The Underground Time Continuum

She dropped it down a gutter one day. And realized as soon as it passed her finger tips that she dropped the wrong thing. Once something is floating through a sewer system there’s no getting it back. At least not in any condition that would make a person desire to keep it. Some people throw things away. Jillian lets them drop. She watches them slip further and further from their starting points, closer and closer to the ground, or the sea, or the metaphorical manhole that is her mind. Although this particular sewer isn’t metaphorical at all, but very real. Located on the corner of University and Drifter Street, in the business district of a small city. Jillian had moved to said small city four months prior to the gutter incident in hopes that it would do her well to be away from most everything familiar. Instead, she worked at a café near a bookstore she frequented, but never bought anything. She worked at a restaurant where she ate half off. And she searched for jobs that would lead her to a career, ones that utilized her over-priced education and could actually pay the bills. Because no such job existed as of yet, Jillian worked 70 hours a week to struggle.

Jillian was slipping.

When a ship begins to sink, you empty it of all unnecessary (or all not absolutely necessary) items in order to slow, or potentially halt, the sinking process. Jillian was simply emptying the ship. She decided to rid herself of a watch. This particular watch had no significant value except that it was always seven hours ahead of her own time, and had been since the day that Jillian fainted and fell into the sea. And lived.

The problem is multi-fold. Ever since the watch decided it had it's own thoughts about time Jillian has been unable to keep time. Any time; without the use of her mobile phone, which gets its time via satellites that she has been assured are not only accurate but infallible. She is simply a drifter in the worst sense of the word. Be a drifter, yes, but never be simply adrift, was her motto. However, since the incident with the sea, Jillian had been wandering. Just in her head at first, becoming increasingly unsure of where she wanted to go or be; then one day she began to physically wander. Jillian was and still is lost. But she dropped the watch hoping that it would help her gain some perspective, though she never understood the connection between the wandering and the watch. It should, however, be noted that the watch refused to change times. If Jillian turned the little knob to the correct time, the hands just spun ahead seven hours. It was for this reason that Jillian held onto the watch for as long as she did.

It crossed her mind that the watch was foretelling something, her death, or her re-birth perhaps. But after an unconventionally long time Jillian gave up on the watch and figured it was well out of order and let it drop down a sewage drain. She immediately regretted the act, and she did not regret very much. Now watch-less and quite alone Jillian stood and stared at the timepiece splooshing toward something, she couldn’t know what. Minutes passed as she looked down the grate into the underbelly of the city. And as she stared she saw the watch pass by her eye over and over again; she stood upright and said aloud: “Fuck!”