All the Time in the World (On Monday) by Kean Murphy
The end of a long, lonely year has arrived. But no one realises it apart from me. To everyone else, it has been just another Monday.
The world is frozen like a painting. Leaves hover in mid-air, stuttering towards the ground while the neighbour’s stride unwinds at a glacial pace. My watch is stuck at 11:59:59, the second hand moving imperceptibly, dragging itself towards the six days of the year I become frightfully, delightfully mortal.
I should be ecstatic. Tuesday begins my temporary reprieve from this curse, when for six days time moves at a regular pace. But with each Monday, when time slows down around me and takes a full year to pass, the idea of a world of sound and movement seems increasingly foreign. It is strange to imagine those around me not as lumbering trees, but living creatures, moving at the same rhythm I do.
The thought only makes me feel even more alone. Their laughter reminds me of the life I no longer have. Only their frozen forms understand me, hollow facades trapped in time, all our hopes left in abeyance.
I steel myself before my front door and walk in. A single click from my watch. Midnight.
The lights burst on and a hurricane slams into me. Indistinguishable white noise is replaced by an overwhelming cacophony of a hundred sounds, from the howling of the washing machine to shrieking of the kettle. The hands of the clock skate across its face like lightning; the leaves of the plants swirl in a tempest.
A supernatural creature appears. She moves impossibly fast, ambushing me before I can say a word. She hurtles towards me and I step back, but she catches up easily, matching my every move. I am paralysed, a ponderous stone. Her hand rockets towards my face and I shut my eyes.
Her touch is warm and gentle on my cheek.
“My son. Are you ok?”
My eyes refocus. My mother’s brown eyes track mine effortlessly, her lined face twitching too quickly for me to discern. It is not right, my mind screams, for another being to see me so easily, but I suffocate that thought. I am here, home at last.
“You were gone the whole day without a word. What have you been up to this time?”
I disappear into her arms, feeling vulnerable, feeling alive.
I sleep for half a year. Or as everyone else knows it, until noon.
My mother smiles as she gestures towards my lunch on the table. But all I notice is the television coming to life with images of jail cells filled with dismayed criminals. The fruits of my year-long labour. I had spent Monday acting on information my colleagues at the precinct had left for me, tracking down criminals and leaving tip-offs on how to stop them before their plans succeeded.
Once, I would have been delighted to see this. Hadn’t I always lamented that we had too little time to protect everyone? If only I had a bit more time to find that fingerprint under the table, I could have saved that girl in the basement. If only the car had been just a little faster, I would still see the family around the corner laughing around their barbecue. Their terrified faces drift into my mind like spectres, still as clear as they had been twenty years ago. All I needed, I remembered praying at that dilapidated temple, was more time, even if it was just for one day of the week.
I should have been careful about what I wished for. All I feel now is weariness, of the kind that sleep can never remedy.
My mother rests her hand on my arm and a warm shudder echoes through me. Her hand strokes the pale scar running past my elbow, and then I realise. When she saw me last night in her time, my arm was broken and wrapped up in a cast. Now, the scar is all that remains. I flinch away, feeling the warmth dissipate as I put my arm back under the cold table. She gazes at me, her mouth forming the shape of a smile, but her eyes sorrowful.
I swore to never tell my mother about the curse. I knew that her heart would break, and I could save her that pain by keeping up the pretence of normality for six days of her week. But now, twenty Mondays later, I see myself in her mind’s eye: a silent, unresponsive statue sitting in the space once occupied by her son. Even my colleagues, the only ones who know what I am going through, have long given up trying to make conversation.
“Darling, you know you can tell me what’s going on.”
How I long to be able to say yes to her. I want to get up and tell her everything, of twenty years’ worth of bottled-up stories, inside jokes, and unanswered prayers. I wish I could let her into this dim lonely world and let her light a candle, even if only for a week. But I find that I’ve forgotten the words that would convey how I feel, that would reassure her that I’m ok and that she shouldn’t worry and ask if she is still taking that ginseng I got for her. My tongue is creaking and stiff from disuse. I raise my hand hesitantly, hovering over her arm, before deciding against it.
She sighs as she looks at me. I shift uncomfortably in my seat. Her gaze is withering, too precise, too observant.
“My son, you need to stop working so hard. Look how tired you are! You’ve aged so much in the last six months. People will start to think that we’re the same age.”
That’s because we are, Mother. In another week, I will be older than you. But how could I ever explain that?
“Promise me you will rest and take it easy.”
I will, Mother. Until next Monday.
