The Hourglass

So I sat, wordless dread conquering my thoughts, my head grasped in my hands, staring through the openings in my fingers like they were the bars of a jail cell encasing my world. Time slowed to a near standstill, like the sands in the hourglass were stuck in the neck, refusing to move any further.

And so my thoughts drifted slowly towards this hourglass that seemed bent on prolonging my wait as much as possible. The grains stuck at the neck piled on top of each other, forcing the trapped particles near the bottom further and further down. Finally a single lonesome, pathetic grain of sand would break free and fall towards the ground. Then without warning gravity dissolved and the single speck of sand fell in slow motion towards the bottom of the hourglass. Now as it neared the floor my vantage point abruptly changed and I also was at the floor of the hourglass and either everything around me had exploded to a monstrous size or I had shrunk down to a tenth of my previous magnitude. A huge boom thundered through the far exploits of my trance as the suddenly monstrous sand particle crashed to the bottom of the hourglass.

Now time sped up again and the grains pounded to the floor one at time in two-second intervals, like the steps of a giant lumbering towards me. And then the thought of the word “giants” broke me out of my half-conscious state and I pulled my eyes away from the vending machine that I had seemingly been staring at for the past five minutes. I looked around for the mammoth being I was waiting for on that lonely wooden bench and found myself relieved that he was still out of sight; the dreaded time had not yet come.