time
cw: death
we have all the time in the world, or so they tell me.
i am born with a ticking in my head, its meaning unfathomable to my younger self.
mostly, i tune it out.
but when i'm ten years old, the ticking stops for a day, the same day Father Marius is killed. it leaves my thoughts in empty silence like the space he used to occupy in my classroom. the ticking returns but he does not.
the ticking stops again when i am twenty-two and my father shakes the stiffened shell of my tortoise. we bury her in the empty land across the street. the ticking fades for a few days that turn into weeks and months. i almost think it a false memory, when it resumes one warm spring day: flowers bloomed from her grave.
the ticking returns and i understand now that this ticking is not normal, this ticking is just for me. i try harder to tune it out.
the years blur together – am i twenty-five or twenty-six? – when my friend. dies. oh god. she dies. from thousands of miles away, i write her a poem while a plague soaks up her lungs until she draws her last.
she died and i'll never see her again.
the ticking doesn't pause for even a second.
instead, it ticks at double speed and top volume. it's not in my head anymore, but an urgency coursing through my veins. my bones throb and ache, and the marrow within them keeps watch.
my rib cage tightens around my heart. i try to remember how to breathe- when was the last time that i took a breath?
what is my body waiting for? what comes at the end of the countdown? will it be my turn next to drop dead? am i already dead?
or am i keeping vigil for others? guarding their stories and standing strong until every last one is gone and i alone remain?
and why me? how much longer must i endure this?
i take a breath and search for the ticking.
i track it to its source in the desert where i was forged, an immense ticking clock, half-buried but still stretching up miles into the sky and miles away from me.
the sands slip away under my every step, like grains in an hourglass and i must climb and swim and scramble to not be drowned. the clock never seems to get closer.
i think it must be a mirage, an unreachable figment of my imagination. and so from afar, i yell:
“What is the point of all of this?!”
my voices carries across the dunes, an anguished cry that is met only by silence.
silence.
the ticking has stopped and the clock face is perfectly frozen at eleven o'clock, though the midday sun feels more like noon. sweat drips from my brow and i collapse to my feet.
i don't have any answers. i don't know how much time i have left, and i almost yearn for the ticking to begin again.
it occurs to me: with no way back nor a destination ahead, i may have finally run out of time, my soul stranded in some strange land of sand and mirages as far as the eye can see.
or perhaps, they were right and at the cost of everything, i am left alone with all the time in the world.
for the start or end of the story: “We have all the time in the world.”