i. TIME’S SUBJECT
The sun brands a square into the rug. Archer shouts.
—This is the pit of fire for the enemy!
The plane Archer’s holding soars over the burning square, axolotl at the helm.
—Wuuuurrrrrrraaaaooowwww!
Now a raptor soldier plummets, booted from the underbelly.
—Smoked in the fire! Take that! You walking dead mans!
The soldier disappears into the flames. He’s ashes.
—Keep fighting!
—Archer! A voice pushes in from the kitchen.
Raptors in the mountains raise their crossbows.
—This will be a disaster!
—Archer!
—One shot! THWOOP. Ohhhhhh! We’re going to crash! WHOOAAAAA!!!! KRRSSSSHHH!!! BFFFFFFF!!! KRRRRKRCKKKLEE! We need an ambulance! THE PILOT NEEDS AN AMBULANCE!
—ARCHER.
—Mom! We need an ambulance in here! Now!
—Please, honey, I need just 10 more minutes for my meeting.
—It’s an emergency!
No reply.
The kitchen is where Archer’s mom zooms.
The couch room is where Archer plays.
The bedroom is where they sleep and the bathroom is where they poopa-doopa.
—Uh-huh. He hears her say to the man in the screen. Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Archer sits. The war is over. For now. The raptors won. The plane is a belly up. It hisses. The axolotl pilot, badly burned, crawls from the cockpit, still grinning. Mom’s voice again cuts through.
—What time tomorrow? Well, I know Jason has—
Silence.
—Sure, sure. Well, I have all afternoon—.
Silence.
—Look, why don’t we just throw a dart at the clock and say 5? Yeah? That solves it all.
Archer stands up at this. He cranes his neck to peer at the clock on the wall. The clock has a white circle face. The circle face is a blinding moon. The numbers are the craters. He jumps up on the sofa to get a closer look. It ticks. Throw a dart at the clock and say 5? That solves it all?
Then Archer remembers. I have a dart. He leaps off the couch straight into the square of fire then hops twice more to land at the trunk by the wall. He throws open the lid and dive bombs into the corner of the box. His hand grasps the cold pin at the nose of the thing.
—I have a dart! He yells and hoists it high over his head.
Now Archer’s aiming, aiming for the dead center of the clock face and the second hand is ticking, jutting forward from second to second like it’s laughing and he’s got the dead center in his sights and he winds up to throw and he steps with his red socked foot forward and releases and shouts,
—FIVE!!!!
A direct hit.
—YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!!
But, then. The missile, which should have smacked and caromed off the clock face and gone spinning head over tail to the floor when it hit the plastic mask, instead sticks directly into the clock face. The clock has turned into what looks like doughy slime foam. Then ripples swim and fan out from the dart’s tip, the clock now somehow liquid.
Archer stands and stares. Then shouts.
—Mom!
The dart moves, it continues on into the clock. Like a train pulling into a tunnel at the end of its route, the dart pulls as if slowly sucked into the liquid foam and the whole surface of the clock face pulls inward into the tunnel puncture with it and all the numbers and hash marks stretch like taffy as though it’s all getting sucked down with the dart into the drain. The hole is a belly button. The belly button swallows the dart and all then folds in on itself.
The clock is gone. Where it once hung is a dark circular hole in the wall. The hole spreads like a thunderhead growing. It widens until Archer could fit in its mouth.
A new room!
Archer runs. Archer jumps. He stands tip toe on the couch. The hole is like a cave opening in the wall. His hands are hooked on the rim of it, his eyes peeking over.
Archer scrambles up the wall and in.
ii. INTERSTITIAL: WHIRLIGIG OF TIME
In the dark, a pangolin. It sits and stares, its scales shining like copper reflecting a light Archer can’t see. He looks behind him. The cave mouth is shut. Gone. All around him is blackness. Except for the glowing pangolin. In an instant, the creature shudders and its scales fall to the ground with a clatter. A bearded man in coveralls appears. He scoops up the scales. Then coughs in a fit.
Archer is moving. Like he’s in a boat. A boat on a fast-moving current that doesn’t slurp and roar, but crunches instead. A dry crunch. Fall leaves maybe? The naked pangolin plummets out of his vision and down into darkness until he’s just a tiny pea.
The river is words. The words appear as black words on paper strips. Waves and curlicues. All paper. The long threads of words flow around and under his invisible boat. And then: a glittering carmine-dappled migration. Animals all around. Antelope that fade into tree frogs and there! Axolotls that become smiling women. The animal souls fade in and out of different forms as they move alongside Archer.
Ahead a circular door creaks open. A hole punched in the black.
iii. THE TIME HAS COME
Archer steps through the circle door. He’s standing on a thin ledge high above a city piled full of brick buildings and toppled medieval walls. A light breeze hits his face like a sigh. He places his hand on the giant iron circle that’s like a bank vault door to steady himself so he doesn’t fall. He feels through the cold iron a sonorous heartbeat. Insistent. Pummeling. Like the iron heart inside is punching his hand: Alive. Alive. Alive.
Archer realizes: he’s on the ledge of a clock tower. The circle door is the clock’s face. The ledge is his thin floor. Beyond it, a long, long f
A
L
L.
The city below is bathed in gloaming light. Like a faded dusky quilt is draped on all the buildings. He looks up at the cirrus streaks in the dying light. Birds, black commas, flit through the airspace.
Don’t look down!
And then he sees it. Suspended in the sky at his eye level ahead is a room. Hanging there. In the sky. It’s as though he’s looking into a square dollhouse room cut into the sky. In it he sees a hospital room, a man on his deathbed, so thin he’s made of matchsticks. Another gentlemen, older and on crutches, a bandage around his head and jaw, stands beside the bed. He offers the dying man water with an eye dropper. The dying man stretches his neck up and gapes his mouth like a baby bird, reaching for the drips. Archer hears the man on crutches as if he’s speaking inside Archer’s ear.
—Thirsty today. That’s it.
A comma bird swoops around the open face of the room, slashing through Archer’s vision. Archer shouts.
—HEY! UP HERE! HEY!!! HELP! CAN YOU SEE ME?
Dying-man sits up, gasping for breath. He lies back down. Fixes his eyes on Bandage-man. He whispers and it’s the sound of sand pouring onto a floor.
—Did you hear that?
—Hear what?
—A boy.
—A boy?
—Yes.
—No boy.
—I could have sworn.
—Nope.
—Hm.
—Don’t go batty on me, Archer. Silly bird.
Dying-man shakes his head slightly, relaxes his eyelids. Archer feels a chill on each of his vertebrae as though mallets of ice are tapping on each and every one. Bandage-man called Dying-man Archer.
—Will you pray for me?
—Sure. Real or made-up?
—They’re all real.
—You know what I mean…
—Made-up, please.
Bandage-man mutters as he continues to water Dying-man/Archer with the dropper:
—underneath the mercy lights of time, you shall pass on…the mercy lights will watch you and cradle you…and then bear you away…over oceans…and you shall hear and know what’s in a whale’s songs and just what they mean, you will respond and know family again…underneath the mercy lights…
Dying-man/Archer cries.
—I’m going to miss you when I’m gone, Jon.
—I’ll see you soon enough.
As Archer watches, banners like tendrils unfurl from the center of Dying-man/Archer’s forehead. They’re crimson and lemon, black and white piebald, cerulean blue. The banners flow upwards in slow twists and curves and then, like a key change, bend and swim straight towards Archer on the clocktower ledge. He’s frozen, paralyzed by their approach. As they reach him, they flow around and over and even through the little boy, into his chest and out his back, the way a hand passes through water. Archer shouts in fear.
—HELP!!!
—There! I heard him again!
Archer stumbles back into the tower’s dim skull as the massive circular clock face closes with a final whump.
iv. INTERSTITIAL: OLD TIMES
Now Archer can only walk backwards and the banners light up the dark. How will I escape? He walks and walks. His feet are on his legs backwards and he walks backwards and his hand ankles are where his feet wrists should be. No, that’s not right. And all around, a million mile high and million mile below film screen towers up and plunges down and on it are images. Images that change and fade and repeat: a man in an airplane, his face all smiles; a teenager with blonde hair receiving a kiss from a girl with pink hair, little buttons on her jacket, both of them grinning; a goldfinch sitting in a little tree in a tiny garden; a sunset over a lake and cliffs; and then a boy – it’s Archer! But poopa-doopa in his pants smaller kind of Archer, maybe – sitting in his mom’s lap as she reads aloud to him from a favorite book.
In the center up ahead and backwards, a small circle door opens. He can’t reach it. Home! Mom! Please! But no matter how hard he walks, he’s on a moving sidewalk like at the airport but he’s going the wrong way.
His dart! He stoops to scoop it. He’s sucked straight through the miniature hole when he grasps it in his hand.
v. TIME’S ARROW
Ma appears in the doorway, looking at her phone. Archer stands. Archer pants. Still looking at her phone.
—Hi, Buster.
Archer pants.
—Watcha been doing?
She looks up. Eyes the room.
—Wowwww, you really made short work of the place. We’re gonna have to clean up.
Her hair hangs in twists on the sides of her face. Black banners that shine. He can smell her Mom smell. He has to pee. He pants.
—You OK?”
He nods. The wall behind her is restored. No mark of the cave. No sign of the river of words or the dollhouse hospital room.
The clock hangs innocently. But it watches him.
—Well, I’m sorry that took so long, I know I said—
She stops short. She picks up the dart, on the carpet near her foot.
—Whoa, what’s this? Looks pretty sharp.
—NO!
Archer runs at her, shoves her. He snatches the dart from her hand and turns. She stumbles back. He jumps onto the couch and bashes the clock to the floor. The face comes apart like a secret.
—Archer! What the hell?”
But he’s already running.
Over the threshold.
Into the kitchen.
Heaving open the back door and through.
On the flaky old porch.
At the rail.
Arm behind his head.
Cocked.
Step.
Release.
He throws the dart away. Hard as he can.
—NO!
It sails.
Over the parking lot, through the trees, into the wind.
Up and up.
Into the stratosphere.
Through it.
On and on and on.
Straight into the face of the sun.
Direct hit.
About Jarrett Dapier
Jarrett Dapier is a writer, young adult librarian, and drummer. His first picture book, Jazz For Lunch!, illustrated by Eugenia Mello, will be released by Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum Books on September 7, 2021. His second book, Mr. Watson's Chickens, illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi and published by Chronicle Books, arrives in stores one month later on October 5, 2021. He lives in Evanston, IL with his family and their many pets.
About Adam Lazar
Adam Lazar is a painter, sewist, and graphic designer based in Evanston, Illinois. He works primarily in watercolor and acrylic paint and frequently includes line drawing and collage. While the subject matter of his pieces vary, color and emotion are central to his work. You can learn more about Adam on Instagram @maxandwolf.