A Countdown To Remember

Ten minutes and it will all be over. The decade, but also my life. I watch him out of the corner of my eye. His face holds the same familiar features, but somehow it’s changed – morphed by his expression into something more terrifying than the weapon he’s clutching. His eyes are wild as they focus on sharpening the knife in his hands. The laughter they once held has shriveled dry and hard. His skin is sallow; a foreshadow of what mine will become.

Nine minutes ‘til midnight.

Pins and needles prick my hands. The rope that’s bound them has cut off my circulation, tied so tightly it’s torn the flesh on my wrists. Drip. Drip. Drip. Blood trickles down my fingers and onto the floor, almost in time with the hand of the clock ticking the seconds away. Counting down to my death.

Eight minutes ‘til midnight.

I haven’t screamed yet. There’s no point. No one would hear. Our closest neighbor is a mile down the road. That’s the reason we moved here in the first place. For the peace. For the quiet. For the serenity of nature. It was my husband’s idea, and I lashed out hard at first. I was born and raised a city girl. New York’s bustling energy filled a part of my soul I couldn’t imagine living without. So the arguments were heated, sometimes ending with broken dishes scattered across the kitchen floor. But I’m like fire; I burst with enormous rage that’s impossible to maintain and quickly dies, whereas Jed is like the sea; he breaks down the shoreline slowly and continuously until it succumbs to erosion. Inevitably he won. He always does. The next morning we packed our bags for the country.

Overnight my life changed. I would lie awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, without the dull roar of continuous traffic to sing me to sleep … It was quiet. Deadly quiet. The days were no different. Luncheons and cocktails were a thing of the past; long walks through the forest and curling up by the fire were my present and future. Growing up in the city of lights, I never knew darkness until I moved to the country. Jed found comfort in the long black nights - he’d sit on the porch until midnight. Sometimes I’d join him on the rocking chairs, squeaking an eerie tune as we stared out into the abyss. He told me anything could happen in the darkness. On that we saw eye to eye. But what he found enticing, I found frightening. Anything could happen.

Seven minutes ‘til midnight.

It’s amazing how quickly the mind adapts. I shed my old skin within three months. The first night that I slept soundly, with only the chirping of crickets to lull me to sleep, was the moment I knew I’d survive. I had adapted to country life. Not through and through, but enough to convince myself I could find happiness here. That’s not to say the transformation wasn’t painful. It cut me straight through to my core. The isolation. The loneliness. The emptiness I felt inside. But I adjusted. I survived. And that saved my marriage.

Jed was the liveliest I’d ever seen him – as though he was destined for this life of solitude. I fed off his optimism; it helped carry me through the hardest first months. So it’s only fair I attribute half of my adjustment success to him. The other half is owed to Shane.  

Six minutes ‘til midnight.

I first met Shane a week after the move. I jumped when he knocked on the door. There was force to his bang, fuelled by his strong fist, and when I opened the door I saw the same strength in his face – broad a determined; a man who knew what he wanted. And what he wanted in that moment was to offer us some jerky. “As a welcome to the neighborhood,” he said with a curious smile, pressing dried strips of venison into my hands before I could protest. He had me backed into a corner; after an act of kindness like that, it would have been rude not to invite him in. But I had no idea that by welcoming him into our home that afternoon, I’d also be welcoming him into our lives. Reflecting on it now, I wonder if I made the right choice.

Five minutes ‘til midnight.

Jed and Shane got on like a house on fire. Even though their personalities differed to such an extent, they shared their most important value. A value that provided the foundation for their relationship: the great outdoors. Where Jed sought nature for its peacefulness, Shane sought it for its adventure. He hunted for sport, the sheer thrill of a kill, although he always ensured his prey never went to waste. It was why he invited us to dine with him so often; there was always too much meat for him to consume on his own.

He lived in a log cabin a mile down the road. He’d built it himself, and he told us this with as much pride in his voice as there was sun shining through his strands of glossy hair. I looked at him in that moment, and my gaze lingered longer than it should have. That seemed to happen often. Shane was a compelling sight to behold. A force not to be reckoned with. 

Four minutes ‘til midnight.

We had a ritual after dinner: a game of rummy on the veranda. Puffs of smoke from the men’s cigars circled the wooden table, and I chased the scent with sips of gin until my lips tingled and sight swirled. We cheated without mercy and roared with laughter when we got caught until the cards lay forgotten on the table, replaced by conversation more riveting than their bland numbers. Once or twice Jed and I drank too much to undertake the walk home. On those nights, Shane never failed to offer us his bed. To our protests he’d reply, “If you can move me, you can have the couch,” before racing over to flop down on it as a lump of dead weight. Neither of us tried to move him.

Although rough in every sense of the word, there was a softer side to Shane that surfaced in times like these. The closer we became, the more of it I saw. How he’d hold the door wide for us entering his house, replenish ours drinks without asking, leave baskets of jerky on the front porch with black-humored notes that read things like “From Bambi.” He did know how to make us laugh, and as he warmed to us, I warmed to him. On the days Jed was called away for business, Shane filled the lonely hours. He asked me what I found hardest to adapt to in the country, and when I replied it was the sense of time - adjusting to the hours that blended together into undistinguishable days - he gave me a clock. “So you can always differentiate one hour from the next,” he said.

The face was crafted from a slab of a pinewood, and I knew at once he had made it himself. I almost cried, for it was the most beautiful gift I’d ever received. We became great friends, Shane and I. 

Three minutes ‘til midnight.

Jed and I rarely fought in the country. I suppose it was because there was nothing to fight over. But as I grew happier with each passing day, Jed’s temperament began to plateau. It didn’t worry me a great deal. I, more than anyone, understood that what goes up must come down eventually. With Jed’s steady demeanor, it was a year before I even took notice of it. There wasn’t a singular moment of enlightenment, just a slow series of observations. He’d sit on the porch for longer and longer into the evening, sometimes until dawn when I’d wander down in the early morning light to find him fast asleep. But what troubled me the most was the habit he’d developed for talking in his sleep. His shouting woke me up on more than one occasion, the voice of someone I didn’t recognize, so uncharacteristic of my habitually placid husband.

Two minutes ‘til midnight.

It was the afternoon of December 31^st, and we were scurrying about the house in a frenzy. My spirits couldn’t have been higher. That morning, Jed had surprised me with a ticket back into the real world. We were going to a party. A party in New York. Our bags were packed, my sequined dress pulled from the depths of the closet. I was packing our lunch in the kitchen when Jed came in, planting a kiss on my forehead. When he pulled away, his eyes darted down to the basket of food, something stealing his attention. “Jerky, again?” he asked, annoyance tainting his words.

 “I’ll never get tired of it. It’s delicious,” I protested. “You haven’t complained about it before.” I brushed him off with a flick of my wrist and continued packing the basket full of food. “What’s Shane doing for New Year’s? You don’t think he’ll be spending it by himself, do you?”

 Jed shrugged, and I turned back to him just in time to see the side of his mouth give a small twitch.

“We should invite him,” I pressed, and it wasn’t a question. “We should have thought of it earlier! Would you finish packing the lunches, I’ll head over to his right now. It’s not too late. We can all bring in the New Year together. Oh, don’t look at me like that,” I winked, turning my back to him. “I’ll save a kiss for you too.”

I didn’t give Jed a backwards glance as I fled the kitchen to pull on my boots. I didn’t even turn to say goodbye before stepping out the door. But I never made it to Shane’s. I never made it past the front porch. My back foot was still inside the house when a loud crack filled the silence. A blinding pain followed it, erupting through my skull like a sledgehammer. I dropped like a ragdoll.

One minute 'til midnight.

Darkness had fallen when I awoke in our living room, head throbbing and hands bound. A stranger sat opposite me. He was disguised as Jed. He was the man I’d married on the outside, but in his eyes I could see that he’d changed. Snapped into someone – or something else.

“I knew you loved him,” he said in a matter-of-fact way.

 I shook my head, trying to clear it, for I had no idea what he was talking about.

He didn’t wait for my reply. “I saw the way you looked at each other. The way you laughed together. We used to laugh like that too. Don’t you remember? DON’T YOU REMEMBER?” Jed slammed his hands down on the table. Spit flew from his grimace, painting him as a rabid dog.

I tried to speak, but could only summon a whimper before the words flowed coherently. “I don’t … know who –"

“Silence,” he interrupted. And following his own command, dropped his voice to a chilling whisper. “We were so good, you and I. I’ve never loved anyone but you. I will never love anyone but you. And now, I’m going to ensure you return the same promise to me. I can’t freeze time, but I can stop it. We'll die here together in this year - while we’re still in love. And we’ll remain in love forever.”

Ten seconds 'til midnight.

He stands, knocking his chair backwards. It crashes to the ground and I flinch. As he walks towards me, time stands still. I don’t want the last thing I see to be his face - for that hateful image to plague my soul for all eternity. I tear my gaze to the clock instead, the clock that made me as happy as I’d been in the city, as happy as I’d been with Shane. I never loved him that way, not more than a friend. It’s strange, the things you can’t see unless you’re looking for them, but even stranger are the things you see that aren’t even there. An imagined affair. One Jed believed so wholeheartedly was real, he was going to kill me over it. But it’s too late to protest. I'm not arguing with Jed anymore. I’m face to face with his disease. His cabin fever.

Nine. Eight. Seven.

He’s close now. His breath reaches my face. His rage consumes me.

Six. Five. Four. 

Moonlight catches the knife that he raises above his head.

Three. Two.

My breath draws a sharp intake, and when I exhale, I scream.

One.