Foston Slacks - Time's Flies

19

They left the café with the cliché waiter grumbling about them as he cleared away their table. They made solid progress along the corridor, despite Foston stopping every so often to enthuse, at length, about this shop, or that strange looking doorway that seemed to envelop people instead of opening for them, or that car that took in dirty air through the exhaust and produced petroleum through the engine and into its tank to be off-loaded at an extortionate rate (plus tax) at the next petrol station.

Everything, for once, seemed to be going well. Only another four, perhaps, five miles left to walk, according to Foston, and they would be at Time's door, or times door. The pronunciation sounded the same and she still wasn't sure Time, or time, was a being or a magazine, or what. Everything was going smoothly.

Until the entire corridor seemed to lurch, bend back upon itself and then reassert itself back into its original configuration. Or, mostly its original configuration.

While Clara vomited into a drain at the side of the road running along the length of the corridor (the lurch and reconfiguration had made her stomach decide it had had quite enough of pretty much everything, thank you very much, and that it was done playing games), Foston held her hair back, patting her head, saying 'There, there', and she wasn't sure if he was comforting her, or pointing out where, exactly, she should be vomiting. She regretted ordering that second bottle of vodka and quietly, trying not to make too much of a thing out of it, pulled the half-empty bottle from her pocket and set it aside. She pushed it an inch or two further away.

"That was a doozy!" Foston seemed to find it all quite exciting, offering her his handkerchief (freshly laundered at the Schadenfreude Hotel) to wipe the dribble of vomit from the corners of her mouth. She took the opportunity to blow her nose and closed the handkerchief up before she accidentally looked at what had been blown out.

"I expect you're going to exposition that to me. It felt like my entire insides had suffered a colonic irrigation. From the outside to the inside." Through bleary eyes, she looked around.

Something was different and she couldn't quite her finger on what. She held up her hands, making a box with her forefingers and thumbs, like some kind of amateur filmmaker. It didn't help, but she felt sure she could now totally fake being a director. She couldn't see it. Something. She didn't know what, but something was different.

And then she realised. It wasn't something. It was almost everything. The clothing people wore was completely different, all shoulder-pads and sunglasses and sleeves tugged up to the top of their forearms. People driving in sleek, more rounded looking cars that were all completely different, yet all pretty much looking exactly the same.

Another lurch occurred and, suddenly the shoulder-pads, sunglasses and sleeve affectations were all gone and everyone seemed to be wearing bright coloured, baggy running gear. Another lurch and everything changed again. Clothing came in more neutral, muted colours, everyone seemed to have spray-tans. The women wore thick, but 'natural' looking make-up that only looked natural if someone had never seen anyone not ever wearing make-up, with long, fake eyelashes, plumped up lips and thick, so thick, eyebrows painted on so badly that they looked like rejects from a Nineteen-Forties comedy team.

And phones. Everyone now had a mobile phone. Everybody! The conversation, that had provided a pleasant background noise as they travelled the corridor, was now almost non-existent as everyone stared, their heads bowed, down at their phones, tapping away and, somehow, failing to walk into each other.

Without even thinking about it, she pulled her own phone out of her handbag and tried to load up her favourite social media. It was instinct, or peer pressure, or programming, she didn't know which. What she did know, was that her phone still had no signal. Which was annoying, because she totally wanted to take some photographs of food. Needed to. Even if the food was someone else's.