The Pantheon

A Stitch in Time

July 01, 2021 Joshua White
The Pantheon
A Stitch in Time
Show Notes Transcript

Saves nine. Guess I'm doing my version of an Aesop fable.

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Drip. Drip. Drip. 

At this point I had forgotten that I’d been trying to ignore the sound. It was utterly strange how that worked. When I told myself to forget it, I forgot. But then I forgot that I forgot. Strange, but really, really annoying. 

I didn’t have time to fix the roof. How could I? There were two hours left in my day, and I still hadn’t put anything in my gut. And then tomorrow was work, and after that I’d promised Lydia I’d take her kid to soccer practice, and then Thursday was also work and I think I’d promised something along the same lines to Bruce… if only those louts could get their own cars. But it didn’t matter. Not that. I’d made obligations to myself, and, well, others I was guessing, so I was going to carry those obligations out. No ifs, ands, or buts. But then when was I going to get the roof fixed? I guess I could have a contractor come round on Friday, but then Friday was one of the only days I felt I could relax, and… 

I was just going to have to try and ignore the drip for a little longer. If I was successful the first time, I was going to be successful the second time. Didn’t matter that the first time the drip hadn’t been so often. Didn’t matter that the room was starting to smell like rotten eggs. Didn’t matter that…

Wait a second. Rotten eggs? I remembered that there were certain things that smelled like rotten eggs. Really bad things, if I was correct. I did a quick google search. Sure enough. Gas leak. I checked the stove. Nothing. I checked the meter. Nothing. Called the company. Nothing. I opened up the windows and sighed knowing that another hour of my day had vanished. 

Food. I still needed food. There were a couple of microwave burritos in the freezer, but I was worried those wouldn’t be good for my health, especially if I ate them so late in the day. I’d been working on losing weight for a good while now, and I’d been impressed by the results. Eighteen pounds gone as of this year, and that was, I figured, mostly a result of cutting off the beer. It stunk, yeah. Made me have more evenings like this, where I was sitting alone, worried about the future and the water dripping from the ceiling.

Wait. A. Second. Where could the water be coming from? I had the windows open. Sky was dark, sure, but it was as clear as a new sheet of paper. There hadn’t been any big rainstorms for three weeks at this point. And the pipes ran through the walls on the ground floor, and below in the dirt. I’d seen the schematics. Not one single valve pumped water up to the attic. So, was it even water? Was my roof porous enough that the rain from last week had saturated it, and it was just now dumping it into my room? 

I’d been ignoring it long enough. Gas leak, water leak, either way I needed to figure out what it was. It had been a couple years since I’d even visited the attic, but the ladder was still there. There was nowhere to go but up.

Up. 

It.

How. 


And.


You see, don’t you?


It’s so easy to see. 


Before me was this… I don’t know what… if I could… the color was orange. Bright orange. Spherical, sort of, but squished. Water seemed to sweat of it, and roll down into the scorched floorboards, and if I stared at it… I… I…

Before me stood a man. A youngish man who assumed to himself that the best years of his life were yet to come, yet understood deep in his heart that he was mistaken. In fact, if the man had any intelligence about him at all, he would know that the number of his remaining days was so small, it would not even reach the double digits. Even now the man tried to regain control over his body, over the little runt of a mind he possessed. With enough willpower, he assumed he could fly down the hatch and back to safety. But where would he go? What would he do? If he wished, he could ignore the thing that lurked upstairs, tell himself it was a bad dream caused by a particularly nasty case of the flu. After all, he still had the sniffles. He was recovering. 

So much folly wrapped in one single package. Not even the most primal of fears could spur the man’s legs towards the still open door. For the man’s purposes, it might as well have been a mile away, and my own form naught but a centimeter from his face. 

Four months. Four months he ignored the symptoms of my existence. A problem for the future self, he said. Well, the future is colliding perpetually with the present, for such is the nature of time. Where is the future self now, little man? Where is your salvation of laziness? 

Now there is nothing to do but to wait. Three months and I shall engulf him, what will be left of him, anyway. A human does not last long without drink. 

Drip. Drip. Drip. 

It was a wonder when any other humans would bother doing anything, or even checking in on the soon to be dead man. Lydia and Bruce, perhaps? His boss? All of it was doubtful. Each and every person would work around the problem, until it had been at least three days. And then it would be too late.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Eighteen more years and the building itself would be forgotten. The videos would be scrubbed, the operatives who were sent in deployed to completely different regions of the world until they all forgot. 

Drip. Drip. Drip. 

All because they never could learn from their ancestor’s mistakes, or even their ancestors’ wisdom.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

There was nothing else to do. It simply was.