Infinite

One

“...so what I’m saying is, there could be any amount of hours in a day.” Dean paused for a second or two before continuing. “There could just be twelve hours or twenty-four or twenty-six or thirty. Why are we being dictated by the concept of time? We didn’t have an hourly system until the Greeks decided they need it. So by right, I could even question the existence of a day, of time itself. What if our lives could be measured by something other than time? What if it is measured by the number of people we loved or the number of lives we have changed? What if I say time doesn’t exist? Guys?”

He looked around the room expectantly. Martin was nowhere to be seen. Jake was snoring away on a chair, his feet propped up on the desk in front of it. A few steps away, Slasher was slumped up against the wall fast asleep with his hands on a guitar. He shook his head and turned away. On the other side of the room, Dash-Beard was lying spread-eagle on the bed, his head rolling off a side. A half-lit cigarette dangled between his trigger and middle finger and the bassist took a long drag as he stared up at the ceiling with a vacant expression. Dean looked at him hopefully.

“DB?”

“Fuck your existential bullshit, mate,” Dash-Beard drawled without looking at Dean.

Dean sighed and turned towards the only other sentient occupant in the room.

“What about you, beautiful? What says you?”

Fang, Martin’s golden retriever, thumped her tail once and rolled her tongue gleefully.

“Exactly, that’s what I thought too!”

He grinned and gave the dog a good rub behind her ears. There was a loud burp behind him and then a pair of shoes appeared in the door. Dean looked up to see Martin staring him with a can of beer in hand.

“Stop flirting with my dog, asshole,” Martin said as he settled down on the floor beside Dean and Fang.

“I would, but I think she’s got a bit of a thing for me.”

As if to second his statement, Fang trotted onto Dean’s lap and licked his face a few times.

“See? Ladies love me.”

Martin snorted. “So then get a girlfriend who’s not my dog.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Twenty-eighty,” Dean replied distractedly, laughing as he tried to get away from Fang’s sloppy kisses. Martin’s stopped chugging back his beer and stared at Dean. For a second, Dean thought he was going to saying something important, but instead, Martin just shook his head and said, “You son of a bitch. What about that girl?”

“Which girl?” Dean asked, even though he knew full well which girl Martin was talking about.

“The one from that fake ass school you go to. The one in the writing class...Crazy Shits in Book or something.”

“Madness. It’s called Madness in Literature. It’s a class on the study of psychological disorders in –”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I don’t even know why you go sit in that class. You’re not even enrolled in the school.”

“There is no harm in gain knowledge.”

“But there is in posing as a student.”

Dean ran his fingers through Fang’s soft fur lazily. “No one knows.”

“Yet.”

“It’s not like I’ll do it forever, anyway. Just until...you know.” The transplant. Which may never come. Which mean that Dean just had to keep going for dialysis and treatments and consultations every other week until A) he gets a spanking new liver or B) he dies. Neither sounds very appealing to him, but what choices did he have? Some days, he woke up thinking it was going to be okay, it was going to be alright even if he dies. On other days, however, he wanted to throw everything at a wall and scream over how shitty life could be. He used to think that people who were knew they were dying would have a better grasp on life than those who weren’t, but he realised a while ago that it was wrong. Everyone was dying and nobody knew what to do with themselves, so they try to distract themselves with things. Money. Music. Books. Ideas. For Dean, it was abstract ideas. Thinking about abstract ideas made him feel as though perhaps he was more than himself, that he was more than just a body and a mind, that when he dies, he might not be completely obliterated. And that reminded him that he was, in fact, on a certain train of thought before he got distracted. He turned towards Martin.