Writing Prompt

A bright smile. “Good morning!”

A twitch of the brows. “How’s it goin?”

A nod of the head. “How do you do?”

A respectful bow. “Sir, Madam.”

A lively cheer. “Top o’ the mornin to ya!”

Man, am I running out of greetings.

“Guten tag,” I say to the elderly couple I saw leaving the hotel earlier this morning. “I’m Jeremy. Feel free to ask me if you need anything!” I shout as they walk away. They’re on their way to the elevators and respond with awkward smiles. Probably wondering what the hell forty-something-year-old me is doing loitering around the lobby the entire day.

Technically, being polite to hotel guests and visitors isn’t part of my job, but I need something to break the monotony of daily twelve-hour shifts broken only by two thirty-minute breaks to snack or take a piss. The rest of the time, I stand in my little corner and watch the world go by.

I was hired because I possess a very particular set of skills. Skills that I have acquired… well, I didn’t really acquire them. And they aren’t a set. It’s just the one skill. More of a genetic mutation really. Congenital. I didn’t even have to work for it.

“Bonjour,” I greet a woman in a pantsuit rushing by me. On the way to the business center, no doubt. I’ve watched enough people coming and going to form educated guesses on where they’re headed.

Somehow the manager of the hotel saw this defect as a superpower. But what does Ivan know? He lives out the plot of Dazed and Confused half the time. I’m not even sure Ivan understood what I meant when I explained it. And when I explained it again later and stressed just how useless this “skill” was, Ivan had called it a superpower nonetheless.

It’s possibly the most useless superpower on the planet. Not even super, really. But what’s the opposite of super? Does an antonym even exist? Probably not. This talent of mine is so un-super that they haven’t even come up with a word for it. “Subpar” doesn’t come close.

I’m not part of the reception staff. I’m not maintenance, either. The closest thing I can call myself is “part of the security team.” But I’m not equipped with a gun or a taser or a baton. I don’t even have a walkie talkie. I’m just here to observe, basically. And, on the off-chance that they actually need my services, I get escorted by one of the security guys on duty—usually the laziest one who couldn’t spot a security threat even if it was wielding a gun in his face—and taken to the hospital across the street.

On one of his Wacky Tobbacky Weekends, as Ivan liked to call them, he made a deal with one of his buddies who just happens to be an MRI technologist. They met when Ivan “slipped and fell in the shower” and bashed his head on the sink. Though, if I had to guess the real story, Ivan passed out on some form of psychoactive substance and tried to fly off his couch again.

Anyway, Ivan’s buddy Greg allows us occasional use of the fMRI machine for whenever something untoward occurs at the hotel, like a bag snatching. Or a celebrity outburst. Their hospital is equipped with the latest equipment—including a machine that can reproduce digital images of my memories as I replay them in my head. A brave new world indeed.

Sometimes, Ivan won’t even bother with the MRI if he just wants to get the dirt on some girl he’s stalking online. One time, the girl stayed in the lobby talking to some dude for a whole hour. Ivan made me replay the entire hour over and over that night: I watched her in slow-mo, fluttering her vapid eyes and clacking that damn pearl necklace as she told the guy how impressed she was that he was a data analyst because she “loved computers.”

It was more likely that she loved the expensive watch and the expensive suit the guy was wearing—and the money he used to buy them.

I felt a little bad reciting their entire conversation to Ivan. Working in guest services at the hotel—even if he supervises a small bunch of people—doesn’t exactly pay that well. His shoulders slumped and he looked at the floor before telling me to repeat their conversation three more times. When it finally sunk in, he said “thanks, Jer” and lit up a joint. Our conversation got real philosophical that night.

Now, standing in the middle of the lobby for the four hundred and ninety-eighth day since I began this job that required no discernible skillset whatsoever, I start to wonder if anything interesting will ever happen while I’m here. The bag snatching and celebrity outburst happened months ago, months apart. I’m afraid I’ll be going an entire year now without having anything to show for it—or anything to show the higher ups, who’re already starting to bug Ivan about how I would be the best lamb to slaughter in the event that layoff season came round again. It would be a crappy Christmas indeed if that ever happened. Although it might actually push me to get off my ass and find a better job that doesn’t involve me standing around like a moron.

As dazed and confused as Ivan is, he’s been real clever about convincing hotel management to let me stay on. First, he brought up how there had been a power outage last year, which was the only time the hotel found out that their twenty-year-old generator wasn’t generating shit (and probably hadn’t been for years). Not only did the security cameras cut out, but the power surge corrupted a huge part of the data on their computers—including security footage.

After that, Ivan went on about this huge heist that had targeted a bank in New York. It was an inside job, he said, so the security tapes had been erased for the entire five hours that those ski-masked, leotarded hooligans (his words) were popping the candy store cherries out of their vaults (also his words). “With Jeremy,” he said, “you can’t erase nothing. It’s all there all the time,” he said, waving his hands around his head like he was describing a lunatic instead of an overemployed employee.

Lastly, Ivan told them—and I had to give him credit for saving this for last—that I’m being paid minimum wage, without any benefits. Which is a huge win for the hotel because, with me, they basically have an extra lobby emoloyee that guests can ask for directions or other concerns. An extra employee that they don’t pay as much as their actual lobby attendants.

That placated management enough to allow me to stay and, when I met up with Ivan later that night, he looked at me smugly and said, “Always be closing,” right before lighting up a huge blunt.

“Do you even know what that means?” I asked him.

“Sure I do,” he said through a throat straining against weed smoke. “It’s sexual. But it also applies to what I just did for you, masterfully, artfully, this afternoon.”

I was about to tell him he’d gotten “always be closing” absolutely wrong, and that what he did wasn’t exactly the work of a master manipulator, but I stopped myself. Ivan is the only reason I’m not homeless or starving or dead right now. It was true that night, and it’s still true now.

I survey the lobby. I watch kids running around the huge oak table in the middle of the foyer. I see a group of women having brunch, drinking mimosas and toasting nothing but the time between early morning and noon. I see an irate man gesticulating angrily at Audrey, the woman manning the front desk.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that will break the monotony of my day and get me into that MRI machine which is, pathetically, now a goal of mine just because. Just because it’s the only thing that will actually make me feel useful. The only thing that can visibly prove that there’s a reason for the freakshow mutation that happened when I didn’t even look human yet. Hadn’t breathed in air yet. Hadn’t seen the light of day yet.

“Have a good day,” I say softly to a man heading to the revolving doors. He’s sporting a shiny briefcase and a shinier wristwatch. Probably off to earn the big bucks using his big brain and his big business instincts.

I sigh, wallowing in my own mediocrity. Thinking about how the only guy who thought I was hireable and friendable and not-a-waste-of-space was a burnout who could only get girls in his dreams, or in my closed-circuit-camera of a brain. I can’t even fast forward my memories. I can only replay them and slow them down, in my screwy brain that controls my screwy life—here, now, in the real world. Where I’ve been living in slow motion my entire life.

I look around me and see people walking, strolling, shuffling. Even standing still, they’re all moving too fast for me.

I met him in the club and that was that. One night with Andrew Merricks and I’m stuck with this … I don’t want to say it’s a burden. It has its uses. The first time it happened I saved someone’s life! But the sensation it gives me, that feeling of dissociation that surrounds me when time slows down. It’s horrible!

I do what anyone would if they were in my situation, I use my ability to help people. I don’t seek out trouble, but my word does it have a way of following me around.

Just the other day I witnessed a man trying to steal a woman’s bag. What do I do? I slow time I run up to them and punch him in the nose. He flies backwards, blood flying everywhere, and she is none the wiser.

To an outsider I have what could only be referred to as super speed. But in reality it’s just the depletion of time.

Everything goes so slowly around me, it’s almost like time has paused, except it’s still moving on like it’s an animation missing a few frames, like it’s a video lagging.

This ability wasn’t the only thing I contacted from Andrew, I am HIV Positive now. That also changed the trajectory of my life in a massive way, but I’m still going two decades later and I’m still slowly pottering on.

My life changed when I slept with Andrew Merricks, but I wouldn’t change it back. With what he has given me I can make a positive difference in the lives of many others.

Her hair whipped around violently at the howling wind that rang in our ears. Her face became covered and soon she felt like nobody. No longer did she feel like my wife. I jumped, not thinking, not processing, just trying to get to the love of my life. The building was 50 stories high, I’d never make it. The train station was empty. The last train screeched to a stop. Somehow the train felt impatient, like it was pulling in Leah. She’d given in quickly, feeling completion of her time on earth. Leah was too dazed to truly think, her mind warped by the train’s presence. Still facing me, she stared, I couldn’t see her face among the black swirling hair engulfing her head. I knew in my heart whatever version of my wife that was, she was staring, with a small smile on her face. A pivot on her toe had her back to me in a second. Inches away from the open train door, she took a step. In a second the whole train station was gone. Her hair just escaped from my grasp. I now am on the ground inches away from that now ghost of a train. Seconds felt like hours. So close, she was right there. “I love you Emma.” A voice whispered in the wind. I whipped around, searching frantically, just to find a small toy train laying still with a passenger with black hair riding aboard.

Traveling fast Don’t look back Ever last Survive the blast

Finding strength Run the length Hiding beneath Proceed don’t think

Slow motion sleuth Know the truth Holding back now let loose Sipping lightly on vermouth Tessa🦋

“So we meet again Captain Mercury. You were a—“ Magnus Kraken said. “Yeah I was a fool to be lured into your lair. Yadda yada. Hurry up with your evil villain wrap-up.” Clad in slick black latex with electric blue racing stripes, the superhero looked fast even bound tight to a large metal table. Dangling menacingly, a high powered laser was aimed directly at his groin. Villains were always trying to cut off someone’s junk. Captain Mercury launched into turbospeeed to break his bonds. “Not so fast soldier boy. Those ropes are made from hildaroo fibers they get tighter from heat and —“ “Yadda yada and friction makes heat. Hurry up Captain Obvious,” Captain Mercury said vibrating faster and faster. Magnus Kraken put down his hairless white sphinx cat Minimus and flicked the switch on the laser. With a crackle of ozone the wicked machine roared to life. The superhero ramped up his superhero speed as the silky rope bite into his well muscled flesh. The villain flipped off the laser. “You know you’re kind of a jerk. You never listen to anyone anymore. You know you drove Lady Chaos to tears after that bank heist with your piss poor attitude. She left Acropolis City and is selling timeshares in Boca Raton. I worked hard to trap you with that supersonic field. Those things are tricky! You really can hurt a guy’s feelings.” Magnus dabbed at his eyes with a platinum hankie. Minimus hissed at Captain Mercury. “Wait what. Are you serious? It’s my fault you’re boring and impossibly slow. I’m supposed to fight crime and listen to your long drawn-out ‘so we meet again speeches.’ Forget that and forget wait where do you go?” With a mighty yell and burst of speed, Captain Mercury melted the metal lab table and fell to freedom. He dashed around the room looking for his old archenemy. Nothing. Magnus had left with his cat. Bang, Black Diamond crashed the SpeedMobile into Magnus’ secret lair rear wall.

“Well you took your sweet time!” Captain Mercury shouted and pushed his sidekick out of the driver’s side. “You’re welcome. I had to defuse that bomb at the hospital across town and—“ Black Diamond said climbing out of the passenger side. She shook gravel from her satin cape.

“Stow it. Let’s bounce. You wouldn’t believe the shit that was coming out Magnus. Where are you going?” Black Diamond checked her face in the side mirror and then fished in her utility belt for her lipstick. “No can do. I heading up to the roof to rendezvous with TimeShifter and RhinoGirl. We’re heading over the the Righteous League for smores and axe-throwing,” she said. “What about the patrols? Wait there’s a party? I never heard--” “Well like you said I just slow you dow. Don’t waste your precious time talking to me.” With a roar Black Diamond’s rocket boots flamed to life and she crashed through the ceiling. Her laugh lingered as Captain Mercury K turned out of the lair and into quicksand of Acropolis at night.

Being a “superhuman” sucks.

Alright, that may sound over dramatic, but let me explain.

When I first discovered I could do things others could only dream of, I was excited. Of course l was. I was a dumb fourteen-year-old who didn't understand what “kronomantic tendencies” meant. Let alone the implications of that. The two words stamped on my brand new government assigned ID felt like a message to the world, screaming “I’M SPECIAL!” But they were more like the diagnosis of a chronic illness. Or maybe a sentencing.

After that, the world began to slow down, and not in the way people say, offhandedly, when talking about peaceful or dull periods of their life. I mean literally.

I think it was water I noticed first, the way liquids seemed oddly thicker. Then it was speech. I got frustrated so easily at the amount of time it takes people to get a full sentence out of their mouths. My mother commented once, when I was barely fifteen, on how I spoke so fast they couldn’t keep up half the time.

Then it was everything from computers to rollercoasters, animals to transport. Walking to school I could make it there before the school bus had made half its rounds. Sitting on it was like torture. It forced me to watch the landscape slide by at snails pace for what felt like hours and bored me out of my mind. You wouldn’t believe how much of the world relies on time.

Doctors and specialists were never quite sure how to categorise me, not really. See, from their perspective, I move with superhuman speed, performing tasks in the blink of an eye, but from my perspective the rest of the world has been slowing ever so slightly each day. Either I have a form of uncontrollable super speed or a form of uncontrolled time manipulation? I’m not sure we’ll ever know.

Honestly, either way I’m screwed.

At least I don’t need to eat, and I age according to your time stream not mine, so I’m not about to vanish, or die, or anything, but there’s not much I can really do here.

I lost contact with my parents and brother about four years ago. I know it was four years ago because that’s what your calendars say. Feels like a lifetime. It was just too difficult to try to communicate with people who could only understand you if you sounded every word out over what feels like five minutes but what to them is a second. After all, by the time I was nineteen they couldn’t see my face because of it. Even now I’m in this room but I don’t know how you’ll perceive me. Perhaps as a sort of strange blur or moving shape? You look like a statue to me, the only way I can tell you’ve moved is when I go away and come back you’ve changed position.

Anyway, that’s not the reason I came here. I need your help. And I’m not even sure if you’ll be able to help me. The worst thing about perceiving time differently to everyone else, is the loneliness. I live completely apart from the world, just observing. It’s a bit like living just behind reality, able to see the real world but not touch it. You become the only person in your whole world.

The real reason I came here, the reason I need your help, I think there’s something else here with me. I think it’s following me. I keep seeing something moving in the corner of my eye, something that moves away to fast for me to see it. That should be impossible.

I don’t even know if you’ll be able to help by the time you’ve read this, or if it will have caught me in the time it took you to read. I don’t know what it wants from me, but I know for a fact it’s nothing good.

Look, if you still don’t believe me, I hope you will by the end. I have tried to explain absolutely everything in the pages of this book.

Please, read fast. I worry my life depends on it.

i’ve always been told i like to speed through life, never stopping to take in my surroundings. this is so funny to me because from my perspective, i do take my time. it’s not my fault everyone else can’t seem to move any faster. even as far back as early childhood, i won every sports day race, was always the quickest to answer questions in class, and read books at what everyone else seemed to think was a quite unreasonable pace, so much so that they would start to test me on them to check if i was really reading and not just flipping through the pages. i’ve had people stare at me for minutes on end, eventually questioning after abnormal lengths of time why they hadn’t seen me blink. one thing i’ve never understood was sound, how everyone else could be around such large speakers all day and not start to feel nauseated at the constant low pitches erupting from them. i love making my own sounds, although everyone else can barely hear me sometimes, comparing my high notes to the squeak of a bat, short and high pitched enough to bounce off objects at ease. it wasn’t until the day when i was walking through the rain however, that i realised something was off. i was minding my own business, dodging through the rain drops to stay dry, wondering why everyone else wasn’t doing the same, when i noticed that everyone in my vicinity had begun to blink in unison, the slow, methodic plodding of their eyelids began to startle me and i glanced around to check if anyone else had noticed this strange phenomenon. the people themselves seemed none the wiser. it wasn’t until the dark flashes started however that i began to worry, light would come, and as they all closed their eyes, darkness. the blinks became slower and slower until finally, they came to a stop. it was like watching a roulette wheel make its final rotation, praying for a good outcome, or like the seconds before a coin flip becomes conclusive, knowing that either result could make or break you. flash… flash……… flash……………. and finally, fla-………………………………. darkness. the wheel came to a stop. the coin landed. our fate was sealed. their eyes never opened again, and i was destined to live out the rest of my painfully long life in darkness.

“Hellooooo”, a stranger on the street bellowed in a deep low growl as they tried to get my attention, while waving their hand in my face and blocking my view. This happens to me frequently, and I usually get away from this by acting deaf or just giving up and running away. A crowd of pigeons fly past me at a snail’s pace while the cars in the street just never seem to move, these things used to amuse me in years past but now they’re nothing more than reminders of the curse I was given.

I’m always one step ahead of everyone, but never in a good way. I move much quicker than the rest of the world, but it never benefits me. I can never talk to anyone, because they’ll never keep up with me, and I can’t wait around for them to talk. Their deep voices mix with the sounds of everything around me and combine into a droning amalgamation that I cannot bear. What used to be the sounds of traffic, a speaker playing music and a crowd socializing turned into horrifying groans from the depths of hell.

I turned to crime fighting when I got this “power” thinking I have been chosen for something greater. My hopes and dreams for a successful career were shattered due to lack of communication, so I began to have thoughts of becoming a hero to fill the isolating void of my dreadful life. Unsurprisingly, I became beloved by the city and turned into their savior.

Stopping bullets, saving pedestrians from oncoming vehicles and stopping robberies turned into all I ever did, and just like every other aspect of my life, became just as tedious. I don’t care if I have to fight a group of ten to return a lady’s purse, I know all the moves to neutralize them and repeating this process bores me to no end. I don’t care how happy they all look when I save them, it’s just another year long day in the life, and nothing ever fazes me.

I could go for days complaining about my torturous existence, yet I continue to save lives, because the thought of someone’s blood on my hands with the continued aspects that haunt me could cause me to finally end this once and for all. I could never bring myself to suicide either, because if I did, there would be so many lives lost that I could have saved.

I was supposed to like being a superhero, but now all I want is a friend. Just one person who I can talk to, so this insanity could be a little less painful. When your only friend is yourself, it’s like drowning while knowing no one can save you.

Hovering the city at nights doing the job nobody else would even think about doing. Saving his city from the empty barrels that spreads crime and violence. But only if he could stop the crime while they were taking place. Slower than a tortoise and can’t react to incidents in time.

The thing about the way you see the world is that it’s all internal. There’s no way to be sure we all interpret colors the same way. I think about this sometimes: think that my red might be someone else’s green. And there would be no way to tell. There are differences you can tell. Aphantasia, for one, the inability to form mental images. But the interesting thing about people with aphantasia is they’ll often get quite far in life assuming that “picture this” is metaphorical. It’s like everyone who can visualize has a secret talent that’s just too commonplace to realize some people don’t. Or maybe it’s the capability to not visualize that’s the talent. To not have to relive past embarrassing moments. Studies suggest people with aphantasia are less prone to PTSD, maybe even are generally lower stress. Must be nice.

When I try to explain my talent (on anonymous forums, not in person: as complicated as my feelings are, I don’t want to lose it. If it’s something I can lose. If it really is a Talent and not just the way my brain works), I’m struck by how often people say it sounds awful, that they can’t imagine living life stuck like that. I guess it would be, if I hadn’t lived this way all my life. If I hadn’t grown up assuming that this is how everyone sees the world.