Three thirty in the afternoon and I’m sweating into my third cup of coffee at some godforsaken strip mall type of coffee shop just off of the corner of a grunge-y looking building, waiting for a man who said he’d be here at two…
The clock is a weapon for anyone who uses it to remind them of discipline.
Time is the only currency that matters and we’ve been told for years that it’s more precious than money, more finite than youth and these slack-jawed parasites treat it like pocket change they can toss in the gutter.
I’ve seen them all…
The client who “runs late” to every meeting, stealing fifteen minutes here, twenty there, building a career on the accumulated theft of other people’s lives.
The old friend who cancels an hour before the reunion. Always an hour, just enough time to fuck your entire evening but not enough to make other plans.
The consultant who shows up forty minutes past deadline with a shit eating grin and a Venti latte, like lateness is a personality trait instead of a defect in their own putrid character.
These people are vampires. They don’t drink blood.
They drain seconds and minutes and hours, leaving you older and deader while they waltz through life unburdened by the concept of consequence.
The worst part? They think they’re special.
That their time matters more than yours. That the universe should bend around their whims while you sit there, aging, dying, watching the minutes tick away like heartbeats you’ll never get back.
Four o’clock now. He’s not coming.
I leave cash on the table.
Exact change, because I’m not a fucking animal and walk into the parking lot where the sun hammers down like God’s own fist.
Tomorrow I’ll wake up two hours older and no richer.
That’s the real crime. Not the disrespect. The theft.
The irreversible, unforgivable theft of time.
(The moral? Respect people’s time. Respect your own time. Do your best work and master time, cause no matter what we do. There’s no buying it back)
Stephen Walker.
P.S. If you’ve liked that little bit of prose. You’ll love what I’m cooking up with my editor. Let’s just hope I’m not pushing up daisies before it gets released.