temporal i

What we talk about when we talk about time-travel

Silence engulfs the room like a shadow.

or

Maybe it doesn’t and just seems that way.

“We won’t make it out alive.”

Lyric from some song that's playing. 

Not playing. 

Playing in my head.               

My inner voice is so loud now, booming at distracting volumes. It alternates between intensities, much louder than the noise from whatever else is going on around me.  Hear the colors in the music, when I close my eyes.

My eyes are closed.

They are open.

Outside me: Jack and Zoë and Kathy just seem to exist, right now. Silent. Forgotten. Lost in their thoughts, maybe.

I guess they could be talking, asking me questions, even, and laughing at my total lack of response. They could be loud as hell but I can’t listen.

Don’t.  My mind is louder.

Me talking to me.

Is this voice always there?  Am I only super aware, now, because of the volume of my thoughts? 

Now, I’m aware that I’m aware.

Fear the voice. 

And then

don’t.

Try to listen. 

Instead, see.

Kathy is slumped, relaxing against Jack, who in turn supports himself against the side of the frame and mattress of the bed. Plaid sheets grip the mattress.

Zoe is next to him. Along the floor against the bed. 

I’m cross-legged and hunched on a throw pillow on the floor between Zoë and Kathy.

We’re a set of knocked-over dominoes, suspended mid fall.

The interrupted 360-degree pan makes me dizzy. 

The camera cannot see the camera. 

I don’t see myself. 

There’s no mirror to allow it,

but I know I’m here

by looking down

at my hands.

Kathy watches the screensaver on the computer monitor.  It’s the one where little white pixels that are supposed to be stars fly by, pass you, to provide the illusion of traveling through space.

Very Star Trek. Very retro.

Jack is on his cell phone, surfing the internet or something.  Here, but not. The joint clip smolders in the ash tray just before him.

Zoë smiles and slowly twirls her costume-jewelry necklace. It looks cheap. It’s probably expensive.

I’m thinking about the way it used to be.

Define it. 

College.  People.  The world.  Life.

Before all the bullshit. Before we all started pretending to be adults. When the world was what we could see and we could see whatever our limitless imagination could show us. 

Before the humanization of the god. 

Before the sins of the father. 

Before the destruction of the friend.

Before the de-idealization of love.

When we lived in the present and not through retrospect.

Before the forced concepts of the real. 

Before we decided we had learned as much as we would, could, satisfied.

Before all our minds were made up.

“Stop narrating,” Kathy tells me, unmoved from her reclined pose against Jack.

Maybe.

I jar.

I question if she's actually said this or if it’s a phantom thought.

“Bad,” she points at me.  Pseudo-stern and playful.

I’m sure she's actually speaking now.

“No,” she says.

Smile back. Notice that Zoë doesn’t get it.

Smile wider. More sinister. 

She smiles at Kathy too.

“Isn’t Kathy awesome?” she asks me and means it. “I fucking love this girl.” 

They hug.

A knock at the door.

It opens.                                                       

Light pools in, very allegory of the cave.

Eyes adjust.

Smoke spills out like a river around the edges of the door frame.

Jason stands there with his hair gelled into fine spikes and his whole face a smile. He lives in Milton, on the third floor.

“There’s beer pong in the living room, if any of you are down,” he informs us.

“I'm down,” Kathy says, stretching and sitting upright.  “Let's dominate.” 

She’s bored.

Jack says, “Yeah.”

Phone away in a pocket, he stands and looks at me.

I grumble an excuse. “I don’t think I can move.”

“Wimps.”  Kathy sticks out her tongue.  I can see its reddish pink.

Exit: Jack and Kathy.

“And then there were two,” the hipster laughs.

I laugh.

It’s no longer funny but that doesn’t really matter.

I resign myself to the thought of smothering her with one of the pillows if she tries to have a conversation about how people use language incorrectly. She hates it. Hates them. Those people. People who do this.  Murderers of language.

I tell myself that I should shut her up.

Stop her mouth.

Busy her lips.

But I really can't move right now. Or maybe I just think I can’t.

Maybe I want to hear what she’s saying. 

Probably not, though.