Tonight You Die

Tonight You Die

“Why are you so quiet, Uncle Bill?” Tim Jones asked his favorite uncle on his mother’s side.

They were driving home after Tim, eleven years old, had played video games better than two hours at a place for kids in the mall. He was lucky his Uncle Bill could take him places. It seemed the whole world worked and was always too busy to do things with kids.

The question broke Bill Cato’s trance. He sometimes went into one then he’d find himself in the middle of some activity without the slightest notion of when he started the activity, how or why. That included driving scores of city blocks.

“You’ll tell if I say why,” he said.

“No way. I won’t, Uncle Bill. Haven’t you trusted me before?”

“You’ll tell your mom. You’re a mama’s boy.” Bill said.

Tim was quiet a moment.

“I don’t think I’m a mama’s boy, Uncle Bill.”

“I was watching a game. Remember a boy with freckles and red hair on my left?”

“Yeah,” Tim said. “He was playing on the yellow machine.”

“That’s him,” Bill said. “It was a game about death. Called ‘You Die Tonight’ or ‘Tonight You Die’. Something like that. Anyway, the victim was running from this grayish blob type thing, breathing and bleeding, up and down different streets and alleys in the city.”

“So?” Tim said. “There’s stuff like that in a lot of games.”

“The weird thing was the victim, a guy, was wearing exactly the same clothes I’m wearing this minute. Same shoes even.”

Tim swallowed and looked closer at his uncle.

“Wow,” he said. “Kinda freaky, right?”

“Kinda freaky,” Bill Cato said. “Hope I forget about it soon.”

“You will Uncle Bill. Don’t worry about it. Can we put the windows down? It’s nice outside tonight.”

Bill turned off the air and rolled down his and Tim’s windows as well as the two in the rear. The wind felt great. Must have been a perfect 70 degrees.

“You’re right, it’s nice,” he said. “I always liked sticking my arm out in the wind—like this.”

The 11 pm phone call that night from Phoebe Cato, Bill’s wife, woke Tim up. The next day was a school day and he’d gone to bed at 9:30, his usual bedtime. Tears filled his eyes as he listened from his open bedroom door. He felt he could hardly breathe. His mom was crying and telling his dad that Bill, her older brother, had slipped in the shower and hit his head quite hard. He was at Smith-Bynum Memorial Hospital this very moment. Condition: critical.

The doctors had asked Phoebe how long her husband had been without an arm. She looked at them incredulously.

“What do you mean?” she said. “He’s got two arms.”

“Have you seen him in the ICU?” the doctors asked.

THE END