1920

That was not a good idea.

There are stones of gravel digging into my palms and a dog licking my face. I don’t know whether to be grateful that I’m somehow still alive or angry God hasn’t killed me to save me from this goddamn headache. Note to self: Do not accept drinks from strangers, no matter how kind or attractive they seem. Another note to self, nothing in life is free.

“Okay! Okay! Enough,” I snap my eyes open to the dog, if it could be called that, which is staring at me with one grey eye and its tongue out. Little rocks formed in the corners of its eyes, and its fur tinged yellow. Its wrinkled tongue hung out, and drool dripped off the sides. My fingers touch my cheek. God, I need another drink.

I groan as I push myself up against the stained wall. I sigh and lean on the garbage bag next to me. My palm is filled with tiny stones and scratches; it should hurt, but it doesn’t. There’s a pit in my stomach, and I imagine myself picking berries out of my palms. I need to stop blacking out so much. But how was I supposed to know that this time was going to be truly different, that I would end up waking up on a strange beach with no alcohol to be found? These last few days muddled into a memory of walking through unfamiliar streets and alleys…God, I promise I will stop drinking if you just give me one more drop, and a clue to where I am.

“Arf!”

I look up to see what is important enough to interrupt my sincere prayer. Wow. A man in a blue trench coat stands tall at the entrance of the alley, his face shadowed by the cartoonishly long blue hat, somehow balanced on his head. There’s a crest on it, and I tilt my head; the dog was seeing the same thing I was. Which meant people were lying about sobriety.

“Officer?”

“To your feet! Now!”

“Don’t shoot! Wait! Please!” I scramble to my knees and throw my arms high into the air. Definitely not hallucinating. “Please! My name is Luke, and I’m lost. Can you please help me? I just want to go back to the shelter! On Fourth Ave and…”

It’s then that I realize this freak’s tall blue hat wasn’t the only ridiculous thing about him; no, he was holding a baton. Not a gun, a black baton that was the size of my forearm. Am I dreaming?

“Don’t move!”

I stay frozen with my hands up. He drags me out of the alley and throws me into the light and yanks my head up. I wince and squint up at him. He looks even dumber when there are two of him.

“You bastard! Are you the only one suffering? Three shops were broken into! Have you no shame, son?!” He raises his leg and slams his boot into my chest. When will my good karma ever come back to me? I wheeze as I hit the pavement, grey bricks of cobble instead of my good friend Concrete. My ribs dig into my lungs, and a cough scrapes my throat on its way out. I gasp for air. If the smoking hadn’t done it already, he’s going to be the reason for my lungs collapsing. “Well?! Escaping the war is shameful enough, and yet you continue to steal?!”

“What the hell, man?! I pay your salary with my taxes!” I yell back as I quickly scramble to get up. I stand for a moment and wobble. To my humiliation, the breeze pushes me, and I fall. His stomps are uniform and official as he gets closer.

He grabs my arm and yanks me up with one solid hand. I was over a hundred pounds, for God’s sake, how–

“Wait! Please, I’m sorry! I don’t want to die!” He’s raising the baton in the air, and I realize that it might have been better if he had a gun. Surely, it would be faster. His eyes are narrowed, and bushy eyebrows let me know he is definitely a bad cop. “Please, I haven’t eaten in days! I’m mentally ill! You have to show me how to get to Saint Joseph’s shelter, it's where I stay all the time. Did you know that I’m on such good behaviour that they even let me have alcohol sometimes?”

“Listen, son, that insanity plea may have tricked the enlisters, but it won’t work on me.” He scoffs as he drops me. He spits on the ground next to me, his hands landing on his boxy hips. “Don’t you know not to even whisper the name of alcohol? Now, you’ve gone and made me miss it.”

He squats down in front of me and pulls my ear in; his breath is hot. His teeth are yellow, and he places a hand of solidarity on my shoulder as if he hadn’t been beating me moments ago. I eye his thick, hairy fingers. “You think if I let you go easy, you’ll go and get some wine from the church for me?”

Oh. What had I been so afraid of?

“Are you already drunk? I said the shelter, not the church.”

His smile drops fast, and he socks me across the head again. I spit out blood and glare at him.

“You bastard! Screw you and your bottle!”

He grabs my ear and yanks me forward. “Listen, you idiot and try to remember. There is no shelter yet; they just don’t have the money to build it. You’re looking for St Joseph’s church.”

“That church burned down years ago, you idiot. How are you a cop and you don’t know the biggest homeless shelter around?” I snap and stand up. I fix my coat and slap the dust off my baggy pants. The dog stands. “Can you do something about the dog?

“Burnt down…?” The officer pinches the bridge of his nose, rolls his eyes, and squeezes his eyes shut. “The church does something about the dog, follow him and you find the church. And when you do, you steal some of the wine. I’ll be close by, so don’t even think about running off selfishly. I’m risking a lot by letting you go, you hear me, son?” ”

“Follow this? He’s practically blind.” I looked over at the dog to see him wobbling as the morning breeze blew through his thin legs. At least it was still standing upright. Something clicks, and I look back to see the officer holding a small pocket watch. It looks vintage, with cool details too fancy for me to understand lining its bronze lid. What I do understand is that it looks like it can get me a few of my own fancy things.

“Your other senses don’t work, but his do.” The cop scoffs as he snaps the watch shut and dangles it between his fingers. It falls between his index and middle finger, before settling onto his pinky. It gleams in the sunlight. My heart thumps in my chest; he’s holding it so loosely. “I’ll be at the— Hey! You thieving rat! Stop! Stop, right now!”

The watch’s chain digs into my palm, and my heart slams against my chest. My blood rushes through, and I feel like raising a shot in cheers! And after I drank that, then a fresh round of shots for the whole bar! I roar with laughter as I run towards the echoes of the bells. I did it. I really just did that! A normal cop would have shot me dead, but not this cartoon! I laugh and keep running. Somewhere in the middle of my run, my laughs turn into coughs as the wind dries my throat, and I realize I need to sell this fast.

The chain trembles between my fingers as I bring it up to my face to look at it better. It was small, but I could tell a lot of effort went into the details, just from the cursive writing I couldn’t read on it. I’m going to get rich off this. I just needed to find Pandora.

Despite the strange buildings and a few other costumed people outside, the names of the roads are familiar. It’s still the city I was born in, just different. I breathe and remind myself that this will all go away once I have one drop. I was probably just sober for too long, and I’ve heard alcoholics who go crazy when they’re forced to quit, maybe that’s what’s happening to me.

Just get to Pandora’s. Once I get the money, I can figure out some way to buy alcohol. And then I’ll be able to think clearly and figure out what exactly is happening. Surely, someone in this city still had a hidden bottle, and if there was one, it had to be at Pandora’s. My feet begin to march on their own, and I count my steps as I head for the shelter. Pandora was right next to it so that people like me could try again, or fall again, but Pandora had always been there; it still has to be here now.

“Nineteen and twenty,” I whisper as I make the final left turn, a corner I had sped around many times. Sometimes with empty pockets and others with presidential bills sticking out. I look up and past the blur of strange people, the golden trim around the roof of Pandora’s box sparkles in the sun. I sigh, thank God. Still here. In fact, they must have hit something big if they were able to renovate it and make it look so welcoming. Nothing like the grimy building I had known.

The crowd around is stranger than normal, well, maybe it’s more normal than strange. There are no tatted foreigners with thick accents and smoking even thicker cigars. Instead, it's people in their Sunday best. Men wearing vests and white button-ups as tops, and women in long dresses. Some of them even wore the same ridiculously long hat as the officer.

I wish I knew what I drank.

No point in that. I shake my head and slip between the crowd, reminding myself that I’m dressed normally and that this is…I hesitantly push the door in and step into the shop. It’s lit with candles, not brand-new LED lightbulbs, but candles. The walls were kept windowless, but the mountains of treasures that had filled the place had gotten a lot shorter. Something is missing. The counter isn’t in the back anymore, either; instead, it’s to my right, and an unfamiliar, large man is staring at me from behind it.

His eyes are wrinkled, his beard grey, and something familiar in his nose. He looks like the keeper I knew, but unlike the keeper I knew, he looks like he has never even seen a spark of joy. I swallow as I slide the watch onto the counter. His face is stern. I remind myself of the first rule of business. His frown deepens, and he arches one thinning brow. The first to speak loses. I clear my throat. “Hello, sir, I’m here to sell this watch. Let me know if you have enough money in the back.”

He picks up the watch with thick, grey, hairy fingers and looks back at me with an even deeper scowl, flashing the rot in his teeth. “Is this a joke?”

“No? I know the value of this watch, I’m not a fool.” I pull my shirt and tug at it in a serious and business-like manner.

His scowl deepens, and he rolls his eyes heavily. “Okay. You can have a dollar for it.”

My jaw drops on the counter at the same time my fist does. “What?! Look at it! It’s vintage!”

“What? Vintage?” He chuckles dryly and flips the watch over. He points at four small numbers. “You thought I was too stupid to read these Roman numbers, didn’t you?” His thumb traces over the foreign writing, and he asks, “can you read this?”

He’s looking down on me. “What does that matter? It’s vintage, so it’s worth at least a twenty. I think you owe me at least that much.”

He lets out a roar of laughter deep from his bottomless belly and smacks his own fat, ugly hands on the counter. “God, I haven’t laughed like that since I had a drink!”

My nails dig into my palm. “You can hurry up and give me the money!”

He doesn’t talk and pulls the pocketwatch up into the light. He dangles it between his fingers, letting it glimmer in the candlelight, the writing catching the light, and I realize it’s a letter m. “Pay attention, boy, this says one thousand, nine hundred, twenty. Em, see-em, ex-ex.”

MCMXX.

1920.