Have You Ever Noticed? 3AM? … or … In Case of Emergency, Eat Glass

by Philip Loyd…

“In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning…” ―F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

But seriously. Have you ever noticed? 3AM? It comes around once every day. Without fail. In fact, it comes around so quietly, you hardly even know it’s there. Long before I ever knew it was a thing, I noticed it. Sometimes it was just sitting there in the faint light, other times it was calling out to me. When I discovered it was an actual thing, well, all bets were off.

Anyway. Enough with the preamble, on with the ramble. Enjoy.

…………………….

All of a sudden I found myself in suburbia, living that life of quiet desperation. How I ended up there, I’ll never know. I must have followed a woman in.

I’ve tried getting out, and I know what you’re going to say: why not just go through the door? But you see, I’ve tried that. The problem is: the door isn’t really a door anymore; it’s just a picture of a door where the door used to be.

There’s a window there too, but it might as well be made out of bricks. I’ve tried that, too.

So, resigned to my fate, I’ve learned to appreciate each and every moment. Like 3AM, when everyone else is asleep. Either I’m awake really late at night, or I’m just getting up in the morning. Either way, I’m the only one around and to me it feels like I’m the last man on Earth.

On this particular 3AM, my good friend TJ Max was sitting there on the couch in my office. How he got there, how he ever gets there, I have no idea.

“Get dressed”, he said, “we’re going on adventure.”

I offered him some coffee.

“You’re gonna need something a lot stronger than that where you’re going*,”* he said.

I immediately knew what he meant. He meant we were going to the other side.

“I have something else,” I said*.*

TJ Max laughed*.*

“That’s not going to get you to the other side,” he said, and I knew immediately what he was talking about.

TJ Max didn’t just visit the other side, he was FROM the other side.

When I asked him how we were going to get out, he just pointed at the window. There was this one great big window, made up of a hundred little windows. I tried throwing a chair at it. I tried pushing my desk through it. I punched it. I kicked it. I even slammed my head into it. It did not break. Not even a crack.

TJ Max handed me a fork and knife. I knew exactly what I had to do.

In Case of Emergency, Eat Glass.

I never get tired of 3AM.

Before trying his hand at fiction, Philip Loyd spent a lifetime as a financial and insurance writer, contributing to Forbes, McGraw Hill, and Jim Kramer’s The Street, among others. Loyd now writes fiction and reference books exclusively.. Titles available at Amazon.com.