January first, at about 1:00 A.M., my predecessor emerged from an alley as I stumbled home. An old man with a tattered face and stained clothes. I stepped away fearing a drunken outburst, but his eyes lit on me and he reached out a hand.
He took hold of my arm and squeezed, and I gasped. “Get your hand off me!” I shouted, but he dragged me to his face. His lips hung slack; his rancid breath poured over me. Fireworks went off behind me and they illuminated his dark eyes. His nails dug into my arm through my coat, tearing the fabric and scratching my skin.
“I can’t do it no more,” he said, and I gagged on his breath. “I can’t. You have to do it for me.”
“Are you hurt?” I asked him. “Do you need help?”
“You have to do it. You have to do it for me. I can’t do it any more. It’s too much.” His other hand joined the first. “It’s too much.”
He released me and spun, toward his dark alley. He shuffled back, heels sliding over the sidewalk. “But….” His eyes pressed shut; his mouth curled. He sucked in a wet breath. “No, no, I won’t do it any more. I can’t.”
He turned back to me. The January air held me stiff. He raised his arms and took my shoulders. “Forgive me, forgive me,” he whispered, as a group of revelers passed us. “Please, please forgive me, you have to, I can’t do it no more.”
“Do what? What can’t you do?”
His eyes strained at the ground, at our feet a few inches apart. “Look up there.” He didn’t move. “Look up there. You’ll see them now I’ve touched you. Please…please…forgive me.”
I looked up. Fireworks flashed, and I cringed away. “I’m going to call you a cab,” I said.
One of the fireworks exploded, and a huge red silhouette swam in front of it, covering acres of sky. It hovered, still, formless, and as I stared the light faded, hiding the sight. “What was that?”
“Please…please…forgive me. You can see them now I’ve touched you.”
“They? What are they?” He stared at the ground. I shook him once. “Old man, what are they?”
“You have to do it for me.”
From his shabby clothes he pulled a knife. A dagger. Long, sharp, red. It curved through the dark and the point reflected fireworks.
“They come every year,” he said. His voice had softened. “They grow in power every day, and I must keep them weak. They demand….” He touched the dagger’s point to his sunken chest. “One life.”
“One life.” The dagger flashed brighter and bolder reds as fireworks boomed above us. “Or what?”
“I can’t do it no more. So many lives. They never got to love. None of them knew a long life. I can’t take that away again.”
“What will they do?”
Something huge brushed behind me. I turned, gazing down an empty street, then I looked back up to the sky. The moon blurred. Like a piece of paper left in the sun it grew hazy, and drifted apart as if into sections of smoke.
He pressed the dagger into my hands. “I can’t, no longer. No more. I’d rather they take me, but I can’t do that to people like you, who still have to love. Do it. Do it now! DO IT!”
Peace overcame him at last as his body faded to dust and blew away into the new year. The dagger dripped red.
It’s been ten years. By the time it starts to snow, wings flap past my window. Shapes cross the moon for a moment, gone before I look up. Red lights streak through the sky, burning holes in space. The sun begins to fray and unravel at the edges, but everything is back to normal the morning of January first, and I’m washing the blood off the dagger, and hiding in my bed, and trying not to think about what I have done.
It’s December 31st. It’s an hour until midnight. I don’t know how many times I can do this. One person should be a good price for a new year, but every year the price seems to grow.
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Daniel Deisinger lives in Minnesota, and writes for work and fun. His work has appeared in over a dozen publications, including Castabout Literature, Flash Fiction Magazine, Ripples in Space, Coffin Bell Journal, and The Book Smuggler’s Den. His twitter is @Danny_Deisinger, and his website is saturdaystory-Time.weebly.com.
Photo: Joe
