I curse myself for setting my alarm as the 80’s rock anthem of Saturday nights. Every time I repeat, there it is at 7:00 a.m. exactly; the same stupid synthesizers and brash rhythms blaring in my ear. Around the 300th time I repeated, it started coming back around, but that only lasted as long as my taste-all-the-tastes-of-Sacramento phase.
Change it you might say.
I can’t.
I’m stuck.
I’m stuck, repeating the same s***ty day with the same s***ty people. Admittedly there are some interesting people in my life like Teepee Bob, the semi-homeless man with the bright yellow beard who lies down on the sidewalk seductively and watches people. Bob seemed surprised the first time I came up and talked to him. He was also surprised the second, third and fourth times, even though he never forgets a person’s face, in case they become a ninja nun and try to kill him. My family is always concerned when I spend this “beautiful summer day” talking to homeless men, but the conversation is usually worth whatever temporary nuisance they prove to be for this day. Talking to people all night was how I discovered that, if I stay up until 1:17 I have a heart attack and die. 1:17 is the reset point, and no matter how hard I try, I always die at exactly 1:17 a.m. I die and I wake up the next day at 7:00 a.m. and everything is back to the way it was. Exactly the way it was; my planner is blank and my wounds are healed and nobody remembers anything from the day before. No one will remember if I kill somebody or rob a bank or die a tragic and painful death. They’ll cry and hug each other and contemplate suicide, but before they can take the leap, 1:17 rolls around and they’re hitting the snooze button, trying to decide if pancakes are worth the effort. I went insane trying to escape the loop for the first 100 or so repeats, but it’s no use. So I gave up. Now, I just have fun instead. I have to make fun for myself by exploring and experimenting and just generally doing whatever the f*** I want to. Woot. My rebellion is lost on the ignorant people around me. I keep doing new things but no matter how crazy the semi-homeless man or how satisfying the murder of the prick in 5th period calculus, everything eventually loses its charm.
It’s funny how no repeat is exactly the same, but they all seem to acknowledge each other’s existence. I’m fairly certain the only difference is the choices I make and I’m here to prove chaos theory and the butterfly effect or to branch out multiple universes or timestreams or something. I must have kicked the wrong pebble because, even though each repeat starts exactly the same, there was a period of time from repeat 687 to repeat 694 when meteorites kept destroying civilization (or my suburb at least) because NASA is underfunded and the one guy that knew about the oncoming apocalypse lives in a trailer in the middle of the Arizona desert where he dropped his satellite phone into a puddle of his own urine during a peyote trip. The last part of that story was told to me by a man with a scraggly neck beard who runs a they-are-among-us  website, but I figure, f*** it, the sky is falling, I might as well believe what I want to.
Watching my family get squished like bugs or killed by a pebble from space in some kind of odd cosmic headshot isn’t a particularly pleasant experience anyway, but it was especially annoying because I was in the middle of trying to figure out how many types of clothing I could make out of paper plates and Dixie cups.
It seems harsh, but they are always fine in the morning anyway. I entertain myself. It keeps me sane, relative as sanity is. I also keep a planner in my pocket so I can make dates with strangers and plan the future that remains out of reach. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I’m an 87 year old woman named Margeret, sitting in a comfy chair in a nursing home in Florida trying to rock away my regrets. It’s too late for any of that. Margeret and I have to live with the choices we’ve made. I raise my glass to you Margeret; may you rock in peace.
I feel a bit like a man who used to scratch at the walls of his prison until his fingernails and teeth were the same color and cleaner than his hair, but now just sits with his eyes closed, enjoying the rhythm of the water dripping in the hallway of his prison. Today is my 1,000th repeat. It’s seems like I’ve won an award, but that the award is for participation in a Jog-a-thon that the Universe forced me into and won’t let me stop to get water or go to the bathroom. F*** the Universe. Or God. Or the Divine Turtle. Whatever floats your boat.
What should I do this time? My house is hardly an inexhaustible source of fun, and the small suburb where I live (although pleasant) is really more eye candy than anything else. I suppose eating breakfast would be a good course of action. Did you know that there are 27 different ways to eat Raisin Bran? This morning, it seems more appropriate to eat cheerios. They’re not the honey-nut kind that transform the milk into liquid deliciousness and sometimes have you going back to the box for seconds, only to realize that your stupid brother Scott ate them all. Just Cheerios.
My mother walks into my pleasantly boring meal and puts on water for tea, not coffee today because she has a migraine and caffeine just doesn’t agree with her (but then again, she does loves her coffee). I get up to put my dishes in the sink, and I toy with the idea of putting them onto the counter instead, but her migraine plus my recent (2.7 years ago by my time) drop to a C in chemistry do not add up well and that is definitely not a mistake I’m going to make a twelfth time. I carefully placed them in and headed for the door. I had one foot out the door, ready to completely abstain from seizing the day without notifying anybody who loved me (I’ve been pretty royally screwed so I yes, I feel slightly entitled), but again, I thought  better of it.
“Mom. Despite my lifelong aversion to the outdoors, physical activity, and all things nature-related, I’ve decided to go to the park. I promise not to break any laws or talk to strangers.”
“What?” She turned mid-drip and started making a trail of coffee stains coming my way. “Sean, I don’t understand wh-”
Her words are lost behind the closing door and the rustling of leaves in the gentle breeze that wafts the scent of fresh-mown grass from Trevor Johnson’s front yard. I say Trevor Johnson’s and not Mr. Johnson Sr.’s because Trevor does all of the real work, and does so rather stoically, despite his eagerness to unload his woes onto the first interested party.
“F*** this man! One of these days I’m gonna take one of those stupid little garden gnomes and throw it at his precious, goddamn Camaro so hard it’s gonna f***in explode!” I wish that I had gotten to know him better before I got stuck. He seems really cool. Now all of our conversations inevitably end with an inquiry into my identity and with me walking away uncomfortable and just a little bit unsatisfied.
That house with the purple door and the pretentious-looking bacony and the fake, plaster gargoyles is home to the Kensington family. They’re filthy rich, and you can tell, by how skinny the wife is and how fat their children are. I don’t really have a story to tell about them, they’re just the lords of douche-shire and I never wasted any repeats on them.
Goldberg Park is my favorite place to think. The swaying trees pull your mind towards a trance and the ducks go about their lives, observed or not. I once lived until 1:18 a.m. in Fallen Oak, a park just a few blocks away from my house in the other direction, but I just can’t stop my feet from taking me this way instead. I invariably gravitate to the same beat-up, old bench. This bench is my favorite. From here I can survey all. The bench sits atop a hill and delivers a shaded view of the ducks in the pond and all the other benches. Drew, the single mother of a baby girl named Starlight (15 months), has stopped to drink and look at the pond.
Drew already has her day planned out, but what should I do? I could go and talk to Teepee Bob. Been there; done that. I could go see how many times I could shoplift before getting caught. Same old; same old. I could remember what it feels like to snuff out someone’s life light. Meh. 
Right on cue, Drew strolls by with her baby in a baby stroller, wearing short hair and a tank top, allowing her skin to boast its tattoo of a flock of birds around the word “free”. It’s early, so things haven’t really had time to diverge, but it’s still comforting to see her in the place she usually is. There seems to be limitless possibilities from the same starting point in each repeat. I once asked her why she thought having a baby by herself while going to night school and balancing two jobs was a good idea.
“Life isn’t a decision. You just live it, day after day.”
“Sometimes one day doesn’t follow another” I mumbled to myself.
“And before you go back to your s***ty life and judge me, I’d just like you to know that I love this girl and that this day, and the day after that, and the day after that, and every day until I’m old and Republican will be hers. Please, go tell all your little D&D friends. I’m Drew! F*** you!”
I pull out my planner and put down “tell D&D friends: F*** You” for tuesday. I suppose she taught me something about cosmic justice or karma or being nice to people. To be honest, I’m tired of learning things.
Maybe I should head down to the library and read the 1,023-page book that is the complete history of Florin.  It’s the only book in this town that I haven’t read. Warm air and the gentle scent of flowers persist that I stay in my bench and push down on my conciousness.
I wake up panting. Whenever I nap I see the same things. I am the hamster in the wheel, spurred on by the maniacal laughter of my overlord who a little girl who is also a ballerina doing an endless pirouette in the pool of blood where her toes are being slowly worn away and are half-way gone. 
I shiver and pull my jacket tighter around me, but the north wind is no match for the summer sun and I stand up to take it off, but the zipper is stuck in the same place, and I can’t get out of my jacket. I try and pull it over my head, but there’s no way out, and I pull and I pull and i pull and it won’t come off and I hate this stupid jacket and i’m stuck in it and I can’t stand it. I pull down on the zipper but I still can’t get out. I pull the sides of my jacket out and it still won’t budge. I pull harder and harder and harder and finally the zipper shatters and I rip off the jacket and flail at the the bench with it, so the metal makes scratches in it that won’t be here when 1:17 finally comes. The breeze picks back up and the tops of the beads of sweat on my arm began to evaporate, lowering the overall temperature, and providing a moderate tempering of the noon sunlight. I pick up my jacket and admire the ducks. I turn back around and jump.
There is someone very new sitting on my bench. “Hey man.” He pushes his long wavy hair out of his face to get a better look at me.
“Hello.” I’ve never seen this man before. He seems oddly out of place. He dresses like a hippie with a tunic and love beads but his eyes are wise and timeless. The beginnings of his beard accents his smile nicely. He looks out at the ducks and the benches, some filled people, with his eyes wide open.
“Who are you?” He seems like he might be a John or a Greg.
He chuckles, “Who is anyone really?”
“Well I’m Sean.”
“That’s your name.” He leans in with a grin that says he’s clearly just told the most profound and hilarious joke to ever be heard by man.
I shook my head. “Well, what’s your’s then?”
“Oh who cares; call me John, if you really want to.”  He laughed at my shock and slapped his canvas-covered knee.
We sit there for a few minutes. He sits completely still with his eyes straight ahead while my knee bounces and I bite my nails, occasionally glancing at him or opening my mouth only to close it again, with the click of my teeth breaking the silence.
“So.” I puff out my cheeks and force nonchalance. “Where are you from?”
He doesn’t reply at first. “Oh a little bit of everywhere. I’m an interloper, I guess.”
“Oh ok.” I nod and turn away again. He continues to sit there and smile inanely at the birds and the squirrels, as if they have the most interesting opinions on Buddhism and the legalization of marijuana that he’s ever heard. Hippy bastard. Enigmatic hippy bastard. I don’t want to scare him away though. “It’s just that I thought I knew everybody around here.”
“New people don’t come to your town? I would have come here sooner if I knew it would be so beautiful.”
“Well, when did you get here?”
He looks to the sky. “I don’t know. Not long before.” Looking back down towards the pond where Drew is finishing her walk and the ducks suddenly take off, as they always do, he said, “How long have you been here?”
I narrowed my eyes and took stock of him once more before shrugging my shoulders. Usually, I just interact with people normally the first time I meet them, but I don’t really care today. I summon my best version of cool indifference and normalcy.
“I’ve repeated this day one thousand times.”
Nothing. Not even a twitch.
“What do you think people want out of life?”
What!? What do people want out of life? What kind of question is that? Are we just going to gloss over the fact that I’m the f***ed-over version of Bill Murray? Although I think about this a lot actually (existentialism is surprisingly appealing when you’re the only real person you know).
“To be happy.” He nods and adjusts the straps on his Birkenstocks. The leaves on the trees come to rest and the cries of the baby birds above us are temporarily sated. A snail moves across a leaf, devouring it.
“Are you happy, Sean?”
“Of course not.” I answer immediately.
“Why not?”
“Obviously, because I’m repeating a single day over and over again with no escape.”
He smiles. “And why does that make you unhappy?”
“I want to be free. I want tomorrow”
“Have you ever been to tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Well, then how do you know it will be so much better than this?”
The breeze picks up and the trees lean in questioningly. The birds continue to chirp and the mockingbird imitates the others with its versatile voice and quick wit. I cough a little and adjust in the bench, sitting fully upright. “I don’t, I guess” and I get up to leave.
When I get back home and open the front door, Scott is sitting at the kitchen table reading comics.
“Hey man,” I say.
“Hey man yourself, doofus. Mom is super worried about you.”
“That’s because she loves me more than you buttface.”
The stairs that lead to my parents’ room are extremely creaky; unfixable, as it turns out, because of serious warping. I’ve walked out on my parents many times, but It’s very rare that I come back to apologize. I take a deep breath and knock before entering.
“Oh, there you are Sean.” My mother, sitting in her floral-print armchair that my dad hates so much, looks up from her book. “Did you have fun playing in the park?”
“Uh, yeah, it was alright.”
She puts down her book and takes off her glasses. “Just alright?” She looks out the window. “Today is a beautiful day. You are lucky to live through days like this.”
“Yeah, I suppose I am.” I back out of the room and close the door behind me. I unplug the alarm in my room before going to bed. Just in case.
7:00 a.m. arrives again. I launch myself out of bed and dance around my room a little, singing along with the familiar tune, definitely nailing those high notes. I get dressed and jog down the stairs.
“Good morning, Scott. Have you considered the wonderful and mystical world that is outside as an alternative to the dark and shadowed streets of Gotham City?”
“Haha, very funny.” He makes a face and mumbles at his comics. I tousle his hair on my way outside.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to get rid of all my junk.” I stroll outside and flip through the blank pages of my planner before throwing it in the dumpster.