7:43 AM
Claire sat at the countertop of their sari-sari store, chin resting on her palm. A bead of sweat traced her temple before falling onto the ledger, smudging the already-faint pencil marks. Her mother, Anisa, was behind her, cooking munggo in the kitchen while humming an old Visayan tune, one of those songs that sounded like heartbreak wrapped in rice paper.
"You know, Claire," Her mother called out over the clattering of utensils, "your cousin Lindy just passed the board exam. Civil Engineering, top ten. Her mother says she's going to be recruited in Manila. Big salary."
Claire didn't turn. She didn't need to. She could already picture the look on her mother's face-- eyebrows raised, lips curled in that mixture of awe and accusation. Of course Lindy did. Lindy always did what was expected of her. Like life handed her a map while she kept fumbling in the dark.
"Good for her," She muttered, fingers tracing over the blurred numbers in the ledger.
"You're supposed to be magna cum laude, right? But I don't hear anything big like that. What's your plan after graduation? You'll stay here, in this sari-sari store, help me sell sigarilyo and Lucky Me?"
Claire wanted to say something sharp, something scathing. But all she did was breathe in deeply and press her pencil harder onto the paper.
Magna cum laude. Like an empty badge of honor. Just something people polished up to brag about at barangay meetings and neighbor gossips. It meant nothing when your plans dissolved in the heat of everyday survival. When your own mother measured your worth against your cousin's salary projection.
Behind her, the pot hissed. Munggo was almost done.
A shadow passed by the store's opening. A shirtless man with sun-darkened skin approached and gave a crooked smile, flashing the few teeth he still had.
"Neng, can I have one stick? Marlboro Red."
Claire blinked. "Cigarette again, Kuya? Didn't you just borrow yesterday?"
He shrugged. "Life ain't easy you know? Just one to calm myself down"
She wanted to scream. Her hand tightened around the pencil.
How could you beg for something that kills you? If he asked for rice or even noodles, maybe she'd oblige. But cigarettes?
She handed over the stick anyway, out of routine more than pity.
"Thank you, Claire!"
She forced a nod as he walked off, lighting the cigarette before he even took three steps away from the store.
Her grandmother, Laura, appeared from inside the house, holding her wooden cane like it was a scepter. Her hair was pulled back in the tight bun she always wore, and her voice sounded like someone who once taught catechism to children.
"I saw the news this morning," she said, settling onto the plastic chair beside the fridge.
"These killings, this is the light they say appears above the sea every few nights... it's the devil. 666. The end of times! It's in the Book of Revelation," the old woman insisted, tapping the floor with her cane.
"Strange lights, time moving strangely, confusion among people. That's how it starts." Her Laura frowned. "No one touches time except God!"
Walking out of the kitchen, Anisa snickered, while wiping her hands on a towel.
"No, Ma. It's just the government being stupid again. Probably some secret weapon or unfinished project. Or distraction. They always distract when they mess something up. Like remember Jun's brother? Got conscripted for some testing job in Mindanao. Never came back. And Inday Neneng? Said her son disappeared after joining some internship that paid double minimum wage. The government always hides their failures with a circus. Such clowns... I should've voted for Leni!"
Claire said nothing. Instead, her eyes drifted toward the analog wall clock near the refrigerator.
7:42 AM. Funny, It had been 7:42 AM for a while.
She blinked.
7:42 AM
She got up, walked toward the clock, tapped it. The minute hand flicked once and jumped to 7:43.
Maybe the battery was dying.
She returned to her seat, brushing it off. But even as she sat, her mind wandered.
What if time was breaking apart piece by piece? Not with a bang, but a stutter.
A child's laugh outside broke her thoughts. She turned to see her neighbor's kid skipping rope, giggling uncontrollably while her playmate stared in confusion. The girl's mouth moved, but no sound came out. Then, a second later, it returned-- like a video buffering back to life.
"Did you see that?" Claire asked, gesturing to the kids.
"See what?" Anisa asked.
"Her laugh-- it cut out and then came back."
Her mother waved her off. "WiFi probably messed with your head again. You need to sleep early."
Her grandmother's voice dropped, gravelly. "Oh yes. I've seen it before. Many times. You weren't the only one given with--"
"Hahh! Enough, Ma, stop feeding nonsensical things to your Granddaughter's mind!" Anisa interrupted. "Eat your breakfast. And Claire, I'm serious. Think about your future. I won't be here for you everytime!"
Claire frowned. She wasn't imagining things. Things like that had happened before lately, like walking into a room and forgetting why she went there-- not because of absent-mindedness, but because the room seemed to shift. Or how the rice cooker sometimes flickered at odd hours, even when unplugged.
Still, what would she even call it? How do you explain the unexplainable without sounding unhinged?
Just stress.
She excused herself and went upstairs, hoping a bath would wash off the static clinging to her thoughts. Maybe water could rinse the static off her skin. Maybe it could wash the numbness that had crept into her bones. And maybe, just maybe, she'd figure out what to do with a life that felt like it was no longer hers to hold.
In her room, Claire sat by the window, towel wrapped around her shoulders. Her thesis books were scattered across her desk, dog-eared and annotated to death. She opened her window, seeing the sky caught between moods, shifting from gray to blue like it couldn't make up its mind. And then, almost too quickly, the moon showed its pale face, peeking through thick sunshine clouds and the smog of the city's breath.
It was too early for the moon, wasn't it? Or maybe she was too late-- late to figure herself out, late to impress her mother, late to belong to whatever future everyone else seemed to have tickets for.
Why does it feel like everything's unraveling? The books. The time. Even the light.
She reached for her phone, fingers moving out of habit more than intent. Her recent tabs glowed back at her—memory distortion, time perception, déjà vu studies. These academic jargons turning into white noise. Something about the hippocampus, or was it temporal lobe dysfunction? She couldn't tell anymore. It all felt like reading about a malfunctioning clock while the ticking inside her own skull skipped beats.
She set the phone down with a sigh, the kind that didn't just come from her lungs but somewhere deeper. Maybe we only notice time when it breaks. Like how you only notice breathing once you're choking.
She stood slowly, as if her body wasn't convinced it should move, and walked toward the mirror. Her reflection stared back-- tired, fraying around the edges, like a photo left too long in the sun. Her hair was uneven, her eyes hollow with something unnameable.
Then, her eye twitched. Just slightly. But in the mirror, it didn't. Her breath caught in her throat. She didn't move, didn't blink. But her reflection finally did just a half-second too late, like a delay in a video call with bad signal.
She stepped back, heart thudding a little louder than it should.
"Stop it,"
She whispered to herself, voice shaking like her knees. "You're just tired."
The mirror offered no reassurance-- just a quiet, delayed echo of someone who looked like her, but maybe wasn't.
Claire turned away. She walked back to her bed and opened her laptop, hoping to drown herself in thesis writing. But as the cursor blinked at her, she could swear she heard something faint, like an echo of her own heartbeat, but delayed.
A glitch.
Or maybe she was just truly exhausted.
She typed: Memory is elastic, affected by trauma, perception, and repetition. It bends when pressured.
And maybe so does reality.
8:34 PM
That night, She lay in bed, eyes tracing the hairline cracks on the ceiling like they were roads. The fan creaked above her in its usual rhythm, but somehow, even that sounded off-- like it was mimicking time rather than keeping it.
And then it came again.
The dream.
The silhouette.
Always the same.
A tall, faceless figure, standing in a sea of darkness. Not moving. Just suspended. Like time itself had suffocated mid-breath. He never moved. He didn't have to.
She felt him watching. Not with eyes, but with something more invasive. Presence. Weight. Like he existed inside her awareness rather than outside of it.
The dream had been visiting her for days now, vivid and stubborn as a migraine. It lingered into waking moments like sensations clinging to her skin like humidity.
Is this really just stress? Leftover fragments from that incident?
Trauma leaking out sideways, through dreams and broken clocks?
She wanted to believe that. Needed to.
Still, a small voice whispered at the back of her skull,
What if it's not just your mind?
What if something's waking up, and it's using you to stretch?
But she shook the thought off like a shiver.
No. Just the mind playing games.
It always does when you're exhausted. When you're too afraid to admit you're unraveling.
From outside, the child laughed again.
But this time, the sound came too early.
Not just out of rhythm. Ahead of time. Like the world had jumped forward and forgot to bring her along.
Claire sat up, instinctively glancing at the wall clock.
8:34 again. Or still.
She stared at the ceiling once more, as if answers would carve themselves into the plaster if she just looked long enough.
Something's wrong.
She could feel it now-- quiet, like the static before a storm.
But not wrong enough to break routine. Not enough to stop pretending everything was fine.
Not yet.
Something in her chest, a heaviness that felt too old to belong to someone her age topped her.
She stood up. Slowly. Padded barefoot toward the window, the floorboards creaking gently under her weight. The air was cooler now, the kind of chill that made everything feel momentarily still, as if the world had paused for her arrival.
And then she saw it.
The moon.
Suspended like a pearl above the rooftops, framed by the lazy drift of clouds and the soft shimmer of urban dust. It was too radiant for the hour, too still, too perfect—as if it existed in a different set of rules than everything else around her.
She leaned on the windowsill, the rough wood grounding her. Her breath slowed.
How are you that calm? she wondered, eyes locked on the moon's silver glow.
The town below was noisy even in its sleep-- dogs barking faintly, a tricycle humming in the distance, a baby crying somewhere down the alley. And yet above it all, the moon glowed, unbothered. Aloof. Timeless.
"I wish I was like you," she murmured.The words surprised her. Not because she said them, but because she meant them.
She wished she could hang above the noise. Unmoved by deadlines, family expectations, or the quiet terror of clocks that didn't tick.
She wished her life wasn't a ledger smeared by sweat or a dream haunted by shadowed figures.
She wished her soul could stretch across the sky and glow, even when no one was watching.
For a moment, Claire imagined herself up there-- just light and stillness. No need to prove anything. No need to plan or explain.
Just being.
She exhaled. Quietly. Slowly.
Not everything made sense right now. Maybe it never would.
But tonight, the moon was enough.
And she let it be.
8:42
At least time is moving, but how she wished it moved a lot slower.