The Last Ten Years

The man was young. A stubble darkened his chin, a small cobweb of creases forming in the corners of his eyes. Dark purple shadows bracketed his eyes, making them look like they were bulging in their sockets. His clothes were tattered –skinny jeans that had long since gone out of fashion, a plaid shirt worn open over a plain grey t-shirt.

The man was dead.

‘Arden,’ I said. My voice boomed. I hadn’t used it in quite some time.

The man looked up. He carried a backpack with a keyring attached –the letter ‘N’ now faded clashed against his metal water bottle. ‘N’ for Nick, Nicholas James Arden.

His eyes widened as he saw me. ‘No,’ he whispered, as if anyone else could hear us. ‘It’s not time yet. I’m not done here.’

I wondered if I scared him. I towered over him, with giant hands, a deep voice and the ability to erase his existence if the mere thought flitted across my mind.

‘It’s been ten years,’ I said, ‘to the day.’

Arden didn’t speak. What was there to say?

‘You’ve been busy,’ I continued, ‘haven’t you? Haven’t you made the most of what little there is left for you here?’

‘I was supposed to have more time,’ Arden said quietly. ‘I’m not ready. I don’t want to go.’

‘No one ever does.’

It was the one thing I learned in the past ten years. People always had regrets. If they only had one more year, one more month, one more day. Something they always wanted to do, to say. Someone they didn’t want to leave behind.

But the universe didn’t owe Arden anything. He wasn’t supposed to get anything. He was prey to the world –victim to all of the hills and valleys.

‘I’ve been lenient with you,’ I said. ‘So tell me, what have you been doing this past decade?’

Arden shifted uncomfortably. His eyes darted anxiously out of the corner of his eyes.

‘Meeting people,’ he said cautiously. ‘Friends. Family. Saying goodbye. Doing things I always wanted to.’ He huffed a dry laugh. ‘Can’t eat, though. One thing I’ve missed most.’

I didn’t smile. Arden was lying. It was the way he glanced over his shoulder, or stared blankly at the ground. Maybe it was the unconscious twitch in his lips or how he clasped his hands together in front of him. I’d become good at reading people.

‘Anything else?’ I prompted after a moment of silence. When you were quiet, people felt the need to keep talking. To fill the silence. Arden didn’t. I gave him one last chance for him to come clean. To tell me what he was hiding. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to peer into his past.

‘No.’

Wrong answer. I towered over the man –he wasn’t short, I was just tall. But I grabbed his hand in mine, so delicately, like it could break with a mere touch. I stared into his slate-grey eyes. I watched.

‘You’re lying,’ I said, the hairs on my neck bristling. What I saw was wicked Vengeful. Nothing like the peaceful spirit he had promised to be. How could he betray me like this? ‘You haven’t changed at all. Don’t you remember our deal? What I did for you?’

Arden quickly drew his hand back, like it had been bitten by a snake. He drew a sharp breath in. He could sense my anger, radiating like heat.

‘No, I’m not, I promise.’ His voice had become cracked and feeble. ‘I didn’t –I didn’t hurt anyone. I helped. I tried –I tried to.’

Ten years ago, Arden was my first job. It was simple: I had to convince him to leave Earth and come with me to the afterlife. There, his fate would be decided.

‘Please, you can’t take me, I’m not ready,’ he pleaded. I knew he would. I’d been warned. But Arden was convincing. ‘I never meant to hurt her. My –my sister. I want to be there.’

‘Not possible.’ I had replied. But he could tell I was wavering.

‘It was a mistake. I was stupid. I should have kept her out of it. I needed the money.’

I thought he would be a good Guardian. But there was something else in his eyes –a glint of malice hiding behind his good intent. He’d stolen and beaten and hurt so many people. He was the reason that people lived on the streets and feared for their lives and ended up in tiny, dank cells. But a little girl got dinner every night because of it.

Until she didn’t.

‘Please. Just ten years. I won’t do anything, I swear. I just need to see her. Make sure she’s okay.’

Arden sank to his knees. If ghosts could cry, tears would be streaming down his cheeks.

‘You won’t be able to talk to anyone,’ I reasoned. He wouldn’t have a body. He couldn’t talk in a way that anyone could hear him. People would walk right through him. Couldn’t see him. But he could alter the world –tweak something in his home so his sister found a drawing he made her, or tuck her into bed, drawing the covers up to her small face.

‘I know,’ he whispered. ‘I just want to stay. Please. I can’t leave her. Not yet.’

‘Fine,’ I grumbled. ‘Ten years. But you can’t alter the world in any way. Say your goodbyes. I’ll be back in ten years.’

Arden laughed and stood up and thanked me. I’d never seen a dead person so happy. But it was there, in the back of my mind, an unease, a dread, a discomfort. Arden wasn’t a good person.

What if I had just made a huge mistake?

‘I let you stay,’ I snapped, ‘I bent the rules for you. And you broke my trust. You hurt people. You interfered with their lives.’

‘No!’ Arden yelled. ‘I never meant to hurt anyone. I didn’t hurt anyone. Please, you have to believe me.’

‘Believe you? After you lied to me?’ I growled. ‘Your soul doesn’t deserve to be saved. You deserve to be let go.’

It was my fault. I shouldn’t have let him stay. I hadn’t let anyone stay since –not loving grandmas who passed away at home, not kids who wanted to hug their dog one last time. No one.

Only the one who took the lives of so many others.

‘Please, you can’t. I didn’t hurt anyone. I helped them!’

I waved him away. In an instant, Arden was gone. His voice swept away by the wind, his body vanished. Not ascended. Not remembered by anyone who hadn’t known him. He simply ceased to exist. I had erased his soul from existence.

Only then did my anger begin to melt away.

How had I been so foolish as to let someone as malevolent as Arden stick around for a decade? Why hadn’t I trusted my instincts ten years ago? He had used his last ten years on Earth to seek revenge, to interfere with the lives of those who had wronged him. He was an evil man.

I walked down the street, swallowed in my thoughts. It had been my fault. It had been a mistake. I should have denied him the privilege to stay, as I did so many others.

Why had I ever thought this heartless man would make a good Guardian?

A man was walking down the street. He walked right through me, without knowing the giant, eight-foot self-regretting Guardian he just stepped through. Dark hair, hood pulled low over his eyes. But I recognised him instantly. I had seen him ten years ago. The man who murdered Arden in the back alley behind his house, when his little sister watched out of her bedroom window, crying hysterically.

The man had been jailed briefly but charges were minimal. He was released recently.

I trailed the man down the street. His hands were jammed in his pockets, fidgeting with something. He looked nervous. Perhaps returning to the life he left behind when he was in prison.

The man suddenly made a sharp left into a twenty-four-hour diner. I almost missed him, swallowed into the noise of knives and forks scraping on ceramic plates. Bustling with activity despite the hour, the man slunk into the back room and pulled his hoodie off over his head. He tied an apron behind him and entered the kitchen, where he joined the other chefs, cooking and yelling and wiping his brow with the back of his sleeve.

How had this man gotten a job? He had been imprisoned, and a vengeful ghost had been plotting against him. Messing with him. Yet he’d turned his life around.

I stared at the man. Then, like clockwork, I understood.

I had just made a terrible mistake.

Arden hadn’t lied. He had helped this man. In some way I couldn’t comprehend, he had helped the man who killed him get a job after prison.

I had to get him back.