They Could Kill You

Janie | Chapter 7

Allister is already down three of the subway stairs, but moments ago I could have sworn he was on stairs leading up to a wooden stage. I'm dazed again, but not from the sunlight. Night fell hours ago. I pull Allister's jacket tighter around me, grateful for his company as I think about everything that can go wrong in the dark.

Up the block, a man digs in a dumpster. He's probably looking for food, or socks...but I loop my arm through Allister's anyways, hopeful he understands why.  A movie theater lets out as we walk by, and I grip Allister's arm tighter. 

A man runs out of the theater with his head turned, staring at the door he just crashed out of as though searching for someone in pursuit. He crashes through us, breaking my hold on Allister's arm. An alarm is ringing, and sirens are already wailing in the distance. People stop and stare, watching as the man escapes from whatever he's done. Everyone is only watching. Everyone but Allister, who slips his arm back through mine and whispers, "Now seems an adequate time to prove myself." I don't have time to ask what he means before he presses his pocket watch again.

The world stops.

The movie goers surrounding us are frozen, none of them so much as blink. Then, with a sound like an airplane taking off...everything moves backwards. A man takes a tissue out of a wastebasket and places it in his pocket. Tears stream up a woman's face and slide into her eyes. The thief is running backwards, hesitates at the spot where he runs through Allistar and I, then retraces his steps all the way back into the theater, where the door seems to shut itself behind him.

Everything stops.

"Be ready this time," Allister says, positioning us back to where we were standing. He loops his arm back through mine, and presses his button. Time moves forward again. Well, not forward. I guess it would be more like in a circle, repeating the loop again.

A man throws a tissue into a wastebasket. A woman in a red dress begins crying. A man burst out of the theater, staring behind him as he runs. This time I am expecting him. When he darts up to me and Allister, we brace ourselves and hold tight.

This time, the man does not separate us. An alarm is ringing. Sirens can already be heard in the distance. The man is still trying to escape, but the other bystanders are following Allister's lead. They lock arms so that the man can't escape. He is facing away from me, but I can guess what he looks like: Teeth exposed, eyes narrowed. Like a wild animal backed into a corner. His expression is probably murderous, desperate. Anyone can kill, and I am certain this man will kill to escape.

As the sirens get closer, a light sprinkle of rain begins to fall. I wish it would have been raining when Allister reversed time, how magical it might have been to see it raining up. Of course, he couldn't have done that. As interesting as all of this was, none of it had been so impossible an actor couldn't fake it. A man can pick up the tissue he's just discarded. People can run backwards. Even crying backwards could be an illusion.

The police cars are close, flashes of blue and red glare off the windows of adjacent buildings. The man walks around the circle, locking eyes with each of us one by one and pleading in a language I don't understand. I expected to see rage and fight in this man's gaze. Instead, I see fear. I don't know what he is saying, but it sounds like he is begging for his life. I unlink my arms from Allister's and the stranger next to me, and step aside. The man looks shocked for a moment. He bows to me with tears in his eyes, and runs. The other would-be vigilantes sigh. They were probably already daydreaming about their interviews with news stations and calling themselves heroes, but I just ruined it.

Allister presses his stop watch, yet another button, and again everything freezes. Even the rain hangs suspended in mid-air. When Allister has pulled my attention away from the rain drops, he asks "what did you do that for?"

"I'm sorry. He just seemed so scared. I thought a bad guy would look more...bad," I say, my heart racing both from the adrenaline of my split decision and because the rain just stopped. In midair. You can fake people walking backwards, and freezing. You can't fake water suspended in the air.

His eyes soften. "That's the tricky part, we don't know what kind of guy he is. We witnessed a bad choice tonight, but who's to say if it's out of pleasure or desperation? Does he need the money? Who's to say? Catch him...? Let him go...?"

"Enough riddles, can't we just go to the future and see what he uses it for?"

Allister brow furrows pensively at this. "That's a misconception," he says. I can tell he's pondering how to explain what he means, so I turn my attention back to the frozen world around us. The people in the street haven't moved. I walk to the woman in the red dress, who I know moments from now will be crying.

Allister follows me, and shouts "don't touch them!" just as I reach out to touch her arm.

"Why not?" I say, shooting my hand forward like I'm about to hit her in the face. I stop less than an inch away from her face, and still she doesn't flinch. I'm thinly holding on to a hope that this is all still all somehow fake, but my resolve is crumbling. I wonder if this is what my mother's descent into madness felt like. Was she aware she was going crazy as she went?

"No," he says slowly, "it's because I don't want to frighten you." I wait for him to continue, still staring at the woman in front of us and waiting to catch her moving. "For this moment out of time, these people don't quite exist. They're...they're not breathing. They have no pulse, no heartbeat. If you touch her or any of them, they'll feel cold."

My heart drops.

Anyone can kill you. The words of caution come back, but too late. Damn Allister's gold speckled eyes, and voice of honey. Damn his magic tricks. "You killed them?" I shouldn't ask. I shouldn't care. I should already be running.