Everything, in Time

Ariana sat at her computer, squinting at the screen through a pair of glasses. Hot rod red frames were paired with iridescent black lenses. It was the only indicator of their true value. Her fingers caught on the frames as she ran a hand through her hair, a childhood habit survived to adulthood.

Set into the ceiling, the fluorescent lights hummed. They had been her bosses' attempt to hasten the work day; something to allow 9-5 to pass in the span of four hours, rather than eight. The other employees had certainly appreciated it, citing variations of too-much overtime and too-little leisure.

Ariana understood the sentiment, but never quite found herself agreeing with it. Time already felt finite; why limit it further?

She pushed the glasses further up her nose from where they’d begun to slip, and relished in the way the world seemed to pause. Each second pulled to nearly twice its length, the extra time an escape from the world's crushing pressure. Almost a reprieve, she thought. Almost enough that she could breathe.

Or maybe not.

Five o’clock struck with a vengeance, sharp and heavy enough that it was a physical blow. Something that left her with her knees pulled to her chest, and a nervous twitch in her hands. Hours of her life had swirled down the drain without her realizing it. 

Her train of thought–a low, destructive spiral–was pulled to a stop by her boss lumbering into the office.

“Ariana, you know I don’t pay overtime,” Roger chuckled, then devolved into a fit of low, rasping coughs. Fifty years of smoking had ruined his body from the inside out.

Ariana was never one to smoke, but sometimes, in the stillness of the night, she could admit that it crossed her mind. Would she feel time stagnate between each drag, or would it leave her with dirty fingers and a craving for more?

“Yeah, yeah.” She stood, stretched, collected her things. A series of cracks ran through her back and she grunted. “I’m going.” The ice in her drink had fully melted, sweating through its plastic cup. Hadn’t she just bought it?

Roger began towards the door. “Any weekend plans?”

“Don’t get me started,” She scrubbed a hand down her face, falling into step beside him. “I have to file my taxes.”

He winced. “At least there’s Turbotax?”

“And thank God for them,” Ariana stepped outside first. “Have a good one, Roger.”

The sun hung high in the sky, its brightness bleaching the world into quick blurs of color. People with their noses upturned, faces cast in light rushed by. A man across the street jogged through a crowd, nothing but a shimmering blur of blue-brown-black. 

Ariana found herself shoulder-to-shoulder with a dozen others, the rapid clicks of their speech spinning through the air. It was dizzying, to keep up in a world so bright. So quick. She could feel her wrist watch ticking, minutes scrolling by like pages in a flip book. The effect was lessened by her glasses, but even they couldn’t uproot nature's most monumental forces.

Time slid out of focus. Half an hour compressed into a singular minute, the sun's light exchanged for the grocery store's LEDs. Ariana had no memory of walking the isles, yet she found herself at the checkout counter, watching her basket slide down the conveyor belt.

More time lost. A minute? An hour? If she closed her eyes, let the darkness wash over her, would it slow to the point of stopping? Could she finally breathe?

The cashier’s speech anchored her. Magenta hair curled around the girl’s jaw, bobbing up and down as she spoke at a million miles an hour. “Thank God it’s Friday. I am so ready to sleep in tomorrow,” Punching numbers into the register, one of her hands sparkled with the silver of a well-made prosthetic. “This week has dragged on like nobody's business. I can’t wait for it to be over. Time could not pass any slower, you know?”

No, Ariana didn’t know. But the sentiment was common enough, and the role was an easy one to slip into. She forced herself to laugh while her lips cracked into the shape of a smile. “Oh man, tell me about it!”

She took the bus home, its wide windows cutting time into neat moments. Already, it was six-something. Ariana departed the bus, and trekked home. Her feet caught over sloped patches of concrete, cracked in more places than not. She half-tripped up the steps of her brownstone, a building on the verge of turning from antique to deathtrap. It was charming, she thought, shouldering through the front door.

A head of blond hair shot up. “You’re home!” Her fiance rolled off the couch, a leathery thing worn so thin you could feel the springs beneath it. Again, charming. Both of them. “How was your day at work? I missed you. Feels like we’ve been away for forever.”

She dumped the grocery bags onto the kitchen island and blew out a long breath. James used that word a lot: forever. She suspected it held differing meanings for the two of them. “Tedious. Marcy is still trying to pass her report through finance. It’s a lost cause, they’ll never approve it, but try to tell her that. And do you know how long I spent working on…” Ariana looked up, caught Jame’s fond gaze tracing over her. She blushed. “How was your day?”

James coughed out a laugh. “Friday’s are pretty light,” He stole a grape from its container, popping it into his mouth. Then, overly casual, “I made dinner.”

“Oh?”

“Carbonara.”

Ariana hated cooking. It was a drain of time, puttering about under white kitchen lights, when the only thing left at the end of the meal was a mess of dishes. Nothing that couldn’t be erased with a minute's worth of effort. She pulled her hair from its tight bun, crimped waves falling to her shoulders. “You’re the best.”

A goofy grin pulled across his face. “I know,” He teased.

James leaned in for a kiss and she deepened it, noticing for the first time how the top buttons of his shirt were popped open, his belt draped over the back of a chair. The moment broke when her glasses knocked against his nose and they skittered apart.

“You really do love these, huh?” He pulled the glasses from her face, slipping them onto his. She watched his pupils dilate through the lenses, the bewilderment spreading through his features. “Man, I forget how strong they are.”

“They’re amazing,” She confirmed, stealing them back, and setting them into the pocket of her blazer. The brownstone wasn’t nearly as bright as she had expected, lights muted with candles flickering on the room's perimeter. “What did I do to deserve you?”

James ducked his head, strands of blond hair falling into his eyes. “I know you like to take things slow. I thought this would help.”

“It does,” She surged forward onto her tiptoes and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.”

They ate, the room filled with the sounds of forks scraping against ceramic and the occasional anecdote. The dishes got cleaned, dried, put away. It was as though there had been no meal at all. Nothing to prove the night's existence besides memory and the negative space it left behind. Yet even memory, Ariana knew, could falter under the stress of time.

Panic blossomed beneath her ribs, a cold sweat dripping down her neck. It followed her into the bedroom, the bathroom, the late hours of the night. For once, darkness–the promise of a slower world–didn’t help. More time wasn’t beneficial if it still wasn’t enough.

Her ribs crushed together. The past and future pressed so hard against her that there was no room for the present at all. Listening to a clock countdown the hours of her life only made it worse. The panic writhed, and Ariana lurched upright.

Her youth had been spent waiting, time slipping between her fingers in its endless state. Inflated in the heat of summer, every waking hour spent under the sun, time hadn’t felt real. She’d been a bright child, swallowed in light and overexposed like a bad photograph. A careful distance maintained between her and the world, even as she rushed through it at light speed. 

At thirty, that distance cracked open, fear and grief and panic spilling from her chest. Three decades of her life were gone. It was as though time had warped around her, streaming forwards while she stood at an impasse with her feet locked to the ground. Her peers were suddenly so far ahead, locking down jobs and families, while she couldn’t seem to figure out who she was.

Thirty-something was a cruel age, in that regard. Too young for a midlife crisis, and too old to not be sure of one's goals.

Panic tasted like pennies on the back of her throat, or maybe that was the cut on her tongue from where she’d worried it back and forth. Ariana forced her body to a still, hoping that her mind would follow. It never did. Blood rushed through her ears, not quite loud enough to drown out the clocks ticking. A breath caught in her throat. 

She still couldn’t breathe.

A quick look at James showed him half tangled in the sheets. His back rose and fell with the smooth, shallow tread of sleep. He’d always been unbothered by lost time, basking in the sunlight as the world flowed around him.

It was something that she’d come to love–that cool, unshakable grace. When they’d first met, she was hungry and shaky and snappish. The void in her chest was made worse by withdrawal and homelessness. He’d simply cocked his head as he passed her by, asked if she had a place to stay the night; and, when she’d cursed him out–James had invited her to his place.

He’d proposed a few months ago, down on one knee with an oblong case clutched in his hands. A pair of glasses, rather than a ring. “They’re encrypted,” He explained, at her odd look. “Er, maybe that’s not the right word. There’s Oronium in the frames,” James’ fingers twitched around the case. His throat bobbed. “I know that you’re afraid of the world moving on without you. So,” Their eyes locked. His words came out in a rush. “Theyslowdowntime.”

“What?” 

She’d heard of Oronium, as had everyone else with an Internet connection. A recently discovered rare metal mined from some part of the Earth's core; as difficult to find as it was to purchase. Its capabilities were still being discovered.

“Holy shit,” And then, “Holy shit!” Wearing them felt like coming up for air after drowning, tangible proof of her existence and his love. The mark of their legacies. Something that proved he understood her, even when she couldn’t quite voice all the fears running through her head.

Ariana looked back at James, sleep mused blond hair shagging around his face, drool smeared across his cheek. Emotions tangled in her chest. All she had to do was ask; he’d spend the night taming her panic into something manageable, talking her down from the edge of insanity she seemed so intent on balancing upon. But she’d always preferred action over talk, the need to do something a physical weight in her chest. The need crystallized in the back of her brain, washing away the guilt.

Throwing off the sheets, Ariana ran. How much time passed was a mystery. It was distorted, stretching out into an infinity of malaise before snapping back to jagged heights that left her dizzy. She was grabbing her keys, her coat, her glasses. Getting on the bus, then off.

Even at night, the streets weren’t dark. Lamppoles hung over the sidewalk, stripping away any of the slowness that night offered. In between moments of clarity, the thought bothered her. 

The panic broke outside of a narrow facade. Ariana’s stomach dropped. No lights hung from the building, nothing to hasten the shock of winding up outside a place she’d vowed not to return to. Nothing to swallow the bitter fact that even after years away, her muscle memory hadn’t faded.

A bouncer standing at the door gave her a once over. “There’s an entrance fee.”

Ariana licked her lips, tasted the salt across her cupid's bow. When she blinked, her eyes were dry and scratchy. She’d been crying, then. A hint of gratitude struck her, for her dedication to her glasses. “Twenty bucks?”

The bouncer nodded.

She forked over the cash. The smothering tightness in her chest did not ease as she looked around. 

Nothing had changed in the years between visits. The lobby was the same, black mold layered along the walls. Long familiar music boomed through the floorboards, vibrations shaking her from heel to heart. She’d bet that it opened up into the same two rooms: one drowned in light, the other shadow. And even though the people weren’t the same, they weren’t different, either. Just kids, rushing to grow up–or doing their best to avoid it. In the end, both paths led down the same road.

“Faster or slower?” A voice drawled. There was something uncanny about him, the blond hair and almost clear blue eyes.

Ariana hesitated a moment too long, brain playing catch-up. She knew him, how did she know him? Déjà vu creeped up her spine in a cold wave. 

Annoyance cracked over his features, a flash of irritation inscribing itself into the place between his brows. “Look…” His voice cut off suddenly. “Ari?”

She flinched back even as the pieces fell into place. No one had called her that in years.

He’d been her buddy in the past. They’d get high on whatever was available, too broke and desperate to be picky. She spent dozens of hours tucked into the pocket of space against his side. They had fit terribly well together.

She was taller now, and somehow younger even though they were the same age. Frown lines marred his face, pulling down the edges of what had been a beautiful smile. Formerly clear, blue eyes–that had privately reminded her of the pearlescent sheen on a bubble–were fogged over. He looked…tired. Like a callous worn to roughness.

“Danny,” She said, but the nickname tasted wrong. Too young for someone who looked so old. “I thought– you’re still here.”

His cloudy gaze found and held hers. Gray streaked through his blond hair. He should have grown up to look like James, or at least something close. And yet the resemblance between them wavered like a double vision. “And you’ve returned.”

Her jaw clicked open and shut as she fished for words. “Your eyes…” Ariana couldn’t finish her sentence.

“Ah, yeah,” His lips thinned into a line. “Happened sometime after you left. You know what it’s like.”

And for once, she did. The way that drugs and too-strong lights screwed with your senses until you couldn’t even recognize your reflection.

She’d always assumed he’d stopped after her. That after ten plus years he’d realize that the highs weren’t worth the lows, and there wasn’t enough time left to be driving themselves into an early grave.

The breath was still caught in her lungs, the same one from that morning, the week before, the year before. She was never quite able to release it, to settle into the here and now. In childhood, she’d been breathless, run ragged from one venture to the next as she tried to find a way to fill the time. As an adult, she couldn’t seem to exhale, clinging permanently to the past.

Looking at Danny who had never grown into Daniel, the air rushed through her lips, and blew out her nose. She left in a rush, stumbling out into the street. It hadn’t changed, a perpetually lit urban twilight. And yet, she didn’t put her glasses back on; couldn’t find a reason to drag time into unnatural lengths.

For the first time in her life, Ariana let go.