The chronilogical escape artist.

A Story by dukovan

A story, interchanging.

I'm draped over the side of my bed at 2:30 in the morning.
I'm asking the radio telepathically to remind me what I'm doing here in in room 247 on the East block of Mills Street.
There's a reply it seems to me, a black and white code that's growing like fuzzy mold through the lining of my ear and coating my ear drums. There's a softness in the beats, like a hummingbird. I think of sugar expanding through a cotton candy machine and how I blew seeding dandelions as wishes across the summer air. By now I've forgotten most of those wishes. Now, I would wish for some cotton candy or dandelions, or both. I'd wish for more wishes to blow. I assure you, I'd blow them all.
When The clock hit 4:30, a medium volumed pulse of obnoxious frequency seemed like a grand finale and final awakening of a two or so hour seizure of mine.
"The pills pushed me into this."
"Is it so wrong to see things this way?"
"The wrong way?"
"Well...this way."
"Well, which is it:"
In one way or another, I feel as though I've been grandfathered into something. How could I not, if only on a genetic level? I pondered the ability to measure time, thinking it preposterous to do so, I marveled at its ease. One only needs the principle of measured time and consistences and the mechanics of gears.
"Which way is it?"
"I believe it's inside of me, way of my arteries"
"Your belief has nothing to do with this, or anything for that matter."
"Ah, but does our belief have anything to do with anything of this matter? Or any matter?"
"Ah, now you're asking better questions."
It's 5:15 and I should be out of the shower already. But here I am, waiting for my own filth to drown me instead.
I thought about how my hands are polluted with the past and how I don't even really believe in a past, or future for that matter, or this, rather a continuum of "now". Here I am, the same, speaking to myself about what was and eerily, still is.
"Everything I don't think about makes sense."
"So how do you feel about nothingness?"
"I feel like it means everything."
It was early 90's in a dimmed home where my dad showed me his past. There were half finished train tracks in his parents basement. There were wood carved millard ducks and the smell of hobbies. The ducks were blind and still, passively accepting the wake. Lines were not drawn at their beaks so I knew they would not open, so they could not speak. I accepted this truth, all wide-eyed. The truth rang in 3 chimes. I asked my dad what it meant.
"It means everything when you have an appointment at 3 o'clock."
"But I don't have an appointment."
"Someday you might have an appointment at 3 o'clock?"
"Very likely, you might. Let's say you did have an appointment at 3 o'clock today, what would that have meant to you then?"
"Nothing."
My father paused and discerned slightly with this answer I spoke so clearly.
"Nothing? Why not? Why wouldn't this mean anything to you?"
I paused and concerned myself with what I meant about "nothing" for an answer and why.
"Because, it just chimed, Dad. It chimed three times, anything can do something three times. A dog can bark three times, a phone can ring three times, it can lighting three times. I'm not going to go running for appointments everytime something happens three times."
My dad chuckled to himself over this and soon corrected,
"No, its just that it is a clock and chimes three times when the little hand is on the three and the big hand is on the twelve."
I stared blankly into the big wooden box encasing gold chimes. The face with numbers printed across tucked behind glass, stared as blank back. I faced this foe with stone-faced endurance. I hoped to outsmart it, or just toss stones at it for threatening my days ahead with meaningless three o'clock appointments. The moment my eyes adjusted focus and i saw myself in the glass, I had an idea and was already smirking in private conversation.
"So what does it mean to you now?"
"As opposed to then?"
"Is there a difference?"
"Will it make more sense If I don't think about it?"
"Don't think about it."
"Is there a way not to?"
"There will always be a way, its just a matter of time."
"Backwards through our arteries."
Smirking still, my father broke my drifting with the third time saying,
"David?"
"What?"
"So what does it mean to you now?"
"Nothing"
"Still nothing? Well, why not?"
"Because I can just move the hands backwards or forwards to keep it from being three o'clock, whenever I want."

...........So I managed to get out of the upside down position just to feel more disoriented upright. I am losing the line that I've always called the "difference".
I shouldn't think so much...I'm getting ahead of myself.