PITFALL ART: WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE ANSWERS OR FAME?: PART 3
A Fork In The Road
A collaboration between Debdutta Pal, Ann James and Robert Gowty
I ran and ran, as fast as I could.
I could hear the footsteps getting closer and then I felt a giant shudder and my body contorted like it was being pressed from every side, but from the inside.
What just happened?
“Oh, hello, it’s me. I’ve just reintegrated.”
“Who? You’re me, aren’t you?”
“You are correct. And those 574 shadows chasing you. They’re you, too. You need to be very careful about who you reintegrate.”
It seemed I was still in the in-between. Not only was I seeing everyone else’s shadows, I was seeing my own.
“Focus, focus. As they get closer, you’ll know which you it is. This is your opportunity to discard the you that you don’t want to be. But there are only two of us at the moment. We can’t fight the rest off by ourselves. Just keep running faster.”
I was in the tunnel now, where there were tunnels branching off tunnels branching off more.
Closer and closer. Yes, this one is alright, bam. Three, four, five.
“Once you get to three hundred, you’ll be strong enough to fight the others.”
Closer and closer. No, not this one! I did a sharp left into another tunnel.
Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven.
Even at eleven, this was a lot of me to keep under control.
Slowly, we were building.
Up ahead, another runner was coming towards me, with their own shadows chasing them.
It’s always disorienting when I’m back from time traveling. This time the aliens have left me in the park sani-hut by the soccer field. There is no t.p. I stumble out to see a few people standing around with notepads, looking toward the field of runners.
My house is just across the street. I make a wide arc around the runners running, a wild horse is munching grass in the other soccer field. She nods to me.
“Tough times, enit?” she asks.
“Do you know the date?” I reply.
“May, The Year of the Horse. 2020-something.”
The year of the horse is my year. I can do the calculation in me head as soon as it’s clear from the chaotic debris of the past days, weeks, months I’ve been away. Did I change the past this time? Will Dave have his head on straight? And mama back to her own body? The AARP Ad Collage Time Trip was a nightmare.
The mare looks up at me. “Sweetie, donnae get your hopes up. It’s a good reality, not great. Never has been, never will be as long as the humans are in charge.”
I take the shortcut home, through the neighbor’s yard. The front door is unlocked and no one is here. No one and nothing. The house we’ve shared with family and friends, empty. I run to every room and the back yard. The wading pool is full, the water fresh, a unicorn floatie deflated on the lawn next to it.
“How did I get here?” I wonder for the millionth time.
I laugh at the absurdity of it because, in my previous, one-dimensional life, I asked myself the same thing over and over again. Strained my vocal cords.
“This is an American Beauty moment”, I hear her snicker. Although I don’t know who this voice belongs to. A fellow in-betweener? My former self?
“The float looks better than you, serving as the perfect metaphor.”
I step into the pool, not knowing whether that is what I intended to do, or if I’d just come out of it. My clothes aren’t wet, so that could be a sign. Maybe.
Exhaustion seeps through my skin, twisting every bone into a discomfiting angle. My muscles sing in pain. All I want is to stop running, but the only thing keeping me alive is the thrill. I couldn’t travel back to the mundane.
Just like you can’t stare at the Sun, I couldn’t escape my shadows.
Nobody had done this before. Nobody knew the consequences. We were all marked by the same thread — a fervent need to escape. I’ve run through that moment so many times, but I’ve never come up with a different answer.
You’d think that would make it easier — sharing the pain. But much like our predecessors, we engaged in the act of faking it. Happiness was a necessity.
Which made me want to snap some necks.
After my last near-death experience (99 out of 347), I had an epiphany. Maybe I’ve had it all wrong. If I stopped looking at life as a competitive playground and allowed myself to pass the minutes, would it work?
Would it be the truest form of escape?
The answer came in the form of a dark shadow, plunging my head into the algid water of the pool. I thrashed my arms and legs around, to no avail. My lungs gurgled and ached, unable to handle the constriction. I saw fireballs.
“There is no answer, you fool. Stop asking questions.”
“Stop trying to figure it out. The mystery is an essential feature.”
This is Part 3 of the exquisite corpse that began as part of the November 2023 Deluded Custodians Challenge. You can read Part 2 here: