September 15, 2017 – Michael Seidel, writer

The day was supposed to be a Thursday. That was the word from the calendar, and sources like computers, phones, and Fitbits. Other people asked, agreed, “Yes, today is Thursday.”

He remained unconvinced. The day didn’t feel like a Thursday. It didn’t feel like any proper day. His senses and thinking couldn’t penetrate the mask the day wore to see what day was under it. It definitely wasn’t Thursday. It didn’t seem like Friday or Monday. Distinctive in their feel, he thought he would have known them. Nor did it seem like a holiday behind the mask. Each holiday had its own uniquely cultivated taste and sound. He was certain that a holiday couldn’t be completely and successfully masked against his awareness.

Could it be Sunday behind the mask? It seemed out of character for Sunday. In fact, of all the days, he would expect Thursday to be the one that would pull a prank like this and masquerade as another day. Certainly it wasn’t something Saturday would do; Saturday was too full of itself to pretend to be another day.

An odd idea came to him. He had nothing to tell him it wasn’t Thursday behind the mask. If it was, Thursday was masquerading as itself, but doing a poor job of it.

He considered why that would be, why Thursday would want to pretend it was another day masquerading as itself. Doing a poor job of it would make him distrust everything about the day.

That was it. One of the days was up to something, and the way they were going about it was inculcating distrust in all of them. He looked around the day with sharpening suspicion, wondering which day could be, and what was going to happen. Whichever day it was, it was a cruel, cruel thing the day had done. If a day couldn’t be trusted, what would be next? Gravity? Sunshine? Time? That was all that he needed now.

Looking to the future with dread, he looked to the past with doubt, and stayed wary about the present, certain something else was about to happen, and completely unprepared for what it was going to be.

An old fave. From an excellent album and nineteen eighty-five, here’s Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics with, “Would I Lie to You?”

I’d come back from Okinawa the year this was released, and was assigned to a mobility unit. We traveled a lot, mostly to Florida, but also Egypt and other parts of the Middle East, and Europe. I’d bought a new Mazda RX-7, and put over fifty thousand miles on it driving to temporary duty locations. The net result of that traveling, I’ve never seen this video until today. It’s, ah, interesting, with the story it told.

Side note: nineteen eighty-five was the year of my first computer. It used CP/M 86, had a tiny green screen, dual floppies, and ran at 4.77 MHz, but it was something. Using WordStar, I’d put it to learn how to write fiction, but mostly, I gamed on it.