The Time Eater - A Short Story

I’ve always known that I was special, after all no one else my age has ever seen him, and nobody in the history of the human race has ever been able to remember him. I can though, and that’s why I’m special. I can recall the first time I saw him. He had been visiting my father in the bathroom and was about to creep down the stairs. Dad had come out complaining that he had found his first gray hair and when I walked out of my room, I saw him there, on the landing, about to put his giant hairy foot on the top step.

We’d talked for hours that day, he asked me why I could see him, I don’t know I had replied, he’s huge you see, at least twelve foot high, you couldn’t miss him. He had so many interesting stories, like the time he’d sat in on a meeting between the Prime Minister and the President of America. He said he’d eaten hours and hours that day. He feeds on wasted time you see. Every time you procrastinate, every time you put something off, you feed the Time Eater.

He can speak every language on Earth can the Time Eater; I suppose that what happens when you’ve been alive for over a million years. He can even speak Latin, I don’t know why he’d want to but he can. I asked him what his favourite language was and he’d told me Mongolian, he always liked going to Mongolia he said, because out there he found the most delicious wasted time in the whole world. He said that in England and America, all the wasted time tastes of wet cardboard, whereas in Mongolia, it tastes of stars. I asked him how he knew what stars tasted like; he told me that he’d built most of them. That’s what he does when he’s collected enough precious moments. They’re hard to come by, precious moments of wasted time, like diamonds in a river bed he says, and he uses them to make stars. Stars, he says, are wasted moments that lead to inspiration.

He says that although humans can’t see him they still know he’s there. They have all these words for him he says, demon, angel, death even. He says he finds humans funny, says they’re always trying to label everything like it’s a new batch of jam or something. He says that sometimes he wishes humans could hear him so that he could tell them his real name; The Time Eater.

He visits humans all the time, not children of course, because children don’t know how to waste time. Sometimes they try their hardest, putting off exam revision and things, but because the mind of a child is always learning new lessons, they’re never really wasting their time.

When he visits them, adults always know he’s there, they just forget really quickly, like a lost dream. More often than not he leaves his mark, a gray hair; and each time he visits he leaves another one and another one. Most old people have been marked so much that they only have gray hair.

Of course the Time Eater has a job, he’s not just here to eat time and get fat; he needs to eat time so that he has enough energy to make all those long distance journeys. He says that for every hour of wasted time, he can carry a soul about one hundred miles. That’s his job you see, to tell people when their time has come. He says it’s sad because when he tells them who he is, he has to tell them about all the time they’ve wasted. He can’t help it, it’s in his nature. Many beg and promise him that if he gives them just one more day or week or month or year then they won’t waste any more. The Time Eater hates these moments. He’d love to have told them during their lives not to waste so much time, but people can only see him after their death. Besides, he always tells them, if you hadn’t wasted all that time, I’d never be able to carry your soul away. Some smile at this he says, but most cry.
Sometimes people have been waiting for him, and they greet him like an old friend. Usually these are people who have only met him a few times in their lives; he calls these people his Time Fliers. His favourite Time Flier in the last hundred years was Winston Churchill. He and Winston chatted all the way up. They discussed life and death and good and evil, but mostly they just chatted about Marmite. The Time Eater can’t eat real food you see, and so Mr Churchill told him all about the glorious taste of Marmite.

So you see, I’m special. I’ve been able to see him for ages, I’m his best friend he says, no one in the last million years has ever been able to see him before like I can. We trade, The Time Eater and I, I tell him about touch and taste, and he tells me stories. Either that or he shows me some of his magic. For instance, the other day, he stopped a butterfly in mid flight. He roared with laughter when I tried to touch it, and my finger went right through its wing. You can’t touch it he told me, not when its clock stops; at that point it exists only as a memory. You don’t have to be the Time Eater to know that you can’t touch memories.

So he can stop time. He can’t change it, but he can stop it, and normally he does right at the moment someone dies, just so as he can introduce himself and prepare them for the journey ahead. He has stopped time now. He called to me just a moment ago you see, from across the road. I wanted to run over and give him a hug I was just so excited to see him, but I didn’t see the lorry coming my way; I can see it now though; it’s just about an inch away.

I can’t move when the Time Eater stops my clock, but I can communicate with him through thought. He’s sorry he keeps on telling me, he shouldn’t have called my name, I tell him not to worry, these things happen. We stay for hours in this limbo, chatting about all the weird and wonderful ways that people waste time. Finally he says it’s time to go, and a tear the size of a tea cup rolls down his furry cheek. He says that after he starts time again, I won’t be able to see him. He says he’s eaten loads of wasted time though, so he won’t have any problems carrying my soul. I ask him where I’m going. He tells me that I can go wherever my imagination takes me, but what if I can’t think of anywhere I ask him. You will he says; it’s your imagination that makes you so special. After all he says, look at me.