Leaving my apartment for my morning shift, time seemed to slow down— for only an instant, mind you, and as it sped back up, I hardly gave notice. This temporary slow-down of time happened every day for a week as I stepped foot outside of my apartment and into the hallway. But, I did not notice it as a pattern until near the end of that week. For it was only at the end of that week that I noticed I had to fight myself and my perspective— the way my life seemed on auto-pilot as I trained myself magically— in order to stretch out those seconds.

I honestly had no idea if there was a correlation with my attempt to slow down time as it seemed to speed up again, or not, but as I trained my candy-bar jumping abilities post-shift, I seemed to be doing better at leveling my magical usage. Before, it was typical of a day’s candy-jumping work to net me an efficiency increase of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction. But now, with just a week or more of this temporal bullshit in the hallway, I was increasing my efficiency by a mere fraction. Quite the improvement!

But as I went about my life, I noticed no other areas where time appeared slower. Or faster for that matter. I sped along my life on auto-pilot, going in and doing my job, and then, after my shift, I trained myself in the weirdly empty candy aisle. During this training bits, I did notice a slowdown where I was able to concentrate more— be more ‘in the moment,’ as they say, but it never lasted beyond the training session.

Until today.

Feeling the temporal flow begin to speed again as I placed the candy bar back on the shelf after making it jump up and down for me twice, I fought against the tug of time.

It was awkward, to say the least. As crude as it sounds, fighting back against the time of the universe speeding you along, the motions of mentally fighting back was a lot like taking a shit; you strained yourself, pushed, prepared (in this case, in vein) for a big emptying, but the motions of doing so were off. Fending off temporal hurrying was similar to taking a dump in terms of abstract bodily motions, but it was less physical. Everything was mental. So it was like taking a psychological shit, except the turd was not getting swept up in your whole life becoming abbreviated.

I was, in fact, successful . . . for maybe a minute.

From past experience, I knew that the flow of time would re-encase me moments after I cast my basic-bitch spell and was on my way back to work. So straining myself, I fought back and found the flow of time to be a return to a normalcy I had forgotten existed. I walked halfway through the store— which was about maybe halfway across the “stage-frame,” or “screen” which was what I saw of the world while in cosmic mode— before I couldn’t keep up the struggle any longer and I allowed time to re-absorb me into its embrace.

Was I doing myself any good by fighting back against time? Maybe not. But I honestly couldn’t see myself doing any harm, either. Sure, I would ask Kush about it sometime, but no hurry, especially since Kush wasn’t even around much any more. I figured that testing the limits of my power and helping to discipline it would always be a plus, so unless someone told me to stop it, I would continue playing with time. Besides, I did, in fact, like how time appeared to flow differently now that I had been awakened to the under-reality; the way it numbed me, caressed me, and just allowed me to do my job and recover without the tedium of days and tedium of time to think, it was nice.

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Checking my always-on mental graph, I saw that the “Magical Quality” read “Stranger.” Still, no idea what that was about. But as I recapitulated to time and saw myself fight through day after day of work, I thought it mattered little.

Looking at myself in cosmic mode as time past me by, still not used to the feeling of seeing myself when I was looking at myself, as myself— mirrors excluded— I felt like I was watching a movie about myself; my routines were routine and predictable but only because my cause was great, even if I didn’t yet know what that cause was all about. Not yet, anyway. But after what I felt like a month had gone by and Kush was nowhere to be seen, I had suspected that something was up, especially when Felix, during this time, was nowhere to be seen either— days, sure, it was normal for Felix to be gone, but a whole month? Something was up and I started to worry.

And yet, what could I do? I had no way of truly navigating the under-reality. Heck, I still remember how on that first day of work after the ‘re-orientation’ I was lucky to just find my way to work, let alone find my way around a weird new (under)world that I had little experience within. So, as I saw it, I had two options before me: the first option was to slowly gain in strength and knowledge until I was a one-man wrecking crew. The second option was for me to try and locate my associates with but a scant ability to stand on my own two feet. Evaluating the two options, obviously, the first one stood out to be as the ideal option; but it was ridiculous as it was idealistic. I didn’t have the time to indulge in an adolescent power-fantasy. I had to find my ‘friends’ before it was too late and . . .

Then what? Save them? Save them from what?

I had to slow my roll. I didn’t even know if they were truly gone. For all I knew, Felix and Kush were vacation buds and they were lounging around on some under-reality version of a beach.

Which was ridiculous.

The fact was that I had no clue what was happening. And my options to find out were as limited as my bank account— which was depressing, believe me.

I returned to my apartment and I attempted to formulate a plan of action. Between my experiences thus far I should be able to cobble together a plan to at least locate Kush and Felix. Never mind traveling to where they are and nevermind rescuing them if they were in trouble. Just, for now, discovering where they are and IF they are in trouble.

Although I began the night chipper— especially since the next day I had off; which now, unfortunately, meant that I no longer had access to magical usage— as the evening wore, I found myself less and less full of myself, some noises from the kitchen causing a small disruption in my mental flow and not helping one bit. Every plan I made required resources or knowledge I either did not know outright or would be borderline impossible for me to know without access to a specialist. And I was pretty sure that I knew no specialist.

By now, the noises from the kitchen had swelled to an unignorable point. Finally, it hit me— what was making the noises? I didn’t have any guests over. What the heck?

I grabbed a nearby baseball bat, my trusty home defense system, and entered the kitchen. I had expected to see maybe a stray animal rooting through my trash— how such an animal got in would have been beyond me, but still; if it were not an animal, the next most logical thing would be a robber. In which case, I would need to prepare myself for violence.

But laying my eyes on the noisy interloper, I saw they were neither animal nor criminal.

Rather, the noise maker was good old Chippy.