The Alarm Clock Monster

I’m collecting together all of the tweets in a short story I posted on Twitter today, in case you missed it. The hash marks denote new tweets.

# Have you ever become aware of your pulse? Thump-thump thump-thump. It’s the timer on your life, an alarm clock set to go off “some day.”

# I hear my pulse all the time, even when I sit still. I hear my clock ticking, and when my pulse speeds up or becomes erratic, I’m afraid.

# I feel my limbs tingle sometimes, and then there’s a buzzing at the top of my head. I think, Oh shit, this is the alarm going off.

# But then it’s not. It’s just a false alarm, just a strong reminder that I’m not young anymore. But the body ages, and the mind does not.

# So inside, I’m still 13, still wanting to sing and dance and play. But I can’t, because someone set my alarm clock to go off early.

# When I really was 13, someone once asked me why I was so sad. I told them, “I feel like someone has sat on my remote control.”

# “My whole life is being lived in fast forward, and I’m missing out on the joys of growing old slowly.”

# I didn’t know I was dying then, but maybe on some level I did. Maybe even before I heard my pulse and listened keenly, I already knew.

# Once you know, life is no longer a game. It’s a process with a conclusion, and after that…well, it’s all speculation after that, innit?

# So I live in a strange private hell. My monster lives inside me, and I hear its voice every day: “Thump-thump thump-thump.”

# The End?