Phased
Denzil blinked, and the world changed.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened, although he still didn’t understand what was going on or why. Nobody else seemed to notice; they just sort of moulded themselves around all the changes as if they’d always been there. Denzil noticed though. He always noticed.
He almost hadn’t, the first time. The first time he had ever blinked had been three days after his fifth birthday. His parents had taken him to every specialist in the country, terrified that something was terribly wrong with their unblinking son, but always they met the same expert opinion. Nobody knew. It wasn’t that anything was wrong with Denzil per se, he was in all respects a perfectly happy, healthy child.
He just never blinked.
Until that day, of course, when he did. And the world changed.
The first one had been a gradual change, now that he thought about it. The air had tasted a little different; the colour of his mother’s hair had gone from blonde to dirty brown; and the exchange student from France who was staying with him was now from Portugal. Little things that you wouldn’t really notice. Denzil had, of course.
Now that he thought about it, nobody had noticed him blink either, except him. They carried on thinking that he had never once blinked in his life. And he didn’t bother to correct them.
He hadn’t, in fact, blinked again until he had been nine years old for four hours and twenty-seven seconds. He didn’t know why he had been checking the time so exactly, but he recalled with crystal clarity that he had been doing just that at the moment he blinked and the world changed again. The neighbour’s garage now held a Porsche where there used to be a Ford Escort, and they had a cat instead of a dog; he had English lessons at 1:30pm on Fridays where he used to have Music; a local rock band he’d recently started listening to no longer existed; and he couldn’t be quite certain on this one but he was pretty sure his own pet rabbit had grown an extra whisker.
Now he was thirteen years, six months, two weeks, five days, twelve hours, nineteen minutes and three seconds old and he’d blinked for the third time in his life. It was kind of disconcerting to him at first to find that nothing had changed at all until he realised approximately fourteen seconds and ninety-two milliseconds later that the only reason he hadn’t noticed what had changed was because he was looking for little details when in fact he should have realised that what had really changed was everything.
He had wandered around for a few years or so after that, carefully cataloguing all of the things that weren’t what they were before. The rivers and lakes weren’t red any more, they were blue instead; birds flew in the sky instead of being used as writing implements while pencils no longer had wings and had seemingly taken up the empty vacancy the birds had left; people only had two arms instead of three with five fingers on each instead of seven; and then there was the biggest change of all. The one that baffled Denzil more than any other:
The world wasn’t even flat!
Denzil blinked, and the world changed.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened, although he still didn’t understand what was going on or why. Nobody else seemed to notice; they just sort of moulded themselves around all the changes as if they’d always been there. Denzil noticed though. He always noticed.
He almost hadn’t, the first time. The first time he had ever blinked had been three days after his fifth birthday. His parents had taken him to every specialist in the country, terrified that something was terribly wrong with their unblinking son, but always they met the same expert opinion. Nobody knew. It wasn’t that anything was wrong with Denzil per se, he was in all respects a perfectly happy, healthy child.
He just never blinked.
Until that day, of course, when he did. And the world changed.
The first one had been a gradual change, now that he thought about it. The air had tasted a little different; the colour of his mother’s hair had gone from blonde to dirty brown; and the exchange student from France who was staying with him was now from Portugal. Little things that you wouldn’t really notice. Denzil had, of course.
Now that he thought about it, nobody had noticed him blink either, except him. They carried on thinking that he had never once blinked in his life. And he didn’t bother to correct them.
He hadn’t, in fact, blinked again until he had been nine years old for four hours and twenty-seven seconds. He didn’t know why he had been checking the time so exactly, but he recalled with crystal clarity that he had been doing just that at the moment he blinked and the world changed again. The neighbour’s garage now held a Porsche where there used to be a Ford Escort, and they had a cat instead of a dog; he had English lessons at 1:30pm on Fridays where he used to have Music; a local rock band he’d recently started listening to no longer existed; and he couldn’t be quite certain on this one but he was pretty sure his own pet rabbit had grown an extra whisker.
Now he was thirteen years, six months, two weeks, five days, twelve hours, nineteen minutes and three seconds old and he’d blinked for the third time in his life. It was kind of disconcerting to him at first to find that nothing had changed at all until he realised approximately fourteen seconds and ninety-two milliseconds later that the only reason he hadn’t noticed what had changed was because he was looking for little details when in fact he should have realised that what had really changed was everything.
He had wandered around for a few years or so after that, carefully cataloguing all of the things that weren’t what they were before. The rivers and lakes weren’t red any more, they were blue instead; birds flew in the sky instead of being used as writing implements while pencils no longer had wings and had seemingly taken up the empty vacancy the birds had left; people only had two arms instead of three with five fingers on each instead of seven; and then there was the biggest change of all. The one that baffled Denzil more than any other:
The world wasn’t even flat!