Wednesday Night Schedule

Schedule - 401
Sarah Van Name


1:15: I lie awake.

1:17: My roommate is quiet. She rarely moves, stretched out long and thin under her sheets, and I can’t even hear her breath – just the smooth hum of the fan, the blinds clicking in rhythm with wind, and the rain outside.

1:18: Music plays out on dark walls, shadows shift and speak. At the end, it blurs, stutters, and begins again. It’s a record that I have played so many times it makes me physically sick to hear it. Acid cuts and recuts itself inside my stomach. The scene pauses, begins again.

1:30: I am shaking, saltwater threatening to overrun the sideways canyons of my eye sockets, but too tired to scratch or bite, to turn sadness, worry, to fury. I don’t have the drive to hate myself for this.

1:44: The rain talks to me in Morse code and click language. It tells me a riddle: there are three answers to a question. One is impossible, one unfathomable, and the last is perfect. This question will answer itself, but you have to wait. You can’t answer this question. So what will you do while you wait?

2:02: The linoleum of the bathroom is cold and wet in places, rain or overzealous sinks having spread water in continent-shaped swathes across the floor. Here, I can hear more clearly the way the rain is hitting the leaves outside, the stone, the pavement, the distinct sound and echo of each. I swear I can hear it as it exits the sky. The light is pale, and my bruises stand out stark and sickly on my skin. I go back to my room.

2:04: I tuck my knees up to my chest and stare at my computer.

2:20: I get back in bed. Take the needle off the record. It is magnetically attracted to the disaster it prophesizes, tries to reach down and make me cry again. But I don’t let it. I make a deal and say, if you stop now, you can start again later, hurt me, yes, but later.

2:25: I wait.

2:48: I sleep.

That night I dream of morning, the world still swathed in the dark winter blue of an approaching storm. When I wake up, I am surprised to find the sky a mild grey, and the girls with their rain boots still walking through puddles like the downpour of last night meant nothing.