PITFALL ART: WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE ANSWERS OR FAME?: PART 2

Only The Eye Makes Shadows Real

A collaboration between Debdutta Pal, Ann James and Robert Gowty

“Dude, wanna go to the in-between? You need to pay upfront.”

My head was full of gaps that were depriving me of the full picture. Were these the in-betweens I was looking for?

“How much?”

“One, $10. I know who you are though. You’ll be needing a bag. $200.”

She had a card reader attached to her phone. No need for cash. Red, White and Blue Enterprises Ltd.

She handed me a bag full of pills. Each pill was half red, half blue.

I guessed the white bit was inside the pill.

“Take one. Each pill gives you a day in the in-between, unless you take too many, then the effect diminishes.”

I looked sheepish.

“It’s fine. Take one now, you need it.”

I took it and suddenly it was like double vision. The girl looked like her shadow self was swaying about her solid body.

The solid bodied figure turned and walked away, while the shadow figure remained. I turned to walk off and the shadow figure followed. All of a sudden these shadows were everywhere, not all attached to solid objects.

The figure soon moved up beside me, turned and smiled, and continued to walk along with me.

“I’m the in-between me, the part of me that will always be here but which normal people can’t see.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve never been accused of being normal.”

“You can say that again.”

“That shouldn’t be a — “

“ — It was a rhetorical statement.”

“So, where do we go from here?”

“The tunnel.”

“Is it dark? I have a flashlight from my financial advisor. It’s here somewhere.”

“No, it isn’t dark. You won’t need a flashlight. Lucy walked through it yesterday. She liked the sound of the echoes off the wall.”

“I’m ready, but I still have to go to work.”

“We’ll stop by there first. Take a picture.”

“Can echoes be photographed?”

I’d split myself into so many parts by now that I’d lost track. Like grains of sand on the beach. A whole with countless bits sustaining one another.

Each one was there for a reason, tailored to an occasion.

They talk about the ache of broken dreams. I say, wait till they come true. Now you have lost your edge — the cynical glue that held you together.

I couldn’t feel pain anymore. Hundreds of simulations ran through my mind seconds before events transpired. The suitable part of me made a starry appearance, navigating the situation with primal precision.

The voices had gone away, and I missed them like hell.

Traveling in between dimensions was supposed to be fun. But like every forbidden pleasure in the world, it had lost its charm. Conversations turned redundant, the scenery looped, and my coffee tasted like sawdust.

Memories that had movie-like quality before had been reduced to echoes. Mine, yours, everyone’s — a pit of doom. They were tagged “inessential.”

Words turned ashy in my throat.

If I hated myself any less, I’d go back to the beginning, treating this adventure like a lucid dream. But as we know well, that isn’t the case.

A whisper looms in the dark, threatening to burst. One of the many me’s crushes it like it was a bug before I have a chance to respond. I file it away and go to sleep. Then I wake abruptly to lurk longingly in that corner.

Run. Don’t look back.

This is Part 2 of the exquisite corpse that began as part of the November 2023 Deluded Custodians Challenge. You can read Part 1 here: