Borrowed Time - Hour 4

Borrowed Time - Hour 4

Hour 4

Turns out, Lowe couldn't eat. She was starving, but she couldn't eat. Just her luck. With a sigh, she flunked down at the kitchen table and watched as Anza fixed herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Lowe licked her lips hugrily and looked out the kitchen window instead.

"So I'm on borrowed time," she muttered. Anza froze in mid-lick of her butter knife, and gulped. Lowe cast her a sideways glance. "Who's time, exactly?"

The little girl swallowed and put the knife in the sink. "Someone very important."

"OK, and why does this someone important have extra time they can just give out freely?"

"It's not freely," Anza replied sternly and carried her plate over to the table, and sat opposite of Lowe. "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"Nope. Only child." Lowe frowned and stared at the grains in the table instead. "Or was an only child. Guess I'm now dead, aren't I?" She watched Anza take a large bite of PB&J. "As dead as a doornail."

There wasn't a reply, and instead the little girl busied herself with her lunch. Typical. Whenever Lowe wanted answers, she never got them. Not in life, and certainly not in death. But God did she want an answer. "What happens after the borrowed time is up? Do I go to heaven?"

Still, Anza didn't answer.

There was something about the little girl, something that unsettled Lowe quite a lot. Like how she always seemed to know the answer but never spoke, and how she always seemed so upbeat and chipper when, in fact, no one could be so damn happy. I mean, she's hanging around with the Grinch, she thought scathingly. What type of person would want to hang around him?

Lowe sighed and put her face in her hands. "How long do I have left, anyway?"

"Eight hours," Azna finally replied as she finished her sandwich and licked her fingers clean.

"And then what?"

She shrugged, hopped up off her chair, and put her plate in the sink. "Dunno. I don't ask Death what he does with dead people."

"But aren't you curious?"

"Always," Anza turned back to her sadly. "But I can't ask him. He's mean, mean, mean! Besides, Zeit doesn't like me talking to him. It makes things a lot more complicated."

"How?"

She sighed and pulled her braids over her right shoulder. Tenderly, she began to stroke them, her thoughts deeply etched into her young, innocent face. "Just because ---" she paused, as if debating the answer, then looked directly into Lowe's eyes, and inside her eyes were thousands of fluttering butterflies, golden suns, and warm, warm beaches. A blue, blue sky and puffy marshmallow clouds. A distant, strange feeling rose in Lowe's chest. She knew the feeling. It accompanied her when her Mom was in the hospital, when the doctors said everything would be OK in the end. The feeling that let her Dad keep moving forward. The feeling that had abandoned her the day of her Mom's funeral.

"You're Hope," Lowe whispered in wonder.

"Not always," Anza replied and looked away again, her deep blue eyes clouded and distant. "Sometimes I'm Despair too."

Lowe rose from her seat. "But how can you ---"

"You see me as Hope. You're hopeful more than desperate, Lows. I can feel it. You want to go back. You still think Zeit can…" She bit her lip as tears wiggled to the edges of her eyes. "Zeit only sees Despair…but…but when you…" she shook her head and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. "Please try to make him see Hope. I want him to see Hope too."

Lowe scoffed and folded her arms over her chest. "Like I could do that. He hates me."

"No --- No Lows! He doesn't! He just doesn't know how else to talk to you."

"Why did he save me at all?" Lowe argued. "I was perfectly fine lying on the side of that road alone! Death would've come --- he said so!"

"Cause I told Zeit to, remember?" Anza argued. "I know what you're like, Lows, and I know you can help him!"

"Help him? HELP HIM?" Lowe scoffed. "Help him with what, Anza? Help him see hope?" she seethed sarcastically. "Yeah, like I really have any hope for that --- that --- that man!" She rabidly pointed somewhere behind her, blindly to the empty staircase. "I can see how he's so in Despair! He's a son of a bitch! All he's done is make more trouble!"

"But Lows ---"

"And, you know, maybe I don't want to give him Hope. Maybe he doesn't deserve it! Maybe I wanted to see my Mom! Ever thought of that? Maybe I WANTED TO DIE AND SEE MY MOM!" She shrieked, and silence followed.

Anza slowly retracted her, like a wilted flower in winter, turned, and walked out of the kitchen.

A gulp of sobs erupted from Lowe's throat as she sank to the table again, tears eating at the edge of her eyes. She couldn't take this anymore. She wanted to go home. To get away. She hated the dead feeling inside of her --- the death ticking like a bomb in her chest. She hated the cold weight of her arms, and the silence in her head. She hated the stickiness of the blood on her shoulder and the sleepiness in her eyes. She hated it all, and the one person who could rid her of it wouldn't. He kept her caged like a rat.

Like a mean kid who couldn't get what he wanted.

"To hell with this!" Lowe shot out of her chair and raced for the door. She flung it open and pounded out onto the wide lawn lined with redwood trees. She raced over the dead grass, the cold dirt, through the mist. She ran as far as she could before her knees gave out, and she collapsed on the ground, sobbing. The house was just a small blurry dot in the mist behind her, and before her was nothing but deep gray. For eternity onward. "Where is this place?" she whispered, and her voice echoed in the mist back to her. "TAKE ME HOME!" She screamed at the top of her lungs, her nails burying into the soil. "DEATH! TAKE ME HOME!"

The cold Rolex at her wrist ticked, slowly, slowly, reverberating. Growing louder and louder. She sat there, shivering, as the minute hand passed the two to the five, and then to the nine. No one came.

She sobbed, her breath ragged from her sobs, her eyes dry and prickly and red. She missed her Mom, her Dad, but she didn't know who she missed more. Dad, once, felt so much closer, and then Mom did, but finally they both felt so far away, so untouchable that she couldn't bear to think about either of them.

"My my, what a pretty little face," hissed a slithery, rumbling voice.

Lowe snapped her head up. She looked around. Mist floated and swirled around her, and nothing more.

"All alone and scared…how sappy."

"W-Who are you?" Lowe whispered.

"And what's that? Is that a ticking watch I hear? Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock…"

"I asked who you are!" Lowe ventured again, digging her nails into the ground to keep herself from shaking. "Stop playing with me!"

"Such a feisty spirit too…how much borrowed time do you have? Seven, eight hours? You're watch is getting weak…"

"That's none of your business!"

"And is that fear I hear? How intoxicating." From the mist came eyes as red as blood, and teeth as white as ivory. From the mist came a thing with gorilla-like fur, and a snake-like tail. From the mist came a thing with a lion's mane and six human arms, and the head of a bald woman. It flicked a snake-tongue out from between vampiric teeth and tasted the air. "The taste of fear is intoxicating. What are you afraid of? Time?"

Lowe suddenly stood and reeled away. "G-Get away!"

"Surely not me. There are far more scarier things than I."

"I said GET AWAY!" She looked around for somewhere to hide, but all she found was the distant dot of the great Victorian mansion, and a twist of fear wriggled inside of her.

"You want to go home, don't you?" Her arms twisted and curled as if they were dancing. "I can send you home. So easily…"

Lowe stopped in her tracks. "Y-You can what?"

"Send you home. Home. To your Mom. Your Dad. Whichever you please." One of her six arms pointed to the Rolex. "All I need is your time."

"M-My time?" She looked at the watch in confusion. "But Zeit said that I can't take it off."

The creature scoffed. "Fool's prattle. He just wants you for himself. To keep you trapped in a cage."

"I don't know…" But the creature spoke true. He was keeping her trapped in a cage. He was a mean kid with a magnifying glass.

"Why else would want you to keep it on? Besides, it's not your time to have."

Lowe put her fingers under the watch, and slowly began to slide it off her wrist. A wrench of pain --- as if a hook had tugged at her stomach --- halted her. She whimpered.

"See? It only gives you pain. Suffering. Despair."

Despair. Anza…

"Let me take the burden. You'll be with your Mother soon enough…"

Her fingers slipped away from her watch suddenly. She looked up into the eyes of the creature and gave a hysterical laugh. "Liar!"

The creature stuttered, befuddled. "But---but---but---"

"No one willingly takes someone else's burden. That's fairytales! You lie! Who in their right mind would --- would take my pain away? Besides ---" but she caught herself and looked back down at the watch. Two thoughts suddenly collided. Zeit had taken on the burden of her, hadn't he? Didn't he say if he did not take her with him, she would become a ghost? She would drift off forever? Zeit took her in as a burden…and Anza told her to take it away. "I'm the reason he sees Despair," she whispered.

"See? You need to ---"

"I'm the one who's causing it!"

"I can lift his burden."

"By taking my borrowed time," she realized.

"Yes."

An inkling of a smile crossed her face. "But it's not yours to take."

The creature gave a rabid lion-like growl.

She raised her head high, tensed her muscles, and said, "It's his."

"YOU INSOLENT WENCH!" The creature yowled and dove for Lowe, six arms straining to reach her before she could bolt, wide mouth yawning open to reveal twenty-four razor-sharp teeth.

Lowe bolted, and barely escaped its claws and teeth, and raced back towards the old Victorian mansion, the slithering thing hot on her heels. She rushed her way across the dead grass, through the cool mist, fear packed in her chest so tightly she felt like it could have exploded. Her legs grew hot, and warmness started to ooze down her shoulder. Red blotted her eyes. Wiping her hand across her forehead, shiny red painted across her fingers. A thunder erupted in her chest, a steady rhythm. She sucked in a lungful of breath. Sobs caught in her throat. "ZEIT!" she shrieked, stumbled over the uneven lawn, and face-planted.

The creature dove, writhing and whirling, outstretched arms grabbing at her hair, her arms. Cold, metallic teeth sank into her heel. Lowe cried in pain and tried to kick herself away, her lungs burning as she screamed his name again and again. The creature reeled her into its six-armed embrace and trapped her against its gorilla-like chest. Five arms secured Lowe's frantic struggle as the sixth arm tugged at the watch. The hook in her stomach yanked again, and another bolt of pain wracked her bones, as if a fishing hook had caught her nervous system and proceeded to yank it out of her body. The creature wrenched at the watch again, and Lowe screamed.

"LOWE!" a protective voice roared, distant and faded. Coming closer.

The creature tugged at her Rolex again, and this time pulled it off her hand. Pain ripped through her body as if the creature had pulled her bones out of her skin, and everything went dark. Her heart stopped, lungs deflated, and blood stilled, as if someone pushed the pause button. As she hit the ground, her body made a dead, thick thud.

The last she remembered was cold, cold gray mist.