Monday, December 3, 2012

The Watch by Hannah Lesniak


Sid glared at the blackboard. The incessant scratching of chalk on the board grated on his nerves. Just like his father, constantly yelling at him. The classroom blurred in Sid’s mind as he recalled the event of the morning.

The living room and kitchen had mingled with the stench of unwashed laundry, rotten food on dirty dishes, and stale beer misting from his father’s armchair. Even in the early morning he’d be at the bottle.

“You goin’ out?” his father had slurred.

Sid had wrinkled his nose as he cracked a window. “Can’t you at least Febreeze the place?”

“Ungrat’ul jackass. Jus’ ‘ike that bitch of your mother.”

Sid had held his fists tight to his side. Just two more years and he could leave. It was easy enough to almost never be in this building he was supposed to call home. It’s not like he needed father-son bonding time.

His father had twitched in his chair. He groped his wrist, slid to the carpet covered in Doritos crumbs.

“Whare is it? My watch?”

Sid had glanced at the coffee table. His father never actually wore it. It was always on the table, like a sacrifice on an altar. His father knelt before it and stroked the golden watch. All Sid knew about the thing was that his mother had given it to his father in their better years, before the booze, bruises, and shouting.

Two more years. The only problem was school. This school with its puffed-up jocks and plastic cheerleaders. Science geeks, band and drama geeks, and the rest of those artsy types. Who would figure he’d be the only skater/druggy in the whole school. So the whole populous pointedly ignored him.

Except Angela. The future saint. She would follow him around and chatter his ear off. And they had every class together.

The teacher went at it again with the chalkboard.

“Sid,” Angela whispered. “Do you need help with the problem? You look a little lost. You know finding the opposite side of the triangle is just a simple matter of using the Pythagorean—”

“I know,” he hissed.

It was enough to shut her up at least.

The chalk scratched on the board. Partners whispered secret formulas, glancing at him in his baggy black jeans, chains, and eyeliner. Judging, whispering, and looking, the chalk picking up speed. The girl behind him giggled. The numbers and shapes on the board blurred. Chalk screaming from the board.

“I can help you, you know.”

His pencil snapped as the bell rang.

“I’m out of here,” he called to her.

“Well, I’ll see you later with cookies, ‘kay?”

Time to ditch all the perfect, cookie-cutter morphs of society. His heart beat in his ears, blood boiling with pent-up energy. He dragged his arm across his forehead.

He methodically made his way through the halls that crowded him and made him touch all of those fake people. People who could live in their perfect worlds of two parents with steady income and 2.5 children. What hacks.

The stale air carried the smell of burned leaves. He headed to the alley to smoke some weed. He walked behind the school, kicking cans and rocks and turned the corner, fingering the bag of weed in his pocket.

“It just isn’t fair,” he said.

“Life’s never fair, is it?” The cool voice drifted over towards him.

A man in a pin-striped suit leaned against the alley. The black of his wing-tipped shoes gleamed in the sliver of light that managed to sneak into the shade. He swung a silver pocket watch on a chain attached to his vest, round and around. It was difficult for Sid to tell if the guy was watching him or the spinning watch from behind sunglasses that he probably stole from John Lennon. It was the bowler hat that really made the guy look from out of this world, though. Who wore bowler hats any more?

“Who the hell’re you?”

The man stopped swinging the pocket watch.

“Does it really matter?”
           
“No. Not at all.”

Sid turned to go to his pot spot.
“You know,” the man’s smooth voice stopped him. “I used to have so many of these. A grand collection.”

He held up the gleaming pocket watch.

“But even the best tickers run out of time.” The man heaved a sigh.

Time to get away from this freak.

“Look, man, I don’t know what you’re doing round here—“

“Oh, but I’m here to help you, dear boy.”

Dear boy? Who talks like that?

“Help me?”

The man put his watch into his left breast jacket pocket.

“Oh yes. You look like you could use something good today, sonny.”

Sid rolled his eyes. “Oh, like you could give me anything, pansy.”

“Ah, ah, ah,” the man wagged his finger. “Never judge a man by his clothing. You should know better than anyone. As it is, I can offer you much more than that weed in your pocket can.”

“Phfff. Like what?”

“Three wishes.”

“You’re high, man.”

With a chuckle he said, “Quite on the contrary. I am a gift giver. I can give you the gift of three wishes.”

What a joker. “Prove it.”

The building behind the man smoldered in flame. Sid turned his face away from the searing heat. Crackling shook the air and smoke clung to his lungs, racking him.

“Question my power again, sonny, and I’ll light the one behind you next.”

Sid turned. The man stood in front of a solid brick building, unburned.

“How’d you do that?”
The man sighed. “That doesn’t really matter, does it? All you need know is that I can give you three wishes with unlimited power.”

Power. Now that sounded like something to brighten his day.

“Of course, you can’t get something for nothing.”

There was always some sort of catch. Too good to be true.

“Oh yeah,” said Sid. “And just what would that be?”

“Three wishes and all you have to do is hand over someone’s ticker.”

“What the hell’s a ticker?”

A snide grin crept over the man’s face. He pulled out his watch from inside his left breast pocket and pointed with a sleek leather gloved hand.

“Someone’s personal timepiece.”

That stupid watch his father worshipped more than booze. Three wishes and all it cost was that?

“I might have just the watch in mind for you.”

“I thought you might. Do we have a bargain?”

Sid grasped his outstretched glove, eyes struggling to find the essence behind those posh glasses. If only the confidence and power that this man held could be his.

“Deal.”

Fire blazed through Sid’s arm. Screaming, he tried to break contact. He fell to his knees, the bowler hat man remained stationary and Sid’s world crumbled in flame.

“Three wishes in return for time,” said the man.

And Sid opened his eyes to find himself kneeling in the alley alone, feeling more energized than if he had had twelve Red Bulls and was about to fight an army of zombies.

Three wishes. What would he wish for first? Money? Power? A pair of shades like that guy had? Those were totally dope. Nah, he’d better think of really good wishes, stuff that would last.

His pocket vibrated.

U coming to class?
Class? Why would Angela think that he’d want to go back to that prison? Like he’d go to biology, where those jerks would laugh and humiliate him. Those high school losers who didn’t have the right to—

Go to class. That’s exactly what he’d do. He could wish for them to have the brain size of amoebas. Yeah, he’d go back to class alright. Maybe Angela wasn’t so bad after all.

Sid stomped through the door of his dilapidated house. Screw those guys. Screw the man in the bowler hat. He had wasted two wishes. The first on wishing that Jerry McDuff would just stop ragging about his eyeliner in biology and the second when he’d lost his temper with the English teacher embodiment of Dora the Explorer. “What is the author trying to say in this passage, Sid? Do you know where the symbolism is?” That bitch didn’t know the difference between Tolstoy and Dickens.

“What’re you doin’ back?”

He breathed into Sid’s face, triggering his gag reflex. Why wouldn’t he just stop drinking, clean up, and get a job? Why wouldn’t he just move on? Drop the watch and forget her?

“I’m taking your watch,” Sid said as he watched his father turn red. Pain erupted on the side of his head.

“Watch it thare, boy.”

Sid held his bleeding ear, glaring. “I’m taking your watch so you can wake up and live.”

His father smacked his other ear. “Oh, no, you won’t!

“Yes, I will.”

“You no good, son-of-a-bitch.”

“You’re the one who married the bitch!”

“Don’t you talk to me like that!”

“I wish you would go to hell!”


And his father disappeared.

“Well, that didn’t take too long.”      

The man in the bowler hat appeared in the kitchen. “Just when I was getting anxious for my ticker, too.”

Sid glanced at the coffee table.
The man laughed. “Oh, no, no, sonny.”

He reached into his left breast pocket and pulled out his beating heart. A moldy, dried, blood-encrusted heart. It beat slowly, like a grandfather clock that needed to be reset.

“You see, I need someone’s ticker,” he said. He rotated the organ in his hand, inspecting it. “This one hasn’t got much time left and I need another.”

Sid stood agape.

“You, you said you needed a timepiece.”

He started toward the coffee table for his father’s watch.

The man chuckled. “No, no, sonny. I said I needed someone’s personal timepiece. I know you had your dear old dad’s in mind, but I’m afraid you’ve wished that time away.”

Sid halted, his hand on the watch. Wished his time away. Time? The watch? No. His father’s heart.

A sob escaped his throat.

The man nodded sympathetically, tossing the blackened heart up and down in his hand.

“Yes, yes. Tragic. What they teach in schools these days for lads like you to completely miss my meaning, I’ll never know.”

“You can’t do this.”

“As a matter of fact, I can. Oh, here comes your side of the bargain now.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Sid.” Angela’s voice. “I brought snickerdoodles.”

The man grinned, blackened blood oozing over his fingers. “And such a pure, young ticker it is too.”

“No!”

Sid couldn’t let him have her. Not Angela. Beautiful, fun Angela who had never done anything to hurt anyone. She was going to be a saint. Even though he’d been a constant jerk to her, she still brought him cookies, gave him a place to stay when his father tore him up after a session, held his hand the day his mother left. Angela had been the only one who had ever been there for him.

“You can’t have her.”

Sid stood resolute in front of the door.

 “I don’t see anyone else for the taking.”
           
“Someone else. Anyone else! Just not her.”

“Who’re you talking to?”

Sid held the door in place, locked it. He had to keep her out of this. “What about the jerk who lives next door?”

“The man who provides you with weed? I’d actually like to have a ticker that’ll work.” He inspected the heart again. “And I really do need one immediately.”  

Angela banged the door.

“Sid, let me in!”

“Yes, Sid, do let her in.”

“No!”

“Sid!” The banging continued.
           
“Sid, now do be reasonable.”
           
“No!”

“What is going on in there?!” Bang!
           
“Sid.”

“No!”

Bang! “Sid! Sid!”

“Take mine!” Sid sagged against the door. “Take mine.”
           
The man grinned, his free hand reaching to remove his sunglasses.  “Oh, if you insist.”

Sid gazed into the eyes of the abyss and felt his heart being torn from his chest. The man tossed the blackened pulp and caressed the fresh, beating organ.

“Now that’s a fine ticker.”
He put it in his breast coat pocket. Stepping over the shell of Sid, he grasped the door knob.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” he said to the ground, tipping his hat and turning the knob.

Angela heard the click of the lock. The door was open.

“Ready to let me in now, huh?” she said as she turned the knob. “Who were you talking to, anyway?”

The swung open, stopping on Sid’s body, a bloody hole in his chest, right where his heart should be.
           
           

1 comment:

  1. Hannah: I'm guessing you've read a lot of Poe and maybe O'Henry. Great twist at the end. But Angela deserves a better boyfriend, anyway.

    ReplyDelete