Chronophobia

Time.

Seven years slipped through her fingers. Like the runny white of a cracked egg, it slipped right through her hands. And she was grasping. Wildly, nervously, compulsively she grasped; trying to find something to hold on to. Seven years, she couldn't believe it. Seven years, she couldn't get past it.

The clock struck eleven, another hour down the drain pipe in the bathroom. Another hour wasted away with alcohol and Darvacets. She pops another pill, and asks the clock to strike another hour. Just keep them coming, just keep running. Just keep running and time will never, ever catch up to you, she thinks to herself in a drunken daze.

There's a seven-year-old stain embedded in the carpet. A stain that will never come clean no matter how many quarts of bleach you grind into it. She takes another swig from the vodka bottle on the table by the bed. Nothing could erase those seven years afterward from her head. No amount of vodka and Darvacets could ever erase the look in his sugarcane eyes.

Time.

It was inevitable, like water leaking through cupped hands. It was so inevitable. She curled into herself, hiding from time itself. The hands on the clock in the hall sped by. Faster and faster they went. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Each tick, each tock added to her seven-year-old headache. They added to the pain in her stomach. They added to the prescription.

The past seven years had pooled at the bottom of her heart. They were stagnant and stale, like the stain in the carpet. The past seven years went by in a painful, slow-but-far-too-fast fashion. Each year added another bottle and another pill.

Time.

The clock struck twelve, announcing yet again another day to add up to another year of pain and guilt and pills. Speaking of which, she pops another with some alcohol. She's killing herself like she killed her baby beauty with the sugarcane eyes; painfully. Seven years and one day since she heard his screams. Seven years and one day since she tried to scrub him from the carpet.

Everything was slowly wasting away, eroding like a pebble in a stream. Seconds turn to minutes. Minutes turn to hours. Hours turn to days. Days to weeks, weeks to years, and so forth. Seconds eventually turn to years. Each second gets you that much closer to a year, to a decade, to a century. Each second, well, every second and you're that much closer to death.

And that meant her baby boy was going to die any second.

Time.

Any second, any year, and her baby beauty would die. And then he was crying, screaming and crying. He awoke when the clock struck midnight seven years and one day ago. His tears stained his beauty. They filled his sugarcane eyes to the brim and then overflowed to streams down his baby cheeks. And seconds and years ticked by. The clock tick-tocked in the hall, the baby kept screaming, and time kept whipping past leaving burning sensation. Death was creeping up on her baby beauty faster and faster with each passing second.

Time.

She wept with her baby in her arms. Her dying baby was crying with her, though not entirely for the same reason. She laid her baby boy in the mahogany cradle in the corner of the bedroom. She shut the window by the bed. She closed the cornflower blue curtains. And ever so slowly she slipped from her nearly see through nightgown and into the dress she hated. Her best dress. The black dress with the curved neckline and the hem that reached the floor. She slid her feet into the fifty dollar kitty heels she had bought a week ago from the department store in town.

She dressed for a funeral.

She did this all the while with her baby crying in the corner. Her baby screaming in the darkness. Her baby crying and screaming away the seconds. He could die any second, every second that sped by was the equivalency of another year on a tombstone. And of this she was most certain.

With her kitty heels and tile-length dress she trailed into the kitchen and rifled through the drawers. Some useless silverware clanged to the floor. Spoon and forks and knives much to dull clattered toward the floor. The baby cried harder and louder with every stray utensil thrown to the side. Then she found it. The knife hidden deep within the drawer, the knife she once held close when she feared a man had crept inside her house to steal the breath from within her very own lungs. The knife with the gleaming edge, like a tooth from a shark, the knife was to be used to rip through flesh.

She carried it, point out towards the world, to the bedroom. She wasn't about to let time take off with her baby beauty, was she?

She set the knife down on the table by the bed and lifted her crying and screaming baby from the cradle. She rocked the baby in her arms, letting her own tears drip to his cheeks. He kept on crying, his face red with his effort to keep his act up. She kissed his little red cheeks goodbye.

She pressed her back up against one of the legs of the bedside table. Her baby weeping with his face pressed up against the black cashmere breast of her dress. And then she grabbed the knife, point out, towards her baby beauty.

If time wanted to take her baby, she'd take his life first. All in all, beating time at it's own cruel game.

With her hand shaking she let the knife plunge straight into his his little infant chest. This is where his screams breached. She pushed the knife in until it came right through his back. His screams were cut short from the blood mounting in his throat.

And oh, his sugarcane eyes were so filled with fear. He feared time too, I suppose.

His blood spilled out onto her dress and into her shoes. It spilled over onto the carpet. His soul rendered itself up and onto the carpet, seeping into the thousands of fibers that covered the floor. And it was then that she saved her baby beauty from time. She threw his lifeless body out with the morning trash. She poured quart after quart after quart of bleach on the floor. She tried so hard to scrub his soul from the carpet. But there is still a stain on the carpet, seven years and one day later.

Time.

She saved her baby beauty from it. But who will save time from taking her own soul?