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Ten.
Ten was a funny number to him.
When his younger self had made mistakes, his teachers had always resorted to counting to three before striking down. It was never actually three seconds, always more; and always a longer pause between the numbers. As if they were waiting, holding on, hoping that he would change his mind. Giving him more time to do such
His mother never stopped at just three. Three wasn't simply enough time, she said, no matter how many seconds passed between. Instead, she counted to ten. Counting to ten took her twenty seconds on the dot. Always one second between.
One.
Tick
Two.
Tock
Three.
Tick
Four.
Tock
Five.
Tick
Six.
Tock
Seven.
After seven, he always burst into tears. Ran up to her and poured his heart out. Held her dress so tightly that they were going to wrinkle, and she always scolded him for it afterwards but he didn't care. Tears, snot, dirt from playing outside, the ketchup he had sworn not to spill on himself, all staining her clothes. But he didn't care.
Only once, he let her go past seven, and he couldn't even remember why. He was a stupid teenager who found the world around him even stupider. He screamed at her - she screamed at him. She started counting, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
He didn't say anything.
She didn't stop counting.
The grandfather clock didn't stop ticking between each number.
Tick
Eight.
Tock
Nine.
Tick
Ten.
To this day, he couldn't remember what happened after ten.
_
Nancy Pelosi had stepped down.
It was like Christmas came early.
Or well, late. Since Christmas had been a week ago. Although then again, Christmas could be both early and late, since it was an annual event and bound to repeat. Still, saying Christmas was late didn't carry the joy he was feeling right now, so-
Whatever. Exact terms didn't matter right now to McCarthy. He was going to become the House Speaker, for Christ's sake!
Everything he had done in life had been leading up towards this. Every little decision ever since college, when his girlfriend broke up with him because of political differences. Everything he had gambled, everything he had earned, everything he had lost. Everything has led him to that moment; the moment he was going to take the gavel from her.
"I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it," he laughed, walking towards the Senate that morning. People around him laughed too, and he knew that the only time he could feel better today was when he would be given the gavel. And maybe if he got to hit her.
Twitter didn't like his joke, but that was ok. What did they even know? They didn't even know who he truly was.
His name was Kevin Owen McCarthy. His hair was light grey and handsome (that's how he got his name, his mother always told him. Kevin meant handsome), with some darker streaks that reached just above his neck, and dark brown eyes, and a lot of people told him he looked like a speaker. He wasn't related to Paul McCartney but he wished he was because he's a major, a great writer who knew how to use words in the best way possible. His teeth were straight and white, just like him.
He was also a House representative, and worked at a place called the US Senate in the US where he had been working since 2007 (he was fifty-seven). He called himself a traditional man and regularly brought it up, in case one couldn't tell, and therefore wore mostly suits. He loved suit stores; in fact, he bought all his clothes from there.
Today was no exception. There was no point in deviating from a winning formula, especially on a day as important as this one was. This day he was wearing a light blue button-up with a tie that was a matching shade of blue and pink, all under a dark blue suit jacket and matching pants. He was walking towards the senate, portfolio in his hand and focused on his surroundings. It was a particularly sunny day, and not too cold despite the raging winter, which he was very happy about. A lot of democrats stared at him. He considered if putting up his middle finger at them would be worth the bad press.
"Hey McCarthy!" shouted a voice. He looked up. It was... Donalds!
"What's up Donalds?" he asked.
"Nothing." he said shyly.
But then, McCarthy heard his company call him and he had to go away.
He felt giddy as he walked up the stairs. This was going to be over in a breeze. Worst case, three was the magic number.
_
Three was not the magic number.
It did not go over in a breeze.
Long from it.
Despite having the majority, it seemed like the Republicans had decided to break apart from the main road into smaller, separate, paths, straying further away from their goal.
218 votes was all he needed.
218 wasn't even that much. He had gone to a school with far more than 218 kids in his year. He made 218 dollars in an hour. He could read 218 in a minute or two. It wasn't as big a number, closer than the stars, yet it felt so distant every time his votes barely broke the 200s. Every time he lost one, it was like the devil was pulling him further from the stars. From his dreams, from the future he had been so sure of just a couple of hours ago.
How could this have happened? He wanted to scream at the rebels, scream at the opposite, scream at the cameras that flocked around him like hungry eagles preying on him, waiting for the minute he would break down.
Next to him, the democrats stood together. How? How was this fair? Why was it that your enemies always stood closer to the stars than you did? An unbreakable wall, a chain without a weak link. As the day came to an end, chattering grew among the people. He lay awake during the night, staring at the sky, unable to sleep. Even if he managed to ignore his own thoughts, the nightmares would just get him. Someone had to buckle, right?
Someone did buckle. A lot of people did. None of the right ones though. And McCarthy felt himself falling closer and closer towards the ground.
203
202
201
This was the seventh vote, and it suddenly occurred to him that he, never even in his wildest nightmares, had been able to imagine something past seven. His mind was racing, panicking, trying to remember that one incident from highschool or was it college no it was highschool he still had a mohawk where he had gotten past seven.
He couldn't remember it. What he could remember was that familiar dread, the hope that the world would come to its senses and finally stop before it was too late.
Seven.
His votes were still the same. Nothing was changing, except for the amount of anxiety he felt.
Eight.
Nothing. Just more discussions, more clicking from cameras that captured him in his personal hell.
Nine.
His votes were dropping.
As the dreaded tenth vote started, a song came to mind. He didn't remember the artist, just that his niece had been obsessed with her. He did remember the lyrics, though. The lyrics that told the story of a girl that could never move on, frozen in time, reliving her fantasy again and again and again. Leaving her with no choice but to stay at her place forever. The world kept going, everyone lived their lives, and she was stuck in her place.
He was that girl. He was the one forced to sit there, groundhog day-style, seeing his world and dreams crumble beneath him.
He had always imagined what hell was like. Never would he have thought it was the very same place he dreamed of.
And as the votes were announced out, he knew. He knew that whether it was going to take eleven or twenty or a hundred more tries, he was never going to come out victorious. Nothing good happened after ten. It was enough time for him to change his mind, to take it all back, without truly admitting defeat. Now it was too late, and he was left there. He sat in his solitude, aware that there was never going to be a moment when something changed. When he wasn't frozen anymore.
The votes were laid out.
Everyone moved on.
He stayed there.
Ten.