Borrowed Time

My name is Orion Cadence-Smith, Orion being my father’s favorite constellation, named after an ancient Greek hunter and visible all over the world, while the dual last name adds character and, additionally, my parents’ not-so-great ability to compromise.
I thought this would be a good introduction because, up until a year ago, my name was the most interesting thing about me.
For the longest time, my dad was my best friend. It sounds kind of cheesy, and pretty pathetic, I know, but I couldn’t have asked for a better one. I remember when I was a kid, he taught me how to tell time with the stars.
“C’mere, Rion, I want to teach you something.” He said, pointing to the night sky, the big dipper wasn’t too far from his gaze, and I could see the north star in the distance.
“The big dipper’s handle is like the big hand on a clock, and the north star is the axis, if it’s before March, you take away an hour per month. If it’s after, you add one. Then you double it, and that’s the time. Do you think you can do it?” I nodded, and squinted at the stars like I was deep in thought, calculating.
“It’s 9:15.” I said proudly, my dad looked astonished.
“Amazing! How did you get it so closely?!” My giggles gave me away.
“Ah, you’re a little cheater, aren’t you? You saw the time on my watch.” He chuckled. “My grandfather taught me that trick, this was his watch you know.” He said, tapping it with his index finger. “And then it was my dad’s, and one day it’ll be yours.” He pointed at the sky again.
“Can you tell me what time it is now?” He asked, I shook my head.
“It’s bed time, now let’s get you tucked in before your mother gets home from work.”
I still think about that day sometimes, when walking out to the front lawn to look at the stars was something that my dad could do effortlessly, where we could talk without the dull hum of his oxygen tank whirring in the background, before it felt like if I wasn’t careful, he could slip through my fingers like sand.
He was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when I was about 13, but he always tried his best to make it look like he wasn’t in any pain. The only thing he ever complained about were his swollen fingers making it hard to play the piano like he used to when he was younger. That’s how he met my mom, a concert violinist at the time. He settled down and took an easy job working from home as an accountant, while she went on to conduct the state’s top orchestra. Needless to say, she traveled a lot.
My mom, even before the divorce, was never an easy person to be close to, she was always a hard worker, and her goals meant a lot to her. Having a sick husband and nothing special for a kid held her back.
But I’m not here to make this look like a sob story. I’m here to confess, to admit to my sins, to try, not to justify what I’ve done, but to possibly be able to explain it, if I even deserve the chance of an explanation.
I’m here to tell you how I lost my best friend.
…
I spent a majority of my life being a nobody. It wasn’t because everyone at my school hated me, though I did have my fare share of encounters with bullies, or because I wanted to be alone, I had just never really figured out how to really let myself be, well, seen.
I went from one of the worst cellists in my school’s orchestra to first chair in our district’s symphony, I went from hardly having any friends my own age to being in a rather close knit group, and I went from being afraid to talk to girls to dating the most beautiful, smart, and nicest person I’ve ever met, which I happened to have had a hopeless crush on since junior high. All in the span of a little over a year.
While I had trouble making myself seen, there was someone, well, something that saw me, and it wasn’t human. He called himself Mutuus.
We met in my attic in the beginning of my freshmen year. Dad’s lungs were getting worse and it was just about the one place that hadn’t been thoroughly dusted. It was my vain attempt to help.
I’m surprised he, well, it, was able to last in there very long to be honest, it seems whatever kind of creature he was thrived in grimy, dusty places thoroughly worn by the hands of time. I didn’t notice him at first, hidden well among a mass of junk and antiques, which probably felt just like home to him. He blent in well.
He hushed me before I could scream, dozens of rings covering every claw-like finger. Pearl necklaces, chained glasses, and silk ties alike all hung from his neck. His wrists were covered in bracelets and cuff-links, on one foot he wore an elegant women’s highheeled shoe, on the other a durable looking men’s workboot, both looked ancient, and precious. He wore various belts and sashes over a torn tunic-looking gown that seemed to be made of old journal pages, smudged and yellowed over the years.
He spoke.
“Your name is Orion, yes?” He hissed, a forked tongue slithering out between a rainbow of gold and silver teeth.
I was too scared to do anything but nod.
“I knew a man with that name once, he gave me this belt.” He make a wheezing screeching noise that I think was supposed to be laughter as he gestured to one of the many, many tangled objects wrapped around his waist. I couldn’t tell which one he meant.
“That-that’s impossible! Orion’s just a myth, his belt is just stars.” I said, the unfathomable amount of questions growing in my mind not stopping me from acting like a smartass.
He hiss-laughed again.
“And who do you think put him up with the stars? He was a man before he was a legend. Came to me begging to be able to fight some giant scorpion.” Nostalgia seemed to be a permanent expression on this creature’s face.
“B-but I-I don’t want to fight anything!” I said, growing increasingly more scared and confused.
“But you want something, yes? You want to be something memorable?” He looked at me with his beady, reptilian eyes.
“I just wanted to help my dad!” I whimpered defensively, the creature snorted.
“I can’t do that, this deal is for you, not him. Only certain people can see me, people with a great amount of potential but also a great amount of pain, and he’s satisfied with his achievements….” He paused. “You on the other hand…. there is a way you can help him.”
I looked at him quizzingly.
“You want to make him proud, don’t you? Live up to your parents’ legacy once he’s gone?”
I nodded, deciding not to ask how he knew that, or any of this, because like everything else about him, I doubted his answer would make any sense.
“Then it’s a deal.” He said, flashing a metallic smile.
His image began to fade as he started to disappear, like a chameleon.
“W-wait!” I said, stopping him. He looked at me expectantly.
“What’s a deal? What are you going to do to me?” I asked, exasperated.
He placed a small hour glass on a nearby shelf. The sand wasn’t moving.
“It’s… broken.” I said, even more confused.
“It just moves more slowly to your eyes, there are roughly 9,000 hours in a year, and each grain of sand represents one. I’ll come back for your end of the bargain once the glass runs out.”
“B-but…”
“What now?” He asked, annoyed.
“What… what are you?”
“You can call me Mutuus.” He said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m on a tight schedule.”
And with that he was gone.
…
He kept his end of the bargain. I don’t think my dad could have been more proud of me, and, likewise, I felt proud of myself. I was able to talk to people, to make friends, and to play the cello more confidently and fluidly than I had ever been able to before. I breezed through auditions, and caught the attention of not only the top conductors, but certain musicians as well. Dawn Summers was the girl of my dreams, and she was finally noticing me.
We had a lot more in common than I would have ever thought, and I spent every moment not with my dad, my cello, or my new found friends, with her. I felt like we could have been great friends, even when we were younger, if I had just worked up the courage to talk to her, and my new abilities gave me that courage. My confidence extended to more than just talking, however. She was an amazing violinist and our duets were legendary, we were always in sync. She said I kept time perfectly, occasionally joking that I was her human metronome. Even before Muutus, I learned not to take a single second for granted.
I was never fond of drinking and going to parties, but I still had some great times. I never expected to go to homecoming, let alone be asked to. I mean, I’m still a terrible dancer, but I knew everything couldn't be fixed. It didn’t matter.
Movie nights, study groups with a questionable amount of work actually getting done, late nights spent texting, all the things my teenage years were supposed to be were now possible. Even when I was alone, I finally had friends.
I finally felt seen.
...
It was after everything seemed to be going great, I had better grades, amazing friends, someone I loved, and my mom had even attended one of my concerts and told me I had done a good job, which from her was one of the biggest honors I could have received, when the nightmares started.
I’d wake up from the most agonizing dreams to the strangest scratches all over my body, stemming from paper cut-like lacerations to what looked like claw marks across my skin.
They faded, just like normal wounds, but the blurred figures in the corner of my vision became more prominent. I went up to the attic to check on the hour glass, I was running out of time.
He appeared before me one night as I was dusting the attic again, a few pinches of sand still left within the timepiece.
“Your time is almost running out.” Said Mutuus, whose riches had only seemed to grow since the last time I saw him, adorned with even more ridiculous heirlooms and jewelry.
I grew pale. “What do you want?! I-I don’t have anything to give you… Is it money? So you can buy more of… of that.” He gave me an unamused glare as his several pairs of earings shimmered in the attic light.
“L-look, I’m sorry! I can give you that, I get paid for performances and I can even take on more jobs i-if you want me t-” He stopped me there.
“What I want cannot so easily be bought.” He said, various chains and items rattling.
My mind suddenly went to every book, every movie, every story I had heard like this, about making deals with beings like him.
“...My soul? You’re…. You’re here to kill me.” I said, in a small voice, hoping I wasn't right.
“That would do, but…. there’s something else I prefer…. if you’d rather barter with that instead.”
I honestly couldn’t believe there was a way out, it seemed too good to be true.
“What do you want?” I asked, tentatively.
“Your memories. Your experiences. Your history. And not just yours, but that of many before you… Yes, the item I want holds something that is truly priceless.” His necklaces clinked together.
“I… don’t know how to give you that.” I responded, for some reason I felt even more frightened as he mentioned the alternative.
“You will know the item when you see it. Once the sand runs out, you may make your choice.”
I felt my stomach drop, my heart began to beat so fast that my chest burned.
“How much time do I have left?” I asked.
Mutuus glanced briefly at the hourglass. “Exactly one month, and that will be plenty of time.” He said.
I hardly got any sleep that night.
…
It wasn’t until I helped my dad out of bed for breakfast one morning that the gears in my mind began to turn. I nearly fainted, grabbing the edge of the table as he sat down to take a sip of coffee.
“Everything alright, Rion?” He asked, concerned. That’s how he always was. Hooked up to an oxygen tank with swollen hands gripping his coffee mug wondering if *I* was alright.
“Yeah, just got up too fast I guess.” I tried to keep my voice from shaking.
“Get something to eat, it’s not good to skip breakfast.” He said, but bringing myself to eat was the last thing I could do at that moment.
“Yeah I’ll grab something at school, see you later.” I said, cutting the conversation short and quickly getting my things as I head out the door.
Dawn was the first person to notice something was off, after insisting it was nothing she only grew more concerned.
“Is… is it your dad? Is he okay?” She asked, I had eventually felt close enough to her to tell her about his condition.
I didn’t meet her eyes. She nodded.
“Rion, why don’t you go home? We have this piece down anyway.” Her arm was around my shoulders, I let it stay there for a minute before putting my cello in it’s case and thanking her.
Dawn was an understanding person, but this was something I don’t think anyone would be able to grasp. She was right about my dad though, and I wished she wasn’t.
Cystic fibrosis makes people prone to lung infections, and my dad was currently fighting a pretty strong one. We would probably have to hospitalize him again soon, after his medication ran out and I… sped up the process.
If his pill bottle got lighter, he didn’t notice. He wasn’t due at the hospital until two weeks from now, and he planned to stick to that, probably to worry me less by needing to go sooner. He must have went days without the medication that was going down the garbage disposal. At this point, I didn’t need Mutuus to give me nightmares. I was becoming my own.
I got the call just a few days before Muutus would return, I had been making sure to keep an eye on the time. My mom surprised me in the lobby of the hospital, jetlagged from a last minute flight home.
“Your father and I have been talking and… we think it’s best if you move in with me for a while. I still have an apartment down here, you’d still be able to go to the same school and... I know you’ve always been good at taking care of yourself when I’m out of town. There’s enough room for most of your stuff and.. the house is still yours when you need it.” It sounded as if she already had planned out what she would have to say when this happened, we both knew it would come eventually. The bags under her eyes looked like they were from more than simple exhaustion.
When I finally met her gaze we both knew I understood.
“He’s in the room to the left, I don’t know if you would really want me to go with you but…” She looked down, I nodded.
“No, I think I need some time alone with him anyway.” I said, and walked down the hall.
His watch was sitting in his lap.
“You have a big concert coming up soon, don’t you buddy?” He asked. I nodded with a wary smile, not meeting his eyes.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it to this one… but I’m sure you’ll do great.” I nodded again, staring at the floor.
“C’mere, I want you to have something.” He had probably asked one of the nurses to take the watch off for him, he did his best to gesture to it.
“The band might be a bit big on you, if you need it adjusted or if it ever stops, the shop down the street does good repairs.” He said. “Ask for Jim if he’s still around, he’s a real craftsmen. He’ll give you a good price too.” He chuckled as I attempted to push away the thought of the watch hanging loosely with the rest of Muutus's trinkets on one of his leathery wrists.
“If it’s not too out of style to be carrying around all these years, you could give it to your kid one day.”
That’s when I started sobbing. He laid a cold hand on top of mine, until I was done.
I was outside looking at the stars when I got the call. He died at exactly 3:33 AM.
I tried to find the north star to help me tell the time, but, like always, I cheated.