The man was still there when I got back, flicking through my book and quietly laughing to himself. “Something funny?” I asked as I put his pint down in front him. He looked up at me, wiped his eyes and spoke: “Just something in your book, they where never like that.”
“What where never like what?” I replied, sliding myself across the wooden bench, shoving my jacket up out of the way. He put the book down again, knocking his pint and splashing the nectar of the old gods across its cover. He did not even acknowledge the fact as he began to speak again. “Oh, don’t worry, just a little factual inaccuracy.”
“In my book? But my book is fiction!” I answered. He looked at me, then down at the book. The beer, now a puddle on the old and discoloured cover, was beginning to seep into the leathered material. Out of the crackling speaker above the bench behind me, strange and out of place chanting gently accompanied James singing of a thing that should not be. “If you say so,” he remarked, pushing the book to one side and leaning in towards me. “So about this time then, you interested?” he said in a hushed voice. I motioned a cheer with my glass and took a swig on my ale. When I finished I answered him. “I still don’t understand what you are trying to sell and never mind what it costs.”
“Alright, I forget you folk see time differently,” he said as he sat back, took a drink of his own pint and continued. “Ever spent a night dancing, had a few drinks, laughed with friends, met a beautiful girl, taken her home and did the old drunken last dance in bed? Then lying there with your arms around her you wondered why it only felt like an hour ago you where contemplating staying in as you were tired. Where had the night gone? It had gone so quickly and your memories don’t add up to the time that had passed? ”
“Yeah, it’s called being drunk!” I said raising my glass again.
“Well, yes and no. You see, yes, your drunk and that does make it all so much easier,” he said with a cheeky but mischievous grin. “Easier for what?” I asked. “Easier for us to harvest your time,” he replied. The only thing that I could bring into words was “Harvest Time.”
“Yes, harvest, like bring in the crops to feed us through the winter. You see, time is an interesting thing, it’s like flypaper for events, sensations and feelings. It sticks to it and wiggles for bit then gives up and returns to the universe to be recycled. But whilst it’s wiggling, it has life and that, my friend, is a commodity.” He sat back, took his pint for another drink looking at me like he had just revealed a great secret to me. I tried to understand what he had tried to explain. “So,” I began, “time is the flypaper, human events and all we feel with it are the flies.” He nodded his head, up and down. I continued on: “and so you sell these flies before the flies die?”
“Yes, spot on!” he exclaimed.
“You chop up the flypaper and sell it fly by fly?”
“Indeed, your are a clever one, aren’t you.” He nodded just once this time and gave me a wary look. He looked thoughtful for a moment and continued his sales pitch at me. “We have all sorts of time for all needs, but mind – the better the experience the higher the price.”
*Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar – Hops grown by HP Lovecraft and brewed by Neil Gaiman
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
