As a professional time waster, I can safely say that it is a finite resource. Others may spend their time working and playing and partying and drinking and growing up, but me, I have spent my time on nothing -- perhaps with the erroneous supposition that I could save it by not spending it? But neigh, time's footfalls never cease; and where others find things to distract them from that infernal march, I press my ear to the ground and listen to each maddening step. It is my great fascination, that encroaching mortality which consumes like a flood; even as the remnants of those departed rise and swell like the waves, there are those who remain afloat, looking down into the abyss that will one day be their home.

Time is like a magnificent puppeteer; each morning he creates a new repertoire of marionettes, and every evening he throws them on the woodpile. For that brief day, the puppets do all that they can to affirm their worth; each story they enact is unique and will never be repeated.

Or, time is like an eternal samurai; he unsheathes each blade, wears it down to nothing, and sheathes it once more for good. Each blade can only be remembered by the marks they made in the brief time they are unsheathed; and only those who wear their marks may remember them.

It is like the day between the nights; so long do we spend asleep, and only for an instant are we awake, between sleeps. A night sandwich.

More precious to me than anything in the world is the twilight time, the time that visits me in the wee hours of the morning when all is still. Sweet unconsciousness clings like a wet leaf, and time is so intimate and slow in its heaves, whispering incoherently. Time may slow in this way, just to savor the brink, but it truly stops for nobody.

And I think to myself, it's a good thing I'm nobody...

A rustle in the bushes.

The shaman pushed open the curtain to the outside and scanned the darkening dusk dimly lit by torch fire. His eyes alighted on it immediately, placed ceremoniously in the center of the ground in front of his hut, surrounded by gruesomely red flowers. His heart shuddered and made him look away from it, the thing he knew was inescapable.

The priestess went out ahead of him and stood before it, her breath shallow. She knelt in the dirt, and, with uncommon care, took it into her hands. She stood slowly and brought it before him with great deference.

"My love," she said, resolutely. "Your duty is delivered upon you."

The shaman forced himself to look down into her delicate hands, and there he confirmed the object of his dread: It was a tiny form, a shape rolled in cloth, and the cloth was cut of the robes worn only by priestesses. As if in doubt of what the cloth could contain, he unwrapped it with his one good hand. As he had anticipated, as she had anticipated, as the very fabric of the world had anticipated, in it was a finger.

His finger.

"My love," she said again. "It is the finger of fate. Your duty is delivered upon you."

That fickle finger, which he had cleaved from himself a fortnight ago, had found its mark. And, like the previous two fingers, this one was cloaked in the garb of a priestess.

The shaman felt dizzy as the world fell out from under him. It is not as though I had not foreseen this, he thought to himself. Fate cannot be averted; and its hand, my hand, cannot be stayed. The impact did not lessen.

The priestess hung her head, her eyes cast down after the world which had fallen, and her hands were folded in a silent prayer.

"I follow my sisters," she said.

Automatically, they walked out of the hut and into the brush, following a well-beaten path. Their feet moved as a river flows, unstoppable and toward an inevitable destination. They both knew that no matter how hard the river was fought, it would always win in the end.

They came to the steps, and they ascended toward heaven. It was too short a climb. At the apex, in view of the gods, was the altar, and the altar boy waited beside it, holding the ceremonial kris. At their approach, the young man looked dumbfounded.

"B-but she is the last priestess," he said worriedly. "Who will hear the words of the gods?"

The shaman said nothing. The priestess mounted the altar and laid down. The altar boy, looking from one to the other, tried not to offer the kris to the shaman, but failed. His path, too, was a river. The shaman raised the kris over his head with his last three fingers.

"The gods weep," said the priestess as she lied on her back, looking up to heaven. The shaman looked up and, indeed, the stars did twinkle and falter.

"Why do they weep?" asked the altar boy fearfully.

The shaman looked into the eyes of the priestess. There was, between them, a silent exchange shared only by souls which were bound: a farewell, and the promise of a distant reunion.

"Because my hand is the hand of fate, and cannot be stayed."

Against his will, he brought down the dagger, and the gods' words were silenced forever.

---

Nearby, sinister mortals rejoiced; for theirs was the only voice that could now be heard, and fate was at their command.

A life full of could-have-beens that still could be but won't. Agonizing doubt and anxiety stifle and smother while the heart weeps with frustration. Stagnant pools collect, solidify and desiccate, becoming one with the landscape. I stand eager on the newly-solid earth.

And yet...

The pen stops short in the face of greatness, envies what has come before and tries to hide its inadequacy. The box grows smaller with each useless habit perpetuated and every vital chance missed. I keep the shades down so as not to see where others have gone with their time, while I bide mine waiting for a chance. A grace, a sun ray makes its way in in a moment of revelation.

And yet...

Infinite silent debates stay the course, but not the footfalls of passing time. I am the dry gust blustering and the lush glade it chastises; spiteful and ineffective, fertile and vivid. Concentrating on confusion do I step in time with a hollow waltz. Meaningless angst and silly qualms punctuate the road of me, the road of discarded and decaying whimsy.

And yet...

A drop leaks through, a thought escapes the dam and dashes alone out into the dry riverbed. I chase it down with a paper towel, but this one evades me and shows itself to the world: Here I am! I exist! Liberate me from this tired bastion, that I might smile once more...

And yet...

I cry out, for a secret has been spilled. Here, finally, an uncensored mediocrity is immortalized for everyone to see. All paths forking forward can be followed back to this origin, and I curse the day for humbling me before myself; and yet... the path indeed forks forward.

The emergency broadcast is the only thing on television, and it tells us not to leave the house. Today I told the girls we were taking a nice, long staycation. A stay-at-home staycation where nobody is allowed to leave the apartment. Well, Isabelle took exception to that, because they were supposed to have show and tell this week in class, and she had caught a luna moth that she was very proud of. Isabelle got to crying, which got Priscilla crying, too. Barbara made their favorite for dinner: pizza quesadillas. They seemed to cheer up a little, and by the time I tucked them in with a story after bath time, Isabelle had come around to the staycation idea. She is my treasure.

I got an email from my brother, who lives out in the country, and he says that at least four cities have been quarantined so far. Apparently, something nasty got through airport security and is now circulating widely. They're trying to pin it down but it's wily. He said it looks like our town's slated for quarantine, too. It was a foregone conclusion. The whole city is under house arrest already. Soon they'll start gassing the streets, he said. He is keeping us in his prayers, he said. He did not say everything would be fine. He did not say the mortality rate was low. He said what he could and left the rest unsaid, like a goodbye unspoken because of its finality.

Me and Barb went out on the porch with plastic chairs and had a few beers. Folks in the tenement across the street had the same idea, and we raised our bottles in cheer. Night was coming on and it was getting cooler, so you couldn't smell the stench so much anymore; or maybe we were just used to it already. 10 stories below, you could still see a few on the street. Most of them just stood there, stock still, but there were several sprawled out on the ground, and you would think them dead if not for the occasion that they writhed sporadically like a beetle on its back. Once or twice one wandered in to view, and it did not move like a human. It moved like something on stilts, something that didn't belong in the body it inhabited. It moved like a bug, one leg at a time. It makes the hair stand on end to watch them moving around on the dead street, like watching the shadows of long-legged spiders crawling on the wall.

Barb and I whispered gaily and laughed like kids. It was the sort of laugh brought on by submerged anxiety, a laugh of calamity soon to come. We stayed out there half the night, living for the moment, our moment, a moment that might not come again. There are crazy times ahead.