When The Time Comes

chapter 29; Ben

Adrenaline kicks in after a stretched moment of confusion. It dawns on me what's happening when I identify what exactly is pressed against my throat. It feels cold on my skin, the humid car air layered thick on my skin.

I am partially asleep when he tells me to leave the car so it takes a moment to register what he's said. He says it again, this time digging the blade a little deeper that it nicks the skin. I don't realize I'm bleeding until I'm on my knees on the ground outside.

The stranger whose face is shielded by a simple black ski mask, takes the keys from me. Just as he gets behind the wheel, my relief is cut short when he arches back out.

"Your shoes," his voice is muffled under the mask.

The lights from the parking are swallowed up by his mask, except for where I can see his eyes. They are nothing special, brown, dull and ordinary. I know that I will forget them before he's even gone.

"What?" I ask, my hands up in surrender.

"Give me your shoes," he hisses, slamming the back of the knife handle against my head.

I kick them off and he immediately scurries for them. It doesn't feel like this is actually happening to me. More like a fever dream. Like I've had too much to drink and I'm seeing things. I stay still on the ground, knees up to my chest and hands in the air. The thief is long gone. In fact, I'm not even sure how long he's been gone.

I didn't register the car drive away until I turn about my shoulder and see the empty parking space. My car- the car I need to get back home- gone, from the hospital.

I take out my phone. Thank god, I still have my phone. I flip it around in my hand, inspecting it. I look at my white socks, now ashy from the damp ground. How will I get home now? I have to find a ride.

I stand up and the breeze makes me aware of how sweaty I actually am. I shouldn't be this calm. I'm moving back and forth between emotions. Confusion, panic, rage and finally, fear.

I can't feel my wallet on me. Wait, I pat my pockets again. Completely flat. There's no way my wallet is in any of these pockets.

I turn around and look at the ground, searching for it when I realize, slowly and painfully, that it was sitting in the car with me. It was near the gear box, where I usually put it because I don't like the way it stretches my pants.

Fuck.

My first instinct leads me to block all my cards before he realizes my wallet is in the car. Please god, don't let him figure it out. It's astonishing how jittery my fingers are as I try and get it done on my phone. My instincts feel slow, drawn out so that they're not instincts any more. I force myself through navigating the app and submitting my changes.

Even when it tells me they're blocked, I am still paranoid as hell.

Sitting there on the ground, I check the app over and over again until I lose count of how many times I've done it. I keep imagining my account credit plummeting to a flat zero. I am between crying and punching myself in the gut. Neither is a good feeling.

I'm stupid to have not locked the car. But who the fuck steals from a hospital parking lot? I look around myself and wonder, who lets people steal cars from a hospital?

I call the police and report my car missing, though something tells me that I won't be hearing back from them about this for a long time. Maybe I deserve this, in some warped sense of karma. I stole from Lib and Omar. And now I don't have a fucking car. What a joke.

Finally, when looking at the parking lot makes me physically sick, I book a car ride back home. On the way, I stare out the window until I am no longer blinking. I rate the driver five stars because he doesn't talk to me nor does he acknowledge my presence in his car. I am silently appreciative of this.

I get out of the car and walk up my porch when I realize I don't have my apartment key. Fucking hell. It was on the ring with all my other keys, including my car keys. I stand there on my porch, palm pressed on the door as if I can unlock it with my mind if I try hard enough. I won't lie, I even try it for a minute.

The clouds eventually break over head, and the rain comes crashing down. I don't try and run for shelter. I feel like I deserve this too. The rain. The car. My wallet. I stare at the door, my shoulders caving forward until my silhouette mimics Quasimodo.

And then I break down finally. After what feels like forever of ingesting all this shit, I feel it bursting back from inside of me. It feels like I'll explode and with every wave of grief and frustration, it's like it only grows larger inside of me. Until each cry swallowed back down, feels like a balloon swelling in my throat. I don't stop crying because I can't. Because I don't know how else this dreaded feeling will go away.

I stand in the rain, hand squeezed around the door knob, until there is no part of my body that isn't soaked. My body is overwhelmed with a fatigue that feels foreign to me. I don't want to just sleep. I want to scatter until no piece of me is left. Until even my mind stops talking and I can no longer hear myself think.

The good thing about the rain, I realize, as I sit down on the patio chair, is that all the bugs like to hide. The same chair the land lady was kind enough to have left behind. Mostly because it would have cost her money to go out and sell it some place- assuming someone would want to buy this ancient wick seat in the first place.

I close my eyes and rain drops slide down my face like a thousand little skiers, sledding down light snow. There is exhaustion in hopelessness. The last time I dared close my eyes, my car was stolen. Here, on the patio, drowning in my sorrows like this, I wonder what else someone might want from me. Maybe my phone this time. I wouldn't have anything to report it with if they did that.

Thoughts like these carry me off to a very dark place behind my eyelids. I sleep through the rain and hail I can only hear falling on the roof and the neighbor's car. I am not awake enough to witness it. I am asleep before I realize.

I wake up to find my clothes are still damp but not nearly as wet as they were last night. I must have slept through early morning as the sun shines hot and bright, drying up the legs of my trousers. My socks are still wet and I can smell them through my sneakers.

I call the land lady, Anna, and tell her what's happened. It'll cost me, is what she tells me. A fifty dollar fine for having the key remade.

Yes, whatever, that's fine, I rush to tell her through my barely charged iPhone.

"I'll drop it off at lunch time."

"Can you manage anything earlier than that?" I ask her. There's no way to sound any less desperate. I. Am. Desperate.

"It's already 11.30," she reminds me. "See you at 1."

I sigh, standing up to stretch my legs that feel like I've just walked through ice. My muscles begin to join the party. I notice a few aches here and there until all of my body feels like hell. I guess sleeping in the rain wasn't the wisest thing to do.

I struggle to walk off the porch, my knees cracking worse than how grandpa's used to. Back when he used to walk around fine, even without his stick. He hated carrying it around until someone told him he looked charming with it. After that, I swear he used it in places he didn't even have to.

I brush him out my mind. Well, at least I try to. It would be nice to see him again when I die. I feel it getting closer. Strange, right? To say I feel death creeping closer by the day. But it's real. I never thought it would be and I'm sort of pissed that nobody dying ever mentioned this feeling of utter despair. If they did, maybe I'd feel a little less crazy. A little more sane.

The front door of the neighbor's apartment opens up. I see the lady who scratched my car. Rather, whose kid did. She looks at me once and after that avoids looking at me again. Maybe she didn't realize I've been locked out. Maybe she thinks I'm here just for the hell of it.

Her son creeps out after her and she locks the door. I look away once her son looks at me funny. Soon enough, I hear them pull out of the parking.

Anna, an angel in daylight with the sun running through her ginger hair, arrives at 1pm. Just as she said she would. When I finally get into my apartment, I find that my pothos plant has died and a single yellow leaf sits in my kitchen sink.