- [Narrator] The first time I stepped back

into my office after the ...

accident, I couldn't help but to just take it all in.

The dusty hardwood floor, the unread therapy books,

the barely-used degrees that hung on the walls

and that big, plush couch.

The perfect office for a psychiatrist,

even one who overdoses.

I told my patients I was at the spa,

but the reality was the cleaning lady found me

choking on my own vomit with a heart rate

just above a dead junkie's.

I shouldn't have survived.

But now, here I was, staring into my dusty office.

My planner was right where I'd left it.

The appointments I had missed because of the ...

accident.

My last client that day was supposed to be Chet Phillips.

I remember the first time Chet told me

about his suicide attempt.

He cried and he screamed about how sorry he was

that he had done it, how he realized

what a precious gift life was.

I listened, as all good psychs are supposed to,

watching the hourglass I kept on my desk

during all my sessions, a silent reminder

that time is something you can never get back.

So, why waste time listening to other people's problems?

I flipped the hourglass to start the sand flowing

just out of habit.

"Sorry, our time's up," I would say

the second the last grain of black sand

would pass through the hourglass.

My patients, the poor dopes, their faces would fall

in the middle of some crybaby speech.

But that's business.

You want someone to listen to you for free?

Then get a dog.

As the sessions with Chet went on, a change came over him.

He was sleep-deprived.

He stopped feeling sorry about the suicide attempt

and began to get this crazy idea

that he wished he had killed himself,

because the alternative was worse.

One day, Chet found a marking on his hand.

It was a slight circular curve.

He hadn't known how he got it,

but with each passing day, the curve would round out

til it was almost a complete circle.

Apparently, he thought a monster he called Soot

was, like death incarnate, hunting Chet

to finish what it started.

"Soot.

"What a peculiar name," I thought.

A monster that always came back to finish the job

if you denied him your death.

"Sorry, our time is up, Chet,"

I said at the end of our last session.

I know Chet was mad.

He expected me to listen to his outlandish tales of Soot,

who would stop at nothing until he claimed Chet's life,

but, truthfully, I couldn't care less

about the patients I liked, let alone Chet.

Far as I can remember, I was pretty high

when the emergency calls from Chet came in.

I was in my office.

I had taken too many emotional stabilizers

and drank too much white wine,

so I had to cancel all my appointments that afternoon.

Chet didn't take it too well.

I listened back to his messages from that day,

the day he actually went through with it.

I almost felt bad as I listened

to the messages of a dead man.

He was terrified that Soot was after him.

My head was full of cotton.

I must have taken a few more pills than I'd intended to

to celebrate my return tonight.

"Whoa, easy tiger," I reminded myself.

"You've got to work back up

"to the amount you were taking before."

I noticed the sand in my hourglass.

It hadn't moved since I'd flipped it.

In fact, it didn't even look like sand anymore.

With my vision swimming, I peered down

at the ornamental glass.

It wasn't black sand.

It was wet, black, dense, and almost shimmering.

Then, whatever was in the hourglass moved.

It shifted for just a moment,

as if it were reacting to me.

I had a knee-jerk reaction, maybe because of the pills,

but I swung at the hourglass, startled.

(glass cracking)

I knocked it off the table and onto the carpet.

It cracked the glass,

not enough to shatter the hourglass,

but enough so that the black contents inside could leak out.

Only, it wasn't leaking.

Whatever was in the hourglass was moving, trying to get out.

It began to coagulate on the floor, black and vicious.

To my left, something was oozing under the door.

It was like black smoke, only heavier,

like airborne sludge or dense, black fog.

Even though my head was swimming from the drugs,

I knew that's not what it was.

Some terrified, primal part of my brain stem

knew what I was looking at: Soot.

The floating black smoke coalesced

with what had drained from the fallen hourglass.

Stunned and terrified, my brain struggled

to comprehend what I was witnessing.

I stumbled back and fell onto my couch.

I suppose the irony shouldn't have been lost on me,

but it was.

I felt crazy, in the same place

people told me they felt crazy.

"And no one will believe what I'm seeing,"

I thought to myself, just like I don't believe

what anyone tells me when they sit here.

In seconds, a figure began to form

out of the smoke and ooze: a spine.

Broken bones covered with the black substance

like flesh covers muscle.

It only took a moment, and then it stood.

But not "it", because I knew what to call it,

just what Chet had called it.

The words Chet used clawed their way

into the forefront of my mind.

"They call him Soot," Chet told me.

"And if you escape death, he comes to finish the job."

The creature stood well over six feet,

holes where his eyes should be,

his gums revealing rotten teeth over the pitch of black skin

and bones jutting half-hazard from his skull and body.

Even though he had no eyes, I knew he could see me.

He cocked his head like some animal,

listening and sensing.

"Please!" I begged through quaking lips.

"I didn't mean to!

"It was an accident!"

I wanted to stand up and run, but my knees were too week

and the creature blocked the door.

Soot held the hourglass in his hand.

"You can have it!

"Just take it!"

(squelching)

He swung the black sand hourglass so hard,

it struck the side of my face with the force of a car crash.

Immediately, I felt the teeth loosen in my mouth.

And the crack I heard was my jaw shattering.

I stumbled backwards into my bookshelf.

I heard a low and horrifying sound

as Soot stood and watched me.

He swung the hourglass again, rupturing my eardrum,

which thankfully kept me from hearing my own bones crack,

but it wasn't enough to stop the flow of blood pouring out.

I looked up and tried to scream

as Soot brought the hourglass down again and again,

pulverizing my face into a bloody pulp,

shattering every bone in my face,

crushing my eyeballs with the base of the hourglass,

my hourglass.

That tiny black sand piece of metal and glass

that had ruined so many lives.

Sorry.

My time was up.