When my dad asked me to come live with him after my mom died, I knew it was a bad idea. He was what you might call a taker, while I was a disgruntled people-pleaser always fighting the urge.
But when he said, “I need you,” I just couldn’t say no. Actually, I did say no but then said yes. His eye was twitching and he looked so sad and desperate that I just couldn’t help myself.
“I’ve only got two more years left in my account,” he told me the day I moved in. That still sounded like a long time to me.
At first, he didn’t ask for much—just helping out with shopping and straightening things up. But one morning, while having my coffee and bagel in the dinette, he lumbered in, wearing a tattered flannel bathrobe, and asked if I could give him some time.
“Sure,” I said. “I have some now.”
“No,” he said, “I mean, I want you to transfer some of your time to me. You have so many years left in your account. But I barely have any, so could you help me out?”
That was a flagrantly bad idea. But his eye twitched, and the people-pleasing voice in my head grew loud and insistent. It said I had to, no questions asked.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll give you a year.”
“How about three?”
“Two is my final offer,” I told him.
I linked up our time accounts, giving him access to mine, and transferred two years to him. In the coming weeks, though, I noticed my hair was thinning and turning grey and my jowls were starting to sag. I logged into my time account. Over a decade was gone, and the transferred time couldn’t be restored.
My father was a time thief.
He did look like he was reverse aging, Benjamin Button style, walking upright and shedding his pot belly. I demanded he stop stealing my time, and he promised he would. But instead, he took more. I kept aging and felt smaller. He kept getting younger and seemed bigger. We ended up in our fifties, looking like brothers. My girlfriend left me for looking too old, which was so ageist. Dad, meanwhile, was having the time of his life. Dating, traveling, living it up.
Then one morning he breezed into the dinette, reeking of cologne with his hair slicked back, wearing a crisp trim-fit baby blue suit, and told me point blank to move out by nightfall. His 26-year-old girlfriend was moving in, and she didn’t want me there.
Daniel Krieger is a writer and photographer in New York. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Maudlin House, HAD and Flash Fiction Magazine. His nonfiction has appeared widely, including personal narratives and features in The New York Times. Read more at danielkrieger.net and connect on X: @daniel_krieger and Instagram: @danielstevenkrieger.