They Could Kill You

Janie | Chapter 6

"No Miss, I'm just telling you what we learn later tonight."

"Right," I say as my fingers close around the canister. I position my feet so that I can spring away the moment I spray him.

He interrupts my plan by saying, "I wouldn't do that," all too casually.

It's off-putting enough that I hesitate, and although he could take that moment to grab me, instead he says "This is not the first time we've met. I know that sounds crazy, but believe me. You have pepper-sprayed me twice, kicked me in the shin, and once you caught Darcy too soon and pepper-sprayed him."

I knew he was following me! I still want to spray this man, but I loosen my grip on the canister until it falls back into my bag.
"If you think about tazing me I will reset this entire thing again," he says.

I pull my hand back out of my bag slowly.

"Look Janie," he says, and he says my name too softly for my liking. "I know it's a lot to take in..."

"How do you know my name" "How do you know my name" We both say it at the same time, and he rolls his eyes. "Because, like I've already told you, this is not the first time we've met. My name is Allister, and believe it or not...I'm on your side."

From behind us, Darcy grunts under the weight of the mammoth fossils. Up the street, only the glow of streetlights remain. The vendors have all packed up for the night.
"Sides are unnatural, we should all just play for ourselves."

"Really?" he says, sounding amused. "So you'd prefer to walk out of here, alone, and then walk the 6 blocks back to your apartment, also alone, in the city at night?"

I want to ask him how he knows where I live, but I know he'll say I showed him already somehow during an "alternate version" of this meeting.
"While we can discuss the benefits and risks of partners later, my mother would be ashamed if I let you leave here with no escort."

I blush despite myself at the way he says partners. I pull out my phone and jump a little at the hour, it's past midnight and my battery is low. I also have no signal. These men are liars, but I'm starting to believe they aren't killers. After all, they've had ample opportunity with the street deserted.

"I...would appreciate that," I relent.

I shiver at the agreement, and Allister mistakes the motion for being cold. Before I can correct him, his suit jacket is wrapped around my shoulders. I should take it off, but my t-shirt is thin, and the night air is crisp. The jacket is still warm from him, and it smells like vanilla and what a sepia photograph might smell like if it had a scent. It smells like nostalgia.

I slip my arms into the sleeves and thank him, and we begin the walk to my home. If only my brother could see me now, here I am: living. It's past midnight and I'm walking home with a man I've only just met. How's that for taking chances? As we reach the opposite end of the deserted street, my heart starts to pound. It's another dead end.

"No," I whisper to myself, running up against a stage identical to the one we've just left.

I look at the sides where earlier vendors were, and realize I'd overlooked something important. The buildings I'd taken no notice of earlier were strange, side by side with no gaps between them. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to escape.

"Sorry," I guess I should have warned you, this is not your average street."

"No shit," I say, stepping away from him.

I have a gut feeling that Darcy is tiptoeing up behind me, preparing to throw a brown sack over my head and fling me over his shoulder like in the movies. I spin on my heel to face the attack head on, but the street remains empty.

Allister laughs, but it's not sinister. He seems wistful again.

"Sorry again, it's against the rules to tell everyone about time travel so we've got to be a bit private about it."

"I walked out of the subway and stepped into this street though, I wouldn't call that private."

"Right...well, no you didn't. Not exactly. You walked out of the subway into a normal New York street. Do you...remember smelling lemon?"

I want to run, but there's nowhere to go. He flips from trustworthy to terrifying between moments. I'm trapped both physically and mentally, I can't figure him out, and for god knows why I feel a desperate need to. I reach again for the pepper spray, but it's gone.

I blink, and Allister is holding the canister in the air like a trophy. For the briefest moment, I'm caught up in the fantasy and believe that maybe he really came travel through time. Maybe he just went back and stole my canister in the time it took me to blink. But then I come to my senses and realize that a conman as good as him would probably make just as good of a pick pocket.

"Give me that!" I demand.

"On two conditions," he says, holding it higher as I reach for it.

"The first of course being that you never use it on me again."

"I haven't!"

"Not this time, but you have in the past and I'm asking you not to do it again."

"Fine. What's the second?"

"You have to save your mother."

He tosses the can back to me before I can agree or refuse. I'm too dazed to catch it. He presses a button on his pocket watch, and the air becomes a cloud of citrus. A gong rings from somewhere deep within the street, but this time I am not swept up in a crowd. Instead, the street begins to shimmer as if underwater, and then we are standing next to the subway stairs I entered the street from.