Chapter 3

Oliver was surrounded with darkness. He could not see the darkness, it just seemed dark because there was nothing around him. Except his bed, or at least the vast infinite ocean of blankets that seemed to be engulfing him every second. It was so incredibly hot, too; his mouth was the only part of his body that could truly take in cool air, because his arms, legs, and torso were on fire. He didn't know where he was and couldn't remember how he got there. For all he knew, in that particular stretch in time, it could have been months ago that he had seen something besides the darkness. That didn't make sense, but then again, the place he was in, whatever it was, didn't quite make sense either. He tried to think, think harder, even harder, but his thoughts seemed like they were in reverse, or at least out of order, and they were both speeding up and slowing down at the same time. He kept experiencing sudden, sporadic sensations of speed, as if he were shooting through the black sky for one moment, and then completely still and alone the next moment, staring into the vast emptiness with wide, open eyes.

Then, Oliver felt something all throughout his body. It was a spine-tingling chill that shot up and down from his neck to his legs for several seconds. He tried looking around, but everything was the same kind of emptiness, so he didn't know where his head or eyes were turning to. Suddenly, he felt a presence beside him, and he didn't feel alone anymore. Although he couldn't see who it was, he realized that it was a little girl who was beside him. She was staring straight at him, and he couldn't move. He immediately felt paralyzed with fear, and he could still feel the burning ocean of blankets all around him. Then she spoke to him and said softly, "Mister, can you please help me?" It was at that moment that he saw a vision of her face, even though he couldn't make out the exact structure of her eyes, nose, or mouth. She was there, though, and at once, he didn't feel scared anymore.

She spoke to him in a calm, delicate way, and he could even hear a slight tremble in her voice. Oliver realized that this girl who he had never seen in his life was not threatening in any way, nor was she trying to be; she was incredibly sad and perhaps a little bit frightened. She said to him, "I don't want to be here anymore. Why can't I just go?" Although he didn't know what she was talking about, Oliver felt a desire to help her and comfort her, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was, "I know. Me too." He didn't know why he said this; it was as if it wasn't really him who said it, but instead some kind of voice inside of him. Then the girl asked him with tears in her eyes, "Please, can we go? You can come with me. I can show you the birds." He tried to say something back. He tried, but his voice wouldn't work. He tried to scream, but no sound came out. Suddenly the deep chill returned, and he didn't feel the girl's presence anymore. The emptiness soon became filled with dark yellow spots, and he gradually began to see objects appear around him in black and white.
Oliver then realized that he was in his room, and that the ocean of blankets was his bed, and he felt burning hot underneath his covers. As soon as he the spots disappeared from his vision, he found the energy to pull down the covers and sit up in his bed. He reached up with his hand and touched his face, and found that he had broken out in a cold sweat. His forehead was the source of all the flames that seemed to shoot through his body, and he realized that he had a terrible fever, probably one of about 103 degrees, considering the extremely hallucinogenic dream he just had. His whole back and the area of the sheet-covered mattress he slept on was soaking wet, and he felt miserable. Then he heard the door to his room open, and suddenly the darkened room lit up from the hallway light. He looked up to see his wife Susan standing in the doorway. She hadn't changed out of her work clothes, and Oliver guessed she must have gotten home not too long ago. What time is it, he thought? Or rather, what day is it?

"Oliver," she said with a worried look on her face, "Honey, are you alright? You've been asleep for hours, and it's only 9:45 in the evening. You're not sick, are you?" He was still woozy and could hardly speak because his throat stung and felt shredded, but he managed to get out, "Yeah, I'm sick, all right, and I just had the strangest dream. You wouldn't believe---" "Ssshhh, don't try to talk, you've got a really bad fever," she interrupted. "I'll be right back with some medicine for you. You just stay there, all right?" The door closed, and with the image of the little girl still fresh in his mind, he laid back and looked up at the dark ceiling, trying to imagine who she was.

Chapter 2

"It's a self-winding 1952 Rolex, Mr. Smith, I'm afraid I don't have the right gears for this kind of watch," said Oliver to his relatively grumpy client. "I don't understand, every other shop I've been to has had the parts available," said Mr. Smith with a hint of frustration. "And it's not even that rare a model, I don't see why you don't carry those types of gears."
It was mid-morning, and instead of tending to his regular tasks around the shop, Oliver was stuck behind the counter with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers, reluctantly poking around the inside of Mr. Smith's watch, which he knew was too out-of-date and obscure to be eligible for any sort of part replacement. For 45 minutes Oliver had been pretending to search through his drawers and boxes for the thin steel gears that were needed to revive this ancient fossil of a wristwatch, but it was obvious Mr. Smith was going to have to consider it extinct. Anyway, Oliver was used to being handled this way by quite a few of his customers, and Smith was no different.
"Well, I'm sorry, but considering it's a '52, it really won't run as well as it used to, either with or without the new gears," Oliver explained. "Fine," Mr. Smith said with a sigh and a mildly sarcastic tone. "You're the expert, right?" With that, he picked up the rusty old Rolex and walked out the door. "Won't be seeing him again, eh?" Oliver muttered to himself as he put his tools back in the top drawer of his desk, walked to the back room, and continued working on a gold pocket watch that was due for pick-up in two days. He hadn't been fixing it up for more than a minute when he noticed that his old black and white TV, which sat on a small wooden table in the corner of the room, had been left on with the volume all the way down. "Oh, for crying out loud," he mumbled as he got up to turn it off. "As if I don't pay enough for the damn electric bill already." Before he switched it off, though, he glanced at what was playing on the screen.
It was an old gangster movie, and it looked incredibly familiar, although he couldn't remember the name of the movie he thought it was. Curious as to what it was, he turned up the volume and began watching it. The plot seemed typical of a mobster flick, which didn't help in his determining exactly what it was. Eventually, it got to some kind of chase scene, where several men wearing trenchcoats and fedoras were running down an alleyway towards another man who appeared to be running away from them. Two of the men carried tommy guns, while the rest of them brandished snub-nosed pistols. Eventually, the man who was running away found himself facing the brick wall of a building, and as he slowly peered over his shoulder, he saw that the several armed men had him cornered and were all surrounding him. He babbled something like, "Please, no, I'll get you the money," and one of the gangsters probably retorted in some clever, cliché way, but what happened next caught Oliver's attention in a way he could not describe. It was followed by the man screaming, the sound of a burst of rapid gunfire, and the image of the man laying sprawled out on the ground with his eyes still open. Oliver was hit with a feeling of discomfort, and quickly looked away from the television. At first, he didn't understand his own reaction, and after sitting there for a few moments trying to figure it out, he realized something. He had witnessed that scene before, but not in a movie. Where had he seen that before, and what was so unnerving to him about such a cheesy death scene in an old gangster film? He stood up and turned off the TV, still uncertain as to the emotion that had come over him. It was then that he glanced at the clock hanging over the TV, and saw that to his surprise, it was already 1:00. "Wow, have I actually been sitting here the entire time watching a stupid movie on TV?" he said out loud. He sat back down at his desk, and continued working on the pocket watch for the next few hours.
It was 5:00, and after a relatively uneventful day at work, Oliver walked in the door to his apartment and hung his coat up. He seemed to have developed a headache as he walked home, and all he wanted to do was make a sandwich, listen to a little more Brubeck, and take a nap. There was something he had been meaning to ask his son Jonathon when he got home, but he was too exhausted to remember. He walked down the hall towards the kitchen and saw Jonathon sitting at the kitchen table, and as he rounded the corner into the kitchen, he saw a girl sitting at the table across from Jonathon. There were school textbooks and pieces of notebook paper scattered across the table, undoubtedly part of a study session. "Hey, dad," Jonathon said as he glanced over at the girl. "You remember Miranda, right?" Oliver looked at Miranda, and was not exactly sure if he did remember her. He felt like he had seen her around the apartment building at one time or another, though. "Oh...yeah, how are you?" he managed to say, his head increasing to throb in pain. "I'm good, and yourself?" Miranda said. "Good, good," he replied, and immediately turned to Jonathon, remembering what he was going to ask him. "Hey, Jonathon, did you pick up Mom's package downstairs?" "I didn't know there was a package," Jonathon said, looking confused. Oliver gave his son a stern look and said, "Well, I told you this morning." "I don't remember you telling me, but fine, I'll go get it," said Jonathon, clearly not wanting to get in an argument with his apparently irritable father. Oliver turned away, grabbed a container of ibuprofen out of the kitchen drawer, and deciding to skip the sandwich, began walking to his bedroom. Jonathon motioned Miranda to come with him, and as they got up to leave, she said to Oliver, "Well, it was good seeing you again." By that time, however, Oliver was in enough pain that he didn't feel like replying, however rude that may have seemed. After he shut himself in his room, he popped two of the painkiller pills, managed to place the needle back on the record, and flopped back onto his bed. As he began to gently float on the sea of smooth jazz as he lay there, he reflected on that strange feeling he experienced at the shop earlier that day, and just when he thought he began to understand what it all meant, he shut his eyes and faded away into sleep.

Chapter 1

It was a bright, clear, chilly morning, and Oscar J. Stone gently opened his eyes to the white light shining through his bedroom window. He felt around for his glasses on the bedside table and put them on before peering over at the electric clock beside him. 8:53, it read in red digitized numbers. 'Don't have to be at the shop 'til 9:30,' he thought. Not in any sort of hurry, Oscar pulled down the covers and sat up in bed, squinting as he glanced out the window. He put his hand up to his face. He hadn't shaven in a couple of days, and was starting to get a bit of reddish-brown five-o'-clock shadow. He never felt comfortable when clean shaven, of course; he liked to be reminded of his Celtic roots.
Oscar climbed out of bed slowly, and realized his wife Susan had already left for her daily errands. The kids had gone to school, and so he was all alone in his apartment. It was the latest he had woken up in the morning for months, for he had always been an early riser. It seemed a bit strange at first, once he realized that except for the cockroaches beneath the floorboards or the spiders behind the refrigerator, he was the only living being in his apartment room at that time. The familiar noises that were usually heard through the walls in the house, like his two sons wrestling in the living room, his wife vacuuming the hallway, and just any racket from the television in general, were completely absent. He knew that this should have made him feel relieved and relaxed, but for some reason, he felt uncomfortable. His head began to feel light, and his heart started beating a little faster. He dreaded the silence; there needed to be SOME kind of noise going on around him.
Oscar walked over to his black and silver Technics record player in the opposite corner of the room, reached under the table on which it rested, and pulled out one of the albums from his collection at random. He turned it over and looked at the cover. It was Dave Brubeck, one of his favorites. He had a strong liking for jazz, and the smooth rhythm of Take Five seemed a perfect cure for this particular morning. He pulled the vinyl out, placed it on the turntable, and set the needle down, and the melodic sounds of Brubeck began to float around him. He started feeling better, and as he looked back out the window, he noticed the white light was not so blinding to him anymore. His heart rate felt normal again, and he didn't feel the slightest bit dizzy. It was then that Oscar remembered he needed to open his watch repair shop a little earlier that morning, because a client had made an appointment for exactly 9:30, and he needed to clean the place up a bit before he arrived. He then stopped the record, took a quick shower, poured a cup of cold, leftover coffee, grabbed his coat and hat, and headed out the door on his way to the shop.

Oscar J. Stone

Oscar J. Stone is a thin, brown-haired 41 year-old shopkeeper with a Scottish background who lives with his wife Susan and his two sons, Jonathan and Wilbur. He currently owns and operates a watch repair shop, but doesn't enjoy his job as much as he used to. This is simply because his job restrains him, forcing him to settle down in a single location for an extended period of time, which is something that has never been easy for him. For most of his life, beginning when he was a teenager, he has desired to break free from his ordinary responsibilities and duties and live a more free-spirited life, traveling and hitchhiking across the world. However, this lifestyle he dreams about is the exact opposite of how he was raised, and so he has been stuck with the reputation as a sort of rebel. Unbeknownst to his family and most of his friends, when he was twenty years-old, he began to get involved with the mob, doing oddjobs such as transporting drugs and weapons, and he began to gamble nearly every day. This gave him some extra money when he needed it, but when he got married, he knew he would have to leave both Scotland and his days of crime behind in order to live a more honest and decent life in America. Although he has maintained his new lifestyle for more than ten years, deep down he longs for his former life of action and risk, and his wild inner spirit is beginning to break loose...