Jack

Just a little something I wrote a while back--it's about a man who is able to see how long people have left to live.

 Jack's hands were stuffed in his pockets. He hung his head low and hunched his back as he traveled across the Brooklyn sidewalk. Light was a gentle shower, a drizzle of illumination, and the grass was piercingly green, beautifully so. Jack saw silver glimmers on the concrete, like little stars. He reached for one, then felt its cool surface and analyzed the etchings. Roosevelt was carved into this little star, immortalized in silver. “In God We Trust.” As he spun his treasure, the corners of his mouth peeled back. But then he let it slip through his fingers, back toward home. It sung as it settled down.

Jack continued walking. When he gathered the courage to glance at the luminescent green numbers above everyone's heads, he felt his heart sting. A young woman in a sundress with bright red lips and a businessman holding black briefcases glanced at Jack. The young woman smiled. Jack thought it was a pretty smile, such a pretty smile"and so full of life. The businessman's face stayed expressionless. She had 10 years, five months and 20 days left. Why so few? he thought. Cancer, a freak accident, murder? The businessman, on the other hand, had 40 years, 4 months, and 29 days left. Sometimes he wished he could snatch the numbers from one person and give them to someone else, like adjusting a magazine rack so they're all in their proper place. But how the hell did he know what was proper? What was proper anyway? They all ended up in the same place. He wished he could tell someone about the numbers; he always wished he could, but whenever he opened his mouth to reveal it, his esophagus became a vacuum, through which the words got sucked back in.

Those ever-changing numbers taunted him before he even knew what they represented. As a child, he'd tried to tell his mother. He'd tried to tell his father. His teachers, his friends. It was futile then and it was futile now.

But then he spotted stillness. The numbers above a man--six feet tall and wearing a trench coat--weren't moving. They always moved as the seconds slipped away. And the numbers themselves were all zeros. How could this be? Jack rubbed his eyes. He steered himself to the left as the man crossed the street. I've gotta do something, I've gotta talk to him. Jack took deep breaths; his heart felt like it was being scorched with lava. He knew he needed to get his attention somehow; maybe he could bump into him, causing him to drop something of his. Maybe he would have an excuse to talk to him then... He could say, “You look familiar. Did we go to school together?” Uncertainty was like bubbling goo inside the cauldron that was his stomach. Why now? Why, on March 2^nd, 2014, is this happening? And then it occurred to him: Maybe he knows something.

But before Jack could bump into him, the mysterious man stopped dead in his tracks and clutched Jack's arms.

“Who are you?” the man shouted, his eyes wide. “Who ARE YOU?”

Jack's heart fluttered and his stomach lurched--the cauldron had spilled. “I'm Jack! Jack Sullivan!”

The man loosened his grip and let his arms fall to his sides. “Come here.”

Jack knew he had to follow. He couldn't guess what might come. And somehow the man trusted that he'd follow, since he didn't turn around. They went back across the street and down the sidewalk for some time until they reached a brick house with a door framed in red. They went up the staircase and the man opened the door, leading Jack in. Jack looked around. It was empty except for a single chair. The man slammed the door shut and locked eyes with Jack.

“Do you see the numbers?” he asked, squinting his eyes.

“Yeah,” Jack said, nodding rapidly. “You, you see 'em too?”

Quickly Jack raised his hands to his lips. But... how?

“Oh, I see them all right,” he said. “And yours are all zeros. You ought to be dead.”

Not... moving?

“Yeah, uh, neither are yours.”

“That's it. How old are you, Jack Sullivan?”

“I'm 32.”

“You don't look a day over 20.”

“So I've been told.”

“Guess how old I am. Go on, guess.”

“Uh,” Jack said, looking for grooves in the man's face. “23?”

“I'm fifty, Sullivan. I'm fifty years old. I left my hometown, Kansas City, 'cause my relatives couldn't handle it. My wife couldn't especially. At first she'd tease me, pinch my cheeks, tell me I was lucky to look so young... But when I turned 40 and I still didn't have a single f*****g crevice in my face, she left me. There's something wrong with me. Something wrong with my DNA. I can't age past 22 or however old you said I look,” he said, then took a deep breath. “I've been waiting for a guy like you to come around for a long time.”

Damn, Jack thought. This is a lot to take in.

“That's rough. What's your name?” Jack said.

“It's Lloyd,” he said. “I used to think I was schizophrenic, with the numbers and all. But when I saw someone die at the exact moment that they got to zero, I knew I couldn't be. You know what I think, Jack?”

“What?”

“I think we're immortal.”

Jack furrowed his brows and took a step back.

“Immortal,” Jack said.