A Murder in Time

An Old Man's Resolve

Photo by Ismaël Jean on Unsplash

Miami’s Palladium nightclub is packed shoulder-to-shoulder with Friday night dancers determined to start the weekend with a bit of fun and, in some hopeful cases, debauchery. Strobing lights keep pace with thumping bass. The tang of sweat mixes with that of alcohol and perfume. Everyone, with the exception of the two bartenders, one deejay, and three bouncers, has begun the ritual of forgetting hard days spent working or studying over the past week.

Perhaps that is why no one notices one old man standing motionless on the dance floor.

If all goes well, his life will end tonight, but instead of enjoying the blaring music, or sipping a martini at the bar, or even contemplating end-of-life mysteries, the old man is thinking of a single Latin word: Cide. Well, not a word, really, but a suffix. It means to kill, or killer, from the Latin verb caedere, meaning to cut or slay. He knows many words for murder using this suffix. Homicide, matricide, siblicide, and infanticide, to name a few. But as he studies the handsome young man he’s come here to kill, he thinks he’ll be committing an unknown cide, one for which there is yet no name.

The first few strings of a Reggaeton song play loudly overhead, breaking into his thoughts. He recognizes this one. Dile, Tell Him, a song from his youth. The dancers cheer and begin to bounce on their knees and roll their hips forward and back in smooth, provocative rhythms. Others, like himself, stand around watching like silent sentinels or sit on barstools chatting amongst themselves and holding red plastic cups in their hands. His fingers tap idly against his thigh as he watches the young man, keeping pace with the music.

Dile que bailando te conocí, the first verse begins, and the young man twirls a beautiful raven-haired woman into his arms, then leans over and plants a kiss on her luscious lips. He’s wearing pressed black slacks, a clean white t-shirt, and formal dress shoes. She wears a gorgeous green sequin mini dress that sparkles when the strobe lights catch it and a pair of velvet platform shoes. Except for the tight roundness at her abdomen, she’s mostly thin. Small spots of color bloom high on her cheeks. She looks thrilled to be alive.

Rosa Bell Fernandez, the old man recalls, though back then, he’d called her Bell. She used to laugh at that, but her hazelnut eyes had always sparkled like the stars every time he’d used that name.

His eyes move to Rosa’s belly as the first tear spills over onto his leathery cheeks. No doubt the child would have been just as beautiful as its mother, just as noble, and just as proud. A child who could have grown up and done marvelous things, perhaps changed the world. But the old man had never known, thanks to the lying, cheating scumbag dancing with her.

An hour from now, Rosa and her unborn child will be killed in a horrible car accident. The young man survives with hardly a scratch. It was always the bastards that live, always the good ones that die.

Well, that was going to change, and damn the consequences. He’d waited sixty years for the miracle of time travel to be possible, six decades to come back and make things right.

The lovers lock hands, and the young man begins pushing through the crowd, pulling Rosa with him. The old man moves to intercept. He clutches the rough wooden handle of the serrated blade concealed in his pocket. The young man pulls out a cell phone and begins tapping the screen, angling it away from Rosa so she doesn’t see.

It takes every bit of willpower the old man has to control his sudden rage and still his trembling hands. Bastard! Bad enough to betray her at all; the little shit’s doing it right in front of her! I’d almost forgotten that cocky smile.

He tries to recall the name of the woman the young man is texting, but it’s like grasping at strands in a complex spiderweb. It doesn’t matter anyway. Whoever she is, or was, what happened hadn’t been her responsibility. It had been this arrogant sack of shit’s.

Closer now. The old man breathes cold determination. Soon, they’ll pass right by him. He steels himself for the right moment, swallowing his rage, his depression, his hope, and fear. He forces them into a tiny box and shoves it into the deepest recesses of his mind. He can’t afford to fuck this up. If he does nothing, the young man will walk Rosa to his Honda Civic. He’ll open the passenger door like a gentleman and usher her into the steel deathtrap that will become her tomb. All the while planning a tryst with his sidepiece, no doubt fantasizing about all the different positions he wants to put her in while his woman waits for him back home.

If the old man does nothing, that is.

The accident will make the local news headlines, its front page featuring the small car, the passenger side peeled open like a can of sardines, where emergency firemen used the Jaws of Life to get at Rosa’s broken body. She’ll suffer from head contusions, numerous internal bruising, and a dozen cuts to the sides of her face and forehead where the glass exploded. But it’ll be the broken ribs that kill her, one of which pierces her heart. Internal bleeding causes her death long before the ambulance reaches the hospital. The baby dies less than an hour later, unable to survive the trauma.

But the bastard who kills them? He survives with only a broken wrist and a few scrapes and bruises. The worst damage will be to the cell phone he’d been texting his sidepiece with as he ran the red light and got plowed by a Ford F250, flipping the car over 3 times before it finally slid into another vehicle.

It’s happened thousands of times in the old man’s mind, in every waking moment, in every dream. He won’t let it happen now. He leaps forward with a growled curse and a snarl, and before anyone knows what’s happening, buries the knife deep into the soft flesh of the cheater’s belly, savagely twisting it on the way out before the younger man has time to do more than cry out in shock. Rosa’s screams are lost in the crowd’s terrified screams and shouts. She stumbles backward, clutching her stomach. The liar seizes the old man’s wrist, but it’s too late; the death blow has already been given.

The young man stares in shocked confusion into the eyes of his killer. Familiar eyes, the exact shade and shape of his own. He takes a deep, shuddering breath and gasps out a single question:

“Why?”

The old man leans close to whisper. “I had to save her. From us. She will live now.”

Understanding dawns on the young man’s pallid face as the old man relaxes. His body is already beginning to fade into nothingness. He turns to Rosa, smiling weakly despite her horrified regard. She’ll be traumatized, of course, but the baby should help her through that. They’ll both be okay now; that’s what’s important.

“My beautiful Bell.” He whispers.

He thinks, It’s not suicide, not really. Maybe, selficide? Then he’s gone.