8:49 AM

The time, pictured digitally in the corner of the desktop monitor, flared like sunlit steel through the glaze of Gordon’s sunken eyes. He blinked at it, and the tiny white blur blinked back.

8:50 AM

The unstoppable force, time, and the immovable object, a hungover Gordon, held this same standoff every weekday morning. Weekend mornings — or rather afternoons, when he clambered from the sweaty, dreamless bowels of gin-steeped sleep — were different. Those days he opted for the red capsules over his workday greens, but he had to time his dosage carefully. If he took the red too early, his hangover seemed to diminish even slower.

8:51 AM

Even without the effects of a red, it felt like his hangover would never end. The veins in his head thrummed like the thick strings of a bass guitar plucked by an eager amateur. His heart pounded against his ribs — a cotton-swathed mallet striking a brittle xylophone. The keycard hung from his lanyard was a ticket to see the critically acclaimed Spreadsheets on Ice, starring the notorious Coffee-Breath Boss with a musical accompaniment by the Early-Morning Snackers. Much to Gordon’s dismay, the ticket got him in for every showing.

8:54 AM

The green was starting to kick in. Each blink had marked a second of passing time when he first sat down. Now, it felt more like two or three seconds. When the clock struck nine, the contents of the capsule he swallowed on his drive to the office would be swimming laps in his bloodstream. These doses, too, he timed carefully. Until then the seconds would pass quicker and quicker, climbing to the peak of the drug’s effects.

Yes — after nine o’clock, the day would fly by. This was the mantra he repeated in the minutes before the green fully ensnared his perception of time. The dreadful crawl of the digital numbers on his computer screen would shift gears into a brisk walk, then into an enthusiastic march. The day would fly by, and then Gordon would be home.

8:57 AM

The day would fly by, and it wouldn’t be that bad. He may not even need to drink when he got home. Well, he may not need more than one, or two. Post-work libations were customary.

8:57:31 AM

He couldn’t wait for those drinks. Screw it. He took another green.

8:58 AM

The day would soar by, and Gordon won’t have felt a thing. He would, really, but the feelings wouldn’t stick as much. The old man he used to sit with told Gordon the same thing at every session, in the office that smelled like coffee and starch spray, decorated with too much intention to truly feel relaxing. Feelings pass like clouds, said whatever-his-name-is. Gordon couldn’t remember. So let them pass.

9:00 AM

Nine o’clock. Busy season.

The office sprang to life. Clickclackclickclackclickclack. A legion of warriors clad in quarter-zips and puffer vests fired shortcuts into their keyboards like they were coordinating missile strikes. Gordon inhaled through his nostrils, exhaled out his mouth, and got to work. Accounts wouldn’t balance themselves. The day would fly by.

#

12:00 PM

Gordon leaned back from his desk, cracked his knuckles, and rolled his neck. The gin-sticky glaze had left his vision, and the fog in his brain had almost dissipated. His heart padded gently in his chest. The day was skipping along.

Hands drummed on the far wall of Gordon’s cubicle. He swiveled and met the leer of his neighbor Josh. His brawny forearms hung over the wall, products of him and his frat buddies’ daily trips to the gym before work. Josh invited Gordon to join their morning workouts all the time — his membership allowed him to a bring a guest, he’d always remind him — but six AM was too early for Gordon to do anything but study the backs of his eyelids.

“You down for tonight?” Josh asked. His familiar smile grew. A hungry smile.

What day is it? Wednesday? Gordon glanced at the date on his monitor, right underneath the time. Wednesday, indeed. Already? On the hump days, Josh and a few of his brothers-in-SARMs would hit the clubs for a night of rum, reds, and relaxation. As with the morning workouts, Gordon was always invited. Unlike the morning workouts, Gordon usually took him up on it.

Josh’s smile widened at the understanding now reflected in a smile of Gordon’s own.

Gordon shrugged. “It’s Wednesday, isn’t it?”

A hearty, thick-handed smack on the barricade between them. “Yes sir, it is,” Josh said. His eyes twinkled. Had his incisors gotten sharper? “Probably going for Mindy’s tonight.”

There was no probability involved. They would go to Mindy’s like they always did, save for a two week span when Neil, an angry drunk and good buddy of Josh, was banned. “Sounds good to me,” Gordon said. “Let’s hope we get outta here earlier than last night.”

“Ah, I’m not worried about that.” Josh leaned farther over the cubicle wall, shielded his words with a hand, and spoke in a loud whisper. “I doubled up on the greens today.” He made his hand flat, swept it through the air like an overflying jet, and made a fyooom sound.

Gordon nodded, smiling, but he didn’t return the gesture. For a fyooom worthy effect, he’d have to take at least three. “Can’t blame you there, man,” he said.

With that, Coffee-Breath Boss came thundering by, and Josh dipped back into containment.

12:24 PM

As the sun fell, the effects of the greens tapered, and the full sprint of time slowed to a lethargic jog, Gordon’s phone buzzed twice: a text message. He jumped at the vibration in his pocket. It almost never did that. Who was it? Spam? Credit card company? He fished his phone out from the tight pants pocket. Death in the family? Some online clothing store he’d given his number to when he registered an account to get ten percent off any order over ninety dollars?

No. It was even worse.

Hannah.

The text notification stared back at him. He blinked a dozen times, but the mirage he figured it for, the ones shared by desert wanderers deprived of water and near-thirties men starved of affection, never faded to reveal a phishing scam or a message from his landlord. Equal parts trepidation and curiosity filled his gut. He opened the text and read it. And read it. And read it again.

Hi, been a while since we last talked — yes, got that part. It has been a while, Hannah. Months, probably. A year? I know things didn’t end so nicely between — yep, understood. They certainly didn’t. What else? but after what happened last time…

Last time? The last time they spoke was in Gordon’s car at a department store parking lot. She’d given him the news then — hardly a story worthy of the front page: SHOCKING! Relationship of Two Years Ends in Predictable Tragedy. And the subheading: Sources close to involved parties say it was “all that dumbass’s fault.” He finished reading the text again. She wanted to meet up. Tonight. At nine PM.

Suddenly, Gordon wished the workday would never end.

#

9:26 PM

“You don’t remember?”

Bewilderment unfurled on Hannah’s face. She was still pretty, dammit. Gordon blinked, wishing she was the tiny clock, hoping she was a cloud that would soon pass.

The green had fully released him by now. He almost took a short-acting one before leaving the office, timing it perfectly to kick in at nine o’clock, but he quelled the urge. No matter how much he wanted their reunion to feel like a ten-minute daydream, some gooey and terrible part of him knew it wouldn’t be fair to Hannah, even if she would never know. For now, he was stuck in a corner café, fully present. Fully at the mercy of the past.

Gordon was just as confused as Hannah seemed to be. They’d exchanged small talk for a good twenty minutes before gracelessly segueing into the reason Hannah wanted to meet. She’d said that thing again--after what happened last time--and her eyes, big and brown, searched Gordon for recognition. They found none.

“Remember what?” Gordon asked. “The breakup?”

Hannah’s brow furrowed. “No.” Her gaze drifted downward. “The last time we talked.”

“So…the breakup.”

She squinted at him, like she was conversing with a complete and utter dunce. “Again, no. Not the breakup. After that.” She leaned in. “Are you— are you serious?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

Hannah recoiled. An indignant chuckle escaped her lips. “I…I called you?”

His face was slack and dumb. “When?”

Another frustrated chuckle. “Like, a month after we broke up. I called you. We talked for nearly two hours.”

Gordon had absolutely no memory of this. No matter how much he tried, digging through those terrible weeks that so quickly turned into terrible months following that night in the parking lot, he came up with nothing.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Her face dropped into a dead scowl. That look was something he remembered. He saw it many times throughout their relationship and many more times toward the end of it. Even after so much time… had it been so much time? The creeping fear took hold.

“You’re doing it again, aren’t you?” Hannah asked.

A fusillade of painful memories hit Gordon all at once. The source of the scowls, the friction in their relationship. He was doing it again. He had been since the night outside the department store.

Gordon sighed and dropped his head. “Listen—”

“No, I already know. We’ve been through this a hundred times.”

That finality in her tone, the same tone that always accompanied the scowl. It kindled an anger in Gordon that once burned long, strong, and firm. She didn’t understand what he went through. Neither did the old sack of bones in the office that smelled like coffee and starch spray. A thing like that didn’t pass like a cloud. The death of a friend, your very, very best friend, was a persistent rain. Of course Gordon did what he did. How else was he supposed to cope? Rot in his apartment for months, expecting a call from him every Friday afternoon like usual and settling instead for listening to his voicemail over and over just to pretend he was alive? Well, Gordon did all of that, and he drank, and he took greens — enough to make a year of devastating grief feel like a brief night terror. Even a child could cope with a nightmare.

Hannah became wary of Gordon’s health when she’d reference conversations they had a day or two before, and he had no memory of them. Still, she didn’t pester or cross-examine him. His best friend had just died. When a prior day’s activities began to completely escape him, she knew what was going on. He was taking more greens than he should. Any dosage over one capsule was too much. Even then, she gave him grace, though his cageyness around his indulgence worried her. They had always been honest with each other, hadn’t they? Then the holes in his memory where prior days fell merged into one vacuous cavity that devoured entire weeks of his life, spitting shreds of them back into the firmament where Hannah peeled them from fogged glass and stitched them together, all for Gordon, and he still couldn’t make sense of her patchwork.

“I stopped,” Gordon said. He rubbed his hands over his knees. “You wanted me to stop, so I

did.”

“I wanted you to stop. You needed to stop.” Hannah said. “And when I wasn’t there anymore to want it for you, you started again.”

So many things he could say in that moment, so many pitiful, petulant, immature retorts, but he bit his tongue. He could lie, claim he hadn’t taken green after green in a bid to skip the grief of losing her, just like he did when Marcus died. He could claim he was clean. As a matter of fact, he didn’t take greens or reds at all anymore. The phone call was just too insignificant for him to remember it. He could say these things, but Hannah knew him all too well.

He looked away from her, ashamed. Fateful silence ensued.

“Why…what did we talk about?” Gordon asked, avoiding her eyes. “On the phone?” More silence. He looked back up and saw tears streaming down Hannah’s cheeks.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. Her lips quivered, but then her face set, strong. Decisive. “I’ve changed my mind.” She shouldered her purse, stood, and walked out of the cafe, dabbing her eyes with a napkin as she went.

#

Mindy’s. Eleven PM, maybe? Who cared?

He was on his third gin and tonic, but he was way behind Josh and his pals. They’d been at Mindy’s for a while before Gordon’s arrival, and when Gordon did arrive, he was promptly greeted with a series of stinging dap-ups and free access to Neil’s baggie of short-acting reds. Gordon took one and popped it immediately.

“Don’t worry about Neil,” Josh said, leaning into Gordon’s ear while the rest of the gang laughed wide and open-mouthed about some night they shared in their college days. “He won’t act up again. Doc’s got him on new meds.”

Josh jabbed him lightly in the shoulder and turned his attention back to the group, ready to plunge into another drunken anecdote. Gordon nodded, but he figured the last thing Neil needed were some exciting new pills to mix with alcohol and reds.

Gordon checked the time on his watch.

10:02 PM

The red was working its magic, alright. He thought he had paced his drinks slowly, but the three gin and tonics had been defeated in the twenty minutes he’d been there — twenty minutes that felt like forty.

Greens were great for speeding through monotony, like work, jury duty, or a nephew’s soccer game. Reds were perfect for the opposite. In those little windows of time, where people weren’t burdened by responsibility or obligation, the red capsules made the windows feel not so little. They kept Gordon and most of his coworkers sane during busy season. When you got home after a twelve-hour day of baking in fluorescent lighting just to eat and do your chores and have an hour to yourself before bed, you’d take a red, and “all the time in the world” became reality.

All Gordon ever needed was time. Work stole that from him, grief stole that from him. He reached for another red and gulped it down. A cozy nest of liquor settled in his stomach, and soon the birds would come flying home. A few hours at Mindy’s would stretch into nearly half a day of drunken, blissful ignorance.

You’re doing it again, aren’t you?

Yes. He was doing it again. Again, and again, and again. Work, drink, sleep. Maybe the greens and reds didn’t speed or slow time. Maybe they just looped time. It wasn’t a fun loop, like a toy racetrack or a rollercoaster, but more of an endless train ride. The monotony remained, but at least he was eager to reach his next stop. But at the next stop he would just hop on another train.

10:04 PM

He looked around the club. People dancing, standing at the bar, chatting in booths.

One of Josh’s friends nudged Gordon and pointed over at one of the VIP booths, where men and women, a bit older than them, sipped and spat obscenities at each other.

“See them in here all the time,” the friend said. “You think I can handle my reds,” not really, “those guys put me to shame. They go one after the other after the other.” He chuckled, looking at them almost wistfully. “Just tonight, they’ve been here for years.”

The second red kicked in, time slowed to a crawl, and Neil unleashed.

10:05 PM

An accidental bump on the shoulder from an unfortunate passerby was all it took. The demon, born from mystery medication, red capsules and booze, took the reins on Neil’s hulking frame.

He practically threw the guy across the room, crashing him into stools and innocent bystanders. Then he was on him.

10:05 PM

Neil hit him hard. He slapped the man’s hands away as they tried to defend against this monster. He hit him again. And again. And again.

10:000005 P…M?

And again. And again. And again. And again. Endless times again.

10:06 PM

Josh leaped from his seat and wrangled Neil away before he murdered the guy. The others remained, as hypnotized as Gordon. They stared stupidly at the chaos. Gordon shuddered. They’d taken a lot more reds than him. How many? The fight was over now, sure, but how long did it play out for them? An hour?

A year?

Gordon heaved himself to his feet, which took great, slow effort. He exited the booth and navigated through the aftermath of Neil’s terror, drudging through the thick mud of time, fighting against it to escape as soon as possible. It took him all but a minute to reach the exit, but it felt like many, many more.

#

It was a long walk home from Mindy’s. The perceived length of the walk tripled. His hand drifted habitually into his pocket, where a few greens were stashed just in case, but he pulled his hand away.

And when I wasn’t there anymore to want it for you, you started again.

The greens called to him. He could take them, balance out the effects of the reds, and take another to speed up his trip home. But that terrible gooeyness returned and told him that wasn’t fair. Not that it wasn’t fair to him, or Hannah, or Josh, or the guy Neil sent home in an ambulance. Not any of them. For some reason, it just wasn’t fair.

Yes, it would be a long walk. A seemingly endless one. But eventually, he would get there.