1000 Hours Outside Book Novels & Stories

then he turned and walked out the door. I left work at one thirty, when my shift ended. I decided to go for a bike ride around the pack territory instead of going home. After riding around aimlessly for about an hour, I rode out to the lake at the outskirts of the pack and found a shady place to sit under a tree where someone had left their towel behind. I shook it out and sat down on it, staring out at the glistening water, the sun’s rays reflecting off it. It was so peaceful that I decided to pull out my cell phone to read a book on it, leaning my body against a large tree trunk. I became so immersed in the book that I lost track of time.

“Holy shite!” I spent the next hour going through page by page. However, it seemed that the book always managed to place a new page at the back as soon as I finished reading one page because I’d never gotten through the book despite the five hours of sleep that I’d foregone. Right before the breaks of dawn, I reached an interesting page filled with names.

There's a pause with kissing-adjacent potential in it, so I hang up before I hear something I can't unhear. I send the photos. Every page, flash on, edges in frame. Then I sit on Dad's desk for about ninety seconds, being reasonable. It doesn't take. I didn’t spend years sweating in that barn just to burn off steam. Ten thousand hours of drills for a night that was never going to be allowed to come, and now it's here. I'm the one who cracked it, and I'm supposed to spend it in my room like the family houseplant? Nope.

I let out a heavy sigh of relief, and finished my hot chocolate before heading back inside, and walking towards the living room. I decided to turn on one of the lights that stood on one of the miniature tables next to the couch, and I opened the book which I had been reading for the past few days. I read for what felt like hours, and when I looked back up at the clock that was hanging on the wall, I found out that I had been reading for the past three hours.

I read it. It took approximately twelve seconds to read, which was the amount of time it took to register the two categories and the two time windows and the brief, clean sentence at the bottom that said please observe scheduled hours to support the household's morning routines. The document was brief. It said what it needed to say in the compact, unornamented language of someone who had thought carefully about what words to include and had included only those. His hours: seven to eight. Mine: nine to ten.

Elma said, “Looks like peace.” Destiny said, “It was. You should come next time.” Elma said, “I will. If I have time.” Destiny put phone down. Looked at her hard. Destiny said, “You have time now. Use it.” The words sat between them. Heavy but warm. Like a blanket. Elma nodded. Didn’t promise. Didn’t lie. Just nodded. Elma talked about the book she finally finished. Not wrote. Finished reading. 300 pages. Paper. No screen. Took her two weeks. One chapter a night.

"Then what is realistic?" "Forty hours. Maybe forty-five. To do three cases well." "That's still better than sixty." "But worse than thirty." "Sometimes worse than ideal is the best you can get." I hated that he was right. --- I spent the week thinking about it. Three cases. Forty hours. Still home most nights by 6:30 or 7. Not perfect. But sustainable-ish. Better than sixty-hour chaos. Worse than thirty-hour peace. The middle ground. Again. Friday, I met with Walter.

I grabbed my gray and white Jordans and slipped my feet into them. Sitting down at my desk. I pulled out the prophecy book I’d been studying. I opened it but couldn’t concentrate. I tried, but I just couldn’t. After hours of not being able to get a single thing done, I closed the book and looked at the clock. It was almost ten. I grabbed my keys and the bottle off my desk and then headed out of the back door. In a matter of minutes, I was outside Jillie’s house. I was in the bushes facing her window. I could see that her lamp was on. I listened closely, and I heard the shower running.

He looked at his watch, the small black hand points to three, the big one to thirty. - Why do I look at the clock? I already know perfectly well that it's half past four now, oh, these habits. Joints crunched. Conrod finished all his work at work, he wrote three articles when his other colleagues did not even finish one. I gave my book to circulation, they promised to do it very quickly, we'll see. Conrod packed a laptop into a bag, turned off the working computer, immediately cutting off the power to the surge protector. At the exit, the taxi he called half an hour ago was already waiting for him.