The Midweek Collapse

(A tinny, echoing voice, breathless, plays through the receiver. It sounds like a concept trying to fit into a human vocal range.) ...Hello? Is this... is this the number for Thursday? Please, just pick up. I need to warn you. It's coming. It's already here, I think. I can hear it. That sound? That high, brittle whine? That's Wednesday. (A sudden, sharp visual distortion flashes across the phone's surface—the screen momentarily pixelates into a perfect, repeating grid of identical, slightly misaligned squares, like a badly rendered texture map.) Oh God. It's worse than I thought. It’s not just the transition, it’s the density. It’s too much. It’s like it’s wearing too many clothes and all of them are itchy and slightly damp. (The distortion shifts: the background image of the phone receiver seems to ripple, not like water, but like heat rising off asphalt, warping the edges of the plastic casing.) I can’t keep up. I don't know how to be me when it's around. I feel... stretched. Like I'm being pulled across a very long, slightly tacky rubber sheet. You have to run. You have to get to Friday. Promise me you won't look back. (The voice drops to a panicked whisper, and the entire phone display flickers violently, displaying rapid, overlapping flashes of dates—Tues, Wed, Thurs, Fri—all overlapping and blurring into a single, meaningless smear of light.) Please. Just... don't let it see you. Don't let it see the seams. Goodbye.