✨A WATTYS 2022 PARANORMAL & "BEST CHARACTERS" WINNER✨
A college basketball star risks everything to prove his innocence with a girl who can communicate with ghosts.
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Ace Jones isn't certain about a lot of things in life, but basketball has always...
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TIME BECOMES a funny thing on a little round machine. Especially when it keeps ticking away without consequence or empathy for those bound by it. Then again, we're made to believe it holds so much meaning and purpose for everything, including our suffering.
I set my eyes on the second hand. It slowly ticks over the small one. I've never felt time move so slow before, but it's also been awhile since I've studied one of these clocks the way I am now. All to avoid direct eye contact with the detective who just entered the room and gave me a look so full of disgust, any hope of him hearing me out is gone.
But the thought that really has me is that I wouldn't be able to tell this detective the time, not even if he started pounding me into the ground like his colleagues did earlier. My fourth grade teacher said we didn't have time to learn how to tell time. Guess she didn't expect me to grow up and sit in an interrogation room where time is all I have. I just wish I could read it.
So much of my success has depended on man's greatest invention. Up until a few hours ago, time dictated when I ate, when I exercised, and when I got my ass to practice. It told me when to pass the ball and when to shoot my shot just before the game clock hit all zeros. Alarms said when to rise while my circadian rhythm demanded when to rest. Even my girlfriend's menstrual cycle had a fucking say on things. But that's just how it goes, right? On earth, TIME rules supreme. It means everything to us, because without it, life has no way of moving forward. And we need something to keep us forward, to keep moving toward a goal.
We need purpose.
Each college basketball game is forty minutes. Or twenty minute halves, depending on how you look at it. After you factor in timeouts, halftime, ref calls, overtime, and other shit like that, the game ain't really over until the two-hour mark. Even then, the basketball gods make no promises.
Ever since I got tackled to the ground, hand-cuffed, and brought into this room for 'questioning', I can't help but see a huge-ass digital clock in the back of my mind. It's been set at forty minutes too, just like the arena. And each quarter that unfolds from this point on will take me closer to that buzzer. To that moment where only zeros reign and the end of TIME has dealt out my fate.
But also like basketball, there can only be one winner. That's how I get through this. That's my reason to beat the clock. To push forward.
I have to make them all see I didn't kill this girl.
