POV: Kim
Three hours and forty minutes.
I know because there was a clock on the sitting room wall and I had been looking at it every nine minutes, which meant I had looked at it twenty-four times, give or take, and the number wasn't getting better.
The silence had texture now. That was the thing about very quiet buildings — the quiet didn't stay neutral. It accumulated. Pressed against the walls. Arranged itself into shapes that my brain kept trying to interpret as sounds.
I was not doing well.
Statistically, said Voice of Reason, in the tone she used when she knew she was going to be ignored and was logging the attempt anyway, the correct response to the current situation is to rest. Conserve resources. Wait.
Correct, I said.
You're not going to do that.
Probably not, I said.
***
