3.10pm

(Originally published by With Confetti Magazine, 2021)

I awaken with a jolt and a begrudged breath.

Sunlight bleeds in through the gap in the curtain, tearing into my eyes. Dust mites dance in a whirlpool of light, no doubt making their way to a home on my clean blanket. 

Mustn’t be that clean.

I need to get a better curtain. 

I needed to get a better curtain two years ago. 

I try not to shudder at the thought of the mites settling in my lungs when I stretch and breathe in deep. I kick the blanket off my empty bed. My alarm hasn’t gone off yet. Reaching across my locker, I try to ignore the sharp pain in my shoulders as they practise tensing for the day ahead. 

The phone flashes in my face and I squint. 6:50am. 

Curling into my pillow, I gently toss the phone aside. Though I squeeze my eyes shut, I can’t ignore the shifting weight that has now announced itself at the bottom of my bed. 

“Morning” the voice booms. 

“Mmm.”

“You should get up.”

“You gave me ten minutes.” 

“Nine. Because you didn’t wash your makeup off last night. Now you need to do a proper job on your face.”

“I know.”

“So. Up.”

Wanting to cry as I force my back upright, I take a look at him in front of me. Dressed in his usual array of grey, he is comfortable being idle as he waits for me to get up. He has, admittedly, lovely thick black hair. But this does nothing to distract from the frankly horrifying lack of facial features. He has no nose, mouth, eyes or even ears. A blank oval stares at me. 

His name is Time. We’ve been together a while. 

His arms are bald and pale and are reaching out to me. Annoyed, I shove them out of my way, climb out of bed and make my way to the bathroom. He follows me. 

The tiles underneath me are icy. Though it’s only early autumn, the apartment gets very cold. My feet are clammy after a restless night. Though I have nobody to confirm this for me, I suspect I talk in my sleep. My throat always feels tight when I wake. 

In the bathroom, I bring my face as close to the mirror as I dare. I rub and pick the sleep out of my eyes and mildly distress over the black that creeps out underneath them from behind the crusty makeup from yesterday. 

“How was sleep?”

“You know well, I didn’t.” 

“It’s only fair,” he reminds me. 

“I know.”

Time is in a pact with my Body. The less I care for Time, the harder he is on my Body. He watches everything I do, keeping track of how I spend every moment I wake, and makes sure he reflects this back on me. If Time feels I don’t take care good care of him, if I spend him in too many places in the one day, if I don’t make time for just the two of us, he takes it out on my Body. He denies it sleep, food, he even shoves my shoulders up to my ears to hurt my back. I do my best to watch out for Time, but sometimes I can’t. And he isn’t a merciful man. I splash water in my face, scrape at my skin with whatever soap is lying on the counter and dry it with the towel that is coarse enough to exfoliate my cheeks. I stare at my face in the mirror. My cheeks are rosy. I sometimes think a fringe would suit me, but I’ve given up on that dream some while ago. Time disagreed with the idea. He said he wouldn’t be able to straighten it every morning, and if the fringe wasn’t straight, then I shouldn’t have any fringe at all. I eventually agreed. 

I could hear him behind me, as he clicked his tongue at me. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. I turned away from the mirror, brushing past him and made a start on breakfast. 

If you asked how Time and I first met, I couldn’t tell you the exact date. Time probably could.  However, I do remember what the day was like. We were young, both in school. I was around six years old when he showed up in the classroom. The teacher introduced him as Time, and she said it was important we all got to know him. I smiled at him, and he nodded to me. He sat behind everyone else, at the back of the class. We weren’t in each other’s company an awful lot. Though, I remember that he would tick loudly at 3:00pm every day. I would turn around to look at him behind me, he’d smile, and I couldn’t help but feel so excited for those ten minutes before the bell rang and we went home at 3:10pm. 

We got to know each other as we got older, but we only became very close when I started secondary school. He began telling me where and when I went to class, when I should do my homework, when I should go out with our friends. He seemed really in control. I liked having him around. I liked being able to do things with him. I didn’t want to lose him. 

I looked inside my fridge. Full enough as to not worry my parents if they dropped in for a surprise visit. Empty enough to get me by for two days on experimental cooking. 

“Are you looking after yourself?” my mam says each week. 

“Yes,” I say. 

“It was nice seeing you the other week.”

“It was,” I say, waiting for her to speak her mind.

A pause. 

“You’ve lost a bit of weight, hun.”

I move the phone away mid-sigh. 

“Have I? I don’t think so.”

“Maybe,” she tuts. “You should come home this weekend. I’ll make a roast. You can see the dogs. They miss you.”

“I miss them too,” I say. “I have a lot on this weekend, so I don’t know if I can.”

“Alright.”

“But I’ll let you know if anything changes?”

There was a ripe avocado hiding in the back, sure to go rotten in the next day or two. I had some bread in the freezer it would do well with. Smashed avocado on toast. Maybe some almond seeds on it too. 

Time ticked at me. 

I reached for the avocado and squeezed it. It was getting very soft. 

“You need to get going,” he reminded me. 

“I know.” I sighed, put the avocado in the bin and grabbed the drop of milk in the fridge door. After half-heartedly preparing a bland, brown mush of a cereal, I sat down at the tiny table. Time sat directly across from me and stared at me as I ate. 

“What are we doing today?” he demanded. 

“I already ran this by you last night before bed.”

“Things have changed. What are we doing today?”

“Get the bus in twenty minutes. Commute for an hour and a half. Read on the bus if it isn’t too busy and I get a seat. Go to work, 9:00am to 5:00pm. During lunch I need to get the bus into town and pick up Kelly’s birthday present. Pick up something to eat. When I finish work, I’m running straight over to the community centre, they needed volunteers for the show tonight at 6:00pm. I need to go to the gym afterwards at 8:00pm, I haven’t been in two weeks. On the way home I’ll pick up some vegetables at 10:30pm for a stir fry tonight. Make dinner. Need to put on a wash, I’ve no clean clothes left. Shower. Bed by midnight.”

“I see.” Time crossed his legs, his knee shaking. 

“Yep.”

“I’m not happy with that.”

“I know.”

“This is what is going to happen,” he leaned in close to me, as I shoved cereal in my mouth. “You’ll go to work. I don’t feel like going into town and then panicking trying to get back to work before the end of lunch. So you’ll go to the supermarket down the road and get Kelly some crappy bathroom set on sale.”

“She’d hate that.” I argued. 

“I don’t care. And forget about food, you’ll be lucky if you can sneak some biscuits in the office canteen. Since you are so insistent on volunteering at this amateur play tonight, that’s fine. But you will be so busy talking with the local busybodies, they’ll be asking where you’ve been all year, you won’t be going to the gym afterwards. Instead, you’ll get a takeaway from that greasy chipper down the road. You can have a cold shower, since you can’t even wait for the water to heat up. Can’t do a clothes wash, you’ll just has to spray some perfume on your dirty clothes. Then bed. Though, knowing you, you’ll keep yourself up stressing about how awful your day was.”

“I see.”

“Is this a problem?”

“It’s not ideal.” 

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing.”

“Good. Stop eating, you need to run for the bus. Throw some clothes on and get moving.”

I throw the half-eaten cereal into the bin, and leave the bowl in the sink, unwashed. I jog into my room, throw on what I was wearing yesterday, grab my coat, keys, phone and sprint out the door to the bus stop. As I scan my card by the machine, I realise my shirt is backwards. I scuttle through the crowd of suits, bags and buggies to the back of the standing section, Time creeps behind me. I contemplate whether I can fix my shirt without anyone noticing. I decide against it, I’ll worry about it later when I get off the bus. 

I settle my eyes on the glass that separates the standing and seated sections. In its reflection, I spot a girl sitting in the back row. She is around the same age as I am. Her head is buried in a book with a spine broken enough to reveal years of re-reading. She smiles sweetly to herself. She doesn’t notice that she laughs, quietly, but out loud at the words in front of her. She’s a million miles away and she doesn’t worry about what slips by her.

She glances up, catches my eye, and I look away. 

I stare at my phone. There is a message from yesterday morning from Kelly.

Hiya! Just wondering if you’d be up for a drink or cinema trip tomorrow? I haven’t seen you in ages and I want to get some one-on-one time with you before the party!

I look up from my phone. Time scowls at me. 

Hey! Sorry, I can’t tonight. Chat soon!