Annalyss laid on her bed listening to the clunk, clunk, clunk of the old clock on the dresser top. Every minute was punctuated with that dull clunk sound, & she felt herself drifting deeper into relaxation with each stroke.
It had been in her father's family for years, handed down from generation to generation. With her father's untimely death last year on her 12th birthday, it now belonged to her. Annalyss' dad had taught her to control her anger, anxiety & fiery temper by listening to the repetitions of that clock; a deep breath to relax with every clunk.
It stood a foot tall & 2 feet wide, & weighed more than her thin arms could support. She wound it every night before she went to bed by turning the brass key in the bottom center. It felt like breathing life into an old & trusted friend with every rotation. With her dad's death, Annalyss had felt like she'd lost her best friend, sometimes going days without speaking more than one syllable responses; but in the quiet of her room she would sometimes carry on extended conversations in her mind with the clock. Well, not really with the clock. More like, to her dad through the clock.
Lately the days seemed to stretch on exonerably. After another dull day at school, Annalyss would escape to the peacefullness of her simply decorated room. She would lie on her bed, close her eyes, & let her mind escape. Back into the special place where only she, her dad, & the clunk of the clock existed.
She would begin by remembering that last great day they spent together, just the two of them high above the clouds in his antique Cessna. When she could feel the excitement tingling in her toes, only then would she allow herself to feel how much she missed him.
It was hard to forget how frustrated she was at school. To let go of the anger at how little she saw her mom. But ever so slowly, breathing deeply while listening to the clunk, clunk, clunk of the clock, she could will herself to relax.
Annalyss allowed thoughts of school to invade her calmness now. The warm breeze blew in gently through the open window, caressing her face as gently as her dad's hand had once carressed her golden hair. It seemed like such a waste of time going to school anymore. She was way ahead of the other kids in every subject. Dad had understood what she was going through. But Mom insisted that it was important that she stay in the same age group as her other classmates, so even though she had a photographic memory which made regular classroom work feel like being in kindergarten, she attended every day anyway.
It seemed she always knew what the assignment was going to be before any of the teachers even put it up on the monitors. Sometimes she would have it completed before class was even over; Heck, the past two days she had been kicking around the idea of submitting it a day before it was assigned, just to see what would happen! God, school was so boring, & everyone seemed so dumb!
"Actually," Analyss thought, " I seem to know a LOT of things lately before anyone says them". It was a little disorienting, to say the least. She would know what someone was going to say, or what was going to happen like it was whispered in her ear. Or just appeared in her head. When they did happen, just like she had already heard, or seen, Annalyss thought it was like a bad case of deja' vu.
At first, she thought that it was all a bad joke. That people were repeating themselves or something. They looked at her quizzically when she said, "I know", when they told her something that she couldn't possibly have known beforehand.
Like she had known that her mom was going to accept an assignment with the medical advance team aboard Station III before her mom had even known the offer was going to be extended to her.
One day last week during Trig analysis, Annalyss had been sure she had seen a different computer monitor in front of her. It wasn't anything like they had in school. There was stuff she didn't recognize, but somehow understood on the screen. When she shook herself awake from what she thought was a daydream, everything was back to normal.
Just two days ago, she was lying on her bed, listening to the clunk, clunk, clunk when suddenly she imagined herself floating in some foamy stuff - she still wasn't sure what it was - and when she willed herself to open her eyes, she was in some kind of cubicle, in a bunk kind of bed. The only thing that had calmed her initial terror on awakening, (she HAD to have been asleep, right?), was the steady clunk, clunk of the clock on her dresser.
And now she knew that even though it was highly unusual, she would be accompanying her mom to Neolyte Station. There was something going on there, too. And it had to do with the foamy stuff.