Leah Walker

Leah Walker moved in a daze.

She couldn’t concentrate on what she was doing. Her morning shower went long but her mind refused to work. She couldn’t think. A fuzzy static settled in between her ears and wouldn’t leave.

The kids got off to school on their own. Leah didn’t make it out of the shower in any reasonable time. She stayed under the water, staring at the wall, well past when the water ran cold. A sudden shiver brought her back to reality, but only just. Enough to towel off and get dressed.

Leah threw a load of laundry into the washing machine and then started dusting. It wasn’t laundry or cleaning day but she felt she needed to do something. Cleaning was a simple, repetitive task that didn’t require thinking too much. Dusting shifted to washing the windows, the laundry moved to the dryer, toilets met the scrub brush, and the vacuum roamed the floor.

The house wasn’t that large. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a family room, and a utility room. By mid-day, Leah moved out to the garage. Built for only a single car, it didn’t have much to it either, but it did have a lot of shelves filled with a lot of cardboard boxes. Leah had been meaning to sort, organize, and toss out a lot of the stuff that they didn’t need anymore.

Now seemed as good a time as any.

“We’re home!”

The chirping of Carter’s young voice was the first thing to break Leah from her stupor all day. Her son’s precise, rhythmic steps across the driveway brought a dose of reality back to Leah. Dressed in light-up shoes and a cheap backpack, he looked timid at first. When her eyes met his, he gained some confidence and stepped a little faster. He stopped right in front of her, beamed, and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked, looking up without releasing his hug.

“Better?”

“You were upset in the morning.”

Leah blinked. “You didn’t even see me this morning.”

Carter nodded into her stomach. “’S how I knew you were upset,” he mumbled.

Forcing a smile to her lips, Leah rested a hand on his black hair, rustling it gently as she looked up at the red pickup in the driveway. It was an old beater, bought cheap. No air conditioning, broken cruise control, and a spiderweb of a crack across the passenger side of the window. It looked like it hadn’t been washed since they got it three years ago.

In fact, Leah knew it hadn’t been washed. It was her daughter’s car, parked alongside the white Corolla that Leah drove. The girl in question hopped out and slammed her knee-high boot into the door instead of closing it like a normal person.

“’Sup mom,” she said, tossing an empty coffee cup into the trash bin outside the garage. “Not sticking around for dinner. Just changing then I’m out with friends. Might not be back tonight.”

“Florence Erika Walker,” Leah said with as much stress on the name as she could, grasping at the straws of normalcy. “It is a school night. If you insist on going to school then you should go.”

Erika snorted. “Yeah. Sucks for school. The Outsiders are playing at the Hole tonight, and I got tickets through Kassandra’s dad. Not missing that.”

Leah flinched at the name. “The Outsiders?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady. “Is that one of your screamo bands?”

“No screaming in this band. I would call them electronic-industrial rock,” she said, stepping up to the door into the house. “Anyway, changing then I’m out—”

“Wait!”

Erika paused with one buckle-covered boot on the doorstep and looked back. Her slate gray eyes, surrounded by an excess of eyeliner, darted from Leah to where Carter still had his arms around Leah’s waist. “Something up?”

Leah’s voice failed her in that moment. She looked at her daughter and swallowed a lump in her throat.

“Mommy’s sad.”

“Hush,” Leah said, rubbing Carter’s head. She smiled a little, mentally thanking him for giving her a moment to find her words. “Just… Do you need to leave right away if this isn’t until later? I was thinking we could have a little family meal.”

“A family meal. Us?” Erika turned fully to face the garage. Her expression turned serious as her black-painted lips curled into a frown. “Did something happen?”

“No, no. I… thought it might be nice once in a while.”

“You’re acting strange.”

“It’s nothing,” Leah said, shaking her head. “If you need to go, that’s fine. We can do this another night.”

Erika closed her eyes and let out a small sigh. “Kass wanted to meet at five. It’s going to take at least an hour to get ready. Cart, can you—”

“I wish you wouldn’t call your brother that.”

“You named me Florence,” Erika said, rolling her eyes.

“Florence is a perfectly beautiful name.”

“Yeah. If you’re living in the eighteen hundreds.” Erika shook her head. “Cart, can you get us some extra time?”

Carter blinked and, for the first time since getting home from school, let go of Leah. He looked down at his watch.

Leah’s palms started sweating.

The watch ticked, as watches were wont to do. The second hand jumped from notch to notch, moving between the one and the two.

It was a mechanical watch, one a bit large for his wrist. It wasn’t meant for a ten-year-old. Leah didn’t even know where he got it from. One day, right after starting first grade, he came home with it saying that the old man had given it to him. Naturally, Leah had called up the school and started yelling about some creep giving gifts to a child. Nobody could remember an old man and no security camera footage showed anyone matching the description. One moment, Carter had been walking down the hall with a bare wrist, the next, he had the watch.

He hadn’t wanted to give it up.

And now…

It was ticking. Louder and louder. The second hand jumped from notch to notch, moving from the one to the two. But no matter how many times it ticked, no matter how many times it jittered forward, it never quite reached the two.

“Two-thousand eight-hundred thirty… Two-thousand eight-hundred twenty-nine… Two-thousand—”

“What is that? Forty-five minutes?” Erika stepped forward, clapping Carter on the back. “Nice one.”

Leah winced. The loud ticking died off—though Carter brought the watch up to his ear and started listening to its much softer tocks, closing his eyes and tilting his head like it was a soothing song. “I wish you two wouldn’t do strange things like that…”

“Strange?” Erika asked.

“It’s normal,” Carter agreed, lowering the precision watch that still hadn’t quite managed to tick forward.

“Besides, now we got some extra time. We can get a little early meal in and I can go to the Hole after. Win-win.” Erika grinned. “Going to get changed. Dinner when I’m done?” She didn’t stick around for an answer, heading into the house without another word.

“So?” Carter said, looking up from his watch. “What’s for dinner?”

Leah blinked. Dinner. Right. That was what she had asked for. Now she had to figure out what they had to eat. She hadn’t gone shopping or planned for anything in particular. Most days, Erika wasn’t home for meals. It was just Leah and Carter; her son had been in a self-sufficient stint ever since starting fifth grade a month back. He would come home and make himself something simple. Quesadillas, grilled toast, stovetop ramen, various sandwiches, or granola that he had mixed himself. Leah would end up eating frozen meals for the most part.

Thinking back, Leah could barely remember the last time all three of them ate a meal together. Last Christmas? It was mid-September now.

Shaking her head, she smiled. “Let’s go find out.”

Tearing apart the cupboard and fridge made Leah realize one small problem. They had nothing meal-like. They had a few packs of meat in the freezer but no time to thaw them. Frozen dinners and cheap simple stuff were around but Leah wanted something a little more. Nothing that could be made in the rapidly diminishing extra time that Carter had provided.

“Macaroni?” Carter said, pulling a bag of elbow noodles from the cupboard.

Those could have been in there for quite a while but… dried pasta never really went bad. Probably. Digging through the fridge, Leah found a brick of cheese. It wouldn’t be the best macaroni and cheese ever made but it was quick and they had the ingredients for it. “Perfect,” she said.

Leah got straight to boiling the noodles and dicing the cheese. A quick wipe of the dusty table and, before she knew it, she had three meals set out. Just as Carter finished placing forks next to each plate, Erika stepped out of her room.

“Mac-n-cheese, huh? Smells good. Not the box-mix crap, right?”

Leah blinked twice, staring at her daughter. Still wearing those heavy boots of hers, Erika kicked out one of the chairs and sat right down. Leah forced herself to close her eyes. “Is that what you’re going out in tonight?”

Erika glanced down at her black crop top and the thin fishnet overshirt she had on. “Sure?”

“Your whole stomach is on display.”

“Of course it is.” Erika drummed her fingers over her burgeoning abs. “Haven’t been working on these babies just to hide it all under baggy clothes.”

“And…” Erika closed her eyes again. Just for a moment. As if doing so would suddenly see her daughter wearing something else. “Is that a tattoo?” she asked, vaguely gesturing to the mandala hemisphere poking out underneath her crop top.

“Don’t tell me you’re upset,” Erika said, straightening her back enough to make her top ride up just enough to show it off all the better. “Everything you got up to when you were my age and—”

“My life isn’t something I wish for others to live through. Least of all my daughter.” Leah pressed her eyes closed one final time and took her seat before looking at her daughter once more. “But I’m not upset. I’m just… Erika… That tattoo is going to be the tramp-stamp of your generation.”

Erika did that teenager thing where she rolled her eyes in the most exaggerated way possible.

Leah pressed her lips into a firm line. “You didn’t tell me you wanted a tattoo.”

Erika took a big bite off her plate before pointing a cheesy fork at Leah. “Because I knew you’d flip.”

“I’m not flipping. I’m… How long? When did you get it? Where did you get it? You’re not eighteen for a few months yet.”

With a flippant shrug, Erika ate another bite. She tilted her head to one side as she chewed, clearly thinking. “Three to four months. Thereabouts. Idiots at the ink place didn’t even glance twice at my fake ID.”

“I see…” Leah said slowly, wondering how she could have been this out-of-touch with her daughter. Hesitant, worried about what she might have missed with her son, she looked over at him. “Have you got any surprises for me?”

Carter set his fork down. “I got a clock tattooed on my butt.” He started to tug up his shirt, only to stop with a cheesy grin on his face. “Just kidding!”

“You better be, young man.” Leah grabbed a washcloth and wiped his cheek. “The cheese is halfway to your ear. How did you manage that?”

Dinner settled down into safer chat. How school was going, how each of their friends were getting along, and other such simple topics. Small talk. It was nice. Something that the Walker family hadn’t done in a long time. Too long.

And now…

“Was good,” Erika said, standing. She headed over to the sink and dropped her dishes in. “We should do this again sometime.”

A pit formed in the back of Leah’s stomach. “Yeah,” she said, lips numb. “You’re leaving now?”

In lieu of an answer, Erika thumbed over at the glowing digital display on the range. Leah stared for a long moment, wondering where the time had gone. That feeling of time slipping into the future wasn’t all too uncommon with Carter around but today… Today it was worse than normal.

“Just going to touch up my makeup,” Erika said, bringing Leah’s attention back to the table. “Make sure I’m not covered in cheese,” she added with a wink at her brother as she headed back to her room.

Carter stuck out his tongue before looking at Leah. “Want help with the dishes?”

“You don’t have to.”

He slumped back against his chair, a frown on his face. Carter had always been a little different. And not just with regards to clocks; that was a lot different. He couldn’t often explain his feelings all that well, especially when upset, leaving awkward silences hanging in the air.

“Unless you want to?” Leah tried.

“I want to,” he said, firmly.

“Alright.”

Carter dried the dishes while Leah washed. There weren’t many. The dinner dishes. Some bowls from breakfast cereal. A few other plates had been left out from the night before. Just as Leah and Carter were finishing the last few bits of cutlery, Erika came back out, sporting her black lipstick and heavy eyeliner.

“I’m out,” Erika called as she headed to the door. “Later!”

Leah stared at the closing front door, watching her daughter through the window. Something snapped in the back of her mind. She dropped the fork she had been washing, letting it clatter to the counter, and dashed to the door. She jumped down the porch as the engine started and started waving a hand.

Erika rolled down the window and one of her dark eyebrows popped up. “Forget something?”

“I wanted…” Leah licked her lips and drew in a breath. “Stay safe out there.”

Erika blinked, eyes searching. “Yeah. I got like ten packs of condoms in the glove compartment.”

Leah opened her mouth but the words caught in her throat.

“That’s a joke, Mom.”

“Right. Of course. I… I love you, honey.”

Erika stared for a moment before nodding. “Yeah. Love you too.” She put the truck into reverse and looked back over the seat. Instead of backing out of the driveway, she sighed and leaned out the window again. “Is something going on? Because I can cancel tonight.”

“No. No,” Leah shook her head. “Enjoy your night.”

“You sure? Because you’re acting like some housewife who just found out your husband is cheating on you and you’re trying to guilt him into going faithful again instead of just kicking that dick in the balls.”

Leah stared a moment before bursting out in a bout of laughter. Some part of Erika’s phrasing poked a hole in the balloon of stress that had been building up ever since she woke up. The sudden release of tension came out all at once in a torrent that she couldn’t stop. It almost made her forget…

The day started with a phone call. One she had never wanted to receive and yet one she had known was coming for eighteen years.

“Tonight.”

“It wasn’t that funny,” Erika said with a confused look on her face.

“It was an analogy, that’s for sure,” Leah said as her giggles died down.

Erika’s confusion remained firmly in place. “Well, if there’s nothing else, I’m going to go now.”

“Of course. Have a good night.”

“We’ll talk later, okay?” With one final stare, Erika let off the brakes and slowly rolled out of the driveway. She offered a casual wave at Leah, who still stood out in the driveway. With that, she headed off down the street.

Leah kept watch of the old red pickup, waiting until it turned at the end of the street before she finally let her gaze drop. Turning back to the house, she found Carter standing on the front porch. He had just as much confusion on his face as his sister but that only lasted until Leah walked up to him.

“Feel better?” he asked with a smile.

“I am. Yes. Want to have popcorn and a movie?”

His smile turned to a frown. “I have homework.”

Leah chuckled and knelt, ruffling Carter’s hair. “I’m going to tell you a secret adults aren’t supposed to tell kids.” She leaned in, conspiratorially, and whispered, “Homework isn’t that important.”

“So I don’t have to do it?” he asked with that same confused frown.

“Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.” She placed a hand on his back, leading him back inside. “Want to pick out what to watch?”

“Hugo.”

“Of course.”

Leah got the popcorn going while Carter turned on the television. They cuddled up on the couch together and started the show. Leah tuned the movie out almost immediately. Of all the movies they owned and all the movies available to stream, she had seen Hugo more than all of them combined. Despite her belief that it wasn’t that good of a movie, she had inadvertently memorized the entire thing, line for line and word for word.

Instead of pulling out her phone or just taking a nap, she watched Carter. She watched his eyes light up whenever clockwork, gears, and trains appeared on screen. She watched as his eyes glazed over during the more social aspects of the movie. In time, they finished the movie.

And started it over again.

By the time the movie ended for the second time, Carter had his head down on her lap, arms pressed to his ears as a pillow. With a wan smile, Leah carefully picked up her son and carried him back to his room. As soon as she opened the door, noisy tick-tocks filled the hall. Half a dozen mechanical clocks hung from the walls, all somehow managing to tick in perfect time with one another. She set him down on his bed, leaving him in his school clothes, and quietly left the room.

In the absence of her children, Leah’s mind descended back into a spiral of fears and worries as she thought about that phone call. Busying herself with cleaning up the popcorn bowl and picking up the few kernels that fell to the couch, she tried not to think too much. It was a futile effort.

With nothing left to clean and nothing to do but sit in her thoughts, Leah chose to pull a bottle of wine from the back of the cupboard, hidden behind stacks of canned food. She pulled out a glass, noted that the amount of wine in the bottle was less than she remembered it, and poured some for herself anyway.

A creaking of the furniture in the living room had her looking up and over the dining table.

Leah clamped her jaw shut. Her fingers tightened around the wine bottle.

“Hello, Leah.”

He sat in the armchair next to the couch. He looked different than the last time Leah saw him. Dark skin rather than light, tight cornrows along his skull instead of full black hair, brown eyes in place of his piercing blue. In both of their previous encounters, he had worn a tailored suit. Now, he looked like he had gone shopping with a bunch of teenagers with his baggy pants and gold chain hanging from his neck.

Yet despite that drastic change, Leah recognized him immediately.

“Mister Dice.”

“You look well,” he said, deep, basso voice carrying every note of understanding, sympathy, and sorry.

A shotgun blast of emotions ripped through Leah. Nostalgia, terror, longing, hope, excitement, despair. Ultimately, it settled down into a resigned acceptance. She left the glass of wine on the counter but her fingers clenched around the wine bottle a little tighter as she walked over to the man in the chair.

“Is it really time? We can’t renegotiate?”

“Not at this point, I’m afraid.”

“But… the contract. It said fifteen years. It has been eighteen, maybe more. You broke that. Doesn’t that render it null and void?”

He shook his head, offering a sorrowful smile. “A minimum of fifteen years. You really should read the fine print of the things you sign. Or at least every word.”

“Is there a maximum?”

“There isn’t.”

“Then—”

“I have run out of time,” Mister Dice said. He gestured to himself. “This is a fleeting form, assembled from a hodgepodge of concepts and conceptions. It won’t last long. You are my backup. Although I sympathize and wish I had an alternative, I don’t. And you signed the contract.”

Leah’s shoulders slumped. That resignation upon seeing him doubled over, sinking into her very core. “I don’t suppose running would help?”

“Not even if you had started when I first called,” he said with another sorry shake of his head. “Did you have a good day?”

Leah snorted. A sardonic, sickly laugh escaped her lips. She almost flipped him off until she thought about it for a moment longer. It hadn’t started well. It didn’t seem to be ending well either. But for a few minutes. A few hours even… it hadn’t been a bad day. Slowly, she nodded her head.

Her fingers tightened around the wine bottle.

She didn’t want things to end this way. There were more days out there, more days where she could discuss her daughter’s habits and maybe keep her from following in her footsteps. Days where Carter might find a new movie to enjoy. Times that they could gather together for food. Family days.

Raising the bottle above her head, she slammed it down as hard as she could.

It struck Mister Dice directly, shattering on impact. Razor-sharp glass flew everywhere, the neck exploding into emerald shards that dug into her palm like jagged teeth. A splash of alcohol covered them both, making her fresh wounds sting and bite.

She didn’t have to suppress the pain; the shock of what she saw was more than enough.

Mister Dice sat in the chair. He hardly looked as if anything more than a light breeze had bothered him. Except… part of his face was gone. An eye, his forehead, and a portion of his skull all the way back to the rear of his head were just gone. There was no blood. No brains leaked from the gaping wound.

In the void where his face used to be, shadows stirred. Like a million tiny spiders all crawling over each other, fighting to be the ones highest on the pile.

He looked entirely unbothered as he raised his sole remaining eyebrow.

“I… I had to try,” she said, momentary desire to fight having fled.

“And I respect you most immensely for the attempt, though I do think you’re worrying far too much. I’d explain, but you’ll understand faster this way,” he said as he held out his hand, palm up. “It is time.”

Leah looked from his face to his hand and back. Those squirming spider legs twisting and breaking on each other should have sent chills up her spine. Instead, a clarity came over her. She understood. Mister Dice wasn’t a suave gentleman, nor was he a gangster pulled from the pages of tasteless stereotypes. For the first time, she saw the real Mister Dice, a squirming shadow of other masquerading beneath human skin.

“You had eighteen years that you wouldn’t have had otherwise,” Mister Dice started. “Don’t think of it as an end. Just a new perspective.”

Leah held out her hand. “You don’t need to convince me,” she said, lowering her hand to his. She hesitated with her hand just above his palm. “Carter needs ticking clocks in order to fall asleep. Erika has been having problems in school… and apparently a whole lot of other things,” she grumbled off to the side. She pressed her lips together and took a breath. “They’ll be alright, won’t they?”

“You have my word.”

With one final nod of her head, Leah let her hand drop.

Leah blinked. She looked at her outstretched hand with a small frown. Little bits of green glass stuck out at odd angles. A trickle of blood dripped around her hand and down her arm. Keeping her hand still, she stood from the armchair and made her way to the kitchen. She carefully plucked out each of the shards of glass, dropping them into the garbage can, before using some gauze from the medical kit in the closet to bandage up her hand.

Once sure that she wasn’t about to make a mess, she took the garbage over to the living room and started picking up the larger pieces of the broken bottle.

The wine was going to stain the chair. Nothing to do about that at this point. The rug underneath would have to be replaced. It wasn’t an immediate need.

“Mommy?”

Leah glanced up to find Carter standing in the hall. Bleary-eyed and half stumbling, he rubbed at his eyes as he stepped closer.

“Hold it right there,” Leah said. She moved over to physically stop him, just in case he was too tired to understand. “There’s glass all over the place.”

Carter, one eye still closed, looked around like he couldn’t understand how he had gotten out here.

“Sorry if I woke you. I accidentally dropped a bottle and it broke.”

“’snot you,” he said, shaking his head. “The clocks are wrong.”

“The clocks are wrong?”

Carter nodded his head. Hand grabbing the hem of her shirt, he pulled her back to his room.

Six mechanical clocks hung on the wall. Their pendulums swung at random, making each tick bleed into another clock’s tock, creating a cacophony of noise. Carter pointed at the wall with a wide yawn.

“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” Leah said, reaching out. She tapped one clock. Its pendulum swung once before locking into place. She touched another one and another, freezing their ticking. After waiting a second, she touched another and then the final two after.

With a snap of her fingers, all six clocks started ticking once again. Pendulums swung back and forth, back and forth. Each stayed in perfect time with its neighbor. The second hands moved in synchronization, counting down the last few seconds before midnight.

“How is that?” Leah said with a smile. “Better?”

Carter’s eyes went as wide as the plates they had used for macaroni and cheese. All vestiges of sleep vanished in an instant.

Which just made Leah sigh.

“Alright,” she said, ruffling his hair, “enough excitement. Back to bed. It’s a school night.”

His wide eyes turned to Leah and, for a long moment, he just stared. Then, without a word, he slowly, mechanically turned away, climbed back into bed, and pulled the covers up and over his head. Leah watched for an extra minute but he didn’t move further.

Carter had always been a bit strange, so she paid the odd arrangement of his covers little mind and shut out the light on his bedside table.

“Good night, Carter,” Leah said, resting her hand on his shoulder through the blankets. She gave him a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Carter didn’t respond before Leah stepped out of the room and gently closed the door behind her.

She never heard the small whimpering coming from under the covers.