Inhale

1.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. - Plato

(Short A/N: I have been going through these chapters again and underlining any terms that may not be as widely known or could need some explaining. If a word is underlined like this, you can scroll to the bottom of the chapter and find its definition. Cheers!)

Although this is most certainly not the beginning, it is the point I have chosen to recount the story from. This is both for your benefit as you make your notes and mine, as everything that had lead up to this point was decidedly mundane. Well, to the outsider, at least. Because it wasn't until this year that the clock began it's final countdown, if you will.

Clocks have a habit of flying under the radar until you need them. Ticking, spinning, watching, every minute of every hour of every day. The sound of those seconds passing is almost entirely inconspicuous until it's the only sound lining the darkness at midnight. Once I noticed that sound, it was impossible to push it back into the background. Almost like remembering you're breathing and suddenly having to expel each breath by force.

The first of September had crept up on me silently and surprised me. It dawned on me that I had been stuck on autopilot for the last days, weeks even, and hadn't stopped to take in any of my surroundings. The summer had been spent packing up the last of Mum's things with Marcel. It had passed me by, blurry and out of focus, as though merely a spell of rain. The boxes multiplied then disappeared as Ruell jabbed a finger as round as his cigars at the attic, ordering Marcel to pack them up.

I had remained in this zombie state until late in the night, or more accurately the early morning of September first. A certain dread had been brewing in my stomach for the last four hours until it boiled, waking me from my fitful sleep. The more I thought about it, the more unsettled I felt, and so I set myself the impossible task of ignoring it. If I sat perfectly still, I could feel it crawling around inside of me; a small animal weaving in and out of my ribs.

I stood up, swaying only slightly, stalked across the room, moved the scanty chair slightly to the right. Little empty circles stared up from the dust where the legs had just been planted. I sat on it. To my surprise, it didn't cry out. It only squeaked just slightly as I shifted my weight. It occurred to me that I had never noticed this chair before. Evidently, I was the ignorant one; the carefully accumulated dust showed it was part of our little hoarded palace.

Somewhere, that insipid clock was tick, tick, ticking away. The dread had heightened my senses as far as they could possibly stretch. With every tick of every second, my hand spasmed uneasily against the covers. Cotton on dry skin.

6:35 am.

The hoarding had developed somewhere in the summers spent packing up mum's things; everything suddenly had newfound sentimental value. It had become less about tidying and more about 'rescuing' items from the attic. Unfortunately, mess was a direct consequence of my hoarding. My blazer had dissolved into the piles of clothes, lost at sea. Once I had located it on the handle of the door, I turned to the multiple open books on the desk. I had my insomnia-ridden night attempting to complete last minute essays, to no avail. Those books were definitely overdue, but the library was never accessible at the start of term.

Leaving the books at the office had occurred to me, but the librarians would not be happy. But what was the worst that could happen? A detention, sure, but those weren't terrible. Unless you have flaws on your record...Which I don't, by the way. Nothing worth noting, anyway. I brushed the thought aside, cursing under my breath. The clock chided me from down the hall.

6:38.

Three minutes. Three measly, inconsequential, wasted minutes had passed.

School wouldn't begin for another few hours and I had already exhausted all topics of thought. All the ones I could tolerate anyway, including: The weather, my homework, cleaning, mum's roses, the weather again, the solar system, whatever goes beyond that (a fruitless thread since I had little knowledge on this), and back to the homework.