The rumour on the streets of Rio was that some dealers had figured out how to sell Time.

“João, do you believe it?” The smoke from my cigar levitates until it merges with Rio’s skies. The perk of dining in the overpriced taverna in Copacabana is the access to a private beach. Even long after the sunset, it smells of sunshine and mermaids, who, if they ever existed, must’ve been nesting here, sharpening their fangs, waiting for prey. Hungry. The surrounding sand grants the illusion of infinity if I bother to bend from my sundeck, scoop it up in my hand, and let it trickle through my fingers in a myriad of seconds of my wasted life. But I don’t. I’m stoned. I’m tired. I’m a forty-three-year-old hog who visits his urologist more often than his wife. Well, ex-wife, if that matters.

I look up at João, who’s moonbathing nearby.

“Can you buy Time?” I poke him in the ribs. Or I intend to. That stuff I tried before we hit this place is still ravaging my system. If I take another sniff of it, mermaids will drag me to the Atlantic to feed me to Iemanjá, the Goddess of the sea. But I don’t need another stray lady after divorcing for the fourth time, so I refocus on my companion. “Hey, João, can I buy Time?”

“So people say. But if you ask me, one can’t buy time, Don Andrew. Only earn.”

I brush off João’s alcohol-infused philosophising. “What is Time, anyway? Mind you, I don’t believe in voodoo nonsense. Is it some dope that gets you so high it screws with your mind, and you believe in reincarnation and angels? It all sounds hax pax max Deus adimax.”

João sheds his usual smile. “Não sei.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? I’m paying you for all kinds of the illegal shit I inject into myself to feel a day younger, and you haven’t heard the hottest gossip when—”

“It’s bad stuff, querido. I’ve seen corpses of rich Americans and Europeans with their neck severed, eye sockets filled with sand, the time on their Rolex moving backwards.”

I ignore the urban myth and shrug. “That’s Rio for you. What’s another corpse in a city swimming in guns?”

João cocks his head. “Still selling Glocks to drug lords and far-right thugs?” There is no judgment in his voice, just amusement.

“Far right or far left, my friend, whoever pays and whoever the current government persecutes the most. I’m apolitical as our saviour, Cristo Redentor. An anarchist.”

“I s’pose that’s how people become millionaires.” João nods. “Why would you need Time? Senhora complained about performance?” He leans forward and pats my protruding belly.

“Fuck off, mate.” I yank his hand off. João doesn’t know my tumour is back, spreading into my kidneys this time. Nobody knows but me and my urologist. During my last check-up, the doc tried to allude to metastasis in my cardiovascular system, but I cut him short. I didn’t want to know how I was going to die. Wrong question. Wrong answers. The correct question is how I can survive and live. Live! The anger at my failing body makes my blood boil, and I clench my fists. If anybody else but the good lad João, who’s been supplying me with embryonic stem cells, was laughing at me now, I’d whack him hard.

Though, who am I kidding? When was the last time I got into a fight? Back in London when I was a starving kid and a wannabe hacker from nowhere? When I married Nikki and thought she was the love of my life and we’d be an item forever—a painful illusion with all first wives? Or when I figured out how to blackmail my way into the business of arms trafficking? That hacker had his star moment, after all—all it took me was one stroke of luck: one porn account hijacked, one email sent, and bingo. As for fighting, these days, I have that Kung Fu Panda from Kansas, Jacobsen, to bully people for me. Jacobsen, another caipirinha, mate! And don’t forget to overtip the waiters—that’s how the poor souls survive here, alright?

When my bodyguard mumbles something about wasting my money, glares at my companion, and reluctantly leaves us alone, João scoots closer. “Listen, I know shit about Time, but I keep my word. When I said I’d trace down anybody for you in Rio, I meant it. I paid a woman to show up tonight to talk to you about Time, but mind one thing: the latest millionaire who was found headless in the ditch near Rocinha was last seen right here talking to the same girl. If you want to try this trick, be my guest, but, querido, have the decency to pay me for three months in advance since you are my best client, and your dead body will bring me nada. But, Don Andrew …” João’s breath scratches my ear as he whispers. “It’s not worth it—you can’t buy Time anyway. And whatever happens, nobody can know about this conversation. Você entende?”

I understand all right. As I understood the previous time when he warned me about keeping my mouth shut and closing my eyes on some things happening in Rio. Who knows where João got tissue from a new-born baby for my illegal cancer treatment? I never asked. He never said. We’re a club of gentlemen of dubious morality. Nobody needs to know anything. Ever. Even I choose to forget. It’s incredible how much we can compartmentalise and seal down our memories, pretending nothing has ever happened.

When a woman slinks onto the balcony, João jumps up and points at me. He gives the newcomer a wide berth and disappears before I blink again.

“Don Andrew?” The woman sits next to me, and her perfume envelopes me.

This fragrance. I know it.

Deep in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, there’s a hotel, or rather a shack, in the middle of the Amazonian jungle. Whenever I opened the shutters of my room there, the forest assaulted me with its smells. These Amazonian plants, Nepenthes, secrete so much nectar that it trickles down their stems like honey, and its sickeningly sweet fragrance permeates the air, making people dizzy. The sweat and saliva of the woods. The scent of a forest that is predatory and savage. The wild.

That’s how this woman smells. She looks young—barely in her twenties, skin smooth like a peach—tanned, stunning. She’s a mestiza of rare beauty who could grace the podiums of Paris and Milan. But she’s here, in Copacabana, at the beach with angry waves and phantom jellyfish, watching the mermaid ocean next to me. Her heart-shaped face looks so right and somehow so, so wrong. I haven’t seen her before, yet she reminds me of someone I haven’t seen for ages.

“So, you want to buy Time?” She nods at me. “Why, Don Andrew?”

“What does a kid like you know about aging?”

I’m trying to be funny, but the woman doesn’t smile. And the longer I stare at her, the clearer it is in my mind what’s wrong with her appearance. Her eyes. They don’t match the face of a twenty-something girl who had no time to grow this sadness, this maturity. Her eyes belong to a woman who’s had her heart broken, dreams ruined, life derailed again, again, and again. Her gaze carries no delusion of youth; she looks at me with a grave understanding of the cruelty of time.

The woman leans forward and places her hand on my cheek. She strokes my face as if we are lovers, as if this is a promise of a kiss that will carry the tang of tobacco and strawberry caipirinha.

I don’t remove her hand as I stare at the girl, who is staring through me, staring back at her. We are an optical illusion of two mirrors, four eyes, reflecting from each other, forgetting where the beginning and the end of us are.

“My sweet Drew the Screw,” the mestiza drawls the nickname she can’t possibly know—the one reserved only for Nikki and a handful of old friends, or it used to be. I lost them all: Nikki, the friends, and that guy Drew, too.

“Don’t you remember me?” Without waiting for my answer, she hums a haunting melody that makes my skin prickle.

“Ah, a beleza que existe

A beleza que não é só minha.”

One blink—and we are not some strangers waiting for the Copacabana mermaids to drag us to hell. We are two lovers at Ipanema, in the apartment I rented when I came to establish my trade in Rio almost two decades ago.

That room reeked of humidity, an old mattress, and somebody’s broken dreams, but the woman and I hardly noticed. She was older than me, experienced, mature. We kissed and kissed, our tongues carrying the tang of tobacco and strawberry caipirinhas. Later at night, I cried and told the mestiza about Nikki and our divorce, and she stroked my cheek, hummed the song about the Ipanema beleza, and told me that I would forgive and forget. Or at least my ex-wife would forget me. She was right about that.

“Glaucia?” I rub my eyes as I wake from my memories.

“My sweet Drew.” Her face, so fresh she could be an artist’s model for a young Madonna, darkens. “Do you remember me now?”

Do I? I promised the mestiza I kissed at Ipanema that I would take care of her, help her escape from the favela, and move her to Britain. She believed me. Or not. Who knew? She was lonely, and I was a man with a broken heart. We used each other. I forgot her once I returned to London—I was too busy trying to get Nikki back (not that it ever worked out).

I pull away from the mestiza. “Christ, that can’t be right.” I hug myself as a shiver ripples down my spine. “You can’t be the Glaucia I knew. She was a mature woman, and that was two decades ago.”

“Drew.” She leans so close that her breath tickles my face. “I’m sixty-two.”

What?

I pull back, but her perfume—the odour of Nepenthe flowers—follows, assaulting me. Deep in the Amazonian forest, Nepenthes open the lids of their traps every morning to reveal half-digested salamanders, insects, and spiders drowned in a pool of liquid inside their stems. Occasionally, their prey, a Blue morpho or another unlucky butterfly, stirs, a trace of energy left in its limbs, but the flower secretes more saliva before devouring its catch alive.

I want to gasp, but my lungs constrict. Damn! I choke and cough until tears flood my eyes and my skin burns. But what did I expect? If a man opts out of chemo, which has never worked anyway, which of his organs will give up first?

The mestiza cackles and drops a card on my lap. “That’s the price for introducing you to the priestesses of Iemanjá, the worshippers of our Goddess of the sea. They sell Time. Think hard if you need it, Don Andrew. You take it or leave it—no questions asked.”

I still tear up, and the amount scribbled on the paper looks astronomical at first glance. When my vision refocuses, I count even more zeroes.

“That’s bullshit.” I shake off the card and grains of sand from my lap. My life depends on finding a treatment that works, not hocus pocus concocted by charlatans, as if I haven’t tried those before. “I don’t even know what Time is. Is it some drug? Traditional medicine? Acupuncture? I need proofs, medical references, assurances that—”

“You ask no questions. You do as we say. You tell no one. Once you’re ready, you show up in Rocinha with your chequebook. That’s it.” The woman stands.

She takes a step backwards, still facing me. One step, another. Something changes in her demeanour as the distance between us grows. The mestiza stares blankly at me as she stumbles towards the exit, her back to the door, her gait strange. Her head bobs up and down, her arms stick out a little to the left and right, then dangle, as if she’s a marionette in a puppeteer’s hands. Halfway through, she picks up speed. As she walks backwards, she cranes her neck to one side, and her body jerks, looking erratic, uncanny, wrong, as if I’m watching video footage played backwards at double speed.

Dread gnaws at my insides, and I squint to suppress another shudder. When I open my eyes, the woman is gone.

Have I imagined the whole thing?

That stuff I sniffed before we hit Copacabana must be ravaging me hard. I wipe sweat from my forehead and wish I’d followed the mermaids to the Mariana Trench instead.

When that lazy arse Jacobsen shows up with my drink, I grab it with gratitude, though I can’t drink. It’s no fun sipping cocktails when your teeth chatter against the glass.

*     *     *
A week later, I enter Rocinha favela, the place that baptised me as Don Andrew, a weapons dealer for Amigos dos Amigos—Carioca bad boys. Though who are the good and bad guys in a shantytown where the police don’t dare to venture, births aren’t registered, and I meet hundreds of ghosts who don’t officially exist?

The favela smells of churrascarias. Illegal electricity lines crisscross every alley, sparkling and humming in the breeze, and at every corner, kids kick a football with more skill than most of the overpriced losers in the Premier League. Cafes serve cafezinho, which smells as if angels grew beans in Espírito Santo and ground them in person, mixing them up with chocolate shavings and the smoke of a bonfire at night.

At the crossroads, there’s a picture of a Black teenager, a basket with plastic flowers, and a hand-made poster that read, “Te amo, Gustavo.” It’s great to see that somebody still loves Gustavo, whoever he was, though the photo will likely be replaced by another one soon, and then another, and another. What is the cost of life in the favela where every adolescent holds a gun? Time is a wasted commodity here. No one can change anything in this place. Nobody.

“Are you sure it’s safe here?” Jacobsen blinks at me, and I want to slap his face. Who protects who? Though a bodyguard is no help in the slums, where different rules apply. Why did I drag the lad along with me, then? Perhaps, so that I don’t change my mind.

There are certain quarters in the favela no outsider can enter unless escorted. A gang of boys, some as young as twelve, brandish weapons and squint at their adult superiors, who shake my hand and flash golden teeth. I grin back. Nikki used to say that I could sell hell to angels if I smiled widely enough—Drew the Screw in action. The irony of it: my ex-wife could accept the hell but couldn’t stomach my weapons sales. What was wrong with the love of my life?

When the gang insists on blindfolding us, I nod—the usual business.

After what feels like an eternity of wandering in the labyrinth of Rocinha, the boy leading me finally stops. “Aqui.” He removes my mask, and I squint at a group of shacks surrounded by piles of construction rubbish.

When a gunshot resonates through the air, I duck and swivel my head in the direction of a dark passage to my left, but it’s empty, and only laughter follows from one of the open windows. Not a brawl, then. Just a drunken party. Some idiots might be celebrating another Flamengo or Botafogo goal.

The boy taps my shoulder. “Então, vamos entrar.”

But I don’t come inside. I don’t look at the boy. I stare at the dark passage, my heart thumping hard, my instincts telling me to keep watching. Which is a silly thought. Ridiculous. There must be nothing there. Nothing at all. Nothi—

But here they are.

Two figures appear immobile, arms pressed tight to their sides. Neither men nor women, they are dressed in white, floor-length robes. And on their heads, there are white sacks with slits for eyes and mouths and ropes tied around their necks.

The figures cock their heads to one shoulder simultaneously, as if they are eager to see me better; see or smell, hard to say as their mouth slits open wide to reveal black holes.

I’m about to scream when Jacobsen tugs at my sleeve, and I swivel my head towards him.

My bodyguard sweats profusely. “Are you sure, boss?”

I snap my head back to the dark passage, but it’s empty now. What was that? Another drug-induced hallucination?

“Are you sure, boss?” Jacobsen repeats.

Am I?

João hired me the best detective in Rio to check on my mestiza, and he found someone who knew someone who swore on his mother’s grave that he’d witnessed how my mestiza shed forty years overnight. Forty. What plastic surgery could do that?

“Don Andrew?” An old woman opens the door of the shack in front of me. “Estávamos esperando.”

They were waiting for me? Nice. I didn’t even know I would show up here until a few hours ago. Jacobsen shifts from one foot to the other, so I shove him from behind to get him inside. The woman makes us sip some liquid that tastes like stale coconut water, but I diligently drain my glass.

The room into which the woman ushers us next is empty, bar a basket on the floor, a clock on the wall, and an electric bulb dangling from the ceiling. The latter sheds slats of light on walls splattered with something brownish-red. A thick layer of sand is scattered across all the room’s surfaces. I’ve negotiated arms sales with Amigos dos Amigos in worse cabins, but something, or rather someone, makes my blood freeze.

In the corner of the room, a person looms, dressed in all white, with a sack with slits for eyes perched on their head, a rope tied around their neck, and their arms folded behind their back.

“O cheque?” The sackhead asks in a voice that could be both female and male.

Jacobsen sweats more. “Are you sure, boss?”

Will he shut up already? I’m sure of nothing. Yet, I’m sure of everything.

But, of course, Jacobsen doesn’t know that I met João earlier this morning.

“Don Andrew.” João grabbed my hand—the very one feeding him for the last decade. “Don’t do this. Please. That woman I introduced you to, she’s …” his voice trembled. “She’s not right any longer.”

“The hell does that mean?”

“Not right,” João repeats with more conviction. “Time messed her up.”

I laugh in João’s face. Who hasn’t time messed up? If only we could trace the moment when things took a wrong turn in our lives, when we got wronged by time. Nikki believed I’d ruined my life the day I sold my first contraband shipment of sniper rifles. Though the sale was only an aftermath. It all started when I hijacked one porn account on the Darknet, made one threat, scared one Secretary of State for Defence to death. Should I have turned up the bastard to the police? But the Darknet stretches all the way to Scotland Yard and beyond. Nikki, of course, wouldn’t listen. You’ll dig your own grave, Drew the Screw. Rot in hell! she cried in my face when I saw her last. But I have different plans.

My good lad João doesn’t know I’d seen others. The detective gave me the names of the Brazilian elite that Glaucia rubs shoulders with these days. My government sources informed me that according to their records, two of Glaucia’s friends are one-hundred-and-sixty and two-hundred-and-five-years-old, respectively. Do I believe that crap?

Sweet Jesus. I’m convinced that drinking dew while chanting mantras bare-arsed can tackle cancer. I trust that carrying the mummified finger of a sixteenth-century Catalan saint can buy me an extra month of life. I believe in everything. I want to live. Live! I must prove to Nikki that I won’t rot away into oblivion for my sins. She was wrong. She got terminally ill.

“O cheque?” the sackhead repeats, and I struggle to breathe.

The cheque isn’t a problem. I prepared it some time ago. But when I withdraw it and look at the amount written there again, my instinct is to tear it up into pieces, or better yet, burn, or better still—swallow and forget about this nonsense. And then, run, run, run as fast as I can. Except, I can’t. My clock is ticking. I badly need to buy Time.

My bodyguard brings the cheque to the sackhead, who doesn’t even look at it. As Jacobsen moves, the sand on the floor vibrates and swells. Or perhaps my eyes are tearing up, and I’m imagining things.

“Pronto?” the sackhead asks.

“Ready? For what?” My cheek twitches.

“Ajoelhar-se.”

“The hell? Why would I kneel? Is this some ritual? Can we cut the crap and just—”

“Go to the basket and kneel.” The sackhead switches to English and brings their arms forward.

And in their arms glistens one of the biggest machetes I’ve ever seen, and there are blood and specks of sand on its blade. Jacobsen stumbles toward the exit, and I swallow hard.

“Look …” I take a step towards the basket that isn’t empty like I thought; there’s something dark and round in there (a deflated football, a rotten cabbage?). “The hell is that shit show with the blade about?”

“Tempo. Você ganha Tempo.” The lights of the room play tricks on me, and the eye slits of the sackhead appear to have changed colour from black to aquamarine.

“Right, mate, I’d like to buy Time even though I still don’t have a clue what it is. Do we need the goddamn drama?”

“Kneel.”

I grunt but do as they say—all shamans, particularly the ones that love wearing sacks and tying ropes around their necks just for fun, like their theatrics. The vibration of the floor intensifies, and the sand there ripples as if the desert breeze is breathing life into it. As I thump onto my knees, pain from my crotch ricochets up my spine. Dark spots dance in my vision, and I have a hard time focusing on the cabbage inside the basket.

Though wait a second.

Why would a cabbage have a human eye? Or is it, is it … It isn’t a toy or a vegetable. It’s something mangled and splattered with gore. Nausea overwhelms me, but I have no energy to stand or even crawl away as the worst pain I’ve ever felt makes me bend over double.

“A deusa do mar,” chants the sackhead.

Their prayer to the Goddess of the sea is short, but it’s enough for the vibration of the floor to grow into a tremor. I look up just in time to catch the blade swishing above my head. Time slows down, and every second acquires the shape of a grain of sand.

Trickle, trickle, trickle.

Time sprinkles down on me with the rustle of a dune disturbed by the breeze.

It’s too late when I understand what is about to happen. I contort my mouth in what should’ve been my final scream, but the sound never comes. Instead, the sand on the floor rears up in a five-foot-tall wave.

Smack!

When the machete lands on my neck, the pain is excruciating, but my thoughts are surprisingly clear.

Sand.

It’s the colour of Time. Eternal.

Time.

It’s sublime, like the grains of sand on the floor.

They are one.

When my severed head drops into the basket, my vision dims. But my last seconds of consciousness are enough to capture the sight of the clock on the wall with its arms spinning backwards.

*     *     *
I wake up with a gasp. I’m dizzy and struggle to focus on my surroundings.

I’m in an empty cabin built from planks that smell like mahogany trees and Nepenthes. I scrunch up my nose, but the reek of carnivorous plants drifts into my nostrils. There are no windows, but sunshine seeps through finger-wide gaps between planks. Sand, which has fully covered the floor, screeches on my teeth when I unpeel my cracked lips. I’d kill for a glass of water and painkillers as my headache promises to explode my skull. What happened to me in Rocinha? What was in that cup the woman made me drink? Hallucinogens?

Bastards.

They messed with the wrong guy. Are they hoping for a ransom? Oh, they’ll pay the price once I get out of here. Once I’m back, I—

“You are early.” I freeze at the sound of a voice.

A woman sits on the floor in the corner, her white robe fully covering her torso and legs, but her face is thankfully free. How come I didn’t notice her before? Is she part of the gang?

She must’ve been stunning once. Traces of beauty are visible on her face, even though it has sagged and wrinkled. Her hair is salt-and-pepper but voluminous, with curls exploding from her head like snakes. She could’ve been Medusa the Gorgon before Time played dirty and reminded her that she’s mortal, after all.

“Water,” I gasp. “I need—”

I forget what I wanted to say when the woman’s hair changes colour to bright red that sparkles in the sun.

“The hell?” I try to lick my lips, but there’s no saliva. “How did you … ? The colour … ?”

“Colour?” The woman tilts her head, and her skin darkens to the shade of ebony. “Colour is a trick of the mind. It doesn’t exist.”

I stare open-mouthed, too dumbfounded to articulate my thoughts. And do I even have any?

The woman picks up a handful of sand from the floor and lets it trickle through her fingers. “Only Time exists, Drew the Screw. The rest is illusion.”

I shut my mouth and swallow the grains of sand in my throat. No, this is not a kidnapping. I must be hallucinating. The hut, the sand, the woman aren’t real, can’t be. Except, if everything is hocus pocus, can I, for Christ’s sake, stop imagining my headache? Because the pressure in my skull is becoming unbearable.

“What is it?” The woman seems to have noticed my struggles.

I unpeel my lips. “My head hurts.”

“Then pick it up from the floor already.”

“What?”

And just like that, the bigger picture becomes clear. My decapitated body slouches by the wall, and my head, a mangled lump like a spoiled cabbage, lies on the sand, its eyes staring at the woman. I try to scream, but I can’t.

Am I the head? Or the body? Or nothing at all? When I try to twitch my finger but fail, immense sadness overwhelms me, and I cry. I’m not even scared. Sweet Jesus, I’m a pathetic mess who can’t wipe his own goddamn nose because my hands are there, attached to the decapitated corpse, while my face is here, half-buried in the sand that burns the stub of my neck. Nothing makes sense. And yet, everything seems so real that it hurts deep, deep in my heart, which can’t even ache, as it’s dead. Am I dead? A sob escapes my lips, and before I know it, I’m weeping like a child.

“There, there.” The woman crawls towards me. As she moves along the floor, my gaze rests on her legs, or rather, the place where they should’ve been. Instead, a muscle resembling the foot of a snail protrudes from underneath her robe. It’s slimy, and the sand it touches becomes wet and shiny. I try to close my eyes to shut out the harrowing image, but my eyelids don’t move.

“There, there.” She reaches my head and picks it up.

As she caresses my face, wiping off my tears of fear and self-pity, her hands scratch my cheeks. A set of octopus-like suckers dot her palms. They tickle my skin.

“There.” She mounts my head on my body, picks up some sand from the floor, and rubs it into the wound on my neck that burns like hell.

The feeling of wholeness, of being one again, of finding your end and beginning, is overwhelming, and my stupid nose runs again. But at least my head doesn’t hurt. I’m not even thirsty anymore.

“Am I dead?” I touch my neck with caution. It feels raw but otherwise seems fine. Functional. Sweet Jesus, have I lost it? “Am I dead, or have I lost my marbles?”

“You are early,” the woman repeats the phrase. “I didn’t expect you here yet.” The suckers on her fingers graze my arm with the care that a cat displays before sinking its fangs into a mouse. “Everyone has their expiration Time. You haven’t squandered all of yours yet.”

“Who are you? Death?” I ask and cringe—what a stupid question. Though I’m not sure what to believe any longer.

The woman’s hair changes to ash blond while her skin turns brown. “I have many names, Drew. Some people call me Iemanjá. I own this place, the sand of Time, and the ocean.”

Nobody has ever told me that people can hallucinate after they’re dead. Which means … I’m alive. Alive?

“Why do you need Time?” Iemanjá looks me in the eye.

“I’m dying.”

“So what? Such is human nature.”

I pause. Should I talk about the love of my life in this godforsaken place? “Nikki said—”

“Why are you bothered by what she said? She’s dead.”

I nod. “I’ve outlived her by two years already. Who’d think that prostate cancer kills slower than degenerative heart disease? I want to prove to her that—”

“Isn’t it too late for that?” Iemanjá waves her hand around. “When she came here, all she talked about was you. You, your dreams as a young man, and your mistakes thereafter.”

My skin prickles. Is it pride or grief? There are days when I forget Nikki is dead. And days when I shove a handful of painkillers into my mouth, grab Nikki’s photo from my wallet, and curl up in a ball on my bed, shouting at everyone to go to hell.

“My mistakes …” The words pour out of my mouth before I have a chance to stop them. And can I in this weird place? “Nikki said I deserve to rot away for gunrunning. She said I’d missed the chance of my life.”

“What chance?”

“To destroy a nest of snakes. Nikki was naïve, you know. She thought I could bring down the Secretary of State for Defence and his cabal with the stuff I got on him from the Darknet. As if anybody in their right mind would destroy people who could propel their career. Do I look like a fool? But such was Nik. Naïve and kind. Big as the world.”

“Indeed.” Iemanjá’s hair turns bright pink with streaks of copper. “And because of her, I can give you two pinches of Time. This should be enough for you to go back two years to that hospital and see Nikki one last time.”

“Two years? Why only two?”

“Nikki regretted saying those words: about you digging your own grave and rotting away. She said that if you’d come closer that day in the hospital, instead of standing in the doorway as if you were scared of her reek of death, if she had more Time, she’d have confessed she’d long forgiven you but never forgotten. She loved you the same.”

I promise myself I won’t cry again. But, Christ, my eyes burn, and I’m swiftly turning into a character in one of those Brazilian melodramas where a donna is constantly sobbing. Where did my life take the wrong turn? How?

Iemanjá’s hair turns ebony. “I’m not doing this for you, Drew the Screw. Nikki wanted to die in peace. She deserves this Time. Stretch out your hand.”

When I do so, Iemanjá grabs some sand and lets it trickle through her fingers onto my palm. As the grains land on my skin, my body warms up as if I’ve dived into a hot spring and stayed there, miraculously surviving on the hot syrup of steam and bubbles. Electricity runs through my fingers and radiates up, up, up, to my heart, which palpitates madly.

Without saying another word, Iemanjá leans against the wall, and a door opens to reveal the ocean, full of phantom jellyfish and mermaids. She crawls through the exit towards the water, humming a tune that merges with the shrieks of seagulls and the roar of the tide.

Astonished, I follow Iemanjá with my eyes until she disappears into the ocean. The cry of another seagull wakes me up.

Wait.

Is this how Time works? That’s it? I’m done? Some sackhead charlatan with a machete dispatches me to the snail lady who either arranges my return or not? Do people buy immortality this way?

I shift my gaze to my palm where two pinches of sand are nestling. Two years? Why not twenty?

My gaze falls onto my clothes: one sock (where on Earth did I lose my trainers and the other sock?), shorts, and a ruined T-shirt.

Am I Drew the Screw, or what? I could always get anything I wanted. I could cheat Time itself.

Without wasting another second, I strip naked and shove handfuls of sand into my clothes until they’re bulging at the seams.

I’m digging my fingers into the sand to take another scoop when something grabs me from underneath. I panic and try to pull away when a baby’s hand emerges, wrapped around my wrist. Another moment of dread—and its whole body resurfaces. Is this another hallucination?

Judging by the child’s legs, still pressed against his torso like chicken wings, he should be in his first months of life, or death, or whatever is happening here. But when the baby scowls, a full set of fangs glistens in the sun and gives me the worst heebie-jeebies of my life.

I shiver as the mutant’s fingers dig deeper into my wrist. “That’s mine,” it growls in an adult voice, “you stole Time from me.”

“Hell, no.”

The mutant holds me tight as he rolls onto his back to show me his stomach. An ugly scar, ragged and infected with pus, runs up his side. “You’ve taken from me.”

Something throbs inside me—the tissue that João stole for me from God knows where?

“Get lost, you, monster.” I make another attempt to shake off the mutant before the creature sinks its fangs into my wrist.

I scream so loud that my head nearly bursts. My blood looks reddish-purple when it sprays from the wound, and specks of the same colour dance in my vision.

I drop my sand-filled T-shirt but continue clutching the rest of my clothes, shaking. The mutant grabs my shirt and, seemingly satisfied with its prey, digs himself back into the sand until he completely disappears from view.

The seagulls laugh at me as I stumble outside, dizzy and disoriented. The sun grills me mercilessly. My vision becomes cloudy, but even if I couldn’t see the ocean, its roar would work as a beacon. I need to trudge a dozen or so more yards; the water will save me from this horrible place—my instincts tell me that much.

I lumber towards the ocean, the sand on my feet pressing me down with the weight of Time, and the scorching ground assaults my feet. I hop on one leg, and the seagulls laugh in the husky voices of predators ready for lunch. The salty reek of marine life, or death (who knows any longer?), overwhelms me, and my spinning head promises to fall off.

Self-consciously, I touch the scar on my neck, distracting myself. When I look down again, the terrain changes. It’s still sand, the eternal substance the colour of Time, but it’s not peaceful. Instead of the swell of the dunes, the beach is dotted with small craters, as if hundreds of moles have been digging tunnels here.

But these are not moles. Dozens of human arms shoot up through the openings, visible to the elbow. They claw their fingers, speckled with dark scabs, and swing left and right. I press my sand-filled clothes to my body and leap back towards the cabin I’ve come from.

But I’m not alone there any longer.

A Black boy stands there, glaring at me with his only eye. A bullet must have entered his face through his right socket, and light seeps through a hole in his cranium.

He points at me. “You stole from me, Senhor.”

“I …” I stumble backwards. “I don’t know you.”

But that’s a lie. I recognise the boy from the “Te amo, Gustavo” poster I spotted in Rocinha. I know his name, but I can’t see how we are related.

“It was Glock 25.” The boy points at the hole in his face. “Amigos dos Amigos shot me right in my casa.”

“I’m sorry.” I step back hurriedly. “But I can’t be responsible for that gang.”

And that’s another pathetic lie. Not many people smuggle G25s, which are not available for commercial use in the city of Cristo Redentor. In fact, I know only one.

“I’m sorry,” I repeat pointlessly.

The Black boy glares at me. “He’s here.” He calls the monsters from the dunes. “Aqui. Get him!”

I’m dashing from the shack towards the ocean when another hand shoots from the sand and grazes my ankle. I yelp hard.

Stupid! I’ve just attracted dozens of predators.

The hands stop swinging aimlessly and move towards me. The bodies they are attached to are concealed by the sand, but their fingers are clawed, ready to attack.

Seagulls cry out in anticipation of blood. The air reeks of death. The dunes tremble. I shriek.

Christ! What have I done to deserve this?

“You stole our Time!” cries the owner of the closest hand and scratches my ankle.

The pain is sharp, but adrenaline keeps me going. I stomp on one hand. Another. My feet bleed, but I barely notice. I kick and crash, trample and clomp.

There! I’ve gained three yards of distance. Just a bit more left: the ocean lures me with its salvation. One step. Then, another, and another, and another, until—

Two hands grab me simultaneously and yank me down hard. I thump to the ground, burying my face in the sand. Hungry fingers dig into my flesh, pinching, scratching, lacerating. I wriggle, trying to get out of their grip, but ravenous hands crawl onto my body, suffocating me.

My eyes bulge, but even in this moment of agony, something horrifies me even further. The spots on the monsters’ arms are not scabs—they’re gunshot wounds. Could be from Glocks, could be from SA80 assault rifles—I sold hundreds of those.

Help!

I scream out into the universe, knowing all too well that no one can save me. When I barely have any air left in my squashed lungs, I sob and throw away my shorts, bulging with sand.

The monsters follow my clothes like hunter dogs, and I scramble to my feet, gulping air. I sway as I stumble towards the water and nearly faint when waves encircle me.

My hand shakes as I open my fist. There rests a sock filled with the sand of Time.

*     *     *
I wake up with a jerk. The water around me is cold and soapy.

A bath.

Blue tiles with mermaids on the walls.

I’ve seen all of this somewhere before. Though, wait. I’ve lived all this sometime before.

I shift my gaze. I’m in a bathtub, naked; a single sock is floating on the surface of the water. I grab it, but there’s nothing inside.

When I get out of the bathtub, I pause at the mirror. And there …

… is me. Sweet Jesus. Me, but so much younger.

I try hard not to, but I cry. Oh, I’ve missed this hair that receded too early and this body before cancer took over. I’ve missed the bright eyes. But most of all, I’ve missed this guy—Drew—who had health, friends, and the love of his …

I yank the door open.

“Nikki.” I stumble into our London studio.

The TV is on—MTV—and a young Britney Spears is getting a music award. My desktop computer is whistling and chirping with the characteristic sound of dial-up Internet, trying hard to piggyback on an analogue telephone network. And behind the computer sits …

Nikki.

Alive and beautiful. Young and forever. Still wearing her wedding ring.

She looks up. “Babe, you OK?”

I sob and collapse to the floor.

“Babe …” Nikki hurries towards me. “What happened?”

I try to explain everything, but what comes out is incoherent. “Nik, can you believe it? Your Drew the Screw did it! I’ve cheated Time itself.”

“You’re scaring me.” She tries to measure my temperature with her hand. “Have you bumped your head again?”

“I’m fine.” I hug her and kiss her neck. “I’m so fine. Oh, Nikki, things will be so different now. I promise. So, so different. You won’t believe it. It’s, it’s …”

When I stop babbling, Nikki frowns. “I’ll grab some paracetamol for you—you’re delirious.”

I nod and wipe snot from my cheeks. Could anyone believe it, eh? I’m back to our youth, to Nikki, to …

My wife straightens up. Still frowning at me, she moves backwards.

Something changes in her demeanour. The love of my life stares blankly at me as she stumbles towards the kitchen with her back to the door. Her head bobs up and down, her stiff arms dangle left and right. As she moves backwards, her body jerks erratically; it’s uncanny, wrong, as if she’s a character in a videogame, played in reverse at double speed.

When she trips and falls, I yelp and dash towards her. Nikki clutches her chest, panting heavily, and her face grimaces.

“My heart, Drew. Something is wrong … So wrong, babe. Please, can you call …” But she doesn’t have time to say anything else. The degenerative heart disease, which should’ve killed her twenty years later in the version of life we lived before, must have devastated her body much faster this time.

“No!” I lift my head and shriek.

But the universe doesn’t care. The universe doesn’t give a damn. A thin layer of sand seeps through the cracks in the ceiling. The air reeks of Nepenthes. Time stops. Anticipation. It singes the air around me, creates pressure in my ears, gives birth to a vibration that runs through the sand on the floor to electrify my bare feet. Anticipation and animal fear.

As I clutch Nikki’s breathless body, something splashes behind my back. I swivel my head towards the noise, and my veins tighten.

The door to the bathroom remains open, dim lights illuminating its interior.

A hand emerges from the bathtub.

Then another one. The suckers on its fingers glisten with oily wetness. When both arms emerge to their elbow, the head follows. Its wet tresses—ebony mixed with scarlet—slither, resembling river snakes.

I try to crawl backwards, to create space between myself and the Goddess of the sea, but my body is numb and barely moving.

Iemanjá flops onto the tile floor and creeps toward me. She slithers, faster and faster, her snail tail resonating with the wet sound of an open wound.

“You lied!” I surprise myself with a cry. “You lied to me, you dirty snail. I was supposed to buy time for Nikki and me. You promised. You—”

Iemanjá slaps me hard across my face, and I fall back. One blink—and her fingers dig into my throat, her suckers cutting into my skin. Her wet body slithers over mine, making me gasp for air.

“You stupid, stupid, man, Drew the Screw,” she hisses into my face. “You can’t buy Time. You can only earn it. Don’t you understand that yet?”

I blink helplessly as her fingers loosen their grip on my throat. Once I can breathe again, I cough until my lungs hurt.

Without saying another word, the Goddess of the sea picks up Nikki’s body, turns away, and crawls towards the bathroom.

“No!” I protest, but Iemanjá snaps her head around and snarls. Two rows of needle-thin teeth glisten at me as a warning.

“Please.” I stretch my hand towards her.

But Iemanjá has lost interest in me. She slithers to the bath with the speed of a Cobra-de-Leite. Once she reaches the tub, she first plunges Nikki’s body and then climbs up inside.

Splash!

And the Goddess of the sea and the love of my life disappear as if they’ve never existed, leaving me with the silence of an empty flat and a broken heart.

I curl up in a ball and sob for hours. Maybe for a mini eternity. Who knows? Time has lost its meaning and definition. I’ve been robbed of everything I craved, everything I’ve ever cherished. What’s there left to live for?

I’m lost in my self-pity when my computer beeps to signal an incoming email.

The noise makes me prick my ears. It sounds familiar. It’s not just the ping of an email. Or the buzz of static electricity in the air. It’s my heart, galloping, thumping blood with mad intensity, accentuating the moment. But the moment of what?

My body shakes as I push myself from the floor. I stumble towards my computer and flop onto the chair in front.

I’ve just received an automatic notification: the hacking software I’ve been running on the Darknet has returned a result. I’ve hijacked an account from a notorious porn site. The bastard was reckless and didn’t bother to set a proper password. Just six numbers instead: 232323. I remember them from my other life, from my previous self, from the Drew the Screw who chose the path that looked tantalising with opportunities, the very road that strayed me away from the only woman I’ve ever loved and led me instead to the city of Cristo Redentor, Amigos dos Amigos, and Rocinha teenage boys with bullet holes instead of their eyes.

My fingers tremble as they hover over the keyboard. Redemption. It electrifies the air around me, makes my skin tingle with pins and needles, gives birth to hope I can’t even name or describe.

I download enough pictures and videos from the Darknet. In my email, I copy as many accounts as I can think of: the police, MI6, the Sun, Daily Mail, the Guardian, the New York Times. Some of them will try to save the arsehole, no doubt, but at least one will do their job. And with that, I press the button.

What’s next for me?

Tomorrow, I might fly to Rio. Tomorrow, I might chase the sackheads who can dispatch me back to the Goddess of the sea. Tomorrow, I might fight another battle for Nikki and me, which might get me killed again—I’m becoming a pro in that.

But for now, I’m alive; I’m at the start of a new beginning, and for that, I’m grateful. Something tickles my neck, and I raise my head towards the ceiling. There, the sand seeps and seeps as it’s done for millennia, as it will do for the eternity of Time, a pinch of which I might’ve earned at last.