Slow

'We do not stand and stay awake for the purpose of being able to live, but for preventing ourselves solely from dying. Seeking pleasure.. lust.. companionship, adventure.'

'Ever since I was a toddler, this tick of a clock every second prevents me from falling asleep - thinking "time" is what we most desperately look for… yet seems to be taken for granted… But what if…'

"YOU SHOULD CHERISH IT!"

It was an overexcitable uproar - a white coat covering his-blue shirt both wrinkled from every movement. Brownish-skin shaded by a sleeve, wearing thick eyeglasses - refracting and widening the size of his pupil as the glass' transparency reflected an image beneath - 'I see me'.

"Is that your advice?"

I asked sarcastically, as if mocking his words. The man frowned and looked down fixing the lenses between his eyes and spoke calmly,

"News flash"

In my mind, it was obvious what was about to happen and so I leaned backward, immediately putting my hands between my ears…

"I'M A NEUROSCIENTIST! NOT A PSYCHIATRIST!"

His boiled emotion could be felt especially with a middle finger.

"I know, I know- I was just messing with you, Dave."

I just smirked slightly back at him as I raised both my hands, complying…

"Awhoo~ whooff~"

Dave breathed out loudly to ease his frustration due to the constant nagging about this condition of mine. Most would probably take it as a gift. But not for me, at least…

Also, my mind was clouded while he continued to speak, explaining my 'gift', he said, even further.

He then suddenly started to wrap things up while fixing his desk filled with books, pencils, and his name engraved on a wooden plank, [David Eaglesmith] next to a digital clock [10:40 pm].

"Anyways… You have to leave."

—"eh?" "My wife, Linda."

—"Umm, yeah? What about her?"

"It's Sunday, Felix. I had to pick my wife and daughter up for dinner this evening. So.. Speaking of which, when were you gonna have a family of your own?"

I know it was a simple nagging of a wholesome friend, but it makes me laugh..

"Pfft.. Do I really have to answer that?"

Dave responded,

"We'll… you'll have to at least find someone who you could trust..."

—"I have you!"

I immediately interrupted with a big thumbs up and broad eyes.

"Ha! You bet!

—"Seriously, there may be times that you'll get hurt, disappointed, and whatnot, but eventually realizing that with this right person… it'll all be worth it."

"Now, you sound more like a Psychiatrist.

Plus, your crest keeps telling everybody you're too old to be single."

That significantly hurt as he kept on poking my forehead with this remark and so I checked out the window. With little to almost no spaces between the window silhouette, it reflected a slightly shrunken starlessly dark eyes, a slightly small pointy nose with a fair-brown complexion and a jaw-line of a starving man.

"It's not that wide, is it? There's no one-size-fits-all standard, after all."

I tapped my forehead using all 4 with a not-so-visible dot mole on the upper right corner. Dave responded,

"Yeah, right. Oh, look! I see baby hair sprouting kekeke~"

We exchanged insults and sparred lightly like a kid, bare handedly tapping each other and swinging from side to side. We then slowly stopped… laughs faded—

[Thug—]

A fist bump to bid goodbyes, but then he took a penetrating glance.

"Felix… You sure, you alright?"

—"Is it that obvious? Well, if it's not okay, that just means it's not the end. So I always try to bealright."

Dave gently tapped on my shoulder as he smiled, and opened the door for me.

"Be seeing you."

—"Thank you, Dave."

"It's not free ya' know"

—"Frappe and chips?"

"Frappe and chips, it is."

******

No beacon yet of sunlight in the outskirts. Midnight queues clearly visible from a thick glass wall—lines of people standing before each other as they pack their stuff left behind on the side table of the cashier counter. Mixture of a screeching metal under a slight tweak of the bench, minimal footsteps loitering around, and noises without context surfacing the entire place.

"Hi! Welcome to Caffe La Bibiana. May I know your order?"

Here lies a group of strangers doing the same damn thing with different thoughts, pursuit, and day as by definition of one's view.

As Felix finishes ordering a macchiato, he walks straight through the glass door, pivoting the shaft and triggering the door chime. The sound singing through his ear along with a reverberating drizzle on the ground. He looked at the sky..

"The night's familiar.." "...and I hate it."

[brzzz kreek]

While mumbling to himself, Felix heard a constant audible arcing of electricity. Seemingly, anyone could most definitely discern a light zapping static from a distorted warp mid-air—like a curvature of a malforming dream.

Without a slight of doubt full of fascination, he attempted to graze it with his hands wearing a motorcycle glove but was straight up submerged inside.

"What the heck…"

He wrought to get up after carelessly fumbling, but on one hand, he was too stunned to regard what to look at before his eyes.

"Hey.. hey."

As the scene unfolded, it became apparent to him that it seemed to be an abnormally yet random act of violence. Interrupting two men in the heat of an argument with their gestures aggressively while pouncing and discerning the pocket of someone prostrated on the floor.

"hey.. HEY!"

Despite a passerby wanting to intervene, the men showed no signs of stopping, but they stopped after Felix became annoyingly loud for once.

"Yes, thank you... I mean, NO. You guys are straight up beating a bum, that makes you no less than a turd."

—"Who the fook is this guy?"

One guy angrily countered and was ready to throw hands but was immediately interrupted by a simple wave of another one's hand.

"Your name?"

—"Felix… is definitely not my name." I'm so stupid. "Ha, of course."

—"What's funny?"

"Nothing. I find it laughable that people keep getting distracted by the things that have nothing to do with their goals."

The man started muttering in an undertone with his bent neck downward as he kept on straying casually from left to right.

"Sometimes you fail, you get back up, and try again…But more often than not, it could mean… death~"

Abruptly after an unsettling voice of a grinning eyes, comes after a sound of slicing wind nearing Felix's neck by a hair's breadth...

******Moments ago... [10:29 PM]

He was watching the digital clock ticks passing through 29 to mid, wondering how its gleam could escape the movement and suddenly change the number.

"Dynamic visual acuity, also known, 'Akinetopsia'."

—"Lame~"

Felix was booing Dave from afar like pretending to listen in a pod, although only two of them were in the room.

"It's such a rare condition where a person could only catch a few frames per second… the brain captures a fraction of images from the eye."

Dave pointed a blue marker to his right eye, and slowly turned his back facing him.

"However!"

He exclaimed.

"It fascinates me how your brain can perceive them in a very slow perspective without missing a single bit… and you have control over it"

— Hap!"

He instantly threw the tip of the marker right to Felix's face with all of his force like a pitcher.

"Hmp!"

Dave scoffed and continued after Felix casually catched the tip exactly putting its hole in his ring finger with a poker face...

"But the light was too fast which the brain cannot interact with, thus…"

Dave paused to roll over atop an image of a spectrum.

"...making the surrounding shift into the realm of infrared."

******[present...]

Everything was at a much slower pace than it would naturally occur with his hazy breath leaving his mouth, chili veins popped barely visible in the white shed encompassing a widened eyelid.

During this state of hyper-awareness, everything gradually halted. On one hand, his vision turns infrared, shifting colors into various shades in proportion highlighting blue from tangerine to capsicum red with their respective temperature.

As if the flow of time ceased to exist, everything came to astop.

'Too slow…'