Time

I lay there on my deathbed. My heart managed to pump enough for one my veins to pop and it
started leaking. The pain… I can’t describe. My vision is blurred, and my life is almost over. I jumped off a building and lived. I lived. It was a miracle that I did live, and it would be a bigger miracle if I survived this. I wanted to kill myself… then I wanted to kill myself even more because of the pain. It almost feels like I’m in another world. I didn’t have anyone’s full attention, they had 7%. There were four people in the room; the rest of it was what was happening to my heart.
I had fallen fifteen stories and landed on a white van with tinted windows. Luckily, it appeared they were going on some kind of trip and they had strapped several mattresses on top of the van. I landed hard enough for the springs in the mattress to collapse. I heard the smacks and pops, and I bounced a while, continuing landing on the metal spring shards. I was too busy with the springs to realize that I had caused a major dent inside of the van, and I had almost killed a baby. The top of the van technically imploded towards the center, and all of the metal around me created a sharp tip directionally facing towards the sky, yet they were slightly crooked. My foot was coincidentally positioned right where one of the metal spikes started, and it poked halfway through my foot.
The driver then lost control of the car distracted from the bump, and spun and slid into a ditch. The car continually flipped over in a muddy pasture, leaving me to die under the car and nearly killing me. I’m surprised I can say that it was lucky how I lived because it was still brutal. Instead of killing me, the van crushed my bones in my hands all the way and popped a little hole inside my left lung.
All I felt inside my hand were blood globs trying to flow to my heart and little bone pieces poking my hand. When I attempted to inhale, all I felt was air flowing out my side, but I still managed to receive air. The driver immediately came out with her baby and dialed 911 for me.
I knew if I survived this, I would suffer pricey charges for that car… but it was alright, as long as I lived. After this I realized I had a lot to live for… but it wasn’t over yet. My life was happening then. It was standing in line with a little confident catch-phrase saying, “THIS WORLD IS MINE”. My eyes were almost perfectly bloodshot, I couldn’t see a thing. I heard a voice. Somebody or something was making noise. I opened my ears and mind to see if I could manage to get my hearing to work.
“I don’t know if there is anything we can do for her…”
That was my clue. That was my life. I kept thinking it was over. I heard the heart rate machine
beeping over and over every second… I knew when I heard the long beep my life was over.
“Give her another shot at the internal heart fertilization.”
I didn’t have any idea what they were about to do. All I thought was that it might help me. The
beeping started going faster, my veins started pumping harder.
“Ha-Hailey? Are you awake?”
==2==
TIME.
My brain corresponded late. It felt like a couple of hours before I reacted. My mouth opened, but the words only scattered and didn’t come out the way I planned. All I heard was me spraying streaks of breath out.
“Talk to me.”
I felt more air coming into my lungs. He must have been pumping more in. I opened my mouth
and words slowly mumbled out…
“I’m awake...”
All the breath tumbled out my nose. It took a lot of air to say that.
“Hailey, I’m glad to say that you might make it.”
My heart shot up in joy.
“R-really? Yes! Thank you so much!”
“Your only shot is to give you this last surgery. We will open up your heart and inject a shot into it, build larger connections to your veins, make metal bones for your hands, and sew up your lung. It’s very risky and your chance of surviving is about 47%. The odds are that you will not make it… I’m not attempting to depress you. It’s just that we should warn you…”
“I-it’s alright, I-I didn’t want to live before that...”
It seemed as if I had just shot a bullet into the doctor’s chest. I looked at him to see his facial expression very depressing. Tears started to roll down his face… I must have touched his heart.
Some people say there is no such thing as love… but I think I might have felt it right then. I felt like the whole world’s joy just struck my heart. I closed my eyes and heard a man crying of joy… when I opened I realized he was crying from sorrow for me.
“Don’t be sad… look into your mirror, you have a lot to live for, and if I make it out, so do I.”
He continued to cry, and gave me a pill. The man seemed to be quite emotional, but I couldn’t
help him really.
“T-take it please, it’ll put you to sleep…” He handed me some water. His bright-blue eyes glared from the shaking water on his eyes. I put the pill inside my mouth and drank half the cup of water.
I heard his voice and felt his tears drip against my face as he waited for me to fall into a state of constant sleep. I then heard another voice crying. It was another doctor. Then another voice; this one sounded like a nurse. Soon I heard about ten voices crying. I felt dizzy... a tear slowly fell down my cheek…
Darkness.
==3==
TIME.
Darkness. It’s a beautiful thing, when you see it… you don’t see any 3D object at all. All you see is a little black 2D box, and maybe a bit of flashing colors if you close your eyes hard. My eyelids slowly separated to reveal a bit of light and to realize I was still alive. The pain was gone, but I felt different… they had performed the surgery!
I rose up.
“You’ve — cured me?”
Nobody was in the room. The light was on, and all my tubes giving me air and blood were
disconnected. The door was open too. I attempted to get up, muscles aching, I slowly rose up off my bed. The room was quiet and the window was dark. There was lots of traffic outside I could tell from the cars. I ran outside the door and looked at the clock on the hallway wall. It said 9:50 PM. I ran down the hallway, seeing the elevator at the end… then I saw a crooked smile on a bloody black face at the corner of the hall…
Shocked at the sight, I let out a small yet loud scream and fell back on the ground. That only
caused me worse pain. At least I was alive right?
I rose up and saw it was gone. I thought it had been a figure of my imagination from all the
chaos I had been through in the past week. I knew I should have stayed in bed, the doctors would have wanted me to stay there for about ten months anyways, but I felt good. Very good. There was nothing from stopping me, so I kept on going. I pressed the elevator button, and heard the chains shaking oddly.
I gained a sense of fear as the odd rickety noise continued. The elevator doors opened with a CREAK, as if the doors were rusty. I got in the machine in a precautious manner. I turned around and pressed the first-floor button…
Okay, something wasn’t right. I’m okay with elevators, but this was not right. Why would I wake up to see no one inside my room? I began to feel sick, like my stomach was about to turn on me. The chains of the elevator shook again, going down.
I reached the first floor to see the lounge room empty. The person at the counter was sitting
down doing some paperwork. She looked up at me. She had black hair and perfectly blue eyes. She
looked about thirty.
“How did you get in here?”
“I’ve been in here. I’ve actually been in here for about four days. I woke up in my room and no one was in there. Can you explain what’s going on for me?”
“Sweetie, it’s 1:33 AM on a holiday. Today is Christmas Eve. Whoever was in your room must have forgot about you. What room were you in?”
“Wait a second, it’s December 24th? It’s 1:33? Are you kidding me? When I had my accident it was January 16th!”
==4==
TIME.
“Wow, about 11 months! Some accident! What did you do?”
“... I tried to kill myself by jumping off a fifteen-story building.”
“WOW! That’s… that’s amazing… I’m surprised you lived. If you could tell me what room number you
were in I can give you some information.”
“It was #01332.” I don’t know why, but there was something strange when I said that.
She started typing in information into her desktop computer.
“It… it says it’s not occupied. What’s your name and when were you born? Maybe I can try finding your injury record.”
“My name is Hailey Worde and I was born August 11th, 1998.”
“So you just turned 12?”
“... Obviously not? I’m 13.”
“Ha, nice try.”
“No… seriously, I am 13. It’s December 24th, 2011 and I just turned 13.”
“Honey, you must have been in the hospital for so long you don’t remember what year it is. It’s 2010.”
“That can’t be right… I came back from a surgery in 2011. Is your calendar wrong?”
“I-I’m sorry, but it’s not 2011 yet.”
“No! It’s 2011 and I know it!”
“I just checked on microsoft.com, it’s 1:34 AM on December 24th, 2010.”
“Uh—okay, thanks… I guess? Can I leave?”
“We don’t have any record of you being here at all, so you can leave. If you still feel hurt you can just chill here.”
“It’s 1 AM and pitch dark, I might as well rest here. My muscles still hurt.” I started towards the cushioned chair in the lounge room.
“So why did you want to kill yourself?”
“E-excuse me?”
“You said you attempted suicide. Why did you want to kill yourself?”
“It... it was complicated. My mom was so mean, and I kept getting bad grades for not doing my work.”
==5==
TIME.
“You have a lot to live for, and you’re beautiful. You shouldn’t be ashamed of your grades, you just need to do your work. Then maybe your mom will start being nicer.”
“Ha, maybe. I doubt it.” I kept walking towards the chair.
“Hey, just try it.”
Those words rang in my mind like a bell. I kept hearing it over and over again, like a never-ending echo. Whenever the sound wanted to be stored into my brain, it seemed like my brain
ricocheted it and it bounced back into my hearing. I look down at my hands and attempt to cover my ears to stop the sound. It kept ringing; I didn’t even know why. Must be from my headache. I attempted to ignore it.
I lay down on the blue silk chair and closed my eyes. My heart felt warm. I felt like I was at home again, when Mom would cover me up in an electric blanket when it would reach twenty degrees in Florida, even though Florida is mostly warm. I haven’t experienced this in a while.
Then my heart sank. I remembered my mom didn’t come to visit me in the hospital. Not even
once. She may have texted me every once in a while, but that was it. Usually four-syllable sentences like “Are you okay?” and it bothered me. I guess my mom hates me.
I tossed and turned throughout the night, hearing the keys tapping over and over again. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, smack, tap, tap, tap, TAP, smack… the same noises over and over again. I started to think about that face I saw in the corner earlier. Its grin haunted me—the way it stared at me left a mental scar right on my forehead. After fifteen minutes of paranoia of the beast, I finally let my mind rest. Slowly, my mind closed out about what happened. I had fallen asleep in the chair immediately.
I heard a bump. Something just bumped. I was asleep for quite a while, but I heard a bump. I
know I did. I got up and turned around with all my aching muscle to see the desk lady gone. I decided to investigate so I stumbled over to the counter. The computer was still on, but no one was there. I saw what looked like a report, handwritten, about what happened in the hospital for the day that passed (it wasn’t ever neat).
I scooted a little over the counter so I could look at the time on the computer. It wasn’t there, she must have disabled it. I snuck over the counter, attempting to not knock over the papers. I jumped into the chair with relief. I shook the mouse around, and opened up Internet Explorer (it didn’t have Google Chrome or Firefox). I typed in Google, “Time EST”. The page froze up, and a Windows XP bubble came out of the taskbar and it said that it had lost connection to PUBLIC Hospital (the hospital’s router). This kind of scared me. I closed out IE and reopened it again. I typed in, “time”. If I couldn’t get EST, I maybe could get CST. It froze up, even though it had regained connection when I reopened IE.
I was scared out of my mind. I noticed a note on the desk. I read it with hope it was the lady.
My Cell – (555) 525-5786 (I do not want to share the real number, for the audience’s sake.)
I got out my phone and attempted to dial the number. Looks like I had service.
==6==
TIME.
The low broken sound of the number calling rang three times and I hear the click. It was silent
for about ten seconds before I thought about making a remark. I could hear small breathing.
“… Hello?”
“Who is calling?” It didn’t sound like the lady at all. It was in fact a man, using a voice editor to make his voice intensely low.
“You tell me who I called first.”
“You have reached the...” The phone suddenly stopped sound. I heard a small click, and then it came back on.
“—and if you’re calling from the hospital then you better...” The click went off again to signal the phone muting.
“—it’s in there, please get out!” I heard the phone constantly misplace itself on the phone hanger, indicating he was hanging up.
So there I was, all alone. All I knew that something was in here, and I didn’t know what. He
referred to whatever is in here as an "it", so I knew something was wrong. Was he talking about an animal? Probably a huge dog in here that got lost in here and they’re trying to evacuate everyone… maybe that’s why the lady left. But I still couldn’t figure out why she said it was 2010. Maybe she was right, and I was just in captivity so long I didn’t keep track of the time. Or maybe I was right, and she had the time mixed up. My head started spinning. It didn’t matter, I knew I had to leave here. I got out of the chair and pushed the door to get out of the counter area, and started for the glass double-doors. I stopped when I reached the doors.
I saw something… not a car or a human. Nothing humane at all… it looked human, it had limbs
and a face except no nose. Sharp teeth, blood dripping out of its mouth… was this the it he was talking about? I blinked once…
It went away. My imagination had taken its extent, it must have figured out how to reach my
fear element. It was fine, as long as it was still my imagination. I sighed of relief and put my hand against the cold golden handle to open the door… then I realized it wouldn’t go any farther down. I was locked in here. I decided to try the emergency exit. I turned around and run past the elevator to the black hallway. I found it on my right, and pushed. It wasn’t locked, but something was behind it. Something big and heavy. I was doomed in here. My heart beat was racing, almost as hard as when I was in my accident.
I saw a light come on down the hallway, in a room with a closed door. That was what made me
jump. That was it. That was the person or thing the man on the phone was talking about. I started walking down towards the hall to see what was in that room. Whole body shaking, I bent down to look under the door to see if anyone or anything was in there. I saw legs, but they were dark, like a silhouette of them. They turned towards the door… I had to hide. He, she or it was coming for the door and I had
==7==
TIME.
to hide. I wanted to rush, but I couldn’t make any noise. I tip-toed over to the lounge room and got the blanket which I was sleeping under and covered myself up on the couch so no one could see me. I heard the rust door open slowly. I heard heavy breathing, then loud unidentified footsteps walking towards the direction of the door. I slightly poked a hole in the blanket where two pieces of silk were sewn, and looked through it.
He was walking towards the door and watching in anticipation to see if he would unlock the door I realized he wasn’t heading for that. He was heading for the corner of the room. I reached the corner, turned around and sat down. It was still a silhouette, but I could tell it wasn’t a woman. He just sat there in the corner, looking for something. He was pretty tall, so he was easy to see on the couch.
There he was for about ten minutes, just sitting there. He looked around every fifteen seconds or so, then he or it just put its head down again. He or it looked dismayed, like something was bothering it. After about thirty minutes, he stopped looking around. I was nearly asleep, then I realized he started moving. He slowly crept towards me, in a manner that a lion searching for a small bug on the ground would. He reached the rug, where the couch is laying on. When it reached about three feet away from me, I backed my eye a little away from the hole, so he wouldn’t see me. I kept referring to it as a he and it because I didn’t know what it was. I could still hear him breathing heavily, and he was slowly disturbing me. Not that he didn’t disturb me already.
He grabbed the blanket with his hand, and slowly took it off of me… his face was still a silhouette. The seconds turned to minutes. The minutes turned to hours. At least it felt like it was hours before he had pulled the whole blanket off of me. When just my face was left to uncover, he snatched the blanket quickly to reveal my whole bruised body. He grinned, I saw his perfectly white teeth.
I recognized the smile from photographic memory. He was the one in the corner of the top floor
by the elevator in the hall. That was the face. I wanted to scream, but when I opened my mouth, the sound wouldn’t come out. I remembered when I blinked, it disappears. I remembered it was a figure of imagination. So I blinked.
It was gone. I jumped out of the couch. It was still dark out. This can’t be real. Why would I blink and something go away? What would happen if I didn’t blink...? That was my experiment for the night. I decided that would be my project. I sat back down on the couch to wait for the grinning monster to come back.
I had waited at least an hour, even though I still didn’t have the time right. It wouldn’t come
back. I was tired, so I decided to rest. Everything was happening so fast, but so slow. My decisions were quick, but the time I took to do them took a while. I laid back my head against the red pillow. Then I saw a little glow through my closed eyelids. A light turned on. It was either my target or some worker in the hospital. The same room; it had to be the same thing. I waited for the door to open. It creaked open once again, and I sat back in the couch with the blanket over me. Sure enough it was the beast.
He sat back in the corner for some reason. He kept doing the same thing, looking around every few seconds and putting his head back down. Then he started the process of crawling towards me again. While he crept, I realized what he was doing.
==8==
TIME.
He was trying to make his victim when someone came in the door. And if nobody came in, he would kill me instead. That was my best guess, at least. I was ready. I closed my eyes to get the water flowing and ready for a staring contest. He went through the process of pulling off the blanket again... And that grin it will haunt me forever, but I faced it.
We both sat there, staring at each other.
Waiting for someone to move.
His grin got wider.
And wider.
And wider.
My eyes wanted to roll back into my head, but I knew I couldn’t. My eyes still open, his grin suddenly but slowly started to close off.
He vanished into the air, even though I didn’t blink. There was no telling where he went. I sat up again and realized it was kind of light outside. I rose up with intrigue and walked to the door. I looked through the glass for a while to notice everything was normal. No creepy things were staring at me, no grins were widening at me. I tried the door... it was unlocked. I was free…
But I seemed to have forgotten about one thing: what was behind that emergency door? I ran
over to where it was down the hall, and attempted to push. It still wouldn’t budge, so I backed up and ran out the main door. I sniffed the fresh air, it was good to be outside again. I ran around the building, and to the door where you exit from the emergency door. Slowly I twisted the knob and opened the door…
In the corner. I saw it, but it wasn’t normal. It had two faces, and had something in its hands… and the baby had something in his hands. I recognized both faces. One was the one I saw inside the hospital many times. One was something I recognized very well, but I can’t say just yet.
The object it had in its arms was a baby.
The person who saved me had saved me to haunt me.
The baby had a clock in its hand. For once I wasn’t so happy to see the time.
You know what time it was?
1:34 PM, January 16th, 2011. The day I attempted to kill myself.
I just realized I was cursed. Whenever I blink, time goes back. I blinked.
I opened my eyes. I guess the curse was gone. The grin will haunt me forever.
==9==
TIME.
(Author's Note: What happened after this is not completely necessary. This was in the girl’s journal I found in 2004, I’ve been struggling to research it ever since. No one had seemed to hear about it, so I worked my way up, found missing pictures all over the county. All ripped pieces. I will go outside in a moment; my two last pieces have arrived. I have told the mailmen to keep it classified, make it look suspicious.)
You cannot tell the passage of time, but I received my two pieces. I cannot make out the figure. Wait a second, look a little to your left…
Oh-Oh my—the picture, it’s—it’s you…
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Category:Beings
Category:Diary/Journal
Category:Mental Illness