I always liked Fridays.
They were my favourite days of the week.
School or work winding down, the beginning of the weekend…
I spent Friday afternoons in anticipation, watching the minutes tick away toward nights spent in blissful non-duration, like falling-into: being cocooned or entombed, for Fridays were both too long and not long enough, yet no other day could ever feel as complete, as intrinsically sufficient—those Friday nights in which we might live forever!—as timeless, and as endless, and as—
Contrition.
For Fridays were.
It began on a Monday you can fall apart, as I was listening to obscure 20th-century music while scheduling a medical appointment for next Tuesday, Wednesday, heart attack and the song said, ‘It’s Friday. I’m in love.’
The music had stopped playing.
Just the line remained:
‘It’s Friday. I’m in love. It’s Friday. I’m in love. It’s Friday. I’m in love.’
—believing it was a technical malfunction, I said aloud, ‘Who are you?’
‘It’s Friday.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m in love.’
‘With?’
‘…you—’ The music restarted; another song: ‘—make me feel like I am home again.
‘I like Fridays,’ I said, ‘but I don’t love them.’
It felt ridiculous to say anything, and I felt foolish, so I shut up and tried to forget the entire weird episode, but, you see, I’m the one who was responsible!” I say over video chat to the gathered members of the International Society for the End of Days.
“Thank you for sharing,” Martha says.
They clap.
Martha remembers Uzoliday, which had once been the eleventh day of the week. But she wasn’t responsible for its death.
“I’ll never forget sitting in my cubicle on a Thursday afternoon. A passing coworker wishes me a good weekend,” I say. “‘But it’s Thursday’, I said. He just looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, and tomorrow’s Saturday. Get some sleep!’ And they all laughed, as inside I was suffocating.”
My Muslim friends no longer have a day of worship. My priest speaks about a resurrection without a crucifixion. No wonder the world doesn’t make any sense. So much of it is missing.
“Unrequited love is universal,” Kenji says.
Kenji doesn’t remember any once-were days. He’s a scholar who combs through historical records for references to ones that time has failed to erase. As he says, time is perfect in its physical manipulations, but when it comes to dealing with human records it sometimes makes human errors.
“Friday loved me, I didn’t love it back, so Friday killed itself…”
“It’s not your fault,” says Martha.
“Suicide is complex. Human or temporal. Friday was deeply troubled,” says Lois.
Lois is our founder.
She believes the end of days must be understood literally. Once there were thousands of days, but one-by-one they’ve fallen (oldness, suicide, murder) and will to continue to fall, like leaves off an autumn tree, until the day on which we’ll have no more days in which to be: stillborn instants in a timeless matter-sea.