Six Thirty:

          Bill William tossed and turned that morning trying to sleep. After working all night, he wasn’t used to sleeping with the sun shining through the window. Today was his wife’s birthday.

          The company he just started working for had come up with new work shifts no one liked. He was stuck on the Six PM to Three AM shift. The company said the employees got to vote shortly, on which, of the many shifts they’ve tried over the last two years. Bill just got off the swing shift. This was his first week on the new graveyard. Well, what they used to call graveyard.

          Bill could not complain too much. All he did as a night watchman was sit in one of the newest vaults ever built. The vault was ten floors underground. That place had more alarms, bells and whistles than any other place he had worked.

          Bill looked at his alarm clock. “Great,” he told himself. “I haven’t even been asleep for three hours and I’m wide awake. I might as well get up and putter around the house till I get tired.”

          After getting dressed, Bill walked down stairs and found his wife sleeping in her recliner.  When he kissed her forehead, she woke up and asked, “What time is it?”

          Looking at his watch, Bill smiled down and said, “Six thirty, love. Sorry. I couldn’t sleep. Happy Birthday”

          “Well, go for coffee then. I didn’t sleep well last night with you gone. You know how much noise you can make and I want to sleep,” she muttered. "Thanks."

          “Okay, honey,” he said.  “I’ll be down at the coffee shop if you need me.” He closed the door and left.

          As Bill walked into the corner cafe, he looked around for the people he normally talked to at this time of day. He smiled at the server and asked, “Hey, Shirley, where is everyone?”

          “They all left. You’re running late today. Why?” she asked over her shoulder as she took some plates of food to two ladies.

          “I’m not late. It’s only,” he paused as he looked at his watch with a questioning look on his face. “It’s still Six thirty PM? Hell! My watch stopped. What time is it?

          One of the men sitting at the counter looked at his watch. “Eleven fifty six,” he told Bill.

          “Thanks. I guess I sleep a lot longer than I thought. I better stop by Wal-Mart and pick up a watch battery today,” Bill said as he sat down.

          “So,” Shirley said. “What’ll it be? Tea or coffee?”

          “Go ahead and make it coffee. I have to go find something to put over my windows to keep the sun out so I can sleep,” Bill told her.

          Shirley leaned over as she handed him a cup of coffee. “You know what my old man did when he worked the night shift down in Texas two years ago?”

          “No. What did he do?” Bill laughed.

          Shirley gave Bill one of those “Do you want to hear this or not?” looks that she gave out often and then went on talking,” “He got some of that aluminum-backed foam from the lumberyard and a roll of duck tape. Cut chunks to fit the windows. Duck taped around them and then used long tack pines to put them over the windows. It made our bedroom darker then a coal mine shaft.”

          “Thanks. I’ll look into that after I get this watch running. You know how I hate not knowing what time it is,” Bill said as he sipped his coffee.

          Bill looked down at his watch again. It wasn’t like him to let the battery go dead. “Hey, Shirley, get a load of this. My watch stopped at Six thirty PM on the 16th of March,” Bill said with a smile.

          Shirley looked at him with a “So what?” look.

          Bill laughed. “This is the 16^th of March. Don’t you see? It stopped tonight.”

          “You probably had it set wrong,” Shirley said.

          “Probably not. You know how much I depend on this watch. I would have seen it last night at work. Oh well, I’ll get a battery and keep an eye on it. I can’t have a watch changing dates on me. Might be time for me to get a new watch anyway.”

          Bill tossed Shirley two fifty for the coffee and tip, then headed straight for Wal-Mart.

***

          As Bill handed his watch to the lady behind the glass case, she took a look at it and said, “Another watch battery. I sold more batteries today then I have in a long time.”

          Bill grinned at her and said, “Well, that’s because of the time loop.” He was just joking, but then Bill loved to play word games with people.

          “Time loop?” She said questioning.

          “Sure. Look at the date on my watch. It stopped at Six thirty PM on the 16th of March. That’s tonight.”

          She just smiled back at him and rolled her eyes.

          “No. Really,” Bill, still joking, continued, “Something the Government does today will threw us into a time loop.”

          “Sure.” She smiled.  “I suppose you have proof. That will be $3.97.”

***

          Bill was thinking about his wife not liking what he got her for her birthday. He looked up at the clock on the wall over his desk. Six twenty eight PM. He felt a low rumble

***

          Bill William tossed and turned that morning trying to sleep. After working all night, he wasn’t used to sleeping with the sun shining through the window. Today was his wife’s birthday.

***

          Bill William tossed and turned that morning trying to sleep. After working all night, he wasn’t used to sleeping with the sun shining through the window. Today was his wife’s birthday.

***

          Bill William tossed and turned that morning trying to sleep. After working all night, he wasn’t used to sleeping with the sun shining through the window. Today was his wife’s birthday.