clocks—the body’s metabolism, too, is displaced. For half a year! But not me, not my metabolism. I make sure of that.” He put out his cigarette. “Wait there,” he said, as if I was going anywhere. “I’ll prove it to you.”
He left, apparently, to get something from the bathroom.
The clock read 1:53. Time was running out. I tried pulling back forcefully on the bindings on my feet. The bed frame rocked in the air with a rusty creak, and for a second, I thought I might fall flat on my back, crushed beneath the frame’s heavy metal weight. It was a worthless attempt—even though my legs were fairly strong from years of working bus pedals, I couldn’t budge free.
The Watcher returned with a paper grocery bag. He held it up for me to see—it was wet, stained like a sack lunch left in a locker for several days. And it stank, too. A strong fishy odor. “This,” he said proudly presenting the bag to my eyes like a gift, “you will see when the time comes. Then, perhaps, you will understand.” He ceremoniously set the bag down next to the clock radio on the bedside table. “Hey,” I interrupted. He faced me, curious. “Why don’t you just let me go, huh? I’m not gonna stop you from changing the clocks, or anything. There’s no reason in the world that you have to tie me up like this…”
He acted as if he were seriously contemplating my request, but then looked coolly in my eyes. “There is all the reason in the world for this, Mr. Bus Driver. You see, because time is displaced, space must be displaced, as well.” He raised his eyebrows, as if he had no choice in the matter. “For every hour I lose, I must take an hour from someone else, to make up for it. To make the change in not only time, but space—life itself—too. There is no alternative.
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, Mr. Bus Driver. I must take an hour of your life—your final hour.” He rechecked his watches. “And I will have to do so slowly, precisely… so that not a second is gained or lost. It is no easy task; but I have done so before.”
He moved behind me. I could hear the knife being slid free of its sheath—slowly, purposefully, the jagged serrations on the back of the blade rhythmically plunking against the leather. My eyes roamed the room involuntarily, looking for impossible escape. I scanned the room: a blank wall faced me, an insanely mellow pattern in the wallpaper; the clock on the bedside table had red digits that warbled and mutated in my mind like red coals, unreal; and that ugly paper bag sat on the bedside table like something in another room altogether…
The tip of the knife was against my back. No pain—it just tickled, cool like ice on my spine.
His voice whispered into my ears, carried on a hot cloud of stench that crept over my shoulder: “As I said, there is no such thing as luck—just perfect timing. Being in the right place at the right time. And you—yes, you, Mr. Bus Driver—were lucky enough to have brought me here to St. Louis. After all… it was you, wasn’t it, that brought me to Denver last April? It was you, was it not, who carried me from Central to Mountain Time, so that I could make my last adjustment?”
I frowned, looking at the clock. “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”
“No matter. It happened. In time you would probably remember that you had seen me before. I cannot afford to have that happen.” He ran the blade from shoulder to shoulder across my back, then down, as if enscribing a rectangle, a door on my back. My skin made a sound like shredding fabric, its pierce faint, numb… it was not a deep cut. He was playing with me, warming up his sickness, lubricating his blade.
“It is almost time to begin the adjustment.” I could hear the spit in his cheeks crinkle as he smiled. I could only imagine the look in his eyes—a hungry, eager look. “As I have discovered over the past few years, it must be done accurately, with the utmost precision. It will be slow, Mr. Bus Driver. Slow… and painless. For exactly one hour.” He wetly licked his lips. “No turning back now!”
I swallowed a mouthful of spit. My muscles were shaking with a fear that had not yet registered in my mind.
“And the beauty of it all, Mr. Bus Driver, is that I will get your job! I will create a vacancy in your fleet of bus drivers… and, naturally, I will apply for the job just when they need me! They will think I am lucky, but I alone will know that it was just perfect timing! Ah, to be in control of time itself! To travel where I need to go—without anyone, anyone like you, to know the difference! No longer will I depend on society; society will come to depend on me!” He laughed aloud, horribly. “Now do you understand? Now do you see why there is no such thing as luck? Why we must manipulate time and space, in order to survive?”
1:59.
He brought the blade to the base of my neck. “Let us begin…”
My mind was racing. For the first time, I realized that I was about to die, despite his sermon, despite the fact that he had just told me over and over that he was going to take my life slowly, draining me over the course of an hour in some twisted idea of turning back the clocks in order to maintain his balance.
And then I remembered what he had said about time zones.
“I, THE KEEPER OF TIME, WILL NOW COMMENCE THE ADJUSTMENT, THE BALANCE ON WHICH LIFE ITSELF DEPENDS! I, WHO ONCE DENIED THE SPRING AHEAD, WILL NOW DENY THE FALL BACK!” Unmercifully, he pressed down on the blade.
“Afraid not,” I said, my voice so matter-of-fact that I thought I’d crack.
He sighed. “It is truly sad that you are too ignorant to truly understand…” With a free hand he rubbed the top of my head. “Maybe during this next hour, you will.”
“No, YOU don’t understand.” I grinned, though I knew he couldn’t see it. “You’re an hour late. You’ve missed the adjustment.”
“Huh?” Now even his voice sounded cartoonish. He cautiously lifted his knife.
I shook my right arm, rattling my watch against the metal bed frame… the watch that I had forgotten to move ahead an hour for the change from Mountain to Central time. “According to my watch, you missed it. That’s what you get for talking so goddamned much.”
He raced around the bed frame to look at my watch.
And I rocked forward with all my weight.
The bed hit the floor with a thunderous thud. The Watcher was pinned beneath me, his face directly beneath mine ensnared by the metal springs, his face trapped in a look of terrified shock. His eyes clocked like fast pendulums, searching for escape through the metal mesh. His fingers strained in an attempt to reach the survival knife that had spilled out of them, but his arms were locked in place by the heavy weight of the bed—he could not reach the knife.
I could.
Two a.m. announced itself on the clock radio with an audible click.
I pass the brown wooden sign that reads WELCOME TO COLORADO—a square shape in mockery of the state’s real boundaries—and sigh in relief.
It is good to be back in Mountain Time. Real time. Even if I’ve lost two hours of sleep—more, if you count how long it took the cops to investigate my hotel room, asking me more questions than The Watcher himself ever had.