Day Three

Clark was happily sucking on someone's big toe, and it was an unfamiliar yet enjoyable experience that was mildly kinky. Chuckling to himself, he opened his mouth wider and licked at the next digit. With a pop, he had two wiggling manicured toes between his teeth. He teased them in his mouth with his tongue, causing a laugh from their owner. Clark's heart warmed upon hearing the pleasant sound of glee. The voice then requested his presence elsewhere, and he made no hesitation in obeying. Slightly missing those sweet feet, he nuzzled against strong smooth calves, kissing and nipping his way up the lean muscular body, Clark got to deeply admire the whole amazing view, and seeing something that shouldn't be there…

'Oh my God, it was a guy!' Clark smashed the alarm clock next to him and cursed out loud about breaking it.

'This was wrong, everything was wrong on so many levels.' He specifically remembered changing the alarm to nine o'clock last night, and it had gone off at seven. Normal weekday morning time. 'And, oh my God, it was a guy!'

Shuddering at the thought of having to repeat the same day over yet again, he jumped out of bed, dressed and instantly appeared in the kitchen. Seeing his mother busily mixing pancake batter in a large bowl he asked, "Mom, what day is it?"

The open worry in Clark's voice brought a frown to his mom's lips. "Friday, May-"

"No!" He abruptly cut her off. "Is Dad outside?"

Nodding yes, his mom started to say something, but Clark didn't hear it being in a hurry to leave the room.

Clark stood and frowned when he found his dad muttering at the flat tractor tire, kicking it with his foot. As his dad looked up at Clark's sudden appearance, he wiped his hand across his forehead smearing some orange fluid across it. The familiar vision caused a sickening roll in Clark's stomach.

"Son, is there something wrong?"

"Yes, there really is. I need to talk to you and Mom, now. Please, let's go inside." He was proud that his voice had only quavered a tiny bit.

"Of course." His dad appearing alarmed quickly put down his tool box and walked with him back to the yellow farm house. 'Just what they all needed- more stress.'

Clark knew how freaked out he must have just made his mom and dad, but hell he was in for a long discussion about every little detail that had happened over the last two days, plus he was the one caught in the middle of yet another 'zany adventure.'

After a while, Clark couldn't help but glance at the time, noticing that it was almost eight o'clock. He had been talking to his parents for almost an hour now. Clark sat at the kitchen table facing them as their expressions became extremely grim. The details of his last two days had been laid out before them with such panic that they now appeared to be quite distressed for him. The fact that he was reliving the same day over again was seriously scaring him. This seemed like something that Clark couldn't just super-manhandle into being better.

His mom and dad looked at him and then each other. They seemed to communicate with each other telepathically on how to deal with this next new weird thing that was happening to him.

His dad finally asked, "Son, are you sure you haven't made some kind of mistake? We don't want to blow this thing out of proportion if we don't have to."

Clark thought hard on what specific facts had occurred to him during the last two days in a row, when he suddenly remembered the news report from the first day. Getting up he rushed to turn on the TV, and he was mildly pleased to find CNN airing an update from an area near Russia, "Once again the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.6 on the rictor scale, there has been a few after-shocks measuring up to a 6 in the last ten minutes. There has been 3,670 people confirmed dead, and over four thousand are still reported missing…"

"How about this for proof?" Clark pointed desperately at the screen, "Dad, I don't think Russia gets earthquakes that often. God! This is like a global thing, and I'm the only one who knows?"

The faces of the women and children that were covered in blood and dirt, flashed before his eyes, making him feel sick to his stomach.

"These poor people could be re-living the day of their deaths over and over, and not even know it." Feeling more depressed, Clark returned to the table and let himself fall heavily back into the chair.

His parents were shocked at his outburst, and they stared at him while the news reporter's voice droned on in the background.

Clearing her throat, his mom was the first to speak as she stated kindly. "You can't save everyone, honey."

"I know. I'm just so confused right now." Clark sighed, "Am I all alone in this?"

His mom appeared to think over on how to answer him. 'Which probably meant, yeah you are.'

"Do you even believe me?" He couldn't think of the possibility right now that this could be permanent. To be forced to live a never-ending Friday would be one original hell he didn't want to have to deal with.

"Of course we believe you, Clark, don't ever think otherwise. Your father and I just hope that whatever this is might just run its course out on its own. It hasn't been going on quite that long. Three days, right?" She got up and put her hand on Clark's shoulder. "We've always been able to find a solution together to these things in the past, and we don't think that this will be any different. Please, try not to worry too much." His mom hugged him tightly, which he returned gratefully.

"Why don't you go to school and try to gather any information you can at the Torch. And we'll see if we can find out anything ourselves in the mean time." Smoothing out a rather nasty cowlick on the back of Clark's head, she bent down and kissed his forehead.

Holding onto his mother, Clark felt better surrounded by the warmth of her loving hug. She gave him a sense of peace and the feeling that everything would turn out okay. He hoped that the feeling was right as he smiled and proceeded to get ready to go back out into the real world.

Skipping two classes after wasting time in first period playing tic-tac-toe with himself, Clark had studied tons of newspaper articles around the world and various essays on the space-time continuum thingy. He had also researched to see if there were any other related strange occurrences reported, checking near Smallville first, and then slowly expanding his search to places like Metropolis and further away Gotham.

Groaning out loud in aggravation, he decided that he really wanted to be alone right now. His classmates and friends had been purely difficult towards him the whole morning. They continually reminded him of his plight by doing and saying the same things around him that he had heard and seen the day before. So far, he had been safely hidden in the Torch. But his luck had run out when the lunch bell went off, and soon after, Chloe came strolling in with an evil grin on her face, and he quickly closed all of his browser windows.

"Clark, so where were you for English and Math? Bad boy. I think you would have failed that horrible Math exam anyway, but…" She seemed to think that his skipping classes was hilarious.

"I had to look up something very important on the Internet that just couldn't wait, and it kinda took longer than I thought. Can you lend me your English notes?"

"Of course I will." Plunking herself down beside him, she looked at the empty blue screen. "Wow, fascinating stuff there. What's so important?"

If only this space-time stupid thing had been happening to other people, which Clark had found no proof of… he really didn't want to be discussing it with Chloe, again. He was starting to become angry at having to repeat himself continually. He wanted to be alone to sulk. Not that sulking would solve any of his problems. 'Maybe my parents are right and this would go away soon on its own.'

"Chloe, it's personal and I don't feel like talking about it right now, okay?"

"Sure, Clark, I won't push. But if you want to talk, you know you can come to me. Deal?"

"Deal." Chloe's truth lesson had not quite worn off, and she seemed willing to give Clark some space. 'As impossible as it seems, small miracles are known to happen.'

As she went to sit at her own computer to work on one of the last school years Torch issue, he re-opened multiple screens and continued his yawn-inspiring search.

A few minutes later, Pete came waltzing into the room like he owned the place, and his long-time friend wore an expression of utter mischievous as he plopped himself on the desk next to him. Clark internally rolled his eyes at the prospect of having to tell yet another friend to more or less mind his or her own business.

"Long time no see. Did you get lost?"

Clark replied sarcastically, "Yeah, you know how it is. You make a left instead of a right, and two hours later you're in some frozen part of Canada."

Frowning at his rude reply, Pete shook his head and gave Clark a friendly nudge, "And I bet that happens to you all the time too."

"Well, once." Clark finally grinned, then turned to make sure that Chloe hadn't been listening to their conversation. Sometimes, it was a real relief to have someone who knew all about him around. He could just relax and be himself, something he hardly remembered doing anymore. "Don't worry about me, I'm fine. Really."

"Okay man, Chloe and I are gonna go watch 'The Great Jack Swanson' rehearse his moves on the field at football practice later, you can join us if you want."

"Maybe." One of these Fridays, he just might have to do that.

"Great."

Clark unhappily watched as Pete walked towards Chloe and placed his arms around her in an intimate hug from behind- while she continued to type away on the keyboard in front of her. He felt a twinge of misery as she smiled brightly at the contact. He'd lost his wingman and his non-girlfriend girl-friend at the same time. 'Life sucks.'

The hours rolled by monotonously as he surfed through what it felt like hundreds of tedious web pages. Determined to find something, hell anything he stayed in the Torch until late in the evening. Near midnight quite tired and hungry, he passed the barn walking towards home when an un-excepted rush of dizziness hit him, causing Clark to trip and almost fall face first into the front door stairs. 'What the hell was that?'

Almost snarling in annoyance and defeat, he straightened up and went straight into his room, wanting only to lie down and rest. The whole day had amounted to nothing. He had found no answers only more questions, and on top of it all he had forgotten to ask Lex if he wanted to do something tomorrow... if there was a real tomorrow. The icing on his sugar-coated day was when his parents peered into his room to tell him about their big fat zero solution. And by the gloomy look on his dad's face, Clark didn't even want to ask what he had been up to in his own quest for answers. He was hungry, tired and wanted to punch something, really hard. Finally, going to bed well past midnight, Clark went to bed feeling extremely depressed