Falling From Grace

For as long as he could remember, Matthew Sanders always wondered what the exact definition of time was. The more he thought about it, the more he realized the meaning behind the word could change with every moment that passed.

For example, if you overslept the morning you had to go work because your alarm didn’t go off, time was something that made you late and screwed you over, because no matter how much you rushed, you weren’t going to make it on time.

If you were in high school, time was something that resided on the white cinderblock walls of a class room, slowly moving by. Time was the only thing keeping you there, and it was the only thing that told you how many seconds had to painfully pass by before you were allowed out of that hellhole. And once you were home, time told you how much longer you had to wait until you were sitting right back in that classroom again.

Time was something that ruled everyone’s lives. It tells us when we should go to sleep, when we should wake up, when we should turn the television on to watch our favorite shows. It tells us when we should meet people for lunch or dinner. It tells us when we were born, and when we die.

For Matthew Sanders, time was something he always hated. He refused to let a bunch of numbers that ran from zero to twelve control who he was or where he was supposed to be. This didn’t mean he ever forgot the concept of time though. In fact, when important things happened to him, he was so aware of that current definition of time, and how it changed with every situation.

For instance, the first time he ever laid eyes on Grace, the time was 11:45 P.M., and at that moment, time was the only thing that was keeping him company.

He was sitting in the bar of a hotel, taking constant sips from his glass of whiskey while he watched the minute hand tick around the face of the clock that was hanging right over a bottle of vodka. The bar was empty, except for a few sloppy people. It was a Tuesday night, and Matt had no idea why he was sitting by himself, drinking himself into an endless pit.

He watched as a girl with dark hair took a seat just two spots over from him. She put her bag on the bar, and sighed as she told the bartender her order. She was pretty, but Matt had learned a long time ago that pretty always was the quickest path to disaster.

“Give me two drinks of the strongest thing you can make,” the girl said. She caught his interest, so Matt watched her as she took the drinks from the bartender when he came back.

“I’ll pay for those,” Matt said, cutting in. The girl was visibly upset, and he knew if he was in her situation, he would want someone to do the same for him. The bartender nodded, saying he would put it on Matt’s tab.

“Thank you,” the girl said with a sniffle after she took a big gulp out of the first glass. “You didn’t have to do that though.”

“By the way you just drank that, I’m assuming both of those drinks are for you,” Matt said with a smile.

“Yes, I ordered them both for me,” she replied, suddenly self conscious. “I hope you don’t think I do this all of the time. I’m not a lush or anything.”

“Oh, I’m not judging you,” Matt said, putting his hands up in front of him. “I’ve been in situations plenty of times where I’ve needed more than one drink to help me get through.”

“My boyfriend just broke up with me,” she said through a sniffle again. Matt never asked her what was wrong, but he guessed he looked like he was curious. “We hadn’t been together for that long, it’s just, we came here together and now I don’t know where I’m supposed to go. I don’t have a room to stay in, and the earliest flight I could catch back home is tomorrow morning.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, and the girl thought she had told Matt too much. She thought she had come off as an overemotional, clingy ex-girlfriend.

“He’s stupid for letting you go, you know,” Matt said, staring at the clock on the wall again instead of her. He knew this girl was going to cause him trouble the moment she sat down, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t pursued trouble in a long time. “I’m sure whoever he’s choosing over you isn’t even going to compare. By the time he realizes it, it’s going to be too late, though.”

“What?” she asked, an astonished tone to her voice. “How did you guess that he dumped me for another girl?”

“Because it’s what men do,” Matt replied with a laugh. He looked at her again, and he noticed she had a beautiful pair of hazel eyes, even beneath all of the tears. “I’ve done it before. We never realize it until they’re long gone. You’re the kind of girl a man looks for to spend the rest of his life with, not to fool around with.”

“So, you’re telling me you’re different than every other man walking on this earth since you’ve learned from your mistakes?”

Matt could tell from the look in her eyes that he had already charmed her too much. It was too late to back out now, but he could always try.

“No, what I should tell you is that a woman like you never wants to get involved with a man like me because I’m more dangerous than the rest of them,” he answered with his most charming smile. What he said wasn’t figurative in anyway. He was speaking in the blunt truth. “What I am going to tell you, though, is that I’m about to order a bottle of champagne up to my room. What you want to do with that information is up to you.”

She looked offended at first, but then she realized that sometimes, the quickest way to get over something that is bothering you is by replacing it with another thought.

“You’re dangerous, huh?” she asked playfully, raising an eyebrow. She was challenging what Matt just said, but she didn’t know that she was playing with fire at that very moment. “For some reason, I don’t believe that.”

“Well, you can’t tell me I never warned you,” Matt said, looking back up at the clock.

“My name is Grace,” the girl said, holding out her hand for him to shake.

“Matt,” he said, looking into her eyes again. “I guess it’s my good fortune that your boyfriend decided to break up with you tonight.”

“I guess it is,” Grace replied with a smile.

Yes, Grace played with fire that night, because she never knew that most people didn’t know Matthew Sanders was his actual name. He was more commonly known as M. Shadows, a criminal wanted all over the country for numerous different felonies. This wasn’t saying he was a serial killer or a rapist.

But this wasn’t saying he had never killed anyone before, either. The city Matt lived in, he owned it. He had the politicians and the police officers in his pocket, buying them off with money earned from laundering drugs and weapons.

He had earned quite a few enemies in his time on top, and most of the time, Matt and anyone he was close with was always under the threat of danger. He couldn’t count how many times he had felt the heat of a bullet as it passed millimeters away from flesh, or the sting of a blade that had just barely missed its mark.

It was those near death experiences that made Matt realized that time was something you could never take for granted. No matter how hard someone tried, they would never be able to control time, which is why no one ever knew when their time was over.

Matt remembered what time was like when you first fell in love. Everything seemed to go by slower, allowing you to appreciate everything that much more. Even though you already seemed to be going by at a slower pace than everything else in the world, you always wished that you could slow time down so all of the good moments could last forever.

It didn’t take Matt very long to fall in love with Grace. It had taken forever for him to show her who he really was, but she had eventually accepted him for his flaws.

At times, she even made him feel like his morals weren’t so corrupt. The truth was, he hadn’t been “good” for so long now that he didn’t even know what it felt like to have values anymore. Matt only had one saying he liked to live by, which was “trust no one, and only do something that will have a beneficial outcome”.

So far, that had kept him alive and successful since he had entered this twisted world of organized crime. Everything changed after Grace walked into his life that one night. Before that, he was able to do anything necessary to keep everything running as smoothly as possible. He would kill, if necessary, and he had no problem showing anyone just how nice of a right hook he had.

When Grace came, that changed. She was so innocent, and so new to this world that Matt feared if she saw who he had once been, she would leave forever. He wanted her to stay with him always, though, because as he said before, she was the kind of girl a man spent the rest of his life with.

It was easy to do anything you had to when you didn’t have any weaknesses or people to worry about, but Grace quickly became his one weakness. He would do anything for her, and he would do anything he had to in order to make sure she was safe. Once word of his weakness got out on the street, the biggest target was no longer on his back, but Grace’s.

The day everything started to fall downhill, Matt remembered thinking that time was something that never passed by quickly enough. It was something invented to make us miserable. It made us suffer to know how much longer it was going to be until unpleasant something was over.

It was 9:00 P.M. and Matt was walking out of a restaurant with Grace’s hand in his own.

He had told her to dress nice because he was taking her somewhere special, and she gladly obliged with his request. It was an anniversary for them, and he wanted to make this night perfect for her as thanks for how she had filled in all the missing spots in his life.

No one ever realized how empty a person’s heart had to be in order to do everything he had done, or to witness everything he had. It wasn’t easy to be the way he was, but it was even harder to change back. Grace had helped him though, as she showed him there were things in life that were worth protecting and caring about. She helped him believe he wasn’t as heartless as he had originally thought.

Just when they were about to reach the car, which was waiting just by the curb, Matt knew everything had been going too perfect for too long to stay that way. He had his hand on the handle to the door when he heard a voice he hadn’t heard in a long time. It was one he always wished he never had to hear again.

“I thought this night was going to be uneventful, but, apparently, I was wrong.”

Matt turned to his left, and sure enough, someone he didn’t want to see was standing there. His name was Zachary Baker, but, just like most people knew Matt as M. Shadows, most people knew Zack by the name of Vengeance. His name may have sounded bad, but it was nothing compared to who he really was.

They used to be friends long ago, but like all estrangements, they fell out over something they no longer could remember. The only thing that mattered now was that they knew they hated one another with a fiery passion. Zack had disappeared almost a month ago after Matt had nearly destroyed his whole operation, but it now seemed he had recovered.

Matt was thinking, at that moment, that things were about to get very bad.

He watched as Zack’s eyes flickered over to Grace, and a smile slid over his lips as he studied her. No, this was not going to be good at all.

“Well, I can see that things have changed a lot since I last saw you,” Zack said pleasantly, like Matt hadn’t almost tried to kill him not too long ago. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“I think I’m going to pass on that one,” Matt said coldly, moving so Grace was mostly shielded from view.

“I was just being polite. After all, it’s the least you can do after leaving me in Nevada for dead,” he said as he came closer to them. He looked at Grace, clearly implying he was done talking to Matt now.

Matt could feel her shaking behind him. He had tried to keep her sheltered from as much of this world as possible, and she was always uneasy when she wasn’t able to stop herself from seeing what his world was really like. Matt realized it was impossible to keep her out of everything forever, and with each day that passed, Grace was getting pulled into this deceitful world more and more.

“You’re lucky,” Zack said to her with a smile. “None of the others lasted quite as long as you have, but then again, he never cared for them as much. I would just be careful, if I were you, because this fairytale won’t last forever. Soon, you’ll be dragged into this, no matter how much he keeps trying to pull you back.”

Zack laughed as he walked away from the two of them, knowing he had planted fear in Shadows, and doubt in his girlfriend. Most often, it didn’t take long to make someone come crumbling down. It was the simple things that caused the largest amount of chaos.

“Are you alright?” Matt asked urgently as he turned around. He took Grace’s hands into his own as he pulled her into an embrace, and he could feel her trembling still. “Don’t listen to him. He’s just trying to scare you. He likes to play mind games with people, and if you think too much about what he said, you’re going to give him exactly what he wants.”

“I’m fine,” Grace assured him, hugging him back. “I would be better if we got home as fast as possible, though.”

“Okay,” Matt said, opening the car door for her. “You know that I love you, Grace, and that I would never let anything happen to you, right?”

“I know,” Grace replied with a smile as she moved over in the backseat of the car. “You tell me that every day.”

Yes, he did tell her those things every day, but that was because he thought if he said he could protect her enough, he would actually believe it. He was only trying to forget what the inevitable was, trying to hope that this peaceful state could last as long as possible, but the truth was it was all going to end shortly.

For the next few weeks, time now became a guessing game. Each morning, Matt woke up wondering if today was going to be the day when it all ended, when his life fell apart at the seams.

Time went by as usual, not bothered by anyone’s worries or wishes, and, as fate would have it, Matt did not have to wait long until his d-day arrived.

It was 5:30 P.M., and it was the time Grace usually arrived home from work, except on this day, she didn’t.

Matt tried not to panic at first, thinking she could have been held up in a meeting, or traffic on the streets was really bad. He tried to convince himself of this, but the nagging at the back of his brain was telling him something was very wrong.

His suspicions were confirmed when, at 6:00 P.M., a letter was delivered to his apartment. A letter that changed time from a guessing game into a deadline.

It contained an address, demands, and a time, with only one single letter at the bottom of it: V.

He wanted money, which Matt wouldn’t give two thoughts of handing over when it came to Grace’s well being. He was messing with the woman Matt loved with all of his heart, and for that, Vengeance was going to get a whole lot more than just money.

The only thing wrong with his plan is that when someone took the girl you loved, you never thought things through clearly, either. Matt left his home right away, wanting to deal with this on his own because he wouldn’t trust anyone else. He didn’t want to get anyone else involved, and maybe if he could look back on this, he would see just how stupid that was.

So, Matt took off, not giving anything a second thought as he tried to get to Grace in time. He drove as fast as possible, almost killing himself twice. Recklessness and carelessness came when planning was not involved. Yes, Matt would soon realize that failure to plan had been his biggest downfall.

He finally reached his destination, the destination printed on the letter he had received, and he looked at the abandoned warehouse it had brought him to. There were shattered windows and graffitied walls, and Matt just hoped he wasn’t too late.

Time wasn’t moving fast enough in the time it took to get here, and as Matt took the money he had brought with him into the building, it looked oddly to him like no one was even there.

It took him just a few minutes to search the whole building, which was, in fact, empty. He had a gnawing suspicion that he had been set up, but he wasn’t going to leave until he found Grace. There was one last room he had to check, and it had a door that was barely on its hinges.

Matt kicked it down, a gun held in his free hand to protect himself against any surprises. In the far corner of the room, Grace sat, tied to a chair, with a piece of cloth preventing her from speaking. The moment she saw him, relief crossed her features, but then she started to scream out to him.

He dropped everything because there clearly wasn’t anyone in the building, and he ran over to help free Grace from her restraints. She was crying and trying to scream something at him, but he thought she was just shaken up over the whole experience. Matt untied her arms and legs first, but he didn’t know if he had let her speak first, everything would have ended much differently.

“You need to get out of here, right now,” Grace cried to him as he tried to work the last knot by her feet. She had freed her own mouth once Matt had gotten her hands free.

“We’ll be able to leave in a minute,” Matt said, trying to calm her down. “I just need to get your feet free.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she cried as she pointed into the corner of the room. “Look.”

He followed to where her finger was pointing to, and his heart dropped into his stomach with what he saw. Bright red numbers, slowly counting down, and getting closer and closer to zero with each second. It seemed now that time was counting down instead of counting forwards.

“I’m not leaving you here,” Matt said, trying to swallow his fear at seeing the explosives that lined the corner of the room. There was only fifteen seconds left.

“You still have a chance if you leave now,” Grace cried as she tried to help him with the last knot. Matt wrenched the last knot loose, and roughly held her in his arms

“I won’t leave you here for that alone,” Matt repeated. The girl that was the love of his life walked into that bar for a reason all that time ago. It was because he was supposed to live the rest of his life with her, and that was exactly what he was doing. He loved her too much to leave her there to die alone.

He kissed her roughly, passionately: it was their last kiss ever, because Matt knew for certain he was going to hell for all he had done. Grace would most certainly end up in heaven because she had the purest soul he had ever known. Her face was wet from crying, and Matt felt a single tear of his own slip from his eye. He found it funny in that single second, because he had once been known for his rough exterior and nonexistent emotions.

“I love you, Matt,” Grace said, her voice crackling with fear. He held her tightly, trying to tell her that everything was going to be alright.

“I love you, always,” he replied quietly as he watched the red numbers. He closed his eyes as the one slowly, painfully, changed into a zero.

Now, for Matthew Sanders, it now seemed that time was something that had run out for him.