Monday, 4:04 a.m.

The digital clock slowly comes into focus as the tendrils of a supremely boring dream drift away. Monday morning, 4:04 a.m. Time to rise and shine! Like clockwork, she gets up every day at a certain time and does certain things before she must be in a certain place at another certain time, looking a certain way, which lately is always in certain clothes. Wow, does she need new clothes.

Then in a flash, she sees the time in a different way. 404: Error, Page Not Found. If an internet error code can be applied to daily life, the possibilities for a day could become a bit endless, she thinks. She lays there, considering this, sacrificing a moment of her sure-to-be very exciting Monday.

For starters, basic logic says if time can’t find the day, the day should have no time. Plus, it’s a Monday, and the way a Monday feels is how the rest of the week is going to feel. So, if time can’t be found on a Monday, the rest of the week has lost its time, too. For the cost of one day, she gets a whole week. How nice – she’s always loved a great deal.

Not that she would really want a day that has no time to be a Monday. She would have picked a Friday or Saturday if she’d had her druthers. But it didn’t seem she was being given a choice on this. There it was, a Monday with no time – no marker on the ticker of life. She imagines opening the bedroom door to find nothing but white space. She knows this would freak many people out, but she thinks she’d kind of like it.

There’s always something to grab onto on a Page Not Found, anyway. Usually there’s a short message telling you what to do when you reach the error. If she gropes around in the vacuum of white space, she may find those instructions, but they will likely just tell her to return to the page she came from. And, what page is that, anyway? Sunday? A day she uses to prepare for Monday? No thanks, she thinks. That’s almost worse than a Monday.

She’s actually pretty excited the clock is admitting it can’t find the page for Monday. Is it a bad thing? On the contrary; this must mean her life is part of some narrative. She thinks this is a good thing. Wouldn’t it be worse if her life wasn’t worthy of a Page Not Found? If there were no pages to find? If it really all was just a big, cosmic joke like she’s heard pessimists say all these years? No characters, no plotline, no story. No – that’s completely uninteresting.

She’ll take the Monday with no time for now. And she’ll assume this means she can stay in her pajamas all day. And, forget showering. Does a Monday missing in the register of time care if she’s wearing makeup? She thinks not.

Suddenly, all she’s really concerned with is if beyond the blank space outside the bedroom door there’s still a kitchen with a coffee pot.

And…it’s 4:05am. Oh, how lucky. The day has found its page.