Between the 7 and 8

The discrepancy begins with the number seven.

Calder notices it at 6:59 a.m., though later he will doubt the accuracy of that recollection, because certainty requires numerical trust, and numerical trust is precisely what has begun to erode.

His alarm reads 7:00, yet something resists completion.

The minute does not arrive cleanly. It lingers, stretched thin, unwilling to become what it has always become before. The transition feels granular, as if time must now negotiate permission before advancing.

He watches the digits hesitate.

7:00 remains longer than expectation allows.

Not frozen. Simply reluctant.

Calder sits upright, uneasy in a way that lacks emotional category. The sensation resembles miscounting stairs in darkness — the body preparing for impact that never occurs.

When the clock finally changes to 7:01, relief feels disproportionate.

He tells himself it was fatigue.

Numbers do this sometimes. Perception slips. Attention fractures. The mind invents irregularity where none exists.

Still, he counts the seconds while dressing.

One.

Two.

Three.

At five, doubt intrudes.

He begins again.

The apartment is orderly, governed by quiet arithmetic: four chairs, twelve tiles across the kitchen floor, thirty-two books aligned by height rather than subject. Calder has always preferred enumerability. Objects behave better when quantified.

Numbers promise obedience.

Outside, pedestrians move according to invisible calculations — crosswalk intervals, commute durations, predicted arrivals. The city functions because agreement exists about quantity. Distance. Sequence. Duration.

Without numbers, motion would collapse into argument.

At the café downstairs, the receipt prints $4.00.

He notices immediately.

Coffee costs $4.25.

He waits for correction, assuming tax delay or machine error, but the barista slides the cup toward him without hesitation.

“Have a good seven,” she says absently.

Seven what?

The phrase dissolves before inquiry forms.

Calder checks his phone. Battery: 77%. Steps yesterday: 7,777. The date contains two sevens he does not remember noticing before.

Pattern recognition activates involuntarily.

Humans evolved to fear coincidence.

He walks to work counting breaths, attempting stabilization. Numbers have always reassured him — anchors against ambiguity. Even grief once became tolerable when measured in days survived afterward.

But today enumeration feels unstable.

Traffic lights change too quickly. Elevators arrive before buttons finish illuminating. Conversations end mid-sentence, as though truncated by invisible rounding errors.

At his desk, spreadsheets refuse symmetry.

Totals misalign by fractions too small to locate yet large enough to exist. Columns produce answers adjacent to correctness but never identical. Calculations drift like compasses nearing magnetic disturbance.

Calder recalculates repeatedly.

Each result differs.

A colleague laughs somewhere behind him — exactly eight times, then once more, quietly, as though correcting excess.

He becomes aware of counting everywhere.

Footsteps in corridors. Keyboard strikes. Heartbeats pressing against ribs with mechanical insistence.

Numbers no longer describe reality. They pursue it.

By afternoon, anomalies multiply.

Room numbers skip sequence. The elevator displays 12 twice before acknowledging 13. A digital clock in the lobby reads 8:61 briefly before correcting itself.

No one reacts.

This unsettles him most.

The system appears intact for everyone else.

He begins wondering whether numbers require collective belief to function — whether quantity persists only through agreement. Currency collapses without trust. Calendars mean nothing without synchronization.

Perhaps counting itself is communal maintenance.

Outside, clouds assemble in uneven partitions across the sky. He finds himself estimating their spacing, compelled toward measurement despite diminishing confidence.

Seven pigeons occupy a power line.

One disappears between blinks.

Six remain.

Or eight.

He cannot confirm.

The distinction suddenly feels catastrophic.

Evening approaches through incremental subtraction of light. Calder walks home avoiding digital displays, relying instead on approximation — steps guessed rather than counted.

Yet absence creates its own arithmetic. Every unknown demands estimation.

His apartment greets him unchanged except for the clock.

7:00

Again.

Impossible. He left hours ago.

The minute holds steady, vibrating with unreal patience.

Calder waits for progression.

Nothing moves.

A thought occurs with quiet inevitability: perhaps numbers are not fixed truths but negotiations continually renewed. Perhaps reality advances only because counting agrees to continue.

And something — somewhere — has paused agreement.

He listens.

The refrigerator hum cycles irregularly. Drips occur without interval. His pulse refuses rhythm.

Without sequence, events lose hierarchy. Before and after dissolve. Cause hesitates without measurable distance from effect.

He realizes beginnings depend entirely on counting.

First step.

First word.

Day one.

Without numerical succession, nothing officially starts.

The clock flickers.

7:00 becomes 7:00:01.

The smallest possible movement forward.

Relief floods him so abruptly he laughs — once, sharply — but the second tick delays again, elongating into uncertainty.

Time resumes not smoothly but experimentally.

Testing continuation.

Calder moves toward the window, compelled by motion rather than understanding. Outside, streetlights ignite one by one, though not in order. Cars hesitate at intersections as if awaiting recalculation.

The world appears to be learning how to proceed.

He counts instinctively.

One light.

Another.

Pause.

Somewhere between seven and eight, progression falters again.

He feels it physically — reality inhaling without deciding whether to exhale.

The next second approaches but does not arrive.

Calder leans closer to the glass, already anticipating adjustment, already sensing that whatever governs sequence has shifted irreversibly, that enumeration itself stands at the edge of revision—

and as the clock prepares, slowly, uncertainly, to become something after seven,

he begins counting aloud,

waiting to discover whether numbers will follow him forward.