Mystery/suspense
2 min
Twenty minutes
Assima Omarova
Twenty minutes lost. I twist my left wrist for the time. The scene has seamlessly cut from my bedside to one cozy corner of a restaurant. Before me sits a young lady whose hands hold mine across the table. 'Sorry but do I know you?' I lift my eyes and meet her affectionate gaze. 'Not well enough.' Gently she squeezes my hand and smiles.
"You lost time again," she says. "Exactly nineteen minutes."
"Again?" I try to pull my hand away, but I can't. Not because she's holding me tight, but because I don't want to.
"You asked me to," she continues. "Every time."
I look at my watch. There's a thin, fresh scratch on the inside of my wrist. Underneath, the word "Again?" is neatly written.
"What did I ask you to forget?" I whisper.
She leans closer, and I smell her perfume—neutral, almost absent.
"Me," she says. "And what you did."
The music stops. The room becomes too quiet. The watch on my wrist freezes. And for a moment, my hands are covered in blood, and even for a second, I can smell that scent, with the taste of iron.
She releases my hands.
"Until next time," she says, already standing. "You have eighteen minutes left." I blink.
At that moment, I realize: she's not leaving—she's simply no longer here. The chair opposite me empties, as if no one had ever sat there.
And then it dawns on me.
It's not she who takes time.
It's me who gives it away each time—just to be back where someone looks at me as if they remember.
"Take another twenty minutes," I say out loud, though I know she'll hear anyway.
She reappears—as if she's always been here.
"You were happy in the past," she says after a pause. "Exactly twenty minutes each time."
I nod. I know that without her knowing.
"And here?" I ask.
She glances down at my watch.
"This is where you pay."
I look at her face and suddenly notice something I've never seen before. It's different. Subtly. Her eyes change, the line of her lips, the tone of her skin. Each time, a new version. Only her voice remains the same and the question. "Shall we continue?"
I think about the one waiting for me there. About how she laughs, not knowing the date of her death. About how she says "wait" instead of "goodbye." In the past, she's still alive. In the past, it's still possible to come earlier.
I take off my watch and put it on the table.
"Take another," I say. "I need to get back sooner."
She takes it carefully, almost tenderly, like an object that will soon disappear.
"Someday there will be no time left," she reminds me.
I close my eyes.
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