Karmic Countdown

Written for The Writers Cramp contest. This is a daily contest with a prompt and a word count limit of 1,000

Today's Prompt: You receive a present that you can't return, but its mere presence is making you ill.

Karmic Countdown

Willie was almost done cleaning the blood off the knife when the clapping started.

He froze, still kneeling over the body as his mind raced through the wide range of options available to him under such circumstances. He could run, attack or pretend to be something he clearly was not – innocent.

A “Nicely done, Willie,” pushed a rarely used option to his frontal lobe area. He chose caution.

After one last wipe of his knife on the dead man’s shirt, Willie stood slowly and turned to face his audience of one – an old man in a long woolen overcoat. A quick glance around told Willie they were alone in the ally; not counting John Doe on the ground behind him. More options immediately came to mind. Most involved the knife he held in his right hand.

“I’ll show you ‘well done’ old man, but first hand over your wallet.”

The chuckle was both deep and unexpectedly disturbing. This put Willie outside of his comfort zone. He was more of a “terrify and attack” kind of guy. Now, his underfunded thought process didn’t quite know what to do next. Lack of understanding defaulted to the “Danger Will Robinson” signal being sent out. The hair on the back of his neck pricked up.

Willie flashed the knife more threateningly. The man just stood there with his hands outstretched, palms up. “Willie, I don’t have any money. You can check my pockets if you like.”

Willie wasn’t about to get too close to this one. He considered taking the man’s jacket. That had to be worth something. Just then, the watch on the man’s wrist caught Willie’s eye. It was a large gold piece, almost certainly valuable.

“Let me have that watch and I’ll let you go.”

Again, the deep chuckle.

“Certainly my boy. Here, take it. Consider it my gift to you.” With a flick of his arm, the man caused the timepiece to vanish from his own wrist and appear magically on Willie’s.

It all happened so fast, Willie could only gasp in surprise. The watch, now wrapped around his own wrist, seemed to come to life as it widened and then clamped down tightly around its new home. The dial morphed from a traditional face to a digital display of blood-red numbers on an infinitely black background.

Almost immediately the display showed 11 months, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. The seconds began to count down quickly.

Willie didn’t like the looks of this one bit. At first he could only stare at the display. As 59 minutes became 58 minutes, it was clear that a countdown was in progress.

Fear gripped him as he looked up into the strange man’s eyes. For the first time, he noticed that the man had no irises. Beneath the lids were two pure white orbs.

In response to Willie’s increasingly frightened stare, the old man said, “You have one year,” and then turned as if to leave.

Willie considered attacking the man just on general purpose but then felt the motivation running out of him as if a tap had been left open. A knot grew in his stomach. His joints began to throb with the arthritic tempo of a large Chinese drum. Even his teeth hurt.

It had taken little more than a moment for Willie to become old beyond his years.

“Wait!”

Willie was surprised at the raspness of his voice. He could barely push the words out with his dried up set of half inflated lungs.

The stranger turned back and smiled, not unkindly, at the bowed over old man before him.

“What’s happening to me?” asked Willie.

It came out as little more than a whisper.

The man, seeming much larger now by comparison to the new-old Willie, walked back and bent over so that he could whisper into Willie’s ear.

“You have been given a great gift my friend. You have been given time. More importantly, you have been given a chance at redemption. Karma is stalking you. Like a hungry beast. It knows where you go from here and it is waiting. It waits in the halls of death to pass out next lives; lives whose quality has been determined by the one most recently lived. You will not fare well my friend. No, not at all – unless…”

Willie did his best to push the large man back.

“Unless what?”

“Repent! Repent now Willie. You have one year to make amends. During that time, you will become increasingly ill and thus, increasingly less able to do so. This is my gift to you. You have one year to climb out of you Karmic hole.”

“What happens then? Suppose I am good and make all of my amends? Will I become a millionaire in my next life? Will I become famous and have lots of women?”

“No, my good friend. You will be given an even greater gift. Should you climb all of the way out of the hole your life has dug, you will get a gift few men have had the blessing to receive.”

He paused, seeming to reflect back on something before returning to Willie.

“You will be allowed to give your watch to someone else like yourself. You will be allowed to save another. Just as another saved me. Just as I am saving you.”

With that, he turned and walked away, fading into the shadows of the alley from which he had come.

Word count 914