9:21; A Time When Loss Asserts its Lethal Power

She sits in front of her computer, staring blankly at the articles she should be done editing by now. It’s already fifteen minutes pass nine in the evening and most of her colleagues already headed home leaving few of them to conclude what needs to be done. Three staffs and her was left remaining in their division. 

Together with the cartoonist, the layout artist, and the proof reader, they had to stay and overtime to meet the production’s deadline because their news print had to be published the next day.

They had to publish their newspaper tomorrow and so together with their cartoonist, layout artist, and their proof reader, they have to stay late to meet their production’s deadline. 

However, she looks up from her computer when she heard the typing and clicking of a mouse came to a sudden hiatus. 

“Break,” the cartoonist who is known to being allergic to words simply stated with his resting face which always earn an impression from other people to be always angry due to his knitted forehead like he is always looking for some fistfights. 

Since it’s the cartoonist’s nature to be a person of few words, everyone in the team was forced to understand what lies behind his one or two words because it may sound few to normal people, it sounds like a complete sentence to an above normal person like him.

When the cartoonist stifles a yawn, his message was already clear to her, coffee and cigarette break.  

 “We’re going to buy coffee, do you want some?” the proof reader who seems to read the mind of the cartoonist but just bad at timing because she only talks when you had already connected the dots. 

Unlike the cartoonist, the proof reader is a very jolly person despite being dumped by every man she thought would never leave her. If you’re a hopeless romantic, well be like her, even despite the constant heartbreak, she always opens her heart to other people who can possibly give her the love she deserves.  

“Yes, please,” she nodded, though she’s aware that too much caffeine is bad to a person’s health, who cares? She needs cups or even drums of coffee especially since she feels like her brain always suffers from exhaustion due to too much work and lack of sleep. 

“Hey! Are you coming or not?” The proof reader, who had just rolled her eyes, asked the layout artist who is once again on the phone with his girlfriend. 

If the team has a hopeless romantic, there is also a madly in love one. Though, everyone is not sure which one is worse; the one who is single but is craving for a man’s attention or the one who is in a relationship but can’t even breathe due to a possessive girlfriend who wants all his attention? You choose.  

The layout artist glared at the proof reader as a warning. She needs to keep quiet otherwise his girlfriend would freak out like she always does every time there is a woman near him, even if it is a workmate. 

The proof reader rolled her eyes again and started walking out the door and the other two soon followed her. 

Once the workplace is hers, her gaze went back to her computer. Letters and words are being displayed on her monitor but all of a sudden, her vision turned white, erasing the sight before her as a very familiar pang strikes her heart like a bolt of thunder causing a tear to instantly drop from her empty and lifeless yet still beautiful blue orbs. 

Her throbbing heart once again unable to block the pain from rippling through her veins, like a virus overpowering her immune system causing her body to break down physically and also emotionally. 

She inhaled, trying to fill her lungs with air as the pain prevents oxygen from entering her body. 

She knows exactly what is going to happen next not that she had the ability to foresee but because what is going to happen is happening to her every 15th day of the month. 

And it is the 15th day and as her gaze landed on the clock, she could feel her body weaken and starting to surrender to her fate. 

She wants to stand from her seat and leave the room but she seems to be paralyzed, she can’t move and so with her surroundings because suddenly, everything froze including the wall clock that says it’s 9:21. 

9:21…

“There will be a painful death in her life and once it happened, every 15th day of the month and at the time of said death, she will freeze the time and re-live the memory. And it will keep happening for the rest of her life."

She shuts her eyes tightly as it is the only movement she could do. However, just like her previous attacks, closing her eyes once again proved that it is the most excruciating move for her because it just made everything even clearer. 

The clock didn’t move, both of its hands still shows that it is 9:21.

Again 9:21….

With the time reading the same hour and minutes, the letters and words in front of her completely faded and so with the computer and everything that would signify that she is still in her workplace because her surroundings transcend to another place. 

She is no longer sitting on her desk, rather, she sees herself approaching an area where people are gathered as they surround something. 

It is 9:21 in the evening, though the night had taken its toll, the area is still illuminated enough by the street lights which is now, thankfully functioning well. 

The police immediately recognized her since she always works with them every time there is a police operation. Given her identity as a journalist, she was instantly allowed to go closer to the crime scene and the citizens she bypassed seemed to understand why she was allowed due to the camera hanging on her left shoulder and the small notebook on her right hand. 

She is about to start taking pictures and to start asking for details but she stopped when one of the police officers who is working on the crime scene evidence inventory pulled a smart phone from the victim who is lying in a prone position and a blood underneath his head where the bullet fired by the still unidentified suspect had managed to enter. 

The crime scene investigator pressed the unlock key on the right side of the phone and it light up, showing a picture of two, a man and a woman. The personnel cannot access further since the phone has a password but the photo of the man seems enough to identify the victim. 

The personnel is about to put the phone along with the money they got from the victim’s right pocket when his vision suddenly fixed on the woman on the display photo. His brows furrowed and his mind processed immediately the image and sent a signal to his eyes to look at the person to his right. 

“Ma’am,” the crime scene investigator softly said, his voice failed to conceal a questioning and concern tone which seems odd to her hearing. 

“Yes?” she asked and moved closer to the personnel. She did not wait for the crime scene investigator to waved the phone because her eyes went immediately on it. 

Her mouth opened only to closed again because of the familiarity of the phone had her words died in her throat. The phone is the same with the one she got last Christmas as a present to the most important man in her life, her father. 

The officer didn’t say any further words, he just handed the phone to her which she accepted with her now trembling hands. 

She pressed the key on the right side of the phone and upon the display photo appeared, her body tensed. The photo showed a father and daughter who is showing their identical smile; the father is holding a glass of scotch on his right hand while the other one is on her daughter’s shoulder. From the arm extended towards the camera, it is obvious that the daughter was the one holding the cellphone. 

The father and daughter is ‘them’. The display photo is her father’s favorite photo of them, it was taken on the day she had given him the phone as a present on a Christmas Eve last year.

“No,” she whispered to herself. She doesn’t want to entertain the idea but when her eyes went on the motionless body on the ground, her vision suddenly became 20/20 that even without her eyeglasses, she was able to see clearly the victim. 

Her hand which is grasping the phone lost its ability to hold things as the device slips through her grasp and so with the notebook. 

“No, no, no,” she whispered again as she remains standing as if moving any of her feet would lead to a few seconds death march. 

Her breathing grew heavier and once she was able to cope from her initial shock, the loudest and most painful “No!” escaped from her mouth which led everyone’s eyes to her. 

She doesn’t want getting attentions but right at that moment, she doesn’t care. She shook her head as a wave of excruciating tears overwhelms her neutral face and all of a sudden, from her standing position, she was recharged by the same pain which caused her shock and it had given her the energy to rush towards the body. 

However, she didn’t successfully reach the cadaver since one of the police officers were fast enough to stop her.

“Dad!” she screamed and slowly, she collapsed on the ground as the startled officer holds her in his arms. 

Everyone is shocked due to her outbreak as if they had just witnessed a normal person turning into an insane one but with the last word she uttered, they understand why. 

If the citizens were just there to watch just like most people do every time there is a crime scene near them, there agenda to just simply watch and have knowledge as to what had happened changed into something else, something that they did not see coming, because each hearts in the scene automatically ached due to the sight of a grieving daughter before them.

The painful sight had then led one of the citizens, a grandma who is particularly at her 70s, to approach her and upon seeing the old woman, the police gave way.

The grandma replaced the police officer and with the warmth of her embrace, she instantly clung to her as if her life depends on the old woman. 

Her sobs are growing louder and louder, squeezing tears from the people as if her sobs are epidemic disease infecting everyone in the area. 

She has been a journalist for almost five years and she always see families grieving in a crime scene while the police operatives process the body of their slain loved one. With her constant exposure to such, she once asked herself one night, what if one day she will be the one arriving to a crime scene due to a call about a love one, lying motionless on the ground. 

She had cried so hard that night, grieved on the ‘idea’ because she only has one person in her life and that is her father. He is her hero and he is the only one she’s got since she was born with a mother who had chosen to abandon them. 

She is not an easy child; she has an opinion to everything which made her stubborn most of the times, she doesn’t like vegetables which made her very difficult to feed, she doesn’t know how to do household chores especially since her focus is on studying, and she is a snob to almost every people which caused her father to deal with these people’s comments about her. 

He had raised her all by himself and despite being the person that she is, he had done a very damn good job in raising her. 

It is why, he is her hero. He had tried his best to function both as a father and a mother to her, he had given her everything she needed, he had supported her even to the things which he wouldn’t agree for her to do, he had her back and tried his very best to understand her every sudden outburst….he’s just simply there and he had done a very incredible job of being just there for her.

And so she couldn’t, she couldn’t lose him. She would go insane once it happened. She would give everything for Him to not take her father away from her. 

Yet still, it happened. 

The idea came into life and just like what she had thought, she feels like she is losing her sanity. Was she that sinner to deserve it? Had she not followed most of His rules to punish her with the most heart wrenching punishment in the world?

She had thought of the pain, she had cried with the idea, but she didn’t know it could be really that painful that she couldn’t stop her sobs even with the awareness that her broken self is being displayed for the world to see. 

The pain won’t just stop, it feels like her heart is being simultaneously drilled and it won’t just stop bleeding. 

9:21 PM…

And the most excruciating pain which had been bestowed upon her almost two years ago had again managed to remind her about loss’ most lethal power which is its ability to freeze time and ability to always keep touring her back to the time, 9:21 PM, in which her heart had been slayed by the sight of her motionless father lying on the ground with fresh blood under his head where the bullet had entered before his life surrendered to the inhumanity and severity of his murder. 

9:22…

When the time moved, she is back in their office but only this time, she looks like she has been in a marathon due to her heavy breathing or she looks like she has been submerged to a water and she wasn’t given the opportunity to remove her makeup that they had smudged all over her face. 

She looks hilarious but her eyes, her now puffy eyes, would hold anyone back from laughing because they don’t conceal a very raw pain in it. 

Before her colleagues could see her in such state, she rushed to the bathroom and locked the door. Even she’s in a room, safe from anyone’s eyes, she could still risk being heard because they would know. So, with her back against the door, she had to bit down her lower lip. 

It has been two years, and even though she tries so hard to condition herself to get used to it because it is the only way she could go against her curse, she will never get to do that because the death on the curse is not simply a death, but it’s her father’s murder. 

So no matter how much she will try, the curse will always win because the enchantress who had cursed her just bestowed her the most powerful one, the curse of Loss and its Lethal Power.