Killing Time

Kristine Pendleton places a slice of Havarti cheese on the final sandwich for her three kids, before she tops each one off with a slice of whole wheat bread. It only takes a minute to bag up each of their sack lunches for the school field trip to the science museum.

She checks her watch and begins to calculate, “They’ll be downstairs in a minute, the bus will be here in four, and it will take them another minute or two to put on their shoes and reach the bus stop. Just enough time to sneak in a quick goodbye kiss.”

Kristine Pendleton has her schedule planned down to the minute, and sometimes to the second. Being punctual and organized is not how anyone from her childhood would describe her. If they saw the twenty-eight-year-old real estate agent right now, they’d swear that the current incarnation is an impostor.

The people in her life for the past nine years don’t know Kristine Pendleton as anyone other than a human dynamo of action, punctuality, and dependability. The woman has a single fifteen-minute time slot on her calendar designated as personal time, which she uses to plan the next day’s events.

Each of her three children comes downstairs, grabs their lunches, puts on their shoes, and receives their kiss from her, before heading out to the bus with thirty seconds to spare. This is all the time Kristina needs to take a glance in the mirror and press down the errant crease in her skirt and adjust the tuck of her blouse. She has twenty-seven minutes to reach the Wilkerson’s property for a scheduled open house.

Twenty-four minutes pass.

Traffic is light and when she pulls up to the property three minutes early, she takes in the view of the sign in the Wilkerson’s front yard, with her photo prominently displaying her signature ponytail hair, round rimmed eyeglasses, and crystal smile.

The potential buyer is already waiting patiently on the doorstep. He is there early, just like Kristine Pendleton. She exits her car and greets the well-groomed, business-attired gentleman with a courtesy wave and a spirited welcome before she reaches the sidewalk.

The Wilkerson’s property has been vacant for three weeks. During that time, Kristine Pendleton staged the empty home with rental furnishings, which includes wall decorations, plants, and more. The home has a feeling of comfort and warmth with soft color tones and a fragrant scent of lavender throughout the dwelling. The aesthetic is her signature style that she has carefully cultivated over the years, which was in contrast to her rebellious teen goth phase, where her motif of choice was the somber darkness that mirrored her depression, that she wrapped in all-black everything.

Gareth Stevenson follows Kristine through each of the rooms as she details the features, amenities, and possibilities at each stop of the six bedrooms, three-and-a-half-bathroom home. Kristine has set aside approximately two minutes per room, which is thirty seconds more than each room receives in her virtual video tour. As they near the end of the tour, she has a few minutes to spare. “Well, what do you think? Ready to make an offer?”

“You make a compelling pitch and paint a vivid picture, Miss Pendleton.”

Kristine kept her maiden name for business purposes; perhaps as a subconscious fear that her marriage doesn’t work out, in which case her sense was right - the marriage only lasted four years. She thinks highly of the dissolution process and remarks at how little paperwork needs to be done, by not having taken her husband’s family name when they got married.

Gareth leans his elbow against the side of the kitchen counter. “I’d like to go twenty thousand over whatever the highest offer on the table is. This house is where my new life begins.”

“I think my client will be pleased to hear that. Let me get the paperwork.” Kristine reaches into her bag and retrieves a leather-bound binder with her name embossed on the cover. It contains several multi-colored separators for specific types of real estate transactions. “I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of having it filled out ahead of time.”

Gareth responds with a smile and a nod of his head. “I don’t mind at all. In fact, I’ll use the extra free time to shore up my golf game later this afternoon.”

Her heart begins to beat faster at the thought of how large her commission will be from the sale of this multi-million-dollar home. She will take her children on a tropical island vacation during their summer break from middle school. She fishes through her purse for one of her custom branded pens, with a seven-millimeter tip and smooth gel ink, the ones she reserves for deals that she closes on.

Gareth Stevenson positions himself behind Kristine. He taps her on her shoulder, and when she turns around, he plunges an eight-inch chef’s knife through her sternum in one swift, powerful motion. She gasps, drops her purse, allowing its contents to spill across the floor. She falls onto the ground, laying on her back. She can’t feel her legs and her arms won’t move. Kristine’s immobile head can only look up at an amused Gareth, whose shirt and tie now contain a splattering of her bright red blood.

Gareth kneels next to Kristine as she gasps for her few final breaths. “Good. Nice and slow,” he whispers. He lowers his face closer to her reddened and watery eyes. He taps her forehead with his manicured index finger and the tear that is crawling down her face, past her temple, comes to a complete stop right before reaching the tragus portion of her ear.

Time appears to stand still for both of them.

It is at that precise moment that Gareth Stevenson, who was so fond of the chasm that separates life and death, contorts his smile in a manner that would strike fear such fear in Kristine that she wishes could have spent more time with her children earlier that morning.

He inhales the exhalation that escapes from Kristine Pendleton’s gasping mouth. Her lower lip is protruding farther than its thin, contoured, upper counterpart. He isn’t interested in the minty byproduct from the piece of gum she chewed and spit out on her way over to the house. His attention is on inhaling her essence and her very existence.

Gareth removes his phone from the inner coat pocket of his blue blazer and navigates through a few screens until a soulful jazz tune begins to play. He sets the phone down on the floor and rotates it so the sound waves from the internal speaker bounce off the walls and echo throughout the kitchen. In any other scenario, the intimacy of the saxophone would be a great romantic backdrop for two people to gaze longingly at each other with affection as they contemplate the many ways their bodies would intertwine in the heat of passion later that night.

This is a different form of intimacy.

He returns his attention to Kristine Pendleton and her motionless body, held in a suspended state, free from life and free from death. The only glitter in her eyes is now a reflection of a distant chandelier light that will need to be turned off to get a better look into the intricacies of the young mother’s life. Gareth chooses to shift her head to the side, removing her visage from the light fixture that allows the distortion.

“Ah, much better.” He marvels at the woman’s tenacity and drive as he stares into the deepest part of her corneas. He believes those qualities will come in handy throughout the duration of the next hundred years. Hers is a vintage soul that is spoken of in tall tales told when the rest of his kind congregate.

He takes another deep breath from the lingering particles of her final breath. This time, his lips almost touches hers. This is a luxury that he had forgone during the exuberance of his early years. Now that he is more mature, it is important to take time to enjoy the finer moments of another person’s lived life. To consume it in its entirety.

Gareth Stevenson revels in her triumphs and has goosebumps as her greatest hits play before his eyes. Her first kiss, her wedding vows, each one of her children being placed against her skin upon delivery in the birthing ward.

His eyebrows crease towards the bridge of his nose during her confrontation with the woman her husband was sleeping with. Gareth holds his stomach in pain as she signs her divorce papers and struggles to raise her children by herself. His jaw unclenches when the sounds of the jubilant trumpets take center stage in a solo of the jazz song. That’s when Kristine sells her first home as an agent and can afford a home large enough for her and her children.

Kristine Pendleton squeezed so much into a minute, and even seconds, during her life that it may have been too much for a being lesser than Gareth Stevenson to assimilate and consume. He knows better. He will pace himself. He takes a deep breath and holds it in for a few seconds, then slowly exhales.

“Jackpot,” He murmurs under his breath. While others waste their time moving aimlessly from one pointless moment to the next, achieving nothing of merit, Kristine Pendleton managed to make the most of her time, leaving room for nothing else. Gareth can live off her energy for a century.

He gently strokes the handle of the knife, now protruding like a stainless-steel flag from her chest, with his index finger. He marvels at the magnificent simplicity of his chosen instrument. Her heart trapped in motion, mid-beat, mere millimeters from the steel blade that it now shares space with.

“Thank you, Miss Pendleton. You’ve been exceedingly kind to me.” He takes an errant collection of hair from her carefully curated ponytail and tucks it under the undisturbed ones. He adjusts her chin, so her mouth is no longer agape.

He places his forefinger at the top of her nose and the previously suspended tear begins to roll once more, and reaches its predetermined destination, past her ear and onto the floor.

Two beats.

That’s all that her heart could give before it stopped forever. With the chasm now traversed. Kristine Pendleton was nothing more than a memory to those whose lives she touched in the brief moment of time that she lived.

Gareth Stevenson retrieves his phone, stands up, straightens his tie, turns off the chandelier light, and exits the home after closing the front door on his way out. His steps are lighter and as he looks at his watch, he begins to contemplate. “Two minutes here, four there, sixteen after that…” He gives a wink and a nod to the sign in the Wilkerson’s front yard as he passes by. “Feels good. Thanks, kid.”