Your organs pulse like mating animals.

You take shallow, cautious breaths, each one threatening to plunge your body into a barrage of further vomiting. You're sweating, sweating like Hell, there's sweat dripping from your fucking fingertips, but you're so cold you expect your breath to mist. Expect ice crystals to crackle between your numb lips.

It's... still... going.

You feel it. You're still REGRESSING. Fractions of a second. Fractions of a fraction. Too short for a mere human brain to measure. But you feel it.

And it would be so easy to just let one of those REGRESSES keep going and roll out of control, ride it out, rewinding into oblivion. So easy. And feel so good.

You try to wipe at your mouth, but lifting your arm takes too much effort. You're trembling. No, that's not- you're vibrating. Every muscle in you is clenched, coiled, ready to spring backwards. You're on the verge of a Goddamn temporal orgasm.

What day is it?

You cling to the earth. You silently beg something, anything to be your anchor. Anything.

Your fingers dig deeper into the carpet. You bury your face into it, gastric acid be damned. Today, home is your anchor.

0-0-0-0-0-0

You're dizzy. Dizzy like you're a kid again.

Your friends would challenge each other to spin, see who could outspin the rest. Five years old, you know. Old enough to know better but not wise enough to be better.

You'd always win, but you'd always fall, blinking at the sky, your guts roiling, breathing hard yet shallow.

Feeling like the world was spinning on without you.

0-0-0-0-0-0

"When should we stop?"

You glance over at the cloud of grey smoke. This again. "What?"

"You heard me the first time." Damien has a second black cigar clamped between his teeth, but he hasn't lit it yet. He flicks his lighter open and closed. Damien always loved that sound. You always found it annoying.

"Stop supporting your clove habit?"

"Stop going back."

You take a deep breath. You frown at the smell of cloves of nicotine. "When we have enough."

"What's enough, then?"

"Look, it's not like there's a specific number-"

"You said a hundred thousand. Remember? Five zeroes." His finger carves circles in the smoky air. "But we're well beyond that now, aren't we?"

"I don't feel like playing the rhetorical question game-"

"Then how about a rhetorical answer, to humor me? I mean, that'd be ideal. Knowing, even vaguely, when I can live for a day and know that it won't be erased."

You begin to take another deep breath, but you only get halfway there. You just let that smoke idle in your lungs, and you stare at Damien, holding your breath.

0-0-0-0-0-0

The vomit has seeped into the carpet. Doesn't matter. You can just REGRESS and clean it up later.

Your abs are sore. So is your jaw. You don't like being sick.

You roll your head to the side and look at your phone.

Ellen will call, eventually.

And you will pick up, eventually.

How much time do you need to prepare yourself?

"I killed your brother," you whisper hoarsely to your empty living room. "I shot him in the head and buried him on a beach."

"You make it sound so dispassionate," Damien murmurs. "But Kurt was always the fuckin' poet, not you."

"It'll sound awful no matter how I tell her."

"Yeah, true, true." He carefully steps over the pool of gastric acid, sitting crosslegged next to you on the carpet. He wipes at the sweat on your forehead.

Silence.

"So! Are you gonna tell Sarah?"

"Tell her what?"

"This again..."

"That I, what, REGRESSED? I... fuck. I don't know." Your voice tapers off into a dull whine.

"Well, yeah."

"I promised her."

"You did." A pause. "Too bad you didn't REGRESS to before you promised her."

"You're making this worse."

"I know. Sorry."

Silence.

"I'm sorry I killed you."

Damien sighs, patting you on the shoulder. "I really don't know how to respond to that."

"You don't have to."

0-0-0-0-0-0

Your gums hurt.

You turn your head to stare at your dead LED alarm clock.

You almost wonder what time it is, but you catch yourself.

0-0-0-0-0-0

It's recess and you're playing secret agent.

You point your gun at that treacherous spy Damien, and he grins that lopsided grin, because he knows you'd never shoot him.

"Kurt's been captured by the girls. We should go save him."

You are six years old and you holster your gun, glaring at your best friend.

0-0-0-0-0-0

You made the mistake of REGRESSING again and now you've felt the sensation of throwing up backwards.

You make it halfway to your bathroom before destroying the carpet again, so you REGRESS until you can speedrun your way to the toilet.

You stumble and land in the bathtub instead.

Close enough.

0-0-0-0-0-0

You open the refrigerator because you're dying of thirst even if your stomach probably can't take a drop of anything.

There's that six pack of IPAs Aaron gave you as a gift.

You slam the door.

0-0-0-0-0-0

The lights hurt your eyes but if you keep them on then

The other eyes

Will not come

And see

0-0-0-0-0-0

You scream at nothing and everything and fling your dead clock against the wall.

You REGRESS. And do it again. It breaks differently. But not the right way.

REGRESS. Scream. Throw. Repeat.

Sometimes the scream is too quiet, the wrong pitch, too short. Sometimes the clock breaks into three or four pieces, sometimes only two and you want more than two.

Eight seconds, over and over again.

You get it eventually.