Killing Time

Time is money. It's true. Time was hers to spend.

Things will soon be lost in the endless sands of time. Globally, yes. Personally, a definite no.

Time heals. It only made her forget a little, but it literally aged her.

When you're young, you fail to see just how little time you have. To age 18, there are 18 years, but only 939 weeks. At most you have 6570 days or 157680 hours, more than half of which are spent sleeping or in boredom. You can, at most, spend 9460800 minutes in those years doing things like walking, talking, eating, sleeping, staring off into space, worrying, thinking, wishing, believing, and waiting. Keep in mind, those minutes hold 567648000 seconds which clock by so fast you don't notice them.

By the day, you lose 86,400 seconds. By the day, you lose 1440 minutes. By the day, you lose time. Seize the day, that's what always ran through her head. Squeeze the day. Ring it for everything it's worth. You won't get a second chance.

You will run out of seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months, years, decades. The deadline is coming up. Coming ever closer. Cornering you with the intention to take you whether you like it or not. It's the event when death and fate themselves comes to meet you personally. It is the day when what you've done is judged by someone, anyone. It is the moment when you lose the ability to touch, sense, and feel others. It is the point when you lose the chance to affect our world and exist in this reality.

She was all too aware of the deadline. She had seen it arrive for her entire family. That's why she hated "killing time". She also didn't believe in God or any gods, only herself. And she disliked other people as well as any kind of relationship with them. She only valued time. She did work and contributed to society. In fact she was dead set against not doing so, that was killing time.

She avoided talking about how people spent their time for her own sake. Inevitably, the subject would bring about a mention of time which had been "killed". It made her inner self boil with anger. She disliked talking to people because "small talk" was a waste of time. Interaction with people only showed her how wasteful they could be and wasted her time.

There was an exception to people and her distaste for them. There was one man where she worked whom she enjoyed the company of very much. He was her subordinate and worked under her. She was his boss. Their relationship was purely work based, all business, no chit chat.

On the rare occasions when he entered her office he was fast, efficient, and strong. When he visited, he skipped the useless greetings and went onto the more important things. The company had benefited greatly from his arrival and work. His work was perfect. He was perfect. He received nothing but praise from the other time-wasting employees when they gossiped. He corrected people when they were wasting the time.

She looked forward to his visits. The efficiency displayed during those periods gave her tingles. Sometimes she wished a problem would arise so she could constructively spend time on it while he was in the room. He was the exception.

Once she even went to a black hole for time known as a Christmas Party. She needed to go for some business related conversations, clearly not a waste of time. On top of that, he was going to be there, also, for those business negotiations.

At the party after those negotiations were finished, she turned and started for the exit. He startled her with a question. He asked her why she should not stay a little while longer. He said she needed a break, and that if she stayed other possible investors and business operations might pop up who would need her attention. All her reason left her. She couldn't resist so she stayed. She stayed and wasted time.

He left for a few moments to get them both some drinks. She stood there awkwardly watching the rest of the crowd. She listened to some of their conversations. "Did you hear she did that?" "Can you believe this?" "Isn't it interesting that...." Pointless. All of it.