Taking Time

“What was it like being her neighbor?”

“Oh, um, yes… Well…” the widowed Mrs. Byrd stuttered out.

The reporter blinked encouragingly with a warm smile.

“She was a kind young woman” Mrs. Bryd said softly, pausing deeply before continuing. “Looking in from the outside, someone might say she was always running late. But from my point of view, she was just running on her own schedule.”

The young reporter, about the same age as Sarah had been, scribbled something down on her notepad. She leaned in closer towards Mrs. Byrd and questioned…

“What do you mean by that?”

Mrs. Byrd hesitated.

She sat back in her chair attempting to regain the distance between her and the reporter. She crossed her arms across her thin chest, trapping her long gray hair beneath. Her gaze shifted downwards away from the reporter.

“Look, I’m sure you want me to say that she was odd, a freak! That I could tell she was no good from the moment I met her!” Mrs. Bryd exclaimed, now looking up to meet the reporters eyes. “But I won’t do it because it’s not the truth. She was lovely young lady not many people understood.”

“Mrs. Bryd” the reporter said in a gentle tone. “I don’t want that from you.”

The reporter sat upright in her chair once more.

“You’re the only who seems to have really known her” she continued. “She had no family or friends. Ever since this happened, her name has been getting dragged through the mud. Which is why I want your side of the story. I want the world to know what she was like in your eyes.”

Mrs. Bryd shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Her arms uncrossed and reached forward to rub her arthritic knees. Tapping her thighs with her furrowed hands she replied, “Oh alright. I will tell you about her. I will tell you our story. But you must retell it exactly as I tell you. No shifted views of her. I want you to talk of her as I do.”

The reporter picked up the audio recorder and playfully shook it in her hand. “I will tell it, as you tell me. Hand to god” She said raising the recorder into the air with a smile.

“Oh hunny” Mrs. Bryd chuckled. “In your line of work I don’t think you’ll be believing in god for to much longer.”

The reporter replied with a playful shrug before folding her hands together in her lap, like a kid waiting for a story.

There was a long pause as Mrs. Bryd chose how to begin her story.

“She moved into the house adjacent to mine a few years back. Our kitchen windows faced each other’s and were barely further apart than you and I now. My husband Benny, Bernard, had suddenly passed just a few months before that. My children were around for a while after, but eventually all returned to their normal lives, leaving me alone in the house.”

Mrs. Bryd had begun to slouch in her chair from thought, and now paused to readjust herself. She rolled her shoulders back, regaining her elegant posture.

“Quiet is something you either don’t mind, or it makes you deeply uncomfortable. After having my husbands wretched sports games on and drinking buddies over nearly every night for a millennia, quiet was something I has become unaccustomed too. It was something I thought I craved. But in those few weeks in between my children leaving and Sarah moving in, I became deeply uncomfortable in my own home.

The houses creaks and moans unnerved me. I tried playing some of my husbands old records, but either the records had worn, or my ears have changed because the music didn’t sound as sweet as it used too. Then, at 4 o’clock on an August afternoon, the usual quiet of my house (and the neighborhood for that matter) was utterly shattered.

The moving van arrived with squeaking brakes and blaring classical music. The driver was a brunette with oversized sun glasses, accompanied by a look of hopeful distress. When she parked the van, she left the stereo running with the engine off. The music could be heard up and down the street for nearly a quarter mile! Weirdest of all, as I watched her from my window, I never saw her notice that it was playing. No mindless finger taps, or dance steps as she moved around. She looked oblivious to the raging cacophony.

The way she worked can best be described as haphazard unpacking of the van where the point of the matter was regularly forgotten and remembered. She’d grab a box, walk halfway to the house, set it down, and then start doing something else entirely such as checking the tire pressure, or investigating how to unhook the car towed behind the van. Then she’d look over, see the box, and run over to finish carrying it inside.

This routine continued well into the wee hours of the night when the van’s battery died and the music ceased. The next day a tow service came and properly unhooked the car behind the van, jump started the battery, and towed it back to whatever rental agency it belonged too.”

The reporter continued to stare intently at Mrs. Byrd encouraging her to continue.

“The following afternoon I heard a tea kettle screeching from her house. I listened to it for a good few minutes before I started to worry. I looked out my kitchen window into hers and saw the kettle screaming for someone to release it from the burner. I couldn’t see her from the window, and was worried something may have happened.

I rasped on her door for a good minute before checking the door handle to find it was open. I announced my entrance repeatedly but assumed if she couldn’t hear the kettle, she couldn’t hear me. I carefully sauntered into the kitchen and removed the kettle from the stove. There was a mug with a tea bag in it ready to be made, so I went ahead and poured a cup.

I called out ‘hello’ and few more times before noticing the door to the backyard was open. When I walked out I saw Sarah sitting in a pile of mulch, planting pansies. She had headphones on, which is why she couldn’t hear.

I walked in front of her and waited for her to notice me.

I quickly introduced myself and told her of the kettle, that I didn’t mean to intrude, and that I wasn’t a threat. Sarah happily thanked me for being a good neighbor and coming to her tea kettles rescue. She sprung to her feet, dirt and mulch falling out of her shirt and pockets as she did so, and invited me in for tea.

One cup of tea, turned into three, and then takeout for dinner. Sarah was kind, exuberantly intelligent, and extremely forthcoming with her personal details from the get go. About halfway through our second mug of tea, she told me she was very forgetful. She said about a year ago she was diagnosed with Dyschronometria. Time for her passed irregularly and her short term memory box was ‘shot to hell’ as she put it.

She said ‘I can do hours worth of work, and still mentally think only 5 minutes has passed. The sun rising and setting it the clearest way for me to keep track of how long it’s been.’

I asked her if she had tried wearing a watch. She said the doctors had tried to teach her techniques to check the time, but that she still couldn’t even remember to do that. Sometimes, when cooking for example, she would set and alarm to go off every five minutes to remind her to check the food. But she mainly opted for takeout and microwaveable dinners most meals to avoid the possibility of disaster.

She had lived in an apartment for while between the hospital and here, but found that not being able to garden was one of the only things that drove her crazier than her condition. That night we split a pizza and a liter of soda, laughing long into the small hours of the morning. Our bond was immediate.

From then on, whenever I heard the tea kettle screeching or saw her beginning to cook, I made my way over and let myself in. Over time she began to share more personal details of her life. She showed me her artwork and said her father used to be a jeweler, and that she wanted to design as well. She told me her had left her enough money to buy this house, and take her time adjusting to her new life.

Sarah had no trouble focusing on the task at hand, whatever that was. Her and I could talk for hours. She could still drive to the store and shop for groceries, even though she often did so irregularly and at odd hours. She was smart. Very, very smart. She simply didn’t track time well, and couldn’t always remember what she had been doing a few moments before, which often lead of overly salted food. Her animated ways and relentless curiosity is what made most people steer away from her.

After weeks of tea and takeout together, she opened up to me about the incident.”

Here Mrs. Byrd paused once more. She sat stoically. Her eyes darkened and the once light feeling in the room withdrew into her dimming eyes. The tension was palpable.

“What incident?” the reporter questioned, slightly unsettled by Mrs. Byrd’s sudden change in demeanor.

“She had been 23 when it happened. She was working at the family jewelry store. Her first piece she had designed and crafted, a young couple was eyeing for purchase. She said it was the most excited she had ever been. The two others on staff were sitting by the register chatting. The store was empty except for the five of them.

That’s when the three of them walked in.

The men were all thin and scraggly, dressed in black. Their faces covered entirely except for their eyes. Sarah described their eyes as dark, yellowed, and crazed. Like those you would see on a user desperately pursuing their next hit. The men raised their guns and demanded that everyone get on the floor with their hands out in front of them. A few screams echoed in the room, but Sarah didn’t scream. She simply complied, which is what her father had always taught her to do. The girl by the register tried to run for the back room, but got shot in the leg long before she ever reached it. She fell to the ground, wallowing in pain and drowning in the instant tears. Sarah just laid there as instructed.

She told the robbers to take what they wanted, but to please not harm anyone else. She said one of them snarkily replied ‘That was the plan now wasn’t it boys’.

She watched as they raided the displays, taking the pieces marked with the highest price tags, picking and choosing what to take. She saw one of them reach for her ring, the one the couple wanted to buy, and she spoke up again.

‘Not that one’ she interjected. The man was apparently amused by her attachment to the ring and questioned her over it. She told him it was hers and it meant a lot to her. He replied that then ‘it would mean a lot to him’.

His condescending tone lit a sudden fire in her. She cursed him and lunged for the gun he had haphazardly placed on the counter. He barely snatched it before she did, and pistol whipped Sarah to the ground. He kicked her in the back of the head, causing her to black out and ultimately causing her Dyschronometria.

She was in a coma for months afterwards. Her father tried tracking down the men in the security footage, seeking vengeance for this daughter, attempting to make up for local law enforcements failure. He was found dead two months later in a dumpster with the same caliber round in his chest as the cashier had had in her leg.

When Sarah awoke, her father was dead, the family lawyer was liquidating the store, and she was bitterly alone. Her mother had died a when Sarah was 13, in a car accident with her older brother who passed soon after from a hemorrhage.”

The reporter offered Mrs. Bryd a box of tissues. Her face was now tear stained, but she refused the tissues and opted for her sleeve instead.

“Sarah’s life was ‘privileged’ with money, but was plagued by unfortunate events that robbed her of her family and her identity. We worked together to find each other, to help each other keep living in a world we had both lost taste for. We found purpose in each other, and in the hobbies we shared.

I helped Sarah land some interviews to show off her incredible jewelry designs. But no matter how talented she was, her personality off put most everyone. Not to mention the fact she was late to almost every appointment she ever set, including the interviews. Every time she got a phone call saying ‘no’ her heart shattered. She couldn’t remember everything, but she remembered everything bad that happened to her.

A year or so ago, I noticed a shift in her. She didn’t invite me over as much and wasn’t as warm when I was there. She spent more time away from home than she ever had before. I knew something was up, but I didn’t know what for the longest time. Then one day, much like the first day I met her, I heard the tea kettle screeching for far too long and went over to turn it off. I found the back door open and went outside. Sarah was crawling out of a cellar door in the ground. A door that I’m not sure had always been there. I announced myself and she quickly stood throwing the doors shut.

I told her of the kettle and we wandered inside for tea. I asked her of the cellar and she said she was remodeling it. As she handed me my tea, I saw a ring on her finger. A beautiful ring. I asked her about it. She shut down and changed the subject.

I asked again. I asked if it was her ring, the one she had designed.

She nodded blankly.

I asked her how she got it.

She said she took it.

‘From who?’ I asked innocently.

‘From the man who killed my father’ she replied coldly. Then added ‘and me.’

As open and honest as she ever was, she told me what she had done, what she was doing.

She cried heavily, leaning her elbows on the kitchen table. She wailed about how she was never going to get to live the life she wanted too, because of him… because of them. She screamed about the police’s incompetence in finding them, and how easy it really was if you had a sliver of intelligence and persistence. The two things she claimed to have left.

She told me of how she wanted them to feel how she felt. She wanted them to experience her pain, her inability to tell time. She wanted them to live in the hell that she was in. So she made it for them. In the cellar.

No daylight, no books, no freedom. Only themselves to talk too, and cold food to eat as they were chained down there in the darkness. She supplied them each with a fork and a knife, encouraging them to kill themselves whenever they had enough of the hell she had created.

I tried to tell her she was crazy, that this was wrong. She said she was tired of being called crazy and didn’t care. That once they were all dead, she would kill herself and finally be rid of the pain which she had tried to bury with gardening for many years. I immediately felt guilty for calling her crazy. The word we had decided we would never call each other.

After that, I didn’t visit anymore. I knew the day had come when the cops arrived outside her door. I watched as four body bags were rolled out into the daylight from the cellar. In all honesty I felt relieved that Sarah was no longer in pain. The cops rasped on my door, and handed me a note she left me. In it, was her ring.”

Mrs. Bryd was now uncontrollably weeping, her frail frame shaking from the storm of emotions booming inside of her. Eventually she began to regain her composure and the reporter asked,

“But why come forward? You’re now being charged with accessory to murder and will be stuck in this place for the rest of your life” and gestured to the cold stone walls encircling them.

“Because” Mrs. Byrd replied weakly.

She cleared her throat.

“Because people who have been wronged cannot rest until the wrong doers have been brought to justice.” She raised her chin up proudly now. “And justice is served better late than never at all.”