A Town Called Second Chances

We Were About Six

Blink.

It's a funny word, when you ignore the fact that it's a human function. The "bull" and then the "ink"-"bull-ink"-like a thing a clown would say. It's not just that-it's all the words, really, that end with "ink." Think. Brink. Link. Some of the deepest words you'll ever hear or ever know, but when you focus on, I don't know, the dynamics of the word, it's just...silly. Like whichever chap who came up with the English language, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, thought it would be a good idea to throw a couple of letters together, laugh at it, and give it meaning for the billions of English-speakers who would come along.

Blink.

It's such an innocent word, too. We blink millions upon millions of times without realizing it. Keeps our eyeballs wet, so they won't shrivel up and fall out of our heads. It's necessary, as natural and normal and unquestioned as the rain, as the sun rising and falling each day. And we don't question, don't even notice it, really, until the moment someone tells you-don't blink.

Whatever you do.

Don't. Blink.

I used to have dreams, when I was three or four. It wasn't horrific or anything, but it was a little odd. I must have been going through a phase then, because back then, every time I slept, I dreamt of another world.

The strangest part, I've always thought, is that I was Scottish. I was three years old, only three, and I hadn't even met someone from the North-hell, not even anyone from outside Chances-let alone anyone from Scotland. There were some other strange things too-automobiles, made of silver and shaped like-well, I had no comparison. There was a house-the bluest blue you ever did see-and the streets were so smoothly paved and painted I could have sworn they were ice. There were other things, too, things that vanished the moment I woke up. I don't really care to remember them, even if I could, but that was always the thing that got to me. The Scottish accent.

I do, though, remember voices occasionally. Like one time, I heard myself-an older me-bantering with a man who sounded a little timid but completely and utterly infatuated with me. That was a nice one. Another was a woman, mid-forties, maybe, who said something about spoilers. Actually, I remember that one quite well. She always had a mischievous turn to her voice. "Spoilers," she'd say, over and over. Always knowing something that I didn't.

The one I simultaneously loved and hated the most, though--it was a man.
A man, a sad man, who sounded very young and very old at the same time. There were tears in his voice, like they had sort of embedded themselves into his windpipe, and every word sounded like another sob. He would echo loud behind me:

"Don't blink. Amy. Please."

It was very insensible. Everyone needs to blink. And he oughtn't to sound so sad about it, either. But it was a bit worthless trying to analyze the why's and how's of it. It simply was--there was simply a man who didn't want me to blink inside my mind. It was a while ago, and I can hardly remember it unless I try to.

Blink.

When I grew into the literature phase, at about eight, I started to think that maybe, it was a metaphor. Everything passes like a blink of an eye, in retrospect. While it lasts, life, it seems long and tedious. Boring. Then two, three, maybe more years pass, and you look back, and while you know you're all the older and so much has changed, no time at all, really, has passed at all. So around that point, I firmly convinced myself that he was...the angel on my shoulder, per say, warning me against the rapid flow of life. What a stupid warning. You can't stop it, now can you? No matter how you stretch out the days, in the end, you'll always feel like you've been cheated of something life mysteriously promised you or maybe you've just never gotten the opportunity to find.