Sands out of time

John stood on his cheap hotel balcony smoking a cigarette. His beleaguered lungs took one last, long draw before he dropped the spent butt. A foot clad in an old brown leather boot snuffed it out, an action more out of habit than necessity now. On the butt’s second bounce it had slowed and the few glowing embers hung in the air before he squashed them. His last exhalation of smoke hung in a hazy cloud over his head. Hands the same texture and age of the boot thoughtfully stroked week-old stubble.

“I guess it worked,” John said to no one in particular.

He absently clasped the Eye-of-Ra pendant hung from a gold chain around his neck observing the scene —  or picture, he thought — before him. Below was the shabby backyard of the home next to his equally shabby hotel. A wall surrounded the yard lined with young sycamore trees. A dog stood next to its dog house facing the wall, motionless. Beyond the wall was all dirt as far as the eye could see. Some of the dirt was spread out like a lake. Some off to the right shaped into a road. A small truck at the horizon, where the road met the sky, presumably had some business back in town. It was pointed toward the hotel, but not moving.

Dirt directly behind the sea was a small valley wherein more dirt, older dirt, was shaped into bricks and in the center of the bricks, a statue people named the Sphinx. Even further back was a great pointed hill of dirt, a pyramid. Surrounding the triangular tomb was light and color, the setting sun — “when Ra displays his glory before slumber,” John thought. Rays of light cut through the atmosphere, orange to gray to blue.

“I guess it worked,” he said again.

No birds cawed. No horns honked. No insects chirped. Not even a tree whispered as the air of their voices was perfectly still. That word — “still.” John could hear his heart beating. It didn’t race. It beat evenly in his chest. The cigarette on the floor was his third. Another hung in the air after bouncing off the balcony. The first John had flicked into the sky when all this was still novel. He looked at it, the cherry pointed toward him a permanent orange light, a stream of smoke like a thread holding the cig in the sky. Was that one air pollution or air litter?

Jimmy. It was time to go back, to see what happened to his brother.

First, he resolved to turn around and face the scene behind him. It had nearly been curtains by the time he finished the ancient incantation, just three seconds before the German fired. His heart naturally picked up speed seeing how close he’d come to failure — the bullet hanging in the air two feet away, and five feet, six inches from the floor.

His eyes narrowed to look at it, the small cylinder of lead that nearly stopped him. He half smiled, himself now the only thing capable of motion.

“You know, Jimmy would have loved this,” John said, eyeing the source of the shot, his pursuer, Ernst.

Green eyes under a furrowed, sweated brow continued looking down the barrel of a Walther PPK. The setting sun left a permanent glint on round, frameless glasses. Below the glasses and the prominent nose was a snarl —  lips pulled apart and teeth gritted. His face was clean-shaven. He wore a black pea coat and dusty, rumpled black fedora.

“You know you’re the picture of villainy, Ernst,” John told the frozen man. “But you’re not the villain, are you?”

John’s eyes lowered. He couldn’t deny that he and Jimmy deserved such an epithet. Well, he did anyway. Jimmy would do anything for his older brother. It was John with his obsession over finding the Eye, who sunk to villainy. It overshadowed his mission to find the natron — a mineral salt used in mummification — to save his wife. Once you could stop time, anything was possible, right? So with those stakes, every action was justifiable.

“You didn’t have to chase me so hard, Ernst,” John argued, a finger pointing at the living statue … he lowered it again.

Standing to the side of it, John looked closer at the hovering bullet. Letting go of the cigarettes gave them a few seconds before freezing. He touched the side of the bullet and instantly it darted in the direction it was first traveling leaving a red burn across John’s fingertip. He jerked back seething. The bullet flew out of the balcony door. It was previously going much faster than the cigarette butt, of course. John tried to follow it, but he estimated it would have traveled over a mile.

“Jimmy would have liked that, too,” he said.

John stepped around the angry German and carefully avoided touching the armed Egyptian police as he made his way out of his hotel room. Behind the front desk, the young woman held her hand to her chest, her eyes wide and mouth agape as two other policemen stood, each on one foot, evidently running toward John’s room.

“Looks like you're ready for an ass-kicking contest, boys. 'Fraid to say, you're running late,” John said.

He continued out the door, through the parking lot. Would a car work? How big of a thing could he touch that would join him in time again? Obviously standing in and touching the hotel didn’t restart Mr. Schnitzel and the police. Maybe the magic was intuitive like that.

John fished in his pockets for the car rental keys and opened the black Hyundai’s door. He sat in the driver’s seat, put the key in the ignition, turned it, and was greeted by the growl of the engine.

“Hot damn, we got wheels!” John clapped and pumped a fist. He backed out of the driveway and turned towards the pyramid.

He had to know. He had to see what became of his brother after having to run off so fast.

The heat was different somehow. Without a current, without a breeze, it seemed even hotter. However, he was able to see, so light rays must have been moving and bouncing still.

The path to the inner chamber was much easier this time. Swinging axes hung in the air. Cones of fire from the floors and walls sprouted like bright, exotic plants. The suspended platforms hanging over spikes remained motionless until John jumped on them. Pools of alligators seemed like terrifying lawn statuary. The path was easier, though it still left John uneasy.

He made his way into the inner chamber, the resting place of Queen Merites where he found the Eye and Jimmy found the natron. This time he found Jimmy. He clutched the Eye as he fully grasped the scene before him.

Two men were chasing the brothers —  Ernst back at the hotel, an agent with the U.N.’s special collections, and another Eye of Ra devotee, Kosey.

Kosey, an Egyptian native, was Cairo’s most ruthless gangster and most obsessed with finding the Eye. All of his drug trafficking, all of his arms-dealing supported this cause. Explorers he sent out never returned, were found dead, or came back empty-handed and became dead.

Ernst adhered to the letter of the law while Kosey adhered to finding the Eye. Kosey and his men followed the Linx brothers, John and Jimmy, into the pyramid while Ernst and the police closed in on their hotel room, where John had secured the scroll with the pendant's incantation.

In the struggle with Kosey and his men, the brothers got split up, John taking the Eye and Jimmy holding the natron.

“It’ll work! When you figure it out, it’ll work! Then you can come back for me!” Jimmy said before drawing Kosey’s attention to himself, John still hiding behind a half-broken statue. It was the last thing John heard from his brother as Kosey and his men swarmed him.

Here he was again, alive … for now.

Kosey had Jimmy pinned against a wall, his men surrounding them, guns drawn. Kosey’s left forearm was under Jimmy’s neck, the tan, drawstring pouch of natron in his left hand. His right tightly held a 9mm Glock dug into Jimmy’s ribcage, his finger on the trigger. The angry, open mouth told the rest of the story.

Jimmy must have stalled Kosey as long as he could to give John time to get away. Maybe he said he had the Eye hidden or they simply hadn’t found it quite yet. Maybe his last lie was telling Kosey the Eye was in his pocket, where the baggie of mummy salt was.

So was rescuing his brother even possible? 

Knocking the gun away would be step 1, hard enough that Kosey couldn’t pull the trigger if that’s what he was about to do.

John looked around the chamber as he thought. Soon enough, he made his decision. He carefully approached one of Kosey’s minions from behind and reached for the handgun in his rear holster. As he touched it and slipped it out, the man in mid-stride stumbled forward. He noticed his fellow criminals and boss were entirely frozen. His right hand moved to the rifle slung on his shoulder, slowed, and froze again, back to action-figure pose.

John quickly stepped back, gun in hand, looking left and right for other nearby thugs. He didn’t bump into anyone. Success.

The gun would surely fire, as he discovered with the still-life bullet from the hotel, and it would travel for three seconds, plenty of time to make a difference.

“I’m sorry I got you into this, little brother,” John said and stopped short of reflexively touching Jimmy's shoulder. “You never questioned me or what I wanted. You came and researched and fought alongside me, even through the same shady shit I pulled to get this thing … and you got the natron.”

Examining their position, John took a knee near Kosey and Jimmy. He lined up a shot just a couple feet from Kosey’s right hand. John's stomach turned as he considered the rapid amputation about to take place. Kosey would have zero qualms torturing him and his brother for the Eye, but shooting a man’s finger off — especially at this close range — was still shooting a man’s finger off.

He aimed. He had the time to line up the shot as perfectly as was necessary. An eye closed and his hand cupped the handle of the gun, his finger still lying on the barrel. He had one shot and it had to be perfect. Inhaling slowly, he brought his finger to the trigger and held his breath.

Should he be sitting on something?

John lowered the gun quickly and exhaled. He should be sitting on something. Standing up, he glanced around the ancient chamber, the final resting place of an ancient Egyptian queen, looking for a La-Z-Boy, a barstool, a beanbag chair, anything.

The heat was still unbearable with no breeze, no airflow. John was sweating since the water came from his normal, unfrozen body. He spun to his left, to look for a rock or oil vase stand. As his hand moved, a drop of sweat left his body. It flew through the air, in an arc, for two seconds. It slowed as the second hand on John’s watch neared its third tick. It slowed but did not stop before landing on Kosey’s white, cotton, rolled-up sleeve.

1st second

“Stard!” Kosey suddenly finished yelling, presumably the end of “bastard,” John would later think when he replayed this scene in his head for the thousandth time wondering how he touched his mortal enemy or how the spell that otherwise held the entire globe, maybe the entire universe at a standstill failed in this one instance.

2^nd second

Jimmy’s eyes glanced over to his instantly appearing brother. His mouth opened and eyebrows rose before a word began to form.

“I knew it-“ Jimmy began before Kosey

3^rd second

pulled the trigger with all the catharsis of finally flattening an annoying gnat. A bullet traveled from the chamber down the barrel of the gun as milliseconds disappeared. As the third second concluded, the bullet had exited the Glock, broke through the fabric of Jimmy’s sweated, dirty shirt, and pressed against the space between his ribs. The brief blast following the bullet still hung in the air.

John’s plan, in the scene he suddenly had to solve in an unexpected three seconds, was to wait and let time stop again. What could happen in three seconds? Everything.

Gripping the pendant, John stood as frozen as the world. In moments he understood the current impossibility of success. No matter how he attacked Kosey, or hit the bullet, or shoved his brother, there was still going to be a hole in Jimmy’s heart.

Currently, his brother was alive and unharmed. But he wasn’t unharmed, was he? John looked into the now hopeful eyes of his devoted brother. One was black, bruised. There was dried blood on his upper lip from his misshapen nose. A swollen cut on his eyebrow. A long cut on his cheek.

But as long as the world didn’t start turning again, Jimmy was alive.

The natron. Kosey was still holding it — and Jimmy. John couldn’t get it without killing his brother. But the sarcophagus was still open. Surely Jimmy didn’t extract all of the salt. John backed slowly away from his brother and Kosey. He carefully turned then walked to Queen Merites’ last uncomfortable bed and looked inside.

John couldn’t think of how to fish for more natron within the wrappings and bones of the queen’s remains. His brain was overcome with questions.

What’s next? What do you do with the natron if you collect more? Do you leave the pyramid with your brother pinned forever between a bullet and a hard place? Do you drive your car to the frozen airport? Do you climb aboard a plane and force a pilot at gunpoint to travel back to Miami with no contact with no tower anywhere? Do you get home, take your bag of dirt to your nearly dead wife and cure her? What’s next after that? Do you live in a world of statues, frozen ocean waves, mobiles of birds hanging in the sky?

He couldn’t even play fetch with Rosco. He could hold his dog, throw the ball, let Rosco go, and the two would meet at the end of the yard and stop. He thought of all these things more frantically as his directionless hands tore at the queen’s wrappings. Jewels, herbs and probably natron flew into the air most of it freezing before hitting the chamber floor. 

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. John’s breathing slowed.

“Even if,” he turned to his brother, “if you were ok … I couldn’t keep the Eye,” John said and rested his arms on the edge of the open sarcophagus. “Even if you and I found our way home and saved Nikki, I couldn’t keep the Eye. Would we be Dorothy and her friends walking arm in arm down the yellow brick road of Ra forever? Would I start time and just fly back to Egypt and sneak through everyone looking for me just to play in a still-life, art piece?”

The closer John had come to finding the Eye, the fewer times he had said his wife’s name — Nikki. He pounded the sarcophagus.

Jimmy's not ok but life has to go on. My wife … and eight billion people — minus one — are waiting to go on living.

6^th hour

John sat in his window seat on a Turkish Airlines flight at the beginning of a 16-hour trip. A stewardess strolled down the aisle pushing a cart.

“Drink, sir?” she asked.

John looked toward her. “Scotch?”

“Whiskey, sir?” she asked.

He nodded and looked out the window again. He took his drink and downed it in two gulps.

“Thanks,” he said. She was leaning down to the next passenger and froze.

“Oh. You're welcome, sir,” she said, took his empty glass, and moved on.

John turned to the tarmac again watching suitcases glide on conveyor belts and other planes taxiing to terminals. His breathing was uneven and he sniffled a few times. His hand reached up and held the tan, drawstring pouch hanging around his neck.

"Please observe the no-smoking sign," a pleasant voice from the overhead speaker said before wishing everyone a pleasant flight.