It is a common enough phenomenon that on the hottest day of summer, time dilates. Expands, stretches. Tightening the physical limits of temporality to becomes a gross, distended monstrosity of a thing. Science scoffs and skeptics wag well meaning fingers, but it is on these occasions that Time reveals herself a sadist. You can see her, if you’re looking closely, if you squint a little. It helps to be very dehydrated.

It was on one such hot summer day, that Time sat and spread herself across a little college town, passing in that interminably slow way she reserved for the pleasure of torturing those forced to wait. Her present object of scrutiny, one Ben Walder. College-aged corpulent spectacle of a fellow, clad only in shorts and a thin patina of moistness.

Ben slapped at an itch creeping up the back of his neck. Somehow it was this motion, coupled with slow Internet, and a newfound suspicion of mosquitoes, that set Ben over the edge.

Fuck this. Fuck Steve and his stupid dates. Steve and his presumptuous “You’re gonna be home anyways, right?”
And it wasn’t even a definitive thing. There was just a chance. A chance that this might be one of those outdated delivery services that insisted on a signature instead of just leaving it at the door like any sensible apathetic.

Ben was martyring his evening for a contingency.