PITFALL ART
Traversing the Edges of Infinity’s Loop
Experiments in Creativity #3: Part 3
The train driver passed out, then dematerialised. The illusory scene was tearing itself apart.
Billy and Alonnah had leapt into the portal. Too late for me, Optic Man had me in his beam.
The only thing not dematerializing was Wal Martman’s trash bag. Optic Man executed a triple pike into the bag, dragging me in. He coaxed me along like a puppet, finally screaming “braaaaaacccce!”
I came to and was wedged behind the Jumbo Bargain Trash Bag Boxes, 500 bags a box! Couples were arguing, was 500 bags enough? I wriggled out. They all looked like Alonnah and Billy, each with matching numbers on their t-shirts.
I had to get out of here.
I headed to the exit, but it was blocked by a security guard in Nevada Blue. It was Optic Man.
“Sir. Can I check your receipt?”
“Receipt?”
“Without a receipt, how can I check it? You can’t leave until it’s checked.”
I headed back into the store. It only sold Jumbo Bargain Trash Bag Boxes in every size imaginable. The numbers on the boxes matched the design on the couples’ t-shirts.
I grabbed a box and headed to the checkout. The queue stretched to infinity. All the couples looked so lifeless, except for one.
Making my way down the queue, I noticed one couple trying to catch my eye. They looked down at my box and shook their heads. They kept glancing down at their t-shirts. #47.
I returned to the shelves and picked out a box with #47 on the side.
This time the couple gestured with their heads towards the restroom. I headed there and they followed.
Security guards were coming from every direction.
“Run!”
Billy blocked the door while Alonnah ripped the bag from the bin.
“One of those.”
Alonnah lined the bin with it.
“You first.”
I jumped in. Another portal. Alonnah and Billy followed.
Wal Martman and Optic Man burst into the restroom, looked at each other, then followed us into the trash bag portal.
There we met Matron Nelly, the resident janitor, just finishing up her shift.
“One more body to incinerate. Get over here, ya lil devil.”
“Who is she talking to?” whispered Optic Man. (As you know, Optic Man is legally blind and blond.)
“It’s a mouse that’s ripped itself away from the rat racer Acer,” answered Wal Martman. Blue flag special — ”
“ — She can catch it with a slice of pizza — ”
“ — You think I don’t know that?! I been working here since before your ma hatched you. Before you had your first diaper rash. From the looks of you, ya still have one.”
Optic Man cowered, pulled his flag tighter around his rail-thin body, assumed his thinking man pose atop a urinal where his bare feet slipped on the slippy tile, his arms corkscrewed, the landing on the cold checkered floor was not pretty.
“Fucks sake. Get him out of here. I’m not working no overtime. He’s your problem. The whole lot of ya.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wal Martman answered.
We picked up his comatose body and headed back through the trash portal to wherever we were before. Only Robert knows for sure.
It was 10:10 a.m. The portals only handle ten people at a time. We’d need to stay within that limit. I could see Robert counting us with his eyes. Nine! Nein!
We could only take one from the group heading our way. The others would have to be sent to the trash portal.
They were advancing on us slowly. Snailturtle hybrids. The one at the end of the line appeared, towering over the rest. Chris Hemsleyworth!
I remembered the date on Earth. The Patrick Eades of March. Chris was wearing porcelain blue trunks, carrying a boogie board.
All of us charged the snailturtles. 99.99 Coach Smillew.dolores. None had enough on their slimy plastico fantastico to pay.
And so, with Chris Hemsleyworth and his boogie board, our morale lifted to the bright red sky, we ventured on, leaving Optic Man in the shadows.
Read in between the lines. The voice wrings out my straws. That’s where I have been living, but there’s a thing as too much, and it dilutes divulgences.
When I look at the sea of people surrounding me, all I see are purposeless grey blobs. Yet, collectively, they hold so much leverage. A strength often misapplied — seeping through our fingers like simulated grains of silicone.
We look up for meaning, down in derision, but everything is now.
I inherited no superpowers, and I’ve never wanted any. But, I’ve been moving split pieces since before I gained sentience. My earliest memory is exhaustion — wondering about why things didn’t make sense as they were.
They never did. Not to me. And their coordinated belief drove me crazy.
Striving is harder, I understood as I grew up. When you leap, there’s no one to catch you — no nets of benign solace. You hit the broken ground with a thud. Pushing failures aside, you design again, licking your wounds rough.
I used to keep score before, but now it simply hurts too much.
The hope in these parallel words has been terrifying. We were always running from or toward something, but the numbness? It evaporated like drops of dew under a noon sun. Like we never knew neural short circuits.
Strangers became friends who transformed into crowds fabricating their realities. And something about that is so eerily familiar. A nagging twitch.
It might be time to hit the kill switch. Again.
When they asked me not to worry, I knew it was a lie. The epilogue of my life flashed before my eyes, and I didn’t want it to be a garbled mess. And then there were other lives, not enough to matter, not less to be forgotten.
Knowing too much and too little can oftentimes lead to identical forks. They offered me the wipe-out option, but I just couldn't do it. Too risky.
With the taste of isolation on my tongue, I hit rewind — thrice.
Continuity.
Author’s Notes:
This story is a collaboration between Robert Gowty, Ann James, and me.
For the third chapter of experiments in creativity, we continued to use the ‘Exquisite Corpse’ technique, but with a twist. One writer wrote stream-of-consciousness for 333 words and shared their last sentence with the next.
The second writer started from there and the third writer followed.
Once finished, we put it together. Next, the one whose turn it was to publish added one single word at the end, bringing the word count to 1000.
You can discover more about our experiment (and previous ones) here.
