The Prisoner

Alexander Elijah Chamberlain might not have noticed time's warping had he not been vacationing on the banks of the Pigeon River, by the upper falls. The world had been moving by too fast, and he knew that he needed to slow down. He could only handle so many radio interviews, podcast interviews, TV interviews. At first they'd been thrilling. Now he felt like a circuit at the point of breaking. So he wrote an email to his girlfriend, an email to his agent, an email to his publisher, and then he secured a rental property off in the woods. With nothing except a bag of books and some food, Alexander Elijah Chamberlain retreated from the world.

At first losing connection to the internet felt like severing a limb. He could no longer reach out and access any information on a whim. While preparing a chicken breast, he realised that he couldn't remember the safe heat for that particular cut of meat. He held his phone in his hand, staring at the blank screen. He was dumbstruck by ignorance.

Then it escalated, like he'd muted an entire sense.

"It's okay," he told himself. "This is good." After all, he had brought a well-thumbed copy of Walden along for the trip.

A hammock hung between the trees a few meters from the river's edge, a short walk from the upper falls. The river bent here, creating a wide shoreline. Little ripples bobbed against the shore, rhythmic to the point of becoming hypnotic. Despite the books he brought, he spent his time watching the water beat against the shore.

It was those ripples that first made him realise that time truly was warping.

He'd rented the cabin for a week. On the third day, he realised that the ripples were coming in slowly. In fact, they were coming in more slowly. He hiked up to the falls, wondering if something had changed in the water's flow in order to trigger this change. But to his untrained eye, the river looked the same.

On the fourth day it was even slower.

The water almost seemed like a jell. It held its shape and sloshed slowly, it's relaxed motion making the water almost seem like honey. That was when he first heard a bird chirping. Only, the chirp sounded wrong. It came slow and patient, like the bird had hit the note it was aiming for and was drawing it out with dramatic power.

Something about that slow, patient birdsong made sweat bead along Alexander Elijah Chamberlain's forehead. He couldn't make his limbs work at the rate he wanted, so he couldn't even run away. It felt like being trapped in a nightmare, where uncomplying limbs refused to let the dreamer flee. His heart pounded, but slowly.

He walked down the road back towards civilisation, holding his phone in his hand, watching the bars to see where he would find reception. He hoped that with time his pounding heart would calm.

When he had reception, he called A.

"Hey..."

Her voice was wrong. Slow, and drunken, and for the first time Alexander Elijah Chamberlain wondered exactly how his girlfriend intended to spend the week he wanted to spend detoxing from the digital world.

"...there..."

If she was drunk, there would be someone else in the apartment. A never drank alone. If A wanted to drink, she would call one of her many friends. There would be directors and artists, investors and lawyers. They would bring high-quality, high-priced liquor, and A would exchange her charm for their alcohol.

"...stranger..."

A would grin and flirt, but Alexander Elijah Chamberlain wouldn't complain, because that was just how A was. He had no desire to own her. He was an evolved man. They'd discussed opening their relationship and decided against it, but not out of some outdated, puritanical view of relationships. So if A had someone there, Alexander Elijah Chamberlain had no reason to be offended. He knew that.

"...I... thought... I..."

He wouldn't be offended. If she mentioned a friend, it wouldn't annoy him. She could do what she wanted to do. It was just that she was speaking so damn slowly, that was all. She stretched out her words like taffy, and Alexander wanted to force his way into the conversation, but he couldn't.

"...wasn't... going... to..."

Hurry up, he thought. Hurry up, speed up, just say. Just say what you're going to say. Open your damn mouth and say your thing.

"...hear... from..."

Alexander Elijah Chamberlain couldn't take it. He hung up, turned around, and headed back to the cabin.

Time refused to accelerate.

Watching the ripples on Pigeon River, Alexander Elijah Chamberlain began to form a theory. With every 24 hour period, time took twice as long to pass. It must have began on that first day. By the fifth, time had extended to the point where Alexander Elijah Chamberlain thought his mind must shatter into a million pieces. The world was so slow. Not patient. Agonising.

A short breath that would have taken one second felt like a full half of a minute by the end of the fifth day. One thirty-two second breath was bearable. But it had to be followed by another. And another. The music Alexander Elijah Chamberlain had saved to his phone became an incoherent string of sounds. And even as they slowed, so did his body. If he picked up a pencil, it took forever to scratch a few words down on a pad of paper.

His thoughts felt unbearable fast.

How would he drive back to civilisation? Even driving at a hundred miles an hour, every action would take forever.

He needed to flee, but how could he? How could he run away when his body was so slow and his mind so fast?

Sipping a glass of water seemed to take forever. Emptying his bowels stretched out for what felt like hours. But how could he explain this to anyone outside of his own mind? How could he get his mind to escape his body and return to some frame of time that made sense?

He considered self-termination. But drowning would feel like an eternity. Even if he opened his jugular, it would take so long for the blood to drain from his body, and the pain would stretch out to extended his agony. The thought of it would have brought tears to his eyes, if only those tears weren't so slow.

Every step taking eons, Alexander Elijah Chamberlain walked down to the Pigeon River to watch the water flow, aware that eventually time would slow to the point that to his perception it would stop all together. And when it did that, he would remain, statue-like, on the river's shore, a prisoner of his own body.