In Due Time (excerpt)

The old man lived in the in-between mostly, not the distortion of a broken mirror, but the crack itself. He appeared from a crevice between stacked buildings lining the street, early, before the birds, before the traffic, even before the sun. Rooting around his old brown suit, he retrieved his watch. He held it up and listened for its rhythmic tick, tick, tick. Nothing.
He shoved the watch back into his pocket, as well as the rim of his glasses back onto his nose. Gravity had begun to bend the old man forward, and his spotted and sun-pocked skin sagged on his bones.
The old man walked through a streetlight shining down on the sidewalk and left no shadow trailing behind him. He had ruddy cheeks that pinched up sides of his face and caught beneath his spectacles. A long braid crept down his back and wagged back and forth when he moved and ended in a point.
He loosened his hair allowing it to spill down his arms and off his fingertips. Upon seeing his reflection in a storefront window, he thought, “You’re growing more into a tree than anything else!”
Sunlight began to flicker on the towers, and the old man rushed to find a shadow. He turned onto a side street and took a right. Following the slope of a green grass embankment, he wandered down to where it leveled and then he stopped. With knotted fingers he massaged circles into his forehead. He berated himself, “You are silly to try and hide…it is not as if you are noticed.”
His eyes swept the clearing scrutinizing the tall trees pinning him in. How long had it been since he had stood in a clearing, how long since he enjoyed the life around him?
The old man paused; he felt the wind on his back. It picked up his long strands and played with their ends. He inhaled the fragrance of the forest; the grasses, new blooms, and morning dew.
High above him, a bird sang as it soared between branches. The old man watched the bird. He could see exposed white feathers on the tips of its wings. And he was fascinated as it dove off tree limbs and rode the bumps in the breeze.
As he watched, the scent of the world around him evaporated. His eyes began to tint inky and dark. His arms flew behind him, braiding his hair with the agility of a black widow knitting a web. The old man bent forward taking a runner’s stance and tracking the bird with his clouded eyes.
The bird flitted through treetops not noticing the man's pursuit.
After a while, the bird dove down and rested among the green. It raised and lowered its beak. Pecking at the soil, it pulled up a long fat worm.
The man crept out from behind a large oak. He tiptoed to where the bird was feeding. Step by step the man inched closer. Steady. Soundless. Soulless.
“Ha! Caught it!”
He clapped his hands around the bird. It wiggled and squawked. Its head lobbed forward and back to escape the man’s clutch. The more it struggled to free itself, the tighter the old man held on. Its wings fluttered against boney palms until it knew there was no escape and it lay still, waiting. The man twisted up his hands to look into the bird’s wide round eyes. Fear and panic had filled the creature up.
Then from deep inside the bird, came a low whine. Gray welled up within it, washing over its soft body and along its once white tipped wings. Gray also blackened its beak before turning the bird to charcoal. Then the old man squeezed his hands together. The bird-form crumbled between his fingers. Unfortunate. His prey had been nothing but a time killer, or a filler of time, to him it mattered very little which.