1 “Hi, my name is Rufus, and I’m in a loop.”
2 “Hi Rufus. Would you like to share tonight? When did it stop for you?”
1 “It’s New Year’s Eve, Eddie. Every goddamn day, it’s New Year’s Eve.”
2 “That must be rough.”
1 “It could be worse. I had a buddy who decided that never moving past his wife’s death was too much. Ended up joining her after a month of it.”
2 “Damn.”
1 “Yeah. I figure folks like us are the lucky ones. If time’s going to freeze up, stick you on one day for the rest of your life, it might as well be a good one. What about you? What day is it?”
2 “June 8th. Nothing special or personally significant about it whatsoever. Wish I could’ve said something more exciting, but hey, that’s why we’re here, right? To talk about the day things locked?”
1 “I suppose so. They say scientists are working on a solution. No ideas as to why everyone who caught it still has their own time. Did you ever see Groundhog Day?”
2 “Haven’t we all by now?”
1 “I suppose. Does that give any of us any more hope, though? I mean, we’re all still reliving a given day. Some of us have just been lucky enough to come across a support group like this one.”
2 “Yeah, this is true. I don’t know if I could’ve made it without the others.”
1 “Same. Do they have any sort of count, you think? Of how many of us there are?”
2 “Proven cases, or just by claims?”
1 “Proven.”
2 “Probably less than a half a percent. Still, that’s a hell of a lot of people worldwide.”
1 “Yeah it is. Damn strange thing.”
2 “Stranger still that it didn’t happen to all of us at the same time.”
1 “Definitely. That we’re not all on the same day.”
2 “Nah, that’s Vonnegut, with Timequake.
1 “Oh yeah, I read that one back in high school. Everybody knows what’s going to happen next because they’re all going through it together, but they can’t change anything.”
2 “Yup. One of his best, but he always did handle the whole ‘time is weird’ thing well.”
1 “Hell, I wrote my AP Lit final on his stuff. Not Billy Pilgrim, but Edgar Derby.”
2 “Poor, doomed, Edgar Derby.”
1 “Anyway, where were we?”
2 “Intros, I think.”
1 “Hi, my name is Rufus, and I’m in a loop.”
2 “Hi Rufus. Would you like to share tonight? When did it stop for you?”
1 “It’s New Year’s Eve, Eddie. Every goddamn day it’s New Year’s Eve.”
The Swords of the Ancients 
One Comment
I came across the unfinished version of this in my drafts from several years ago, and decided that New Year’s Eve was a damn good time to knock out the last 1/3.