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Simply Spooky - The Tale Of The Timekeeper By Katherine Tomlinson

11/10/2024

About The Tale of the Timekeeper
What is the difference between a storyteller and a liar?
Maybe there’s no difference at all.
As long as you make your story a good one and stick to it.
What’s the difference between innocent and not guilty?
Maybe there’s no difference at all.
As long as people believe your story.
But you know the difference.
And so do they.

Trigger warning: This story contains dark themes including allusions to mental and physical abuse, frank language relating to LGBQT characters, fat shaming, and descriptions of violence.

The Tale of the Timekeeper
By Katherine Tomlinson
Copyright © Katherine Tomlinson 2024

The Time Before…
It had been a good day. His dad was out of town on business, and it was a weekend, so for once, Robbie could just sit in his room, listen to his music, and make his art instead of attending Saturday services and then getting up early for the three-hour Sunday service at the church where his father was a deacon. A dick-on Robbie often thought.
His mom, who was just as happy his dad was gone, left him alone, retreating to the little nook she’d carved out of the kitchen to sit and read while she waited for the cookies she was baking to come out of the oven. She hadn’t made them from scratch, but the store-bought frozen dough she’d bought was almost as good, she said. Robbie had to take her word for it. He couldn’t remember ever eating a homemade chocolate chip cookie.
Treats like chocolate chip cookies were forbidden when his father was home—he dubbed anything with sugar “empty calories”—but his mother had bought the container of dough the day his father left for Des Moines. She’d throw away the empty container in a dumpster she passed on her daily walk with their dog, where she’d also discard the disposable baking sheet she’d used for the illicit activity. She’d wash the spatula clean of crumbs and store it back in the neatly organized drawer where the cooking utensils lived. She’d make certain that no trace of her little act of rebellion remained, obsessively mopping the floor in case a random crumb had fallen during the transfer of cookies from pan to plate.
Nothing got past her husband’s eagle eyes, although she had grown adept at fooling him in small things. Misdirection was the key.
It drove Robie’s father crazy if he thought his wife or son weren’t “making good use of their time.” They were not allowed to watch anything but news and nature documentaries on television, and he’d installed child locks to make certain neither she nor Robbie sneaked a look at any inappropriate content. His mother had argued baking shows were not only harmless but potentially educational, but he said that such shows were irresponsible delivery mechanisms for diabetes and other illnesses. “Do you want to end up dying of diabetes like your mother?” he asked her. Robbie’s grandmother had actually died of breast cancer, but she’d been a substantial woman before her illness whittled her down to a shrink-wrapped skeleton.
For nearly a month after that conversation about diabetes and its dangers, Robbie’s mother had endured daily lectures on nutrition and their meals had been especially bland, heavy on kale salad and fish.
Robbie fucking hated kale salad, but at least it was tastier than collard greens boiled without any fat or seasoning. He wasn’t a big kid, and he was active, so the occasional candy bar a big kid paid him to suck his dick didn’t cause him to pork up. His dad was clueless. He didn’t even know Robbie could drive. He thought it was good for Robbie to walk the mile and three-quarters route to school, no matter what the weather. In truth, Robbie didn’t mind it that much. He relished the alone time. But he needed transportation for errands that were time-sensitive and needed to be finished before his father got home. For those, Robbie stole an old bicycle off a porch, fixing it up so no one would recognize it. He kept his new bike in the woods behind his house, camouflaged so well that he was pretty sure no one would just stumble across it and stell the bike from him.
He’d also boobytrapped it. If someone did try to take the bike, they’d be sorry.
Also, on his walks, Robbie could pick up aluminum cans and empty plastic bottles along the route where other kids discarded them. People were such fucking pigs.
Robbie turned the garbage into cash at the recycling machines in the parking lot of his school. He could have given the money to his mother, but he kept it for himself. There were things he wanted to buy, and nobody was giving him an allowance.
Robbie knew people felt sorry for his mom, but he didn’t feel sorry for her at all. Actions have consequences and she was the one who had married his father, mostly because she was pregnant with him. She had never blamed Robbie for that, but his father sure did. Whenever he was mad at Robbie—which was most of the time—he brought up the unfortunate timing of his arrival. Like it was his fault or something.
He hadn’t asked to be born. His mother thought they were a team. “Just you and me against the world,” she would often say. Robbie let her think that, but the minute he turned 18, he was going to be gone, baby, gone.
But it was the weekend, and his father was out of town, and Robbie didn’t want to think about him or his mother, or any of the other bad things in his life. Before his thoughts took a dark turn, his phone beeped. It was a text from a new friend, wanting to know if he felt like getting together and hanging out.
Robbie had to think about that for a minute. He knew his mother wouldn’t mind. When his father wasn’t home, she was all about her “me time” and she wouldn’t begrudge him going out and getting some “me time” too.
He texted back that he’d be over in about an hour. He hoped his friend had some weed.

The Time Just After
Riley was exhausted. She hated working night shifts because they played hell with her sleep cycle, and for some reason Ben—who was usually a good kid—had decided to start acting out whenever she left him in the care of her mother, who had moved in with them to help save money. She blamed Ben’s behavior on her ex. Ben was always a little hard to handle after spending time with his dad. Part of it was that Alex had remarried and his new wife was now pregnant with what Ben referred to as, “my replacement,” and part was that the disruption was always jarring in other ways. Alex and his new wife--my replacement, Riley thought—lived well. Beyond their means, she often thought. Or at least, beyond what Alex had been able to afford when he was married to her. And the contrast between their place and the cramped apartment where she lived with Ben and her mother was stark. She made a decent salary, and if she’d been single and childless, she would have been fine. But right after the divorce, she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer, and although they’d caught it in time, she’d been left with almost a million dollars in medical debt for the surgery and chemo and radiation and hospital stays. Alex hadn’t offered her a dime. She was pretty sure he would have been fine with her simply dying., although that would have meant he'd be stuck with Ben, which would have been inconvenient for him.
Just as marriage had been an inconvenience.
When they’d split up, Riley hadn’t asked for spousal support—she had a job—but she had asked for child support. Alex had lawyered up and his attorney had successfully convinced the court to award her the absolute minimum. Two hundred a month barely covered a week’s worth of groceries. Ben had hit a growing spurt, and he was always hungry. It used to be one medium pizza would feed them both. Now, he could demolish a large meaty-meaty-meat pizza on his own and eat half of her small one as well.
Two hundred a month was a joke.
She might not have minded it so much if Alex ever acted like he even cared about his son. It seemed like his weekends with the boy were not just obligations but annoyances. And heaven forbid she asked him to help take up the slack when she was on night shift.
Her mother Ada supervised homework, cooked meals, and made lunches for the next day, and then retreated to the living room to watch television until she was ready to go to bed. Lately, though, she’d started getting snappish. She’d bought a small TV just for herself and was going to her bedroom earlier and earlier. Riley wasn’t sure if her mother wasn’t feeling well or was just getting sick and tired of being responsible for another human being.
Ada had taken care of Riley’s invalid father and that had gone on for close to seven years. Seven years of putting up with a cantankerous man who was old beyond his years, suffering from early-onset dementia, and a slew of physical ailments including fecal incontinence—it was enough to wear anyone out.
Ada had spent a lot of time cleaning up her husband’s shit.
Literally.
Riley had been very grateful she was already married to Alex and caring for Ben when her father started to decline. She sent her mother money when she had extra, which wasn’t often, and she tried to check in by phone once a day, but her days were long too, and her parental situation put a strain on her marriage long before it fell apart beneath the weight of Alex’s infidelity.
Once Alex had left, her mother had moved in. Her social security money and her husband’s pension made a big difference in Riley’s household budget. She tried not to feel guilty taking money from Ada.
Ben had adored his nana when he was younger, probably because she was quick to reward him with cookies and kisses whenever he did anything remotely praiseworthy.
But now he was in middle school, Ben had taken to avoiding his grandmother, flinching at her touch, avoiding her embrace, and spending nights at other people’s houses when Riley was working so he wouldn’t be alone with her. Some of the parents had complained to Riley that they liked Ben but that he was imposing on their hospitality.
Riley didn’t want to question the situation too much, but when she brought it up to her partner, Petrofski had just gave her that look. “You know what’s going on Riley,” he said. “Or you suspect. You need to have a talk with your son.”
“He won’t talk to me,” she said. “Not if it’s about what I think it’s about.”
“You have to.”
Riley knew her partner was right, but she couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that her mother might be hurting her son. But Ada’s behavior had changed, and not for the better.
“Okay,” she said, deciding she would have a talk with Ben at breakfast, making pancakes to ease the way. She hadn’t made pancakes in a long time.
But then she and Petrofski got a call that chased all thoughts of food out of her mind.
***
A security guard on his way to work had noticed an open door on a house sitting on a weed-choked lot in the middle of what had once been a nice neighborhood. He’d stopped to investigate and found a horror show inside. By the time Riley and Petrofski arrived, the street in front of the place was already filled with emergency vehicles and a couple of mobile news vans. The security guard’s first call had been to his girlfriend who worked as an intern at a television station. He figured if he got on the news, it might somehow help him get a better job.
***
The smell hit her even before she got out of the car. Her partner smelled it too. “Oh yeah,” he said. “This is going to be a bad one.”
“They all are,” she said, which was true, but most crime scenes weren’t as bad as the one they’d just walked into. And unfortunately, the m.o. fit a number of murders that had occurred in roughly the same area. Nobody wanted to say, “serial killer,” but there was a pattern. All the victims had been partially skinned, and their faces sliced off.
Riley wondered what the killer was doing with those faces. Taking them as trophies? Wearing them in some weird kind of cosplay?
Riley was pretty sure the killer was male. Statistically speaking, most serial killers were. The relationship between the skinned males and the skinner was not yet apparent—it was one of the things their profiler was working on—but Riley was inclined to think the connection was sexual. The three victims so far were all gay men in their late forties, and all were users of the same dating app, although none of their phones had been found so far.
There was a lot of DNA spattered around the various crime scenes, but it didn’t match anything on file. And so far, the killer had been careful about fingerprints. Riley was afraid that unless they got very lucky, they weren’t going to solve the case. And it was also clear that her boss wasn’t all that concerned by the deaths of people he considered degenerate. As far as he was concerned, the victims were to blame for the situation.
“Drugs are part of the homosexual lifestyle,” her boss opined, pursing his lips all prissy-like. “It would be easy for a sex partner to slip someone a mickey and then do whatever they wanted.” He had thought for a minute after delivering that opinion before adding, “And don’t they all love rough sex?”
Jesus Christ. There was a difference between liking it rough and liking it homicidal, which told her that her boss probably hadn’t had sex in anything but the missionary position ever.
If at all.
Riley picked her way through the living room, which was pitch dark and choked with furniture. “We need to bring some work lights in here,” she said as she scanned the area with her flashlight, trying not to recoil as the light revealed the victim with a gory mask where his face used to be.
She was processing the sight when something heavy scraped across the floor. “Jack,” she said in a loud whisper.
“I heard it,” Petrofski said. Communicating with hand signals, he directed her to go left while he went right. The scraping sound came again. She was already so nerved up that when she saw the moving shadow, a deeper black than the dark in the room, she pulled her weapon and yelled, “Freeze. Police."
Instead, the shadow moved, and she fired, the bullet ricocheting off the metal pendulum of an antique grandfather clock.
“Congratulations, Riley,” Petrofski said. “You’ve killed a clock.”
And indeed, the clock’s case had been shattered. But the carnage she’d inflicted on the wood and metal was not what was holding her attention. It was the tattered scrap of flesh that was plastered to the elaborate clock face, glued there with blood.
That’s new, she thought. “I found the victim’s face,” she said. But her partner didn’t hear her, he was already barging toward a fleeing figure.
Heart hammering against the bone cage of her ribs, Riley followed. She heard a crashing in the backyard and the distinct thud of flesh on flesh. Her partner had caught up with someone. The murderer or an unlucky would-be squatter? She rushed out of the house, her flashlight held at shoulder level while she brandished her weapon in her other hand.
The full moon cast sharp shadows on everything, but Riley was surprised to see the perp Petrofski was trying to cuff was young. She was moving toward them when the boy managed to slip out of Petrofski’s grip. He shoved him hard, and then sliced him with the bloody knife he held, the one he’d likely used to remove his victim’s face.
Petrofski made a soft sound as he stumbled to his knees and even in the moonlight, Riley could see the dark stain spreading across the pale blue dress shirt he wore. Torn between her partner’s need and the imperative to catch the little bastard who’d cut him, she hesitated a moment too long.
“Freeze,” she yelled, for the second time that night, but the kid was already slipping through a hole he’d cut in the chain link fence. She took a huge step forward and faceplanted, having tripped over a bicycle. By the time she looked up, he’d vanished into the night.
Damn, she thought as she felt warm blood start trickling down her leg. She wondered when she had last had a tetanus booster. The only bright spot in the whole shitty night was that the bicycle offered a clue. There had been so many fingerprints inside the house she knew they were practically useless, but the fingerprints on the bike handlebar were clear and they were already in the system. They matched a kid who’d been fingerprinted after he punched a classmate on the nose and his victim’s parents went to the police, who’d let him go with a slap on the wrist. Riley was pretty sure this time nobody would turn him loose.
How did his prints not ping the system earlier, she wondered aloud to Petrofski, who was still on desk duty, and bored out of his mind. He shrugged.
“Hard to get good help these days,” he said. He was two years from retirement and coasting ‘til he got his pension. Petrofski did not give AF.
“I still don’t like this kid for a serial killer,” Captain Pace said to Riley and Petrofski when they went to him to lay out their case. “If he went over there to kill this guy, then why didn’t he wear gloves?”
“He’s a kid,” Petrofski said. “He’s an idiot.”
“Profiler says whoever killed those other three guys was organized,” the captain countered. Riley didn’t say anything, but the captain had never been married or raised a child. He knew squat about what children were capable of. And she knew from looking at the suspect’s file he was a smart kid. He probably figured that because he was a minor, his fingerprints were under seal, and no one would know what kind of mischief he got up to.
Except that Prue Hawley, the officer who’d dealt with him on that juvenile assault case, hadn’t like him. At all.
And she’d “accidentally” and anonymously left his file on Riley’s desk. The kid’s bleeding-heart lawyer had cried all kinds of foul, but since 17-year-old Jared R. Nelson had stabbed Jack Petrofski, he was going to be tried as an adult.
The psychologist who’d examined Jared after he was arrested told Riley that the boy fit all the criteria of a malignant narcissist along with a co-morbidity of antisocial personality disorder.
“So, he’s a broken toy,” Riley said.
“You don’t rehabilitate people like that,” the psychologist said without actually agreeing. “You get them as far from society as possible and hope they never, ever get released.”
“He’ll never get the death penalty,” Riley said.
“Even if he did, he’d be eligible for social security before the appeals process was exhausted.”
***
Riley testified at the trial, which only lasted three days. The judge, a political appointee who was notoriously soft on juvenile crime, had chosen to send the killer to a psychiatric facility instead of prison, where he belonged. Or a cemetery, where he really belonged, Riley thought. She didn’t believe in God, but she sure as hell hoped the devil was real. The psychologist’s words had depressed Riley. She’d been a cop too long to believe in justice, but she liked to think that there were consequences for actions. If not in this world, then in the next.
***
The boy’s father wanted nothing to do with the little monster he’d spawned, but Jared’s mother was in court every day.
His lawyer had done the best he could with what he had. He’d kept the kid off the stand, which was a good move because Jared’s perpetual smirk was already annoying some of the jurors. With his dark eyes and high cheekbones, the defendant attracted a lot of attention of the “hot felon” kind. Everybody loves a bad boy, she Riley thought, disgusted. She figured it was only a matter of time before the modelling offers began.
The killer had freely admitted targeting older gay men on a dating app, men who often paid him for his “visits” and offered him “presents” of drugs. “My client is not on trial for his lifestyle,” the boy’s lawyer stoutly declared. Riley almost felt sorry for him.
Of course, he was on trial for his lifestyle. His lifestyle involved murdering people who just wanted to have sex with a beautiful boy. Sending a killer to a hospital was just coddling him. Or at least, that was Riley’s opinion.
But nobody asked her.

The Timeless
Robbie didn’t belong at the Woodcock Clinic.
He hadn’t done anything bad enough to warrant being there. But the court had disagreed. He’d been released into his parents’ custody pending appeal and from the time he got home, his father made it clear that if Robbie so much as farted without permission, he’d find himself waiting out his appeals somewhere much less comfortable than his bedroom. In truth, Robbie hadn’t paid that much attention to his father’s threats. He’d been hearing them since he was a little kid.
“The minute you turn 18, you’re out of my house,” his father had told him on his fifth birthday. To his father’s surprise, the statement had not terrified his son or made him cry. Robbie already spent as much time away from the house as he could manage. He’d considered running away, but already understood—in a vague and childlike way—that without money or a plastic card he could stick into a money machine—he wouldn’t get very far.
When his father couldn’t make Robbie cry, he made his wife cry. Robbie’s mother blamed her son for her husband’s constant bad mood. And in a way he was. Because Robbie was not like his mother. He didn’t care if his father hit him. The pain just made him stronger. He didn’t care if his father beat him every night of the week and twice on Friday.
***
It had been a Friday when the men had come for him.
One minute Robbie was in his bedroom, half-asleep with his Air Pods inserted, just listening to his music, and the next, scary people in black clothes and body armor were kicking down the door and shining bright lights in his face and yelling at him to freeze motherfucker. Robbie didn’t know if his mother heard them, but he hoped not. She didn’t like anyone using bad language in her house. He wondered if the men had scared her. She was there alone with him because his father was teaching a men’s bible study class at church. Robbie was pretty sure he knew all about the assault and had made arrangements to be out of the house when it all went down. By the time he returned home—on the dot of 9:15—all the excitement would be over, and he’d have plausible deniability.
His father had missed quite a show by not being there, Robbie thought. He would have enjoyed it.
Robbie had been so disoriented by the yelling and the bright lights he’d pissed his pants and that was bad because it was hours before anyone got him clean clothes and he had to sit in his soggy, smelly underwear without any way to adjust it because his hands were flex-cuffed behind his back. Tight enough that they were cutting off his circulation. He’d been hustled out of the house barefoot and tossed roughly into an unmarked van. The van was padded inside, so at least he didn’t break any bones when the men he landed.
It was freezing cold inside the vehicle. Robbie knew there wasn’t any point in complaining.
***
All the way to wherever they were taking him, Robbie was disoriented. Although he usually had a good sense for how much time was passing, Robbie’s time-sense had been distorted by the incident in his bedroom. But away from his father, he did not feel the urgency of keeping to a schedule.
His fucking father.
He’d heard about kids being kidnapped and taken away to places where they were abused and starved, and sleep deprived until they grew compliant. He wondered if that was what was happening to him, if his father had finally made good on his threats to “teach him a lesson,” but he couldn’t quite believe that his father would have involved so many other people in what was a private, family affair. His father didn’t like sharing anything private.
Of course, that privacy had been shattered by the trial. His parents had disavowed him but only his father had remained above the fray. His mother had been dogpiled in the media, reviled for her inability to see that her bad mothering had created a psychopath.
Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me, Robbie thought. But of course, that depended on who was doing the talking.
The judge had rebuked her from the bench, but he’d still remanded gun to his parents’ custody. He’d had no choice in the matter.
Just as he didn’t have any agency in the back of the van. He was just along for the ride.
At first, he’d thought the guys who grabbed him were cops, but the longer they were on the road, the more he thought there was something else going on. There’d been a lot of people attending his trial who thought he might know where their missing loved ones were.
As if they’d ever given him their real names.
The court watchers had brought pictures of their missing—sons, and brothers, and even a husband or two. Some even tried to confront him, but his lawyer was pretty good at blocking them.
Maybe one of the victims’ relatives had hired the guys in body armor, but Robbie was inclined to think they were just friends of his father, people he knew from church who thought Robbie’s lack of respect for mindless authority, and his unwillingness to follow his father’s rules meant he was damned beyond all redemption.
“You’re going to hell,” his father promised Robbie often.
I’ll see you there, he thought.
Robbie was surprised no one had gagged him when they trussed him up. He’d gotten a perfect score in the English portion of his SATs and had been in honors English classes since he entered high school. Thanks to all the unsanctioned reading he’d done, he had the vocabulary of a college professor and knew a lot of words his father didn’t, although his father was an educated man. Robbie was small for his age and spindly, so he couldn’t fight him “like a man,” but in an argument, Robbie always emerged the winner until his father simply started slapping him around to end the debate.
His father didn’t like it when Robbie defied him. He preferred it when his son was silent and cowed.
Like his mother.
To be fair though, as Robbie sometimes told himself, when his father started to bluster about finding solutions to Robbie’s “bad behavior,” she sometimes found her courage.
She’d sigh and say him something like, “Can’t you just try to get along with him,” a question he always dismissed. Robbie figured that sooner rather than later, his father would make good on his threat to send him away if he could just find a place that was cheap enough.
What he couldn’t figure out is why he hadn’t done it years sooner. But then he figured it probably came back to money again. His father was obsessed with money. “Time is money,” he would say. “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
Robbie had once muttered, “And two cents isn’t worth anything,” and his father had nearly taken his head off.
His father didn’t mind spending money on himself, but he was a total skinflint when it came to anyone else. He’d made his mother quit her job when they married, and they had a joint checking account, so he would know about any money she made on a side hustle if she’d been stupid enough to try to put anything in the bank. Of course, he didn’t allow her access to any of the funds except when grocery shopping.
She kept her “pin money” in a place she knew he would never look, in a hollowed-out niche in their wedding scrap book. There were never more than a few dollars in it, so no telltale bulges ever gave her hiding place away.
Sometimes, if she was in a mood, Robbie’s mother would indulge her husband’s musings, encouraging him to try various remedies to cure Robbie of his imaginary ills. “Ice baths in salt water,” she would suggest. “Drain cleaner enemas. Mustard plasters.” Once she even suggested stuffing Robbie in the oven and turning on the heat to bake the sin right out of his brain.
Robbie’s father liked that side of his wife and encouraged it, but truth be told, she didn’t like being mean and often felt sick to her stomach afterwards. After all, Robbie was her little angel, her dear sweet child.
***
Robbie’s reverie about his mother came to an abrupt end when the van lurched to a stop. He’d been curled up on the mattress floor like a stray dog trying to conserve its body heat and it took him a moment to catch his bearings. Rough hands pulled him out and half-dragged into a large waiting area with cracked linoleum floors and walls stained brown with blood and other bodily fluids. A faceless man—literally, a man without a face—sat behind a glass window and looked up with anticipation as Robbie was dragged into the waiting room and sat in a chair. No one bothered to remove the zip ties. His arms ached from being locked behind him but in way, he welcomed the pain, embracing it as if proof that he was still alive. He had no idea what was going to happen next. All he knew was that he did not belong at Woodcock Clinic.

Eternity in an Hour
Robbie never found out the name of the man behind the intake counter but that was okay. He was pretty sure he was never going to see him again. He’d been checked in, his cuffs cut, and then, still wearing his reeking underpants, taken to the office of the doctor who was apparently in charge during the night shift. Robbie was not impressed. The doctor was almost ridiculously average. Everything about him seemed washed out, from his straw-like hair to his colorless skin. His name, he told Robbie, was Moebius. Robbie tried to make it look like he was interested. His only hope of getting out of the clinic was manipulating bozos like Dr. Moebius.
“Sit down,” the doctor said, not looking up from Robbie’s file. Robbie thought that studied inattention was a mistake. He saw at least four weapons within reach he could use to kill Moebius if he was a killer—beginning with the ornamental pen set with the marble base.
The doctor finally looked up from the folder in front of him. “I know who you are,” he said, “so maybe you should know who I am. I’m the man who says when and whether you’re ready to rejoin society. I’m the one who’ll oversee your treatment. And if you do not cooperate, then I’m the one who’ll send you to the special floor.”
He said “special floor” like someone might say Butyrka, or some other notorious place.
“Is that where you send the patients who’ve flown over the cuckoo’s nest?” Robbie asked. Dr. Moebius smiled. His teeth were unnaturally white.
“You liked that movie?”
“I read the book, and I’m not crazy.”
The doctor shrugged, not terribly impressed by the statement. “McMurphy wasn’t crazy either,” he said, “and look where he ended up.” It was a not-so-subtle threat that Moebius could use electroshock therapy on him; or lobotomize him altogether.
Robbie was pretty sure the older man was bluffing, but he didn’t want to find out. “I was just trying to be friendly,” he said.
“Sure, you were,” the doctor said. “We’ll talk again.”
And although Dr. Moebius didn’t press any buttons that Robbie could see, an orderly suddenly appeared in the doorway. He was a muscular man bulging out of his scrubs, and looked like he could deadlift a tank.
“Lamar, would you show our new arrival to his room?”
The orderly nodded his bald head and grabbed Robbie by the bicep, yanking him out of his chair. “And get him some clean clothes. He stinks.” The orderly nodded again.
“Come along,” Lamart said to him as if Robbie had any choice in the matter.
It had taken something like five cops to subdue Robbie at his house, Lamar seemed to have everything under control with just one hand. He wore a taser and a gun on his utility belt and in desperation, Robbie reached for the gun and managed to jerk it out of its holster.
They always go for the gun,” Dr. Moebius said to Lamar, “so predictable.”
That annoyed Robbie, who didn’t think either he or Lamar were taking him seriously.
“Back off or I’ll shoot,” he said, waving the weapon at the big man.
The behemoth cocked his shiny waxed head--Like the head of a penis, Robbie thought—and studied him with his beady black eyes. “I can’t convince you to believe in Jesus, but I can arrange an introduction.”
What the fuck, Robbie thought.
“Lamar’s a God-fearing man,” the doctor said. “He leads the men’s Sunday school group. You’re welcome to join.”
Robbie started to say something snotty but stopped when he saw the look in Lamar’s eyes that he sometimes saw in his father’s. A look you’d see as a bird of prey stooped to unalive a mouse.
People with bird eyes were unpredictable. They were likely to do crazy things. And Lamar was so huge, he could unjoint him like a fried chicken.
“When’s breakfast,” Robbie asked the orderly as he unlocked a metal door with a number on it.
“New arrivals fast for a week,” the orderly said. “It’s part of the process.”
What the fuck?
***
“I’m not crazy,” was the first thing Robbie said to Jared, the roommate he was stuck with. “I don’t belong in a room the size of my bathroom back home, sharing a bunkbed with a psycho roommate.” He had added, “no offense,” at the last minute in case Jared was the kind of guy who held a grudge, but the other kid had waved off his apology.
“It’s not so bad here,” he said. “Have you seen Nurse Lili? Total smoke show.”
Robbie wasn’t exactly sure what Jared meant but snickered anyway. He’d learned the hard way how to blend in around people like Jared—self-assured to the point of arrogance and heavily invested in being the alpha male.
“You won’t see her that much,” Jared said. “She works on the ‘special’ floor.” The way Jared said “special” made Robbie shiver.
“What’s so special about it?” Jared didn’t answer, just gave him a lopsided smile. Robbie hated that kind of passive-aggressive bullshit. He shrugged and turned away, inspecting the bunk bed that took up more than half the tiny room. Jared had likely claimed the top bunk for his own, he reckoned, so he lay down in the bottom bunk, wincing as his bony butt sank into the thin mattress and made contact with the wire slats holding it in place.
Robbie ached all over. It wasn’t just the beatings and the blows to his head that had left their marks. The restraints had left deep bracelets of bruise on his wrists, and he knew if he could see his back that it would be more purple than the usual pinky-beige. Even the soles of his feet ached, although he couldn’t remember being beaten there.
Bastinado. The word came to him out of nowhere. That’s what they called the torture where someone beat on the bare soles of feet. He’d read about it one of his history books. They’d used bull penises to do the damage, as he recalled. That was so very meta.
“You hungry?” Jared asked him.
“No,” Robbie said.
“Liar,” Jared said, but didn’t offer him any food. “The food here’s probably not what you’re used to,” he said. “Baloney sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise.”
Robbie nearly gagged. “I’m a vegetarian,” he said.
“Not here, you aren’t.”
Robbie didn’t find it hard to skip meals, but he’d have to eat sometime. Maybe he could swap his baloney for someone else’s bread.
Much as he had in the van, Robbie curled up in his bunk and tried to get warm. There was a thin blanket lying on top of the mattress made out of coarse wool so scratchy it immediately raised welts on Robbie’s skin. And while it was heavy, it wasn’t warm at all. He wrapped it around himself like a shawl anyway.
Robbie managed to fall asleep shortly before the lights were turned back up to maximum brightness and a mousy woman wearing a starched nurse’s cap on top of her messy blonde hair came into the room, accompanied by a man with a heavy ring of keys attached to his belt. She handed a paper cup of pills to Jared. “Thanks Bertha,” he said, dry swallowing the pills.
She moved on to Robbie.
“Your meds,” she said.
“What are they?” he asked, eyeballing the pills in the little white cup.
“Vitamins,” she said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“I need water to take them.”
“Tap’s run dry,” she said. “We’ve called maintenance.” She shook the cup of pills. Robbie looked at them—two white oval-shaped pills and a small, triangular purple pill. She shook the little cup again. “You need to take them,” she said calmly. “If you don’t, Hal will stuff them down your throat.”
Robbie assumed the guy with the keys was Hal.
“Doctor doesn’t like it when patients aren’t compliant,” she said. “There will be consequences.”
“Take the pills, kid,” the orderly said, and his breath was so rancid, Robbie could smell the rotten eggs and ashes clear across the room.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
“Eight hundred and twenty-eight million people go hungry every day,” the nurse said. “That’s roughly ten percent of the world’s population. You’re not that special.”
“He doesn’t care about other people,” the orderly said, “or he wouldn’t be here.”
“I didn’t ask to come here,” Robbie said.
“Oh honey,” Bertha said. “No one asks to come here, but here you are. Take your pills and it’ll make everything better.”
Robbie took the pills, mainly because he wanted Bertha and the orderly to go away.
“Who’s that guy?” he asked Jared later, when they were alone again.
“That’s Hal, he’s harmless. But watch out for Bertha. She steals things.”
“I don’t have anything to steal,” Robbie said. “Not even shoes.”
“I took the disposable slippers they left for you,” Jared said. “Mine were getting worn out.”
“Give them back,” Robbie said.
“Make me,” Jared said and smirked. Robbie knew he’d never be able to force the other kid to hand them over. He resigned himself to going barefoot on the filthy floor.
As Bertha had promised, the pills made him sleepy. He decided to go back to sleep. His dreams were horrible, but at least when he slept, he wasn’t hungry.
***
Eventually, he thought it might have been near the end of his week-long fast, Robbie went back to see Dr. Moebius who noticed he was still barefoot.
“Your feet are filthy,” he observed as Lamar delivered Robbie to his office.
“Want to lick them clean?” Robbie asked. Lamar smacked him in the head so hard his ears rang.
“Ow,” Robbie said.
“Don’t try me,” Lamar said. Robbie turned to the doctor to see if he was going to intercede, but his nose was buried in Robbie’s file again.
“Sit down,” the doctor said. Robbie slouched into the chair. He was so hungry he could smell the fruit flavor of the hard candies in a glass bowl on the doctor’s desk. He wondered what the man would do if he lunged for it.
As if reading his mind, Dr. Moebius slid the bowl to the edge of the desk, close enough for Robbie to take a few pieces without stretching out his arm.
“Help yourself,” he said.
Robbie, sensing a trap, reached out and took one of the hard, round candies. It smelled green. When nothing happened, he popped it in his mouth.
Oh my god it tasted so good.
“Don’t blaspheme,” Dr. Moebius said, making a note in his pad.
Did I say that out loud? Robbie wondered and was almost sure he hadn’t.
Dr. Moebius pulled out a crinkly plastic bag containing a pair of disposable slippers and threw them at Robbie, who dropped them on the nasty carpet. They were “one size fits all” which meant they didn’t fit anyone very well. But they were better than going barefoot.
Barely.
That was the only thing that happened in the session with Dr. Moebius. Robbie felt like time had looped in on itself. And it didn’t get any better. The patients’ days were highly regimented, with half hour and hour blocks of time scheduled and marked off—the only sign that time was still moving forward at all. here was therapy time and contemplation time. Mostly it was quiet time. Reading material was limited to inspirational books and collections of fairy tales like the Bible and the Qur’an. Even though Robbie had always preferred a quiet life, life at Woodcock was just too boring.
“They used to bring in animals for us to pet but someone strangled a kitten and that ended that,” Jared told Robbie.
“Was it you?” Robbie asked.
“Nah, I wasn’t here yet.”
Unlike Robbie, Jared was completely at home at Woodcock. “I was always going to end up in a place like this,” he said. “I knew it from the time I was little.”
“How do you stand it,” Robbie asked. “I’m going nuts.”
“I just go away in my mind. Haven’t you ever done that?”
Yeah, Robbie had done that. He’d been away when the scary men had shown up and he wasn’t real sure where he’d been.
Dr. Moebius wanted to talk about where he went when he went away and how he managed it. “I wish I could get away that easily,” he said to Robbie, expecting a chuckle, but he was disappointed.
Sometimes, the hot nurse sat in on the sessions with Dr. Moebius and took notes. Robbie could tell they were fucking. He could tell Nurse Lili liked to hear the stories he told the doctor, the kinkier the better. She really liked the fantasies he had, especially the ones about his mother.
But outside his therapy sessions, life at Woodcock was one long string of boredom squared. “I’m in hell,” he complained to Bertha one day as she came around with his cup of pills. She didn’t care. Just told him to take his pills and quit complaining.
After about six weeks, Robbie began seeing things. He was convinced Orderly John was a horse masquerading as a human. Jared seemed intrigued by that. “He has horse teeth,” he agreed.
“I’m having a hard time thinking straight,” Robbie said.
“It’s the drugs,” Jared said. “they let you see people’s real faces.”
“Nurse Lili smells like blood,” Robbie said.
“Blood and roses,” Jared agreed. “I’d like to open her up and smell her insides.”
That admission freaked Robbie out and for a while, he pretended he was alone in the room, so he didn’t have to listen to Jared’s weird fantasies.
At night Jared slept the sleep of the innocent while Robie lay wakeful on the bottom bunk. Sometimes Jared snored. But that’s not what kept Robbie awake. At night, when the quiet was only broken by the howl of other damned souls trapped in their rooms, he saw the shadows of beings who slipped into his room.
“If it’s dark, how can you see their shadows?” Jared asked reasonably when Robbie told him about the winged shadows and the sounds they made as they whispered.
“They’re darker than the dark,” Robbie said. Jared nodded, considering that.
“Demons are dark angels,” Jared said. “You can tell because they have red wings.”
Robbie thought that sounded kind of pretty. He had once seen a painting of an angel with multi-colored wings in a book about Hearst Castle.
He told Jared that’s the kind of wings he wanted, but Jared told him humans couldn’t have wings, only angels and demons.
That doesn’t really sound fair, Robbie thought.
Jared told him life wasn’t fair and that he should get used to it. He sounded like Robbie’s dad when he said that.
But Robbie admired Jared. He seemed to have all the answers. Even the day the orderlies came for him.
***
“What do they want with me?” he asked Jared when Lamar and Orderly Jim just showed up at their door and stood there, looking ominous and not saying anything. It was unnerving to Robbie, but Jared just ignored them.
Eventually, they heard the squeak of Bertha’s orthopedic shoes as she strode down the hallway to their room. She entered the room--without unlocking it first—and gave Robbie a look that made him shiver.
“Time to go,” she said.
“Where?” Robbie said.
“Upstairs,” she said.
To the special floor.
“All right,” Robbie said. He wasn’t going to be a little bitch about it. And besides, he was so bored that going anywhere new sounded like an adventure. As he followed the three staff members out of his cell, he noticed Jared was following him. “Where are you going?”
“With you,” Jared said. “You’ll never survive the special floor without me.”
Robbie shrugged. “Okay,” he said to Jared, “thanks.”

The End of Time
To Robbie’s surprise, the room where he was taken was bare except for an ornate metal chair sitting on a raised dais. Seated in the chair was Nurse Lili, wearing a hooded black robe. Kneeling beside her was Dr. Moebius, who was naked. Robbie found the sight disturbingly erotic.
Lili smiled when she saw the boys but did not invite either Robbie or Jared to sit down.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, as if Robbie had had any agency in the decision. “This tribunal is now in session.”
Robbie felt a stirring of alarm. “Tribunal,” he said. “I’ve already had a court case.”
“Yes, and it was a travesty, wasn’t it?”
“His lawyer was an idiot,” Jared said.
“Shut up,” Robbie said, because he knew grownups didn’t like Jared.
“I want you to tell us your story, Robbie,” Nurse Lili said.
“Us?” Robbie repeated, a little confused. He’d already told all his stories to the doctor and didn’t think Moebius wanted to hear them again.
Lili smiled again and this time her mouth stretched impossibly wide, and Robbie could see several rows of pointed teeth inside. “We are legion,” she said. “We contain multitudes.”
“I’m just one person,” Robbie said.
“Really? Didn’t your lawyer claim that you, Jared Robert Nelson, were not guilty by reason of insanity.”
“My name is Robbie,” he said, looking around for Jared, but he’d disappeared.
“Jared Robert Nelson,” Nurse Lili said again, sounding bored. “We want to hear about the Timekeeper.”
“The media made up that name,” Robbie said.
“It’s catchy though, isn’t it?” Nurse Lili said.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Robbie said, or maybe it was Jared.
“Yes, Robbie, you do,” Nurse Lili said and when she spoke, there was a timbre in her voice that hadn’t been there before. “We want to know what made you kill.”
“Make it a good story,” Dr. Moebius said. “And we’ll be merciful.” Robbie looked at the doctor again and saw he’d misread the power dynamic in the room. Dr. Moebius was not submissive at all.
Robbie liked the sound of mercy. And he had kept his secret for so long, had kept it all through the questioning at the jail, kept it all through the trial.
“It was Jared’s fault,” Robbie said. “He wanted to kill our father, but I convinced him that we’d be caught if we did that, so we needed to kill some surrogates.”
“The men you killed were all relatively young men, and gay,” Nurse Lili interrupted, “how were they like your father?”
Robbie was confused. “I would choose them, but when we met, they always rejected me.”
“So, you were looking for rejection?” Dr. Moebius said.
“Yes,” Robbie said. Or maybe it was Jared. He was no longer sure who was speaking.
“And did you always take their faces?” Nurse Lili asked.
“Yes,” Robbie said.
“Because they looked like your father?”
“They had the same stupid round face, like a clock,” Robbie said. He had told the police that he’d had nothing to do with the stupid murders they were investigating, but he wanted to brag about the circular beauty of time and the exquisite minutes and seconds it took his victims to die. All of them had flat round faces until he peeled them off so that people could see what they looked like underneath.
“Tell us,” Nurse Lili said. “Tell us what it felt like to peel off their faces.”
Robbie didn’t really know where to begin but he could feel a strange excitement building inside.
“The first time I did it, the skin tore, and was useless for display.”
“That must have been disappointing,” she said.
“It was a waste. Dwight would have made a lovely clock.”
“Dwight?” Nurse Lili asked. “I don’t remember him being one of the victims.” She turned to Dr. Moebius to see if he’d ever heard of him, but the shrink shook his head.
“Nobody ever found him,” Robbie said with Jared’s smirk.
“How clever of you,” Nurse Lili said.
“He is a clever boy,” Dr. Moebius agreed. He leaned forward, his red eyes seemed to pierce right through Robbie’s heart.
“Not to your heart,” Lili said in his head. “But right to your pathetic soul.”
“You have to understand,” Dr. Moebius said paternally, “we are here to judge you, but you are not being tried by a jury of your peers.”
“I can tell you’re not human,” Robbie said, beginning to feel the first stirrings of fear. “What are you?”
“Show him,” Nurse Lili said.
The doctor bowed his head and when he raised it, dark radiance gleamed. Suddenly the medic didn’t look so harmlessly comical. His skin seemed to be glowing and Robbie found it hard to focus on the outline of his form, which was somehow taller, more slender, and rather androgynous. The same thing was happening to Nurse Lili.
What. The. Fuck?
And Nurse Lili’s beauty was morphing into something far more dangerous and exciting than she had been a moment ago. “Call me by my name,” she whispered into his head. “Lilith.”
“Lilith,” he said, stumbling over the name. He’d heard it before but wasn’t quite sure where. Wasn’t she one of the singers his mother listened to? The one who whined about stray dogs?
“You’re stalling,” Lilith said. “We hate being bored.”
‘The boy has no talent for storytelling,” the doctor said.
Robbie was offended by that comment. “I’m great at storytelling,” he said. “I tell the best stories.”
“You tell lies,” the doctor said, “that’s not the same thing.”
Robbie looked at the doctor with scorn. “You work for Lucifer, right?”
The two demons didn’t answer, which was answer enough. “Don’t they call Lucifer the father of lies? Maybe he’d like to hear my stories.”
Dr. Moebius smiled. “Are you volunteering to be his court jester?”
“Lucifer lacks a sense of humor,” Nurse Lili said. “You’re better off with us.”
Robbie felt his frustration rise.
“Fuck this,” Jared said, and Robbie felt a great sense of relief that he was back. “They can’t keep us here.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Nurse Lili said, so of course, Robbie had to try to flee. He was very surprised to find that he was rooted to the floor.
Literally, with roots growing out of his feet and anchoring themselves deep below the yellowed and cracked linoleum.
“Jared,” he said, but there was no answer. “Jared,” he said again and this time, he yelled it.
“He’s not here,” Robbie,” Nurse Lili said. “He’s gone away.”
“What do you want from me,” Robbie said.
“We had hoped for entertainment,” Nurse Lili said. “But really, you’ve been a disappointment.”
Robbie looked at her face and saw no trace of mercy there.
“So, what happens now,” he said, trying very hard to sound tough like Jared would have.
“Annihilation by immolation,” said Nurse Lili, who wasn’t a nurse at all.
Bitter laughter bubbled up out of Robbie. “At least it’ll be a quick death,” he said, with a bravado he really didn’t feel.
Dr. Moebius looked at him and shook his head sadly. “You’ve been dead since the moment you arrived,” he said. “You just didn’t know it.”
And before Robbie could draw another breath--did he even need to b breathe if he was dead—he found himself at the center of the sun, surrounded by incandescent plasma that should have turned him to ash and cinders in a heartbeat but didn’t.
The pain swallowed up every other thought Robbie might have had.
“The sun will burn out one day,” Nurse Lilith whispered in his mind. “But you will suffer every second until it does.”
Robbie would have let out a howl, but the flaming sun-stuff filled his mouth and throat and lungs.
At last, he felt regret for what he had done, but not repentance.
***
As for Lilith and Moebius, they forgot about him as soon as they had pronounced judgment. For there were always serial killers arriving at Woodcock Clinic who needed their attention.
Nurse Lili passed a file to Dr. Moebius. “This case might be interesting,” she said. “He’s younger than our usual visitors.”
Moebius scanned the file. “Divorced parents. Molested by his grandmother.” He looked up. “Killed 13 people with his mother’s service revolver, including his mother and grandmother.”
“Yes,” Nurse Lili said. “He had to reload.”
“I think we should talk to Ben,” Nurse Lili said. “I’m sure he has a story to tell that will help pass the time.”

Katherine Tomlinson is a former reporter who prefers making things up. A screenwriter and novelist, she is also an award-winning short story writer and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She has published several collections of short fiction, including the upcoming Scar Tissue.

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