Five AM
Prompt:
“You wake up. It’s five o’clock. You make coffee and go about your day. Time passes and you look at the clock again. It’s still five o’clock. ”
The Bottle
Stephanie Chapman
I went about a normal day. Couldn’t leave the house, but other than that, everything else was normal. The clock still shows 5:00AM.
I’ve moved all the furniture around, and all of my personal belongings. But every time I leave the room, things move back into place. The next time I set eyes on it, everything is back the way it was. And the clock still shows 5:00AM.
I even tried changing the time. Pressed the buttons on the digital clock, just like I do for daylight savings. But the numbers never stick. The clock still shows 5:00AM.
The only thing I can’t move or manipulate is the bottle of rat poison on the coffee table in the living room. I can move the table, but the bottle stays put, suspended in air. It’s there to remind me. That, and the clock that still shows 5:00AM.
The day it happened, I got up for work, but didn’t see the point anymore. Instead of coffee, I poured the contents of the bottle into my mug and drank that. I drank it when the clock showed 5:00AM.
Now, I’m stuck in this never-ending limbo. Or maybe this is Hell. Because no matter what I do, I’m trapped in this mirror image of my house. And the clock only shows 5:00AM.