Melanie Ferguson went about her housework in the drone-like fashion of the medicated and depressed. Blinking was the greatest pleasure of her day, for inside the brief darkness was the sensation of floating. She didn’t get the sense that she was floating to any place in particular, but this was precisely what was so wonderful about it. 

For a few minutes each day, Melanie could be nowhere at all, where nothing and no one could worry her, and where she couldn’t worry anyone else. Melanie’s mother had cried when she told her about it, but guilt was far too taxing an emotion for Melanie to saddle herself with. She mentally shrugged it off.

She set about washing four days worth of dishes like an automaton, feeling neither vexation nor dread, throwing three bone china bowls into the garbage without a thought because she knew it would be pointless to try to scrub away hard set cereal.

Just like it had been pointless to fight for a job she hated, or for a house she couldn’t afford, or for a man that hated her. The one and only thing she valued was time, or, more specifically, the ticking of it. Try as they might, not even the most learned scientific authorities had yet figured out how to stop or rewind time, and they never would because, like Melanie in that world within the gaps between blinks, time did not exist. 

It passed by, going largely unnoticed until someone missed a train or overcooked a steak, and even then, nobody could lodge a complaint because there was no manager or secretary for them to sound off to – you couldn’t be managed or scheduled if you didn’t exist.

How Melanie envied it that. 

How wonderful it would be to be time for a day, (if time could actually be). To mercilessly tick on as a rude call centre worker who got stuck with the late shift this week bolted for what would be the last train for an hour, or to swing idly by while a pregnant woman sang to her unborn child and felt it kick in appreciation. 

Melanie went into the living room and looked at the carriage clock that sat on her TV unit. It was one of the few things her grandmother had left her that she didn’t have to fight her sister for, and as such she treasured it above anything else. 

She opened the glass door that protected the clock face and gently touched the hour hand with her index finger. This was something Melanie often did – it was a bit like meditating, feeling the pulse of time beating away against her skin – but today it wasn’t so much beating as it was throbbing. 

It made its way up her hand and along her arm before radiating down and enveloping her completely. The terror of this all too mortal sensation passed when Melanie tried to look around, and realised where she was.

She was nowhere. 

Better still, she was nothing. 

She could see billions of people milling about the earth, moving from the mundane to the fantastic and back again, she could hear their silent cries for her to speed up or slow down or stop altogether, and she could appreciate how delicious it was to hear them blame God or fate for everything they had missed out on.

What she wanted to do was play with them, to bestow good time for good things to the good people, and bad time for bad things for the bad. What she could do if she had that power. 

The pulse turned into a THOCK-THOCK-THOCK -THOCK, and she zeroed in on a surly man wearing a headset. He was watching the clock, tapping impatiently, and speaking into the microphone in a clipped fashion.

‘There’s nothing in your account, Mrs Mason, and you don’t qualify for financial hardship. Sorry. Have a nice night.’

‘You could have asked management – your hardship request tally is the lowest one here.’

‘Yeah, well that would’ve taken another five minutes and I’ve got places to go.’

Melanie wasn’t sure how it was possible for a nothing to feel rage, but she was burning alive. She waited for the man to round the corner and step onto the street across from the train station, then she willed the pulse to quicken. 

Whump whump whump 

The man was approaching the crossing.

Whump whump whump whump

The man was pressing the button.

Whumpwhumpwhumpwhumpwhumpwhumpwhumpwhump.

The man was still pressing the button. His train tooted as it went by.

‘How can it be gone already? I left the office at eight, and it’s only…’

He looked at his watch – eight twenty. 

‘How the fuck?’

Melanie laughed, so much as nothings could be said to laugh.

THOCK Thock Thock THOCK

Now Melanie was zeroing in on a woman. She was sitting in a rocking chair by a window, stroking the rather large bump that was sticking out in front of her.

‘The only one who could ever reach me/was the son of a preacher man.’

Two odd shapes, barely detectable under the taught skin of the woman’s belly.

‘So you do like Dusty then, huh? Okay, I’ll keep going.’

She continued singing, and Melanie was so taken with the contentment in the woman’s voice that she willed the pulse to slow. A scene as beautiful as this should be extended for as long as possible.

Melanie smiled, so much as nothings could be said to smile.

THOCK THOCK THOCK THOCK

Now Melanie was zeroing in on an elderly lady. She was sitting in a wheelchair in the hallway of a nursing home, waiting with increasing impatience for a visitor. 

Thoroughly sick of waiting, she checked that the coast was clear and made her way through the sliding doors to the curb outside. After what seemed like hours, she edged the chair a little closer to the street so as to get a good view of any cars that might be approaching.

By the time he realised that there was an obstacle on the road in front of him, it was too late for the man from the call centre to stop. He got out of his car and ran to the elderly lady.

Now, Melanie was zeroing in on a hospital hallway. The man from the call centre was explaining hImself to a policeman.

‘It’s her birthday, see, and I was supposed to take her out to dinner. I was speeding because I was running late…I missed the early train. Grandma would be eating linguini right now if I hadn’t missed that train.’

Before she could process this, Melanie was zeroing in on a room in another part of the hospital. The sounds of crying babies filled the entire ward, but this room was silent. The woman with the lovely singing voice lay in bed, staring down at an empty crib.

She had been blissfully singing for so long, she didn’t notice that her baby wasn’t moving.

Melanie had bestowed good time on her for a good thing, and she’d enjoyed it so much that she let her child die. 

Melanie had bestowed bad time on the awful call centre man, and a bad thing had befallen the innocent person he was in such a hurry to see.

Melanie thought of all four of them, and cried, so much as nothings could be said to cry.

But she wasn’t nothing, and neither was time. The pulse of time beat along steadily at the same pace for everyone because speeding up for one person meant slowing to a crawl for another.

Time was the pulse of everything that ever existed, and as such it deserved respect. Time could not be slowed or sped up, because Life could not be slowed or sped up; not for a rude call centre worker, or a lovely mother to be, or for a woman who wanted to be nothing.

Melanie zeroed in on a sink full of dirty dishes. They wouldn’t get done quickly, but they would get done. Melanie would do this, as other things, while the pulse of time thrummed along to its steady, syncopated rythm, as did Melanie’s own pulse.

She was, after all, a Something.