Unhaunting The Hours by Peter Sargent

This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual
events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

    Copyright © 2015 by Peter
Sargent

    All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other
electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written
permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses
permitted by copyright law.

    Unhaunting The
Hours

    When I was a boy, I had no father and I
lost my mother to a drug called Spectrum. She tried to kick it but
never could. When I got into the same shit myself I managed to
quit, but the cure was worse than the poison. I had to heal myself
of the cure, and the consequences dogged me still. The people who
pulled me out of Spectrum addiction were after me. I hadn’t seen
them in a long time, but I knew they were out there.
    Mom used to haul me to this Salvation
Army church. A preacher called Major Tuck ran the place. Major Tuck
said you go through seven or eight stages when you’re trying to
quit, but the truth is more muddled to me. There’s one clear stage
at the beginning, when you’re so hopped up you don’t know jack
about your condition. Call that “denial” if you like. And there’s
one clear stage at the end, when after that long slog you finally
get your life in order. But in the middle, you oscillate between
one extreme and another. Some days, Mom was hopeful. She told me
once, “I just made a few bad choices when I was young. I got myself
into this, so I can get myself out.” Other days, she ranted about
powers beyond her control – the police, the EPA, whatever –
wrecking her struggle to get free. Near the end, she’d resigned
herself to believing that she was just born the way she was. “Some
people just have bad genes, George. Maybe Preacher was right, God’s
chosen some, before they were born, as the match sticks on which
the world burns.” She died fifteen years ago and Major Tuck
cremated her.
    As for me, joy never came easy, but I
had it now – whether you want to believe it or not. I stood in the
back alley, trash bag hanging from one hand, shivering in the rain.
The real world, seen through unobstructed eyes, was a nasty brute.
But the touch of sleet and mud filled me with a euphoria I couldn’t
quite explain. I’d just come down the back steps and entered the
terrace, near the dumpsters. A lamp flickered and gave up. I was
left in the dark, save for the windows.
    Then a sudden fear washed over me –
were they coming? Not the Salvation Army, but something worse that
I’d gotten myself into since then. They called themselves the
Abderans, and they weren’t nice to people like me. I looked down
the street at the patchwork of glowing windows, which climbed four
stories up brick walls and stopped at the little ones beneath the
eaves. I tried to calm myself, but there was a tiny man who lived
in my brain, who in my imagination looked like Major Tuck and spent
his time dishing up new ways to make me believe that I wasn’t
getting better and that I never would.
    Then I saw a face full of
blood.
    I stumbled, my fingers gripping the
rusty edge of the trash bin. The pictures weren’t real, but they
didn’t stop charging through my brain. That’s the way it was.
That’s the price you pay. So I stared at the puddles gathering by
my feet and drew deep breaths. In time, the episode passed. I was
happy again. I dropped the trash into the bin, and a soggy orange
cat jumped out. He perched on the rim and glared at me for a moment
before darting off, with a growl that told me he’d be back and I’d
better be ready. I smiled. I was soaked and chilled now, but dammit
all, freedom still feels good. No matter how small the