In the Woods

"You are such a wimp, you know that?"
I'm sitting on a stump halfway up the brick-covered hill leading up to the Ridges, rubbing my legs. My lovely roommate probably isn't judging me too hard, more making fun of me than anything else, but she looks impatient to keep walking while I dawdle and complain.
"Well sorr-ee to have actual, legitimate medical problems that cramp your lifestyle. Great merciful Keeters, my poor, enbunioned feet and I apologize for ever having inflicted our presence upon you--"
"Oh, shut up."
"...I seriously am a wimp though. We're not even halfway there yet."
"Don't worry about it. We've got time."
"Damn. Look at that moon."
"Sure is bright tonight."
"It really is. I don't think we're going to get much star-watching done this time..."
"Eh. It'll still be cool."
"...Okay, I'm good. Let's get going."
......
"Dammit."
"What?"
"I did take us the wrong way. We should have taken the path at the bottom of the hill."
"I thought you said you'd been up here before."
"I have! Just because I can't remember the exact way after half a year and in the dark--"
"Chill, Julesy, I was joking."
"I know. Want to check out the tower up here anyway?"
"Eh, why not."
"On second thought, I think it's actually a silo, though I have no idea what they'd keep in it these days, there's not exactly much call for corn storage in an insane-asylum-turned-admin-and-research-facility--"
"Ssh."
"What did you grab me for?"
"There are people up here."
"Where? And why are you whispering?"
"Ssh! There. Look, there's a bunch of them all on the edge of the hill."
"No, seriously, where--oh! Holy crap, there are a lot of them."
"Jules, you are seriously the most unobservant person ever."
"Shut up."
"Isn't that right where the TB ward used to be? ...What are they doing?"
"I can't tell. I think they're just looking at us."
"Do you think they know we're here?"
"Well, we were being kind of obnoxious--"
"Ssh!"
"What?"
"They're all looking at us now. Maybe it's a cult. Maybe we stumbled upon one of their secret rituals, and they're using the TB ward to focus their spiritual energies or something! Holy crap, Jules, we found a cult. An actual cult."
"...Maybe we should move on."
"Maybe we should go talk to them."
"I really don't like that idea. Come on, Keeters, I know you want to investigate but two girls, alone in the woods on a Friday night with a bunch of figures dressed in black and possibly carrying out strange cultish rituals, that is not a good combination--"
"Hang on, I want to see if I can get a picture."
"You--! Seriously? It's way too dark for a shitty phone camera to get anything."
"Ssh. Maybe if we're quiet they'll think we've gone away."
...
"I am so not okay with this."
"Ssh! I just want to get a picture!"
"They know we haven't left, you idiot, they're still looking at us and I'm sure they can see us a little bit at least--holy shit."
"What is that? No, seriously, what is that?"
"It looks like a laser pointer. I guess it's foggy enough that we can see the whole beam... What's he doing with it though? Wait... he's scanning the whole top of the hill and oh my god it's coming toward us Keeters what if they're not a cult what if they're aliens and we're about to be beamed in to space holy shit...!"
"Ssh."
"...That was seriously the creepiest thing I've ever experienced."
"But really, though."
"It stopped right on you, they definitely know we're here and it's still way too dark for a picture so can we please get out of here?"
"Fine, fine... jeez, you'd think you'd never seen a cult before."
"Shut up. I've never had a cult do a friggin' area sweep with a green laser while I'm trying to hide in the shadow of a silo to get shitty night vision pictures before."
"...Look, we're fine. They're not even following us."
"God dammit, Keeters, I wasn't even thinking about that but now I am...!"
"Sorry."
"I blame you for every time I freak out about something for the rest of this hike."
"Oh hey, now... that deer was totally not my fault."
"Ha, you freaked out about that one too..."
"I didn't even hear it! You just grabbed me and went Sssshit! and I think my jump was totally justified."
....
"Moon sure is bright tonight."
"You said that before."
"It's still true."
"Sure is pretty, though."
"...Just watch, they'll be gone by the time we're hiking home and we'll never find out what they were doing. Maybe we could go talk to them..."
"Mmmmm.... you had a point earlier. Probably not the best idea."
"Oh, and like yours was? 'I just want a picture, Jules, something to prove we found an actual Athens cult, let's just get close enough...'"
"But we did! We found an actual cult!"
"It was probably just a bunch of bandos smoking a joint or something."
"Whatever. I say it was a cult."
"Sure, you do that... Makes for a better story anyway."
"Want to keep walking?"
"Yeah. I want to see at least some stars before the cult catches up with us."
"Ha. You're so funny I don't know how you stand it."
"Well, now that you mention it, I could sit down again..."
Our low voices and the sound of our feet on the dirt-and-gravel path are the only things to break the silence, while the moon shines brightly overhead.

Clocks

I'm supposed to be sitting and reading right now but the words don't even have the decency to blur on the page, they simply pass through my brain without leaving the slightest mark and I find I'm five pages away from where I started with no knowledge of what happened between the end of chapter nineteen and the start of twenty-one. I've been staring at the clock and kind of half-listening to the noise of it knocking gently on my eardrums, remembering the drawing in a comic I read some time ago with words where the numbers should be and a red second hand ticking off the time--You're. Still. Not. Dead. You're. Still. Not Dead. 

The clock is right next to the mirror and from where I sit I can see its reflection in the glass, the second hand going around and around backwards and ticking back in time. I wonder if the clocks in CS Lewis' Wonderland in Through the Looking Glass ticked backward, sending their observers further into the past while ours ticked forward into the future. I wonder if I stare long enough into the mirror-clock I'll start recovering lost time.

Time is a funny thing these days; so few people wear watches but we are no less choked by time. Alarms, timers, and calendar events clang, honk, blare, and ring out every moment with a great clamor and tell us where we are supposed to be. The girl hurrying by with an old-fashioned klaxon blaring from her pocket will not lose her harried expression even when she arrives at her lunch meeting three minutes ahead of time. If she stops on the way she is not marveling at the dark, smoky scent of coffee in the warm air of the shop, nor at the rich and bitter flavor as the first sip scalds her tongue; she fidgets, looking at her watch (a relic of an older time, its second hand still travels constantly into the future, it still has a second hand at all) and she begrudges her coffee the moments it takes to brew.

Yet when she hurried by me on my own sidewalk journey today, I paid her no more mind than a moment of annoyance for the noise of her blaring alarm, too busy myself with hurrying on my own way, checking my own wrist for the time before remembering my watch battery died six months ago and it matters nothing if my wrist says it is half past freckle-o-clock, however perfectly formed and a lovely brown color that freckle may be. My watch, digital rather than analogue, had no second hand, no metronome ticking off my time, but its weight was a comfort, a little piece of captive time clasping my wrist so comfortably that I only noticed it in its infrequent absence. I had worn a watch for almost a decade, had seldom been parted from one model or another from the time I was but ten years old, and the small device had once upon a time been such a part of me that if I lost my watch or broke it or seemingly let it be stolen like those few fretful days in fifth grade when I suffered separation anxiety for an object and found it necessary to comfort myself with the meager substitute of a thick hairband around the lonely wrist, though its squeeze was nothing compared to the feeling of recompletion when I bought another watch again.

But when my watch face ceased to show the time in March, lacking a means to replace the battery, I simply packed it away until I could take it to be repaired properly. There were many freckle-o-clock time checks in those first few days, but by the time I at last rememebred that I was supposed to be missing a watch I had ceased to notice the lack. I wear no watch now, but I tick nonetheless. The rhythm of life around me wanders or scurries or saunters by, sweeping around me even as I check my phone for the time.

Two minutes late. Luckily, while my mind has been wandering along far-off streets, my feet have hurried on.