Story 2 - Seconds

(Music fades in)

Welcome. Cassandra’s Tales and Truths is an anthology series that utilizes the wisdom of the Delphic Maxims. In this episode, our second episode, Cassandra takes a piece of wisdom that seems all too familiar, only to show our subject where everything goes wrong. And maybe show you as well, dear listener. After all, you’ve been told to save time, haven’t you? It is good advice, to an extent.

(Beep. Music fades in)

The small click of metal on metal filled the space. Its power came--not through its own merit--but from the lack of competition. Rayina needed near-silence to work, an exclusion of all sounds not native to her workshop. To that end, she had erected a near-fortress for herself to work in. Isolated from the rest of the world, this space was small and tight but far from cramped. Or that was what she would call it when Apollox and Saeva offered their criticism. It wasn’t cramped, Rayina would insist. Her frame could easily through navigate the room, weaving around benches and stepping over metal sheets and scraps, while narrowly avoiding the small nuts and bolts that hid on dark tile. 

This wasn’t clutter. It was the inner workings of a lock, and Rayina was the key. 

(Music cuts)

“Lock to what?” (Music fades in) Apollox had asked with the sisterly contempt that defined their relationship when Rayina had first introduced that metaphor. 

It had been one she was proud of, and at this object, the room turned cold, sucking the heat out of the pot roast Saeva had just set on the table. Not that it did not have a great deal of heat to spare. Saeva had a strong tendency to overcook things, and there are consequences to that. Some were beneficial when one considers more etherall things, but on the other hand, it was clearly dry. Apollox and Rayina shared a look. 

Sensing the apprehension, Saeva sighed and called out, “I’m finishing up the gravy now. That’ll fix it.”

Apollox grumbled. “Technically.”

Rayina did not hear her older sister. The younger sister’s comment or assurance had set off the clicking of a clock in Rayina’s mind. Almost done wasn’t the same as done. This was true whether one was talking about the gravy or the numerous inventions waiting in the workshop for the creator to return to finish them Seconds ticked by in her mind, released by a clock fine-tuned and well oiled. Like all things in Rayina’s life, it ran with a previously unheard of precision. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Rayina was a genius and had been declared as much early on. As a knob-kneed, lanky child of seven, it became readily apparent. Dark brown curls were seemingly attached to any of the many books that made up the small, makeshift library unknowing parents had thrown together to satisfy their daughter’s lust for more and mitigate the distress she met stillness and silence with. The former was something akin to a fairytale, to the noble epic often shared by parents of successful children, the one scrapped together to light the aura that plays a critical role in said children’s transcendence onto a more mythical plane. 

But the latter was a concerning habit, that should have been addressed before it began a pull downward. 

In many ways, Rayina was already quite deep into an unrecognizable hell, a hell personalized for her and made up of things she feared and dreaded. All of which were cut from a common cloth. These were fears she had never been taught to deal with, and this ignorance--a rare thing for her to have but still very much present--extended so far as to leave Rayina unable to articulate this thing that governed so much of her life.

She did not know what to call it. It was there: nameless and free to attack her. 

The ticking in her head was a symptom of this unnamed disease, but it was one of the more tolerable ones. The clock in her mind ran besides another ticker: the list of things that were still to be accomplished, projects to be started, improvements to be made, and problems to be conquered. Rayina reached up for her neck, and though there was nothing there that the touch of her hand could find, the harsh contact of some material against delicate skin, in her mind, was still real.

“There are timers for that,” Rayina said, unaware that the conversation around her had moved on. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

This social misstep did not bother her so much. In all likelihood, she hadn’t missed anything. Gossip about neighbors did not interest her, current events would not be current forever, and with their very different lives, there wasn’t any thought that either of her sisters could have offered that would be of any interest to her. It was better to revive that memory, that list of things to be done just to be sure that nothing fell off of it. By better, Rayina meant that it was a better use of the time spent waiting for the gravy to finish, so she could eat the overcooked and incredibly dry roast before she slipped back into her workshop and got back at it. 

“I tried a timer,” Saeva said defensively. 

“Recipe?” Apollox offered half-heartedly.

It was a well-meant though not well-articulated observation, but it was already incorporated in Saeva’s defense. “That too. A recipe and a timer set according to the recipe. I did everything right.”

“You guys have this fight all the time,” Rayina spat out.

That ‘fight,’ as it were, was a rehashing of emotions that never do depart: like the emotion of Saeva rising to fill the space left by their deceased mother but never being able to do it quite as well. It was a conversation of hurt and misplaced expectations: a dance that would never progress or evolve. It was what it always was. And for Saeva and Apollox, it was always enough. It was a dance that released them from their more destructive thoughts and actually brought them closer together. For Rayina, release was not progress. She should be focused on progress. 

(Pause)

It was a conclusion stemming from Rayina’s more ardently held thesis. There was not enough time in the human lifespan to do everything, and so careful choices had to be made. Rayina felt confident in hers as a general rule, but in this specific moment, she felt nothing but anxiety as her mind continued to race. Because now she had to worry about the roast getting cold and the side dishes too because the gravy would technically fix the roast, but she did not want gravy on her string beans, which she could start eating if the food had been served up. But it hadn’t been yet. 

Then again, that was a problem she could address herself. Rayina reached for the serving spoon in the string beans. “You need, like, a roast specific timer.”

Apollox raised an eyebrow. “Meat thermometer, you mean.”

Saeva sighed again. “We have one of those,” she said exasperatedly. “I just can’t leave it in the oven, and I’m not going to stand here every five minutes checking it.”

Rayina nodded as she reached for the mashed potatoes. “That’s why you need one that stays in the dish and tells you when it’s done.”

“I’d still have to look in the oven.”

Apollox raised a hand. “Again. Pretty sure those exist too. They usually go in turkeys but whatever.” 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Saeva glared at Apollox, glared at a face so similar to her own: same dark eyes, dark curl, pointed nose, and subtle lips. It sometimes felt like they were the same person, and that had made certain aspects of grief easier. So Saeva could not complain. But in this moment, Saeva chastised her older sister for the apparent sin of being slightly too late in the conversation. “Again. Again. I’d have to look in the oven.”

Saeva’s frustration was compounding. Her left foot inched towards the doorway out of the kitchen/dining room combination space, but it was simply a survival instinct to cope with the discomfort that she couldn’t mention right now. 

This had been their mother’s domain, and Saeva had taken her death the hardest. When she wasn’t crying, she craved a different time, a time when she was not the one who bore the responsibility of homemaking. It certainly wasn’t the life she would have chosen for herself; rather, it was the outcome that stood at the crossroads of two facts: one, that their mother was, in fact, gone and two, that Saeva was the most capable of the three largely incapable sisters of managing a home. Saeva spent her days walking through a silent and cold household, dreaming of a time when it was a lively and warm home. The impossibility of that recreation left her distressed and depressed most hours of the day. 

Such emotions were the type to compound upon themselves when left sitting in a vault in the soul. While Saeva would have benefited immensely from the support of her sisters, there was no time for that, it seemed. Other things kept coming up; many of them centered around Rayina and the numerous ideas she had for small gadgets that would make life so much more efficient. 

Efficiency was important, Rayina would argue. While you had a life, anyway, that part went unsaid. Rayina was trying to orchestrate a double count for whatever seconds you were destined to have, or that’s what Rayina’s goal seemed like. Consequently, Apollox did not feel the need to challenge it. She did not say much to either of her sisters, in fact. Nothing beyond the side comment.

Like the one she offered right then. “Not going to wait for the two of us,” Apollox muttered as Rayina started eating the side dishes. 

“Not going to wait for the gravy, at least,” Saeva added. “It’s Mom’s recipe.”

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

At that, the three of them flinched and pulled away from the two empty chairs at the tight table. Unspoken invitations had only been extended to the three of them, and no ghost was allowed at the table with them, but it seems as if social conventions only apply to physical beings.

“No,” Rayina added, “because I’ve got to get back to the workshop. I have to make this meat thermometer, timer thing now. The one I’m picturing in my head.”

“Those exist,” Apollox repeated. 

But she did not repeat the plea she had made in the past, the one for the three sisters to have dinner together, to spend that time together as a family. While they were half the family they were and the loss was immense, it was not a total loss or a loss that stripped them of everything. They still had each other. Theoretically, of course.

“No,” Rayina argued while she pushed another spoonful of beans into her mouth. “It needs to work with the oven. So the oven itself can tell you when it’s done because you can see it from a greater distance. Or maybe you don’t even need to see it. Your ears are always working. It can tell you or communicate with you that it’s done.”

“What?” Saeva choked out. Apollox did not seem to even get that far. 

Rayina didn’t enjoy repeating herself. It was a waste of time. Talking with her mouth full, while not the best habit, was a way to make up some of that time. But she could also use that opportunity to say something new. There’s a way to efficiently double up on seconds. Like letting the oven track the time a roast sits within it for you or saying something new while you chew rather than an idea that has already passed through your lips once. 

Apollox pulled herself together. “I thought you were working on something else,” she started. She couldn’t finish though; her memory failed her in that moment.

“I was,” Rayina admitted. “This is a new idea. But I need to get it done. So Saeva doesn’t overcook things, and then I don’t have to wait for gravy or whatever. And that means I can sit in my workshop longer and get my projects done.”

Saeva pushed her offense aside. “Do you really…” 

She stopped herself. She had to pick her words carefully. Rayina typically did not give people second chances when they spoke to her. Second chances meant lost seconds. It was like you were borrowing time from her, and the interest was impossibly high. 

“This is the only time we see you,” Apollox finished.

Saeva assisted Apollox on her assist. “It used to be three times a day, but now, it’s just dinner.”

“It’s easier to eat breakfast in my workshop now that there’s a microwave and a fridge.”

“And lunch?” 

“Easier to eat a big breakfast and push through til dinner.”

Saeva took that plan personally. She shook her head. She wasn’t great at this, but she was doing her best. And it clearly had not been noted. In some ways, that was the wrong answer, but to Rayina, it was the right one. An argument on the matter would not be productive and would only push Rayina further away. The other two sisters had learned this through experience: past times that did not go the way they hoped when Rayina began to guard the one resource that--they had to admit--was truly finite.

“But you are going with us to the wedding right?” Apollox asked, desperate for some sort of reassurance that her need for her sister’s company would be met at some point in time, on some future date that she could look towards, drawing a type of fleeting comfort from the horizon. 

Rayina scrunched up her face. She had no intentions of going and reasons for this lack of intention. This wedding was that of a cousin they weren’t particularly close to, in a city far away with no easy travel, and weddings were based on hollow traditions anyway. All of that made for a mouthful, So Rayina didn’t say it.

Regardless, Apollox saw the hesitation and shook her head. “Weddings and funerals are the only time this family gets together.”

What was this then? Rayina asked herself. The three of them together in this space. This was her family, or the only family worth knowing. She didn’t understand what Apollox meant, but the sadness on her face was so apparent that Rayina could not be confident in her conclusion. 

“No, it’s not,” Rayina choked out. 

“Yeah, it is,” Apollox pushed back more forcefully than she ever had before. The last nerve that normally forced her to bide her tongue and keep her tone in check had finally come undone. 

(Music fades out)

This was it, she knew. 

Rayina missed the signs. “But that’s not a bad thing,” Rayina started. She didn’t have the heart to finish, and neither sister had the heart to argue.

(Beep.)

Cassandra’s Tales and Truths is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. More information and transcripts can be found at oracleofdusk.online. That’s one word. Oracleofdusk.online. Thanks!