OVERTIME

8 Minutes:

Jeremy woke up to a false dawn rising over the horizon of his window ledge. In the distance, he heard the echo of an el-train howling as it descended into the subway tunnels that snaked through the guts of the city. His hand stroked a dent in the mattress next to him, like it always did before he became fully conscious. His mouth was dry and the taste of cheap beer still lingered in the back of his throat. Outside, eight-minute-dead sunlight sprayed the clouds with crimson light.

A pigeon cooed, followed by the flutter of many wings beating. The sound rushed his senses, and he remembered how his heart quickened the first time he had heard it, almost an eternity ago. But now the sound barely churned him to life.

"Get up you lazy son-of-a-bitch,” he told himself in a voice that reminded him of his father's every time. "Up and at 'em. Get up. Up and at 'em. GET UP!"

His left hand searched the bed for the .44 and found it. The grip was cold, soothing to the touch, and the weight of the gun was palpable.

He took a deep breath, scooped up the TV remote with his right hand, snapped open the chamber of the gun with his left, hit the power button—resurrecting the TV—checked for the single hollow-point bullet in the chamber, hurled the remote, and rolled the chamber of the gun against his throwing arm.

His eyes reflected the re-run of a re-run. The gun clacked shut with a satisfying ring.

"This time," he said, "I'll put it against my right temple."

Click.

“Bang!” he screamed. He sat up, sighed, and glared at the digital clock.

"Time to go to work.”

7 Minutes:

He rolled out of bed, too nauseated and numb to stand just yet. In 53 seconds, he’ll be throwing-up last night’s poison. In just 49 seconds more, the only evidence of his past will be a pungent stew boiling on the floor.

The TV replayed the same scene it always did—the part where Chrissie, the plump-in-all-the-right-places blonde, squeals and slams the bathroom door on another one of Jack’s peek-a-boo sieges on her skimpy excuse for a bath towel. Despite being on the verge of wanton nakedness, she tells Jack to buzz-off. Jack then makes buzzing noises and advances on her contrived virtue. What follows is a first-grader’s idea of high drama: See door hit Jack’s nose. See Jack in slapstick agony. See Jack stumble. See Jack live up to his full name and trip over the couch ass-over-end. See Mr. Roper enter without knocking and wonder what’s going on. Again and again and again, plus infinity.

T-minus 10-seconds, and he’d get to pretend for a moment what it’s like not to know the abridged future. He’d be too busy puking his insides out to care. 5-seconds, he bent over and assumed the optimal hurling position. 1-second…

If only I could get laid, he thinks as his guts imploded.

6 Minutes:

Jeremy staggered into the kitchen, a zombie now hungrier for pancakes than flesh. But there was no time for either. He was in the middle of a never ending game of Hide-and-Seek. And in this game, there was the same old choice to make—to decide where to hide this time when the Almighty came seeking.

Meanwhile, back in the bedroom, the television’s regularly scheduled program is interrupted by an important message from the President’s Chief of Staff.

Where? Jeremy wanted to know. And how? How do you hide from Him? The why of it no longer mattered. Those kinds of questions didn’t exist anymore. Cause and effect doesn’t happen. They went the way of the dinosaurs. They’re extinct.

The why now goes without saying.

On TV the Chief of Staff informs the people that an incident has come to the President’s attention. A short while ago, according to N.A.S.A. officials, the planet Jupiter disappeared from the sky. Scientists—who are busy working on the mystery as he speaks—have verified this peculiar data, originally reported by an amateur astronomer in Wyoming. He assures the people that top experts in the field are working hard to figure out what is going on. The Chief of Staff then introduces one such expert to allay any fears, a smartly dressed brunette who looks like she always says the right thing.

Jeremy headed to the front door.

5 Minutes:

The hallway smoldered with florescent light through the front door’s peephole. No one was there, but someone was coming.

“Four minutes and thirty-six seconds to go, you son-of-a-bitch.”

Behind him, the smartly dressed woman informed viewers that top physicists from around the world were collating educated opinions and verifying facts to figure out what happened. So far, the consensus leads to one of two possibilities: the first was that some sort of dark matter was eclipsing Jupiter from our telescopes; the other suggestion was what astronomers called a “quantum singularity”, such as a nomad black-hole about the size of a marble in the relative vicinity of the planet. Too far away and much too tiny for us to worry about, of course, but close enough to capture the light reflecting off of Jupiter’s surface. If this was the case, then the light that normally allowed our telescopes to see Jupiter was lost within the singularity. She continued by saying that in either case, the danger to us was statistically negligible. But Jeremy knew that wasn’t true. He knew because there was still one witness to what really happened next.

There was still somebody left to finish the job.

He opened the door, glanced left and right several times like a kid crossing a busy street, and then stepped out into the hallway. He leaned against a wall where beads of darkness were scattering and rolling down the plaster to merge with shadow. The weeping wall always reminded him of the way a night rain used to streak down his darkened windowpane—nights so long ago the memories of them had atrophied into dreams. But these drops were nothing more than black tears falling to mourn an ended world.

“The scientists were wrong about the roaches too,” he said, like he always did.

Then, one of the shadows moved, and with it came the whispers.

4 Minutes:

Jeremy got out of the wraith’s way, trying not to look, but he couldn’t help it—he never could. The wraith had no eyes or ears or tongue, only an eternally open slit of a mouth where the whispers spoke. Its limbs whipped and blurred as it shuffled towards some predestined location beyond him. Its murmurs were familiar, but garbled; white noise shushing like a radio tuned to the middle of nowhere, a strange, indecipherable lament sung to no one. On some level, Jeremy still identified with its song. Even after all this time, he still felt a lingering pang of loss.

The wraith was harmless, probably nothing more than a phantom recording (but maybe, he told himself for the thousandth time, that’s what he seemed like to it). Out of respect, he closed his eyes, said a silent prayer, and let it pass. When the prayer was finished, the wraith was gone. He wondered whether to go left or right this time.

In his apartment, the TV has returned to its regularly scheduled program.

“Right it is,” he decided out loud, just in case a certain Someone was listening, and then he turned left instead.

3 Minutes:

The window to the fire escape was now more of a dead-end than an exit. He beat on the frame the exact number of times it took to get it open, stepped onto the skeletal staircase, and into the remaining day.

Wraiths disintegrated in droves as they shuffled by on the sidewalk below, and in the street, a funeral procession of ghostly vehicles rose and melted away, their horns keening to signal the passing of the loved and unloved alike. Jeremy checked the horizon and saw that God was almost here.

A halo of fire encircled His face, pulled from our life-giving star like warm taffy. The lips of the Almighty were a black pit sucking the light out of the sky, leaving only a blank canvas in His wake.

Soon, He would put out the sun.

Soon, Jeremy would be out of a job again.

2 Minutes:

He decided to go up instead of down, having taken the wraith in the hallway earlier as an omen. He moved as quickly as the necessity for quiet would let him. There was no need for him to count the number of steps—he knew the number by heart. Jeremy was, after all, a professional, the go-to guy, the man hired by Hell to do the job for as long as it took to get it right.

He zigzagged up the fire-escape until he reached the rooftop. Once there, he drew the gun. In the distance, the horizon was fraying. The world was coming undone.

A groan drove up from the apartment building’s foundation. Reality drew its last breath.

“It’s time,” he said through gritted teeth. The gravel crunching underneath his feet took off like a swarm of sated houseflies.

From the mouth of Heaven itself, a war-cry boomed.

1 Minute:

The sky peeled back to reveal the very heart of the universe—a red, pulsing mass of swirling light the Almighty quickly swallowed whole. Finished with the main course, His face coated with starlight, He perused the building tops for something else to eat. His desire to devour more was everlasting, and Jeremy already knew what was for dessert.

God’s face turned toward his hiding place—a slab of tar and concrete that had tore away from the roof and was now rising into the eviscerated sky. Chunks of building tops were floating around like asteroids. Jeremy began counting backwards.

“Eleven-Mississippi, ten-Mississippi, nine-Mississippi… Just… Seven-Mississippi… A little… Five-Mississippi… Closer… Three-Mississippi… Our Father… One-Mississippi… And… NOW!”

He looked God straight in the eye and took aim.

God saw him, and with the barrel against his left temple, Jeremy pulled the trigger.

Click—

BANG!

God winked, and then there was only him and Him in the void.

“Why?” Jeremy had to ask.

0 Minutes:

A false dawn rose over the horizon of a window ledge. An el-train echoed in the distance. A hand stroked a dent in the mattress. Eight-minute-dead sunlight sprayed the clouds with crimson light.

A pigeon cooed, and then the flutter of many wings beating.

Jeremy took a breath and turned on the TV.

His soul reflected the re-run of a re-run. He pointed the .44, pulled the hammer back, and fired. The screen shattered and flying glass bit into him. He didn't bother to move. He was taking the day off from work.

He didn’t need a lame excuse.

He didn’t need a reason.

The why goes without saying.