A Number or Tyme

“Well, pick one,” the fat cherub held out his palms insistently, his…or its mouth drawn into a petulant pucker.

I am so high.

I squeezed my eyes shut several times, hoping to evict the floating angel baby from my sight, but to no avail.

We were in a stalemate in the back alley with the distant sounds of EDM pumping through the air, and the strong odor of weed drifting from the barest stub of a blunt in my left hand. The cherub was floating in front of me, in nothing but a toga, or an oversized loincloth. Cream colored wings fluttered anxiously from his back as if they could barely keep his roly-poly arms and legs aloft. The only other scrap of clothing on the babe was more of an accessory, really, a blazing gold wreath of laurels set in his curls.

I lifted the end of the blunt to inspect it again. Something was very, very wrong.

“Don’t look at that, look at me,” the cherub demanded.

I jumped.

He was less than 5 inches from my face now, sticking his hands right under my nose. Up close, he bore an uncanny resemblance to someone’s grumpy great-grandfather reborn, and he had the most unnerving golden eyes I’ve ever seen.

I cringed away, focusing instead on what he was clutching in his grubby little fingers. In his right hand, he held a scrap of paper with a large sum of money written on it, 11 million pounds to be exact. In his left hand, he held a similar scrap of paper with the word ‘tyme’ scrawled in glitter.

“You mispelled ‘time’,” I said flatly.

The baby raised an eyebrow, “Did I?”

He glanced down at the scrap in his palm, “Oh dear,” he intoned. He produced a stubby pencil from somewhere in his toga, I don’t want to consider where, and scratched something on the paper.

“There,” he said proudly, sticking the paper in my face.

“Thyme??” I asked incredulously.

“Excellent, that’s settled then,” he said brightly, clapping his chubby little hand on my shoulder.

“I- no, I-”

“I- no- I- uhhhh- blah blah,” the baby mocked. “Can’t take it back now, just have to settle with it.”

“What about the 11 million pounds?” I stuttered.

“You know what you want, not I,” muttered the cherub, rummaging again in his toga.

“Ah, here we are,” he produced a sprig of thyme. A literal sprig of thyme, crushed and starting to turn brittle at that.

He held it out expectantly.

“Well, hang on a moment,” I took a step back, “I was asking a clarifying question, do you really have 11 million pounds in that toga of yours?”

The cherub looked affronted, “What I have in my robe is none of your concern, you arrogant little twat,” he snapped.

“Well, have you got it or not?” I insisted.

“Of course I’ve got it, what would be the sense in mentioning it if I didn’t?” he seethed.

“I’ll take the number then,” I said, referring back to the question the cherub had asked me when he invaded my alley.

“Don’t be silly, you can’t change your mind, that’s obvious to anyone with half a brain,” chided the winged baby, sticking the thyme out towards me again.

I’d feel utterly stupid for this later, but in the moment, a wave of desperation crashed over me, and I felt my stomach beginning to sink. My dilapidated beater car, mostly empty apartment, and collection of unopened bills piling by the door danced in my imagination like sugar plum fairies. I squeezed my eyes shut and lurched at the cherub. My fingers closed around something, his toga?

I opened my eyes eagerly, but found myself once again alone in the alley. I rushed to examine what I had snatched from him, only to grit my teeth in frustration. Groaning, I flung the sprig of thyme into the street and stepped on it, grinding it into a puddle with my foot.

All at once, with a bang, the door to the venue behind me flew open, and I jumped into the air, more startled alley cat than man.

The girl who opened the door blinked at me with wide hazel eyes. Her lips were the color of black cherries.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” she said cheerfully after a moment, letting the door fall shut behind her, “I’m Rebecca.”

“I’m…hi,” I wavered. My mind felt like pudding.

“I can see that,” she commented, amusement flashing in her eyes. She slid down to the ground and dug in her bag for a moment, eventually finding a Flake bar and tearing it open.

“Are you alright?” she asked when she had nibbled halfway down the bar, and I was still standing rooted to the spot, staring at the last place I saw the cherub.

I shook my head, and then, finding that not sufficient to wake myself up, slapped my cheeks hard.

The girl laughed. It was a musical sound, and a dimple flashed in her cheek.

“I’m Steve,” I said.

“And I’m still Rebecca,” she grinned.

“I’m going to tell you something crazy, and you’re probably going to think I’m just high,” I blurted out.

“No, no, I wouldn’t think such a thing, you seem such a fine upstanding citizen,” she said innocently, that dimple flashing in her cheek again.

I settled down on the pavement next to her. She broke off a piece of Flake and offered it to me. I took it.

“I’ve just seen a cherub in this alley, and he offered me 11 million pounds or a wilted sprig of thyme,” I told her eagerly.

She leaned in conspiratorially, “And which did you pick?” she asked.

I nodded to the crushed herb lying drunkenly in a puddle a few paces away.

She gasped, “What’s so special about the thyme?” she questioned, nibbling furiously at her Flake.

“That’s the joke,” I rubbed my temples, “it was an accident, I was asking a question and the little blighter took it to mean I wanted the thyme and not the money.”

“Ah.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Steve,” the girl bumped me with her shoulder.

“Yes,”

“We should catch it.”

I turned to look at her. It occurred to me in that moment that she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

We never caught the cherub.

I’d catch glimpses of the cheeky little bugger over the next six years, popping up in the mirror, on the side of the street as I drove by, waving at me impishly from a parade float, swinging his chubby legs over the pool on holiday once, his toga at a dangerous angle. I dove for him, but he winked out of sight immediately, a crumpled sprig of thyme the only sign he was ever there to begin with. There was always a sprig of thyme. I grew to hate the cursed herb. Rebecca knew not to keep it in the house.

I moved in with her last year and proposed not long after, although I had no money for a real ring. I nicked her a gold-plated band at an auction for 40 pounds, and in typical Rebecca fashion, she cried, and laughed, and covered my face in kisses. And said yes, of course.

She was my only anchor, all too often as the thought of the 11 million pounds I had lost ate away at me. She calmed my rage when I’d catch vague glimpses of the cherub’s smug face staring back at me in wood paneling, half-drunk cups of tea, and cloud patterns.

I don’t know what I did to deserve her, but every time I’d feel myself barely clinging to the shreds of my sanity, tattered by the mysterious cherub’s incessant gnawing at my mind, I’d think at least I had her.

As nice as 11 million pounds would have been, Rebecca’s smile was like the sun, and her personality felt like the first fresh breeze in spring. I knew money couldn’t buy that, and I tried to put it out of my mind. If the cherub ever materialized for long enough and told me to choose between 11 million pounds and Rebecca, I’d choose Rebecca every time.

So there we were, Rebecca’s gossamer veil drifting in the wind, sunflowers set in her curly hair, and an angelic smile lighting up her face so brightly that her eyes shone golden.

Feeling light as air, I lifted her veil, kissed her on the cheek, and turned to the minister, holding her hand.

As he began to speak, I bumped her with my shoulder. “You look like an angel,” I whispered.

She rolled her eyes and grinned, “Very funny,” she whispered back.

“No, I-” I trailed off, “you’ve got something sticking out of your hair,” I reached up to pluck out a long stem sticking out from the side of her curls.

“Oh, thanks,” she bent her head down so I could remove it.

I froze, and the walls started to spin around me. It was a sprig of thyme.

“Rebecca, what-” I started angrily. But she was gone. In her place floated the cherub from the alley six years ago.

I looked wildly around the venue, but all the guests seemed frozen in place. The only movement came from the cherub, suspended on the breeze and rocking softly back and forth.

“What have you done with her?” I shouted at the creature.

“I haven’t done a thing,” retorted the cherub.

“You have! Where is she?!” I demanded, clenching my fist, every muscle in my body coiled to strike out and snatch the cherub out of the air.

“Right here, silly man,” the cherub flashed and morphed into my smiling bride for a breath, but when I blinked, she was gone again.

Horror reared in the pit of my stomach. The eyes hadn’t changed. The dimple was on the same side of the face. The curls and the smug grin…

I recoiled.

“So you understand,” jeered the cherub.

“This isn’t…what I wanted,” I whispered faintly, stumbling back another step.

This set the cherub off. He bellowed with laughter, clapping his chubby hands together.

“What YOU wanted? I never asked what you wanted,” he crowed, a dimple of merriment flashing in his cheek, “my, you humans are simple, entitled little things, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?” I raged, “You asked me, ‘a number or thyme’ and held out scraps of paper to me, what was I supposed to do?? You didn't even let me choose!”

“I didn’t make you do anything,” retorted the cherub, “you could have walked away right then and there. You could have asked me what I was on about. You assumed I was trying to give you something because deep down, you’re an entitled, spoiled brat. You’ve had all this glorious discomfort, poverty, simplicity to forge you into a half-decent fellow, but you squeezed your eyes shut like a gurgling little baby and toddled around with your hands out, grabbing at things and thinking just because you could reach at them, they belonged to you."

I clutched at my chest, trying to comprehend and failing to breathe.

"I just wanted to know what you had to offer me," he went on, "you freely chose time. And may I say you've been a delight to feed off these past years, but you see every 6 years our contract- oh stop it, now you’re wailing like an infant.”

I was, in fact, weeping. Frustration, humiliation, and utter rage consumed me. I wanted to ball my fists and swing at this horrid creature, just swing him out of the sky, and punt him into the forest. I wanted to smash his tiny skull in and fling that gold wreath away, rip his toga into shreds. But all I could do was blubber and hiccup, rage and fear and embarrassment bubbling out of me like- by jove, he was right- like an infant. I was acting like an infant. This simpering cherub had stolen six years of my life and reduced me to a wailing baby.

I stepped back, willing the tears to stop. They would do me no good.

This seemed to displease the cherub. “Oh, weep if you must, just try to keep it quiet, I'm trying to talk business.”

“It’s all been smoke and mirrors,” I said the awful words, “for 6 years, it’s been a great game.”

The cherub shrugged, “Can you blame me?” he asked demurely, “I can hardly go against my nature, not any more than you can.”

But he was wrong about that, I realized with a jolt. Perhaps he and I were not so different. I had nothing of his, and he had nothing of mine. Not really. He never had. I bound myself to him through my own stupidity and entitlement, and then he threw it back in my face thinking to trap me further. Through the haze, an idea struck me and I took a step backwards. It was as if I were wading through treacle.

The cherub looked faintly alarmed. “There’s nothing you can do now,” he warned, floating closer to me.

“I could have walked away right then and there,” I echoed his words back at him. Resolve, flooded through me. I don’t know where it came from. I turned on my heel and strode up the aisle.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the cherub’s warning grew higher in pitch.

“You couldn’t make me do anything,” I called over my shoulder, forging ahead.

“Don’t make me do something we'll both regret,” he cried after me in a shrill voice.

I quickened my pace, excitement pushing me to the doors. I threw them open.

With a jerk, I awoke to the grey mist of dawn in the alley. The world was just beginning to stir around me. I had fallen asleep with my back to the building and my hands resting on my lap, palms up to the sky. With a shudder, I curled my hands shut and hauled myself to my feet.

By jove I was awake now.