Time Lapse - Writer's Post prompt

May gazed at the tray of muffins in her hands. They were warm, golden, dotted with bright drops of cherry, perfect. She turned, rested them on the kitchen surface, continued to stare. Cooking flotsam surrounded her, spoons encrusted with dough, knives dripping butter and cherry bits. A slew of muffin cases fluttered across the worktop, a couple drifting to the floor in the draught from the open back door.

May stooped, picked them up and absently stuffed them back into their case, her mind trying to get a grip on the situation. She remembered deciding to make the muffins. She could picture herself gathering ingredients, setting the oven to heat, checking the butter was soft enough to begin. Then came the gap. They happened frequently now. Little lapses where she couldn't remember completing a task. She'd learned to put on a bright smile, to nod when people thanked her for a visit, reminded her of a phone conversation, a date she'd made. Just agree, figure it out later.

The problem had become the fact that she couldn't figure it out. The gaps were getting longer, blanker. At first, when she'd started to notice little empty spaces in her schedule, she'd put it down to tiredness. After all, she had three kids, a husband, a home to run and a job to hold down. She was entitled to the odd blonde moment. Absences which she could piece together with little reminders from friends or family.

A phone call to her mum which she didn't remember would be filled in when her mother next called. A chat to Rhonda, next door, over the fence, puzzled into place when they next spoke, or a chore, a date she forgot and had to be reminded of by those around her. Now, she couldn't remember, even when people filled in the gaps. The spaces remained stubbornly empty, her smile brighter and broader to compensate. Her absent-mindedness had become a standing joke with her family.

She transferred the muffins to a cooling rack, dunked the baking tray in the sink and headed for the garden. She did her best thinking in the garden, curled up on a rug in the gazebo. For a moment, as she settled on her back, staring up through the tangle of ivory roses at the cloudless sky, she wondered if she was supposed to be somewhere.

“No use worrying.” she murmured, “I won't remember.”

Her eyes closed, her nose filling with the scent of roses, her ears catching the trill of a songbird in the hedgerow. 'I'll sleep, think I've lost time again' she thought, feeling the paralysis that accompanies falling into sleep, her limbs stilled, unresponsive. A wasp fled by her nose, startling her enough to force her eyes open, despite her inertia.

Her frozen face could not register her shock, her muscles could not tense, force her upright, to chase the retreating figure. The form was moving out of her field of vision, but she knew the retreating figure. No, not retreating but going forward, leaving her behind. That it was herself barely registered on her mind. What captured her attention was how the figure jerked from one movement to the next. It reminded her of those old movies where frames seemed to jump from moment to moment. She was walking away from herself in frames of time.

Too soon she was alone. She had walked on, into the time yet to be, leaving herself in the time that was. She lay, staring up, mostly numb, unthinking, unfeeling, but for one observation. She watched the tight green bud which dangled from the gazebo above her head. It unfurled, paper-thin petals curling out, drying off, fluttering in the breeze... which jerked through each second. The ivory rose blossomed and failed in the space of an hour, frame by frame, dying in stop-motion. It couldn't happen, but she counted through each minute; one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, keeping pace with time which fled ahead of her, watched in immobile disbelief.

Coldness on her cheek brought her attention to her skin. A tear rolled in single frame leaps over her cheekbone. This realisation was jolted out of her mind, literally. Electricity crackled through her body, every hair in her skin standing to attention, her back arching, snapping up from the ground and slamming back down in an instant. With the charge still leaping through her body, she bolted upright, caught between relief at renewed movement and shock that someone crouched beside her.

The young man, shamefaced, eyed the taser in his hand, and shrugged.

“Sorry. It's the best way to snap laggers awake.”

“Laggers?”

“You, me.” he helped her to her feet, joints stiff, body still tingling, “That's what we're called.”

“We?”

“Yeah. Look, let's get you a cup of soup and set you straight.”

Her head whirling, May gave in to the urge to be looked after. The young man introduced himself as Gary, curling her arm over his and leading her back to the kitchen.

A few minutes later they sat at the table, May with a steaming cup of chicken soup, produced from a packet in Gary's pocket. When asked, he said it was like the taser gun, something that worked. He waited for her to drink some, saw her settle a little, stop jittering and stammering, and then began to explain.

“I'm bet you've been having time loss, right?” May nodded, “Yeah, that's how it starts for all of us. It's how we got our name. We lag out, lose patches of time with little to no recollection of those gaps. No-one understands it yet, but some people fall out of regular time. We slip behind the minutes, more and more, until we fall out of the time stream completely.”

May stared, swallowed, failed to speak, and went back to staring, the soup going cold, unheeded as she listened.

“A couple of science guys fell out of time, like us. They come up with theories, discard them, make up new ones, but there is no answer. Not yet. Laggers end up in the most uneven of races, chasing time. Did you see the frames?”

“You mean... like stop-motion?”

“Yeah, that's not a bad description. Laggers end up walking alongside time, watching it move on without us, one frame at a time. We can't catch up. We're always that one second, that single frame, off the pace.”

“What do I do?”

“Say what you mean, May. It's ok to say it.”

“How do I get back?”

“You don't.”

“Then... What do I do?”

“You run behind, chase time, forever.”

“There must be another way!”

Gary stilled, seemed to listen and then grabbed May's hand, dragging her through the house, out the front door, along the road. She tugged, tried to halt their forward motion but his grip on her hand tightened, his face a mask of fear.

“What is going on?” she yelled, struggling to keep his pace, watching time run away, one step at a time, ahead of them.

“Time's catching up with us. Run!”

“I don't understand...!”

“I know. Just run, May.”

As they fled forward, always a second adrift, May heard a faint, persistent whirr. She glanced back over her shoulder, halted, stumbled as Gary pulled her on, and bit down a scream. Behind her, filling the world from side to side, great silver discs turned, rolling relentlessly forward, toward them. May kept glancing back, watching in mingled terror and awe as the discs spun and the world was pulled onto the discs, seeming to settle into barely visible grooves on the gleaming surfaces.

“What are they?”

Gary shrugged.

“We don't know, but they seem to catch everything, maybe store it. All we can do is run, keep ahead of them. After a while they turn off, when it gets dark. We'll have a chance to get away from them then, put some distance between us.”

“They store everything?”

“Almost.” Gary shuddered and May insisted, urging him to be honest with her.

“My friend, John. We'd been here a while, stumbled across each other one day. Travelled together. Good guy.|”

“What happened to him?”

"The discs came. John was too slow. They rolled over him. I could see him, running behind the discs, trying to get back to me. I had to run, but I looked back. Wish I hadn't. When the discs left him behind, he was erased.”

“Erased?”

“He just disappeared, like he was wiped out of existence. The science guys think anyone who lags behind the discs is erased, like useless stuff, not worth storing, but we just don't know.”

May shrieked, the light suddenly failing, like a switch being turned off, leaving them in pitch darkness. Behind them the discs came to a rolling stop, silence falling with their cessation.

“Time to run, May.”

Stunned, but willing to fight for her life, May allowed Gary to lead her into the darkness.

Gill got up from her desk, stretched and winced as the computer shut down. Emptying her recycle bin and backing up were her final tasks every night. She always winced a little as the computer powered down, almost like it died a little each time, accompanied by a faint sound, a soft but piercing whine. Always made her think that the people she created, populating her stories, the ones she dumped as no good, were voicing their disapproval. Shaking her head at her fancifulness, she headed for bed.