Springing Forward by Steven W. Jenkins

Steven W. Jenkins is an artisan who handcrafts split bamboo fly rods by trade. When time allows he pens short stories and novels of horror and speculative fiction. His first novel, Cold Hunger, has been self-published. Details about the book can be found at www.coldhungerbook.info. Steven requests that those kind enough to read his stories forward a brief and honest critique of his work to rodmaker@sopris.net.

The bitter March morning seemed illusory.

The onset of Daylight Savings Time haunted Phil Cambridge. A dream-like state left him feeling weightless, almost invisible. The mystical sense that an hour truly had been lost only escalated his sense of detachment. It left him feeling that something far beyond his control had changed along with the clock.

Head hung earthward; Phil watched the surreal swing of his polished wingtips as they dispersed the new layer of downy snow.

The Colorado burg of Marshall didn't wake up early on Sunday. The town's narrow streets were normally vacant, save for the handful of the devoted making their way past dogs barking behind white picket fences surrounding quaint, clapboard houses.

No dogs barked as he passed.

Phil continued his trek to Marshall's Community Church. It was there he prayed for redemption from the transgressions that consumed his life and left him a slave to the bottle.

Unbidden thoughts tormented him. Phil left Hart's bar at closing, but he had no recollection of anything after two A.M.; the moment that the clock sprung forward and left a sixty-minute black hole in the space-time continuum. He pulled out the knurled wheel of the Timex encircling his wrist and rotated the minute hand clock-wise to compensate for the change.

An instantaneous synapse stabbed his brain, demanding Phil to halt and close indigo eyes. He stood there, wavering in the bitter air, watching the inexplicable scenario playing behind his eyelids. The granular, black and white, exposé appeared to be recorded by a convenience store's surveillance camera stationed far above the earth.

An obscure man staggered out of Hart's bar onto the sidewalk bordering Main Street, across from the church. He tried to determine if it was safe to cross over the slick asphalt road. No headlights shown, only the sound of a vehicle's spinning tires sounding in the distance.

Halfway into the southbound lane, the ghostly image of a racing Dodge Ram pick-up suddenly appeared ten feet before him. Recoiling, he tried to avoid the violent encounter with the speeding mass of cold steel. The impact was brutal. The man ended glued to the truck's shattered windshield, mortally crushed.

Phil peeled his eyes open, trying to deem what he had just experienced was only a subconscious delusion. He continued along Third Avenue and turned the corner.

A yellow police tape blocked Main Street in front of the church. The small congregation was gathered outside the perimeter in front of Hart's bar, joined by a handful of the tavern's patrons. With heads bowed low, some placed flowers on the sidewalk.

Phil rushed toward the scene as fast as his phantom legs would carry him. He stopped behind the Reverend and asked, "What happened here?"

There was no response, only the nearly imperceptible murmur of the holy man in front of him.

"Dear Lord, please embrace Phil Cambridge and welcome his tortured soul into the kingdom of your blessed Heaven."