Story-A-Day #91: Tickless

TICKLESS

I was taking the same familiar shortcut to work and was just passing the shed when I felt the familiar vibration in my pocket. With a sigh, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the phone, an excuse already forming on the tip of my tongue. My boss was a stickler for punctuality and I was already one minute late, and three minutes away from work.

It wasn’t work though, and I did a quick double take at the phone’s caller ID screen. The hospital? Why the hell would the hospital be calling me? I didn’t know anyone at the hospital, I wasn’t awaiting any test results, and I didn’t have any looming appointments.

Mildly confused, I answered the phone and listened to the person on the other end as she introduced herself and apologized for disturbing me. When she got to the part about it seeming as though there had been an accident, the entire world slowed to a standstill.

I could still hear the voice chattering away, but it had dulled to a somber tone that drifted at me through a tunnel of muffling silence. I happened to glance sideways, down a narrow gap between the shed and the building next to it. A drop of water had frozen in midair, a few inches away from the icicle that had spawned it.

I took another step forward, my legs cutting through the suddenly molasses-like air. The phone slowly lowered from my ear, an involuntary gesture of defeat. I could hear her still, slow motion “hellos?” echoing through the void.

I stumbled and fell into a nearby snow bank, landing in a prostrate position. I felt the phone tumble from my hand and knew that it was lost in the fluffy depths of snow.

A sharp pounding built up in my chest, then a shrill wail in my head. It took me a moment to realize that the pounding was actually my heart, and the wail, that god-awful has spawned from with the morass of my own misery.

I buried my head in the snow, and with it my anguish. The ticking of my watch announced the return of time. I imagined that I heard a soft plop as the icicle drop hit the ground.

It could not be true; none of it. Any moment now I would awaken from this horrid nightmare and laugh about it with my friends.

She could not be dead.