Story, Unknown

II.

The clock ticks loudly against the faint chatter, painfully echoing through the room. You sit forwards, your back arched uncomfortably against the short wooden chair. The bright classroom light beating down against your eyes, you scribble the words shakily onto the paper, contorting the lines.

The time always seems to slow, the lecture stuck in an endless loop.

You watch the teacher pace up and fro, the minutes flying past you in a blur.

Your bed feels so close now, as the hands faintly approach 7 p.m., the familiar feeling of the soft material overtakes you, already stuffing you silently under the covers as you disappear within them. You know it's actually hours before you can lie down. But still, you're caught in the constant cycle that sends you back to 15 minutes ago, when you were sat at a different lecture, at the other end of the school, hearing completely different strings of information and set to a completely different mindset.

Then you start in the opposite direction. The 25 minutes keeping you from going away. The future that, once it appears, will ease your mind back into the normal; the bland. Undefined and unfocused. Restless.

But this is the last period. First periods are always worse. Sitting there, a whole day ahead, when only 10 minutes ago, you were just putting on your jumper. In your dorm. Shielded. Safe. 10 minutes away.

Time's such a thin barrier to break.

Two boys exchange a crumpled note between desks at the front, tucking it in their sleeves as they chuckle quietly, flipping absently through their books when the teacher turns. You watch them from afar, the scene fading in a blur of movement.

And you think.

It's ironic, really. To be sitting in a class and thinking, as you're meant to, but about the wrong thing. It's always the wrong thing.

The scene around you fades, slowing. You're not exactly there, actually. If you ever really were, to begin with.

It's always the most ordinary that sets you off. The simplest, most mundane scenes and happenings. For some reason, there's always something unbelievable in them, buried underneath the familiarity. Or perhaps, it simply seems too familiar to be real. In both scenarios, you're gone. And it doesn't matter.

You're alone. Invisible. Unreal. Maybe always, maybe just then; but definitely, and inevitably. And you can't go back. If you even want to.

Thrown off, your life spreads out before you, shoving you towards the unknown; the tomorrows so far off, yet too near, still. Right then and there, in the middle of a lesson, slouched against your desk, you start to wonder. It's funny; you always know where you are, but don't seem to understand that you are there. Instead, you just stare blankly at it like a puppet.

And you wonder. Aimlessly. Repeatedly. Of where you are and where you're going. Not today, not tomorrow. But instead, the unreachable ''once'', that may not even come.

Soon, however, you reach a brick wall, hidden behind the realization that, by this time the next day, you'd only be back here. And nothing will have changed. Copy after copy of the same thing, spun into infinite cycles, piled up on one another, into forever. The years build up. You are the same.

Until one day. The evermore undefined day when you wouldn't come back. And after that, you never would. No-one would. And when that came, how much would remain? And would you? Or will you be erased; no more familiar than those who never even existed here, in the first place?

If you're lucky, you'll remember to take a step back. Sooner or later, we all do. You'll look down on your hands, tracing them carefully across the carvings on your desk. And you'll stop yourself from thinking about it; pretend some of them aren't over 30 years old. Pretend you don't know.

I'm not a very lucky person. Nor a very happy one, at that. Quite the opposite. So I postpone the wakeup, sinking instead deeper into the void. Higher on my personal Euthanasia Rollercoaster; aware of the devastation and looking forward to it.

I sit back, ignoring the fact that my body isn't mine anymore. Forgetting the fact that it's moving, nonetheless. And I don't know what it's doing. Pushing back the notion that, contrary to popular belief, I do exist. Even now.

A few memories dance lazily before my eyes. Unrecognized. Unfamiliar. Manufactured.

In the distance, I attempt to recall where I was at this exact time last year. Probably in a different classroom, I begin. Art class? Could it be? It would hardly matter. What matters is, was I spiralling then, like I am now? If I could reach back through time, what would I say?

Has it truly been a year?

No, it hasn't. It couldn't have been. And there could never be another.

But there would be. For most in the room, there would be. And perhaps, in 10 years, you'll be far away. Or maybe, you'll all be back; right here. Maybe some things would never truly leave you.

Maybe then, it will make sense.

Dizzy, you look frantically around, catching sight of the clock tolling at 6.45. The chatter rises against your eardrums. Faint whispers emerge from your side. A pencil rolls on the floor behind you, unnoticed by its owner, but heard clearly in your psyche. The note flashes briefly before you, before dropping silently to the floor, never to be thought of again. No matter how long it stayed.

The commotion settles in.

You're soundlessly returned, exactly 0 seconds from now, placed out of your own frame. The invisible. Distant. Untouchable.

You don't move. Perhaps your brain is just too caught up at this point.

The world moves on, misplacing you along the way.

You watch; an observer in this life. Your life?

Ticking faster against your skull, the clock drowns you further out.

If years fly by like seconds, what does that say about you?