by Russ BICKERSTAFF

It had hap­pened with­out warn­ing. It had hap­pened with­out provo­ca­tion. It had hap­pened when I’d least ex­pect­ed it. (Or at least when I hadn’t ex­pect­ed it.) On the first day, they took every­thing. On the sec­ond day, they took every­thing else.

On the third day, I had noth­ing. (Least of all my­self.) This was go­ing to make it re­al­ly dif­fi­cult to get every­thing back. I wouldn’t have known where to start. (And it oc­curs to me that I might not have known where to stop either.)

I was al­most pos­i­tive that they had tak­en all of every­thing from me. Due to an er­ror of some sort. Some al­go­rithm got con­fused. A dec­i­mal was dropped and they took every­thing. And every­thing else. (In­clud­ing me.)

I know that they had not mis­tak­en­ly tak­en every­thing from me. That much I knew. But when they took every­thing else. Well… clear­ly that had been a mis­take of some sort.

When they pos­sess every­thing I have. And every­thing I am, How am I to get any of it back? When they pos­sess even my will to have it re­turned? And some­how I feel I’m miss­ing some­thing more than they’ve al­ready tak­en from me. With every­thing else gone, all I seemed to have was time. (Or some wispy phan­tom of a con­cept of it.) So all I could do was wait.

Filed under Fiction on August 7th, 2020

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