Monologue on Time

Time is stepping back, he doesn’t stand there beside me now, in his happy-elephant garb, I know he’s been here of course, he has that distinctive smell of cigarettes and shower gel, I don’t think he likes my girlfriend either, she doesn’t pay him attention, she only talks to him when she wants something, when I’m waiting for her he stands there beside me whispering ‘she’s a bitch, she’s a user, you can do better’, and when she’s there he’ll shout in the window, or try calling me and send me texts asking what I’m doing with my life, and it’s nice now that he’s here less.

We used to be the best of friends, I wouldn’t talk to anyone else, I lost a lot of good friends because of it, I had somewhat betrayed them for the company of time, and I can understand why he feels a bit betrayed too now that I have suddenly stopped caring for him. He has loads of friends though. “Friends” It takes a certain type of person to be friends with him. It was never easy getting to know him and very complicated when I did know him. It’s funny now, I kind of find myself forgetting what he was like, like an ex-lover you have in those ‘low periods’ of your life and nothing really makes an impression on you. I think we used to stay up late into the night and he’d be glowing, wildly animated, and I would carry him around on my back, me sweating, him laughing. I was drawn to him because of his intelligence, but he’s bitter really, I can see that now that we’ve fallen out, all his cleverness was really just spiteful complaining.

I’ll still see him, it’s not like he’s dead or I’m dead or we’re both dead, it will just be much more courteous and…business-like, it’s much easier that way anyway, I can finally be alone with my friends and family and my beautiful girlfriend and her child and I know that if ever I’m fading away on a bed he won’t be straddling me trying to get me to look into his eyes because we don’t have long left and we have to spend it together, because I’ll be holding other people’s hands, my family, whatever combination they will be in, and they’ll have loved me in ways that he couldn’t, and he won’t get past the doctors because it’s only extended family allowed to see me, and when he’s summoned as Time Of Death he can look on and say that he knew me once, before I asked him to step away, and that I was a good man, and he will be accurate, down to the millisecond, just like he used to be when we were the best of friends.