An Infinitesimal Bit of Monica

The Awakening

Me
I awoke on a beautiful May morning. The sun shone brilliantly through the trees. The wind tickled my jet-black, back-length hair. It was a little before 7 am, and I was waiting to catch the city bus to work.

As I stepped outside, a reverberation in the cosmos. You felt it. I felt it. The whole neighborhood froze in its tracks like time itself had slowed down, and then settled to a gentle, unsettling stop.

It was quiet.

Then the air around us exploded with a distorted rendition of "a little bit of Monica in my life" over and over again. Like someone was blaring it through the speakers of their home.

I was too tired, too focused on getting through the day to acknowledge the oddness. People stopped acting weird and the moment faded as soon as it had begun. Time returned to normal, and the song faded into the day.

I boarded the city bus. Went to work, came home. The day was normal. You know by now: clock in, pack tea, rearrange boxes. Lunch. Pack more tea, rearrange more boxes, clock out. Wait for the city bus, come home.

Packing tea felt like my whole life sometimes.

But that was fine, for now. It was good money for us. With both of our jobs, and our relative frugality, we didn't want for much.

You welcomed me when I came home, with a hug and a kiss.

I went to the kitchen, took two steps before collapsing on the ground, unconscious.

I hadn't eaten all day. My type 1 diabetes is something I'll never get used to.

——————/————————

When I came to, it had only been a few minutes. There was a piece of cracker pressed to the underside of my tongue.

I chewed, swallowed. I got up off the kitchen floor, barely able to stand. I lurch towards the fridge, grabbing on to the handles. I pick an apple out of the fridge and a candy bar off the counter. You always kept them there for me.

I ate both and slowly started to recover. Everything went back to normal, for a while.

"Why didn't you pack lunch?" You scolded me.

"I was running late." I lied. I hoped that the events that transpired this morning were something only I had experienced.

"You were on time. Don't tell me you experienced the slowdown too?" You said, exasperated.

All I could do is dip my head in shame. Of course he had. Everyone in the neighborhood had. There was no use in lying.

I had cut off my phone for the majority of the day. I was bombarded by news article after news article about the strange happenings that had transpired earlier in the day.

When I looked at my phone again, it was all notifications about the event. It had only happened 12 hours ago. Strange conspiracy theories about it had exploded all over the Internet, flooding every part of all the social medias I had. Articles had been written about how people protested the "obvious mind control attempts" by the government and had stormed offices of local officials. And the articles and notifications just kept going.

I cut off my phone again and set it at my side.

I sighed and, by your urging, turned on the TV. The evening news held much the same. And then it clicked: it wasn't just the neighborhood. It seemed like the whole world had witnessed the event, all at once.

I sobbed while making next day's meals. You came to comfort me, a shrieking mess. The world was coming to an end, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was barely living as is, spending most of my days at work, dead to the world except through my outstanding work. I just preferred turning off the constant stream of mental chatter, punctuated by intense emotion, ear-splitting screams and erotic moaning.

I was shift lead for a reason. Those $22/hr came at a steep cost. And I was just fine without the deranged screaming of my internal monologue.

I crawled into bed after replenishing my sugar stores. I wondered how and why my internal monologue was punctuated by such disturbing sounds.

I curled up in a ball, alone in the room. You came in to check on me, and saw my sorry state. You joined me in the bed. We'd finally built something good for ourselves after so, so long. And now the world was ending. What could we even do?

You

It had been happening daily for six days now.

She was a mess. Her black hair was strewn across the bed, her pale skin clammy to the touch. I could only even imagine how she felt. After so many years struggling just to get her caretakers to meet her basic needs, she finally had the life she wanted.

And now that was coming to an abrupt and terrifying end.

Most shops had closed their doors by now, the daily time slips lasting longer and longer. It felt like me and her were frozen for hours this morning. Only she was able to speak. My body turned turgid as the wave hit us before we'd even gotten out of bed for the day.
The only thing I could think about was, "Is she okay? Will I ever be able to speak again?"

As she spoke to me, begging me to get up, asking me if I was okay, she shook off the spell and started attempting to move stuff around the kitchen. She shrieked and cried, and small pools of blood flowed from under her eyelids, draining and collecting underneath her chin. Her hair stuck to her skin, and I was motionless, powerless to do anything about it.

She was probably the only person in the world doing anything during that time. Maybe. I couldn't even be sure. There were probably others immune to the paralysis, able to briefly escape the time prison we had all been stuck in.

As soon as it had started, the grating sound of the distorted music had dissipated and we were free once more.

I finally, tentatively got up from the bed. She ran over to me, then stopped.
Both of us stood in silence. She reached out and touched my skin, worried.

"Are you okay?" She asked.
She pulls me closer to her.

"I'm scared, love. I think that one day these timestops won't end and I'll be stuck here, alone, until I cease to exist."

She guides me to sit down on the bed.

"Why are you concerned about me?" I ask. "Your eyes bled, you screamed and broke things in a frenzied state..." I described my experience to her.

She looks at me, confused. The love in her eyes hurts right now. "Was that a hallucination? Look. The kitchen is fine." As soon as she says this I notice the kitchen is unchanged, save for an empty insulin pen on the counter. I hadn't moved. She'd gone and showered, taken care of her needs, and come back to witness me come out of my stupor.

What else could she have done?

She finally said what we both already knew.

"I think I'm immune to the effects of this... state. But I refuse to leave you alone. We need to find others like me. Maybe we'll have a chance."
She looked uncertain about that last statement, like she doesn't want to accept that this was probably pointless.

Like no matter what we did, we were going to die, or kill, or be killed.