Every night I sit and stare at the clock. Staring at its second hand. Tick, tick, tick. One minute until it is midnight. For every second that passes my heart beats louder, faster, harder as if it is trying to break out of its rusty cage. I am sitting and waiting for tomorrow. This strange concept tomorrow. Every day I ask myself ‘what’s going to happen tomorrow?’. Every day I get the same answer – I don’t know. You don’t know. You don’t know what will happen tomorrow. I push my pillow away, it is too close to me, it is smothering me. I hurl my duvet on the floor, it is too heavy, it is smothering me. I move where I’m seated so I can sit cross-legged, fingers wrapped around my feet, while I’m lightly rocking back and forth in anticipation. The second hand is moving so ghastly slowly. Tick tick tick. I hear myself let out a deep sigh, a sigh that ends in a bored yawn. I look away from the clock for a second – lazily, the clouds wander across the night sky, the lights from the city colours the bottom of them with an odd ochre yellow. It doesn’t suit the round clouds, I think. I stare at the clock, squeezing my feet, and rock back and forth again, head cocked to the side. How can time pass so slowly? A year has passed before you know it, a month before you have finished yawning, a week before you have put the last item on the conveyor belt, a day before the cat is finished spending its nine lives, an hour, a quarter, a minute, a second – all of it has passed before you have finished living.

I sigh another time and shoot the clock an irritated glare. Pass, I think. I’m waiting for tomorrow, not for your stupid tick tocks! The clock ticks at me, a mocking tick, ‘oh, how silly you are, little human’, it says to me, teasing me with its tick tocks. How silly you are, little human, I repeat in my mind. Little human is silly, I agree with you, dear clock. I move my head a bit to the side, eyes still fixed at the clock. Eyes always on the clock. What is every living person afraid of? I think while chewing on my tongue, when I turn my head to the other side, my eyes never leaving the clock. Death. The long sleep. Deep down, the fear of death is the reason why everyone is so fucked up in their head. They know the end is near and that it is inevitable, there that there is nothing they can do about it and that is what is driving them mad, making them live with one eye on the clock through their entire life. That is probably also a reason for why many end their own life before it is even begun. It must be like being benched before the game has even started. That fear and uncertainty we feel about the unknown and foreign is a force that drives people right into the arms of death, exactly that which is unknown and foreign. I’m afraid, too – afraid of the foreign, afraid of the unknown, afraid of tomorrow.

Five seconds left, quicker, I sway back and forth, my bed creaks complaining beneath me, but I ignore it and chew on my tongue, only five seconds left until tomorrow. Everything will be better tomorrow, they tell me, tomorrow is a new day, a new chance, a new chance for what, what new chance, what kind of chance, the words grow louder by the tick of the second hand, drawing closer to twelve, here I am, sitting on the edge of tomorrow, just a few more seconds, then it is tomorrow!

Midnight

In the distance I hear the bell of the church tower chime twelve bells.

My heart stops making noise.

Tomorrow never came.

It is always today.