FATHER TIME

FATHER TIME

Light from the window streams through me, shaking reflections off a
glass vase like belly dancers across the wall. This I can handle, but
if it's really bright sunlight - the kind that draws cats off their
favourite couches, then it makes me tingle with discomfort. You might
understand already, that I don't care for the things you humans love.
But as I said, this little spark of sunlight I can handle. I move
silently across the room and pass through a chipboard door into the
next. I find her sitting patiently in a chair beside the dead electric
fire. I think she might be waiting for me. I look at her; her face
isn't as clear as it might have been; grey shadow obscures her eyes
from mine. It's time. I press my face up against her ear; I can feel
the quietness beating against a door as it pushes back at me, trying
desperately to escape. I have a key and gently suck out her soul, then
move on my way.

How many times I have done this, How much of my time it has occupied
me for, I do not know. I do not have awareness for my own time, just of
what it means to others. Maybe it's because I have no end and I have no
beginning - I've always been. I was here before all the others and I'll
be here when they've gone. These others who came later, they needed
names to put on graves but I never needed one. The hands of a clock, on
the mantelpiece, spin like propeller blades. I pick up the soul of an
ill woman from a street nearby who can't wait. Her soul comes running
to me and I welcome it inside. I pause outside her door to lick a drop
of rain hanging from a leaf and send it falling on a spider. I hear a
feeble sigh and move on my way again. It's not like they say, about
dogs and cats - they can't see me. Sometimes I play games to make them
jump if they are standing in my way. That old lady with the fire - she
had a tortoise-shell cat guarding her, I touched it and it hissed, I
touched it again and it sprang away - silly creatures. I'm busiest at
night. This is when most people leave, when they're on their own and
time tells them to close their eyes. For them, tomorrow is too far
away, even the next beat of their heart seems so very far away. Don't
worry; I'm close, try me instead.

Sometimes I have to travel far in my search for work, both below the
water and far underground. Following an incident near Baku last year, I
sank two miles down the sightless eye of a mining shaft. My man was
propping up a pillar with his head, upon which lay a tonne of fallen
road-stone. I pulled him out easily - they cared so little for him that
they almost missed him in the count. He was almost too easy, almost too
unloved; I wish they were all like that.

Some days are difficult too, occasionally, I'm thrown against a wall
or find my ears battered to the side of my head by a child's whispered
loving words. As I wait in the shadows for them to fall asleep, I kick
myself for not looking out. Why can't everyone around the dying be
grave robbers and people full of hate or without a heart. I can walk
straight through them to bring them what they want.

Other emotions are less easy to understand, love still takes me by
surprise even now, popping up in the least expected places; a card, a
tear in the corner of an eye, a moment's soulful reflection in a busy
street. These lousy modern voodoo tricks stop me in my tracks. How many
times must I wait at the edge of invisible force fields built from
love. If I stand too close I tingle with the pain I feel in the sun, if
I touch, then a flame as long as a cobra races up my arm and sends
sparks whistling from my mouth. And now I'm coming for you - a crash,
an unexpected illness a bad fall in the bath, I'm waiting. So look
around and count your real friends or, if you like, be mine.