The Dark Stripped Bare 1

Time is an elusive thing. When we are happy and having a good time it speeds up leaving us breathless and bewildered. We ask our selves ‘how did it get so late?’ and ‘where did the time go?’ When we are unhappy, bored or waiting for something time stretches out long and crawls as slowly as it can. Every second seems like an hour. We query the higher powers about why is time dragging its heels so much? We measure time by chronometer and mark it with numbers but in truth, it cannot be quantified. Time is at its most peculiar, its most mysterious when one is ill or injured, then time bounces back and forth as the mind wanders from reality to memory to dreams.

I had no concept of how much time passed. I was aware only in small flashes of momentary lucidness that I was travelling. In the minutes between when whatever drug I was being sedated with wore off and the next dose I was loaded with, I could take some sort of stock of my surroundings and situation. It wasn’t good.

I heard voices, male and gruff, but most of the time their words were muffled and I could not understand what was being said. I knew I was lying on a makeshift bunk and I was in a spaceship, I could feel the throb and hum of its engines. It was a fast ship and we were travelling through hyperspace. Once, I had tried to get up which had resulted in me vomiting violently on the floor. Someone had come in and found me, they were not impressed. I had tried to fight them when they went to subdue me with the hypo spray. That had earned me another backhand to my head which only served to make my already battered face ache all the more fiercely. Who ever had hit me had picked me up and all but thrown me back into the bunk. I guess they were worried I would try to run away because they had tied my arms to the bulk head to stop me from getting up after that. I was aware of a terrible thirst but before I could even think about communicating this to someone would come along, hold me down and inject more sedative into me and the oblivion would swallow me up again, leaving only my vivid and strange dreams for company and comfort.

Time, it is an elusive thing and once it has ticked forward you can never get it back.