1 - CLOCK
• CHAPTER ONE •
CLOCK
There is a crash, followed by some irritated cursing under someone's hushed breath in the room next door.
I know immediately what happened.
He has knocked that awkwardly placed phone right off his desk after trying to give his signature a little flare to it.
This alarm is what pulls me out of my hazy daydream for about the tenth time today.
Foggy Nelson is incredibly clumsy. He has a tendency to remind you of that a lot .
Around ten times by…
I look at the scratched up thrifted digital clock on my desk, the numbers are obscured slightly by the leftover greasy residue of a price sticker. When I look closer, I notice I can actually see the imprint of a wonky $15 symbol on it, crossed out frantically to then say $5 directly underneath.
The poorly picked off remains make me smile fondly at the memory of that day, we had been debating on how much a clock that looked like it had been thrown down a spiral staircase, used in a commercial for sandpaper targeted towards middle aged fathers with little better to do that sand bits of woods for a new shelf in the garage and then finally, hit by a very unobservant cyclist, was truly worth.
After coming to the agreement that the answer was in fact not fifteen whole bucks, we toured the rest of the dead peoples yard sale stands. Eventually, we ran out of photo frames with black and white photos of family members still in them, old wedding bells from the eighties etcetera etcetera, and looped back to that beat up clock.
I grabbed it again, weirdly drawn to it. Maybe it was a bit of pity for the utter hell it looked like it had been through. I looked at the sticker a little closer and planned some joke about being rich enough to indulge in the luxuries of life and was met with a gift.
$15
$5.
It's safe to say we both had the same idea.
It was a bit of a race towards the cashier who was roughly in her 60s and looked as though she was about to be eaten alive by a pack of rabid wolves. Foggy and I rounded up all the change we had on our persons and threw it towards her, praying she had lost enough of her vision to read what was probably $3.42 as the big five. When she passed her eye test, she looked at us with a certain sadness, reached under her desk, pulled out her purse and added a few, shinier coins to the pile and gestured to the door with a bright grin on her little face.
A school of papers flying through the air and some muffled scrambling ends with a chair scraping across the floor aggressively and hitting a wall with a blunt thud.
“I am not picking you up. I refuse. No. No. NO. No. No more.”
Ahh, the time.
The clock flickers 9:28 AM, the nine only evident by the ghost of the two horizontal panels that differentiate it from one.
Around eleven times by 9:28 AM.
To be honest, I'm not actually sure what I'm supposed to be doing. So far, I've spent the past three days of my new “job” looking at that damn clock. Sometimes I decide to start flipping through some papers that got thrown onto my desk which then reminds me to replace the cardboard wedge that stops my table from doing a little dance every time I try to understand all this legal terminology in front of me. So far - I'm coming up pretty short.
But to be even more honest, I've spent my time confused. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how this random guy who i guess kind of saved my life from this junkie I pulled off some poor girl in an alleyway - with a blindfold on.
Seriously, you should've seen those flips, I'm still not sure if it was an acrobatic performance and not a near death experience. I would've been fine on my own by the way. If he was just a normal junkie without a knife in his shredded pocket I wouldn't have been hurt. Even then, it wasn't even really that bad, he swung those slinky little arms at me and left a lovely nick in the palm of my hand.
I was not prepared for a gymnastics show from Mr eyepatch in the corner.
I don't know who he was.
That's what bothers me.
I was so confident no one was following me around and trust me, you don't find that little corner of the neighborhood without being guided there, especially not in the middle of the night? It's not a cute hang out spot either, it's filled with the smell of piss mixed with week old takeout and a sprinkling of needles to top it off.
I hardly love it there, but it's a part of that area's sweep. Almost every time I pass through, someone is either passed out on the brink of death or being mugged. Or worse.
Back to the point, who the fuck is weird mystery flippy parkour man in all black? And why did he help me?
His movements were sharp and calculated. He created a distance between me and the stabby guy without even thinking and pummeled him into a pulp in half that time. After stabby was doubled over giving excuses as to why he just sliced some chicks hand open, he turned to look at me. He lingered facing me for a few seconds and tilted his head. I looked over to see if he was trying to show me something but he just… left.
I don't really get it. I've never come across any good samaritans on my runs over the past few months and I still think this “devil of hell's kitchen” bullshit is bullshit. No one is cowering in fear. No one is stopping being pieces of shit because some good guy is running around and lecturing them.
Everyone still hurts everyone else. That’s just fact, nothing cynical about it, simply the way it is. It’s probably just one of the crackheads who broke into a costume store and is playing Batman on a bender.
So, my three current theories are this:
- I was so sleep deprived i saw a hallucination of a runaway circus performer
- He was some stalker following me around to blackmail me into whatever fucked shit he wants
or,
- Someone else is doing what I do.
After calculating the probabilities of these three hypotheses, I drift forwards in time to today.
There’s a hand on my desk.
It is connected to the man who is using the desk to lean towards me, just enough that his words stay restricted between us, and not seeping through the paper thin walls of the offices.
“Hey, you holding up ok? I didn’t get a snappy greeting about being late this morning.”
Foggy's office door flies open as he dramatically leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms like an angry principal. He looks down at his watch.
“Woow. It’s ten in the morning Matt. Ten. Do I really have to ask the question? Don’t make me do it.”
Fixing his glasses, Matt turns his head back to me and lets out a deep sigh, straightening back up and turning to face his friend's wrath. He stammers, attempting to buy himself time with comedy to find an answer to why he is over an hour
“Where ya been, lover boy?”
“I slept in. I'm sorry.”
Foggy cuts him off immediately, letting us all know what’s about to happen.
“Ah ah ah, that ain’t gonna cut it bud. I want a name, description, backstory, mothers maiden name, everything.”
“You know that’s not what happened-“
“It’s that or you stay an hour after we leave? You’re gonna have to listen to the two of us chat outside, having the time of our lives while you do whatever you do in your little box. We won’t let you out. We will literally hold you hostage here until you do your overtime. Isn’t that right?”
Matt turns to face me again, moving his arms around like he’s searching for my help.
“Help me out here!”
I look up at foggy, who is oh so confident I'll take his side in this that all he's doing is nodding encouragingly. I can't help but play into it. Matt's pained look is too funny to let it go. I join in.
“Mm-mm. Pay up! We want details!”
He accepts that we really are going to bug him until he gives us the answers we want, even if they aren’t really the truth. Disappointed but not surprised, he settles down at his desk and gets to work. Foggy starts to giggle and I join him. Soon, a chorus of laughter from the tree of us fills the gray place we call our firm.
“Forever the man of secrets huh?” I shout out.
“You know it.” Matt responds.