I, now had half of a shoe, and no pride. I
pulled the little bit of shoe that I had left off of my foot and threw it into
a nearby trash can. I contemplated pulling my other shoe off, to at the very
least complete my shoeless look. Two shoes: Sane. No shoes: Sane, but weird.
One shoe: Raving lunatic that’ll probably kill you.
Without another thought I pulled the last
shoe off of my foot and tossed it into the same trash can. Shoeless in Seattle.
All I needed was a remotely interesting plot and a plane ticket to Seattle.
Maybe I could butter Jones up, but that would basically defeat the purpose of
getting the shoes, so that I could go meet Ketchup. Jones Jones Jones and
Ketchup, regular all stars in my life.
The beeping of the crosswalk sign caused
my eyes to list lazily toward the street. There was in fact a little old lady
attempting to cross the street. The odds. The sheer odds. What the hell was she
doing crossing the street? I mean obviously she was trying to get from one side
of the street to the other side of the street. But why was she by herself? She
yelled something at me, but I couldn’t hear her.
Then I noticed the reinforced truck
barreling towards her. Time shifted, it wasn’t slower or faster. I could just
perceive it clearer. The lady was not moving fast enough to clear the path of
the truck. I wasn’t going to be able to move fast enough to clear it if I
helped. I looked again, and I could see that she was wearing the shoes from
inside the shop. Despite what I had earlier described as an old lady, I was now
unsure of her age, she seemed younger as she moved closer.
The space between her and I was too large
for us to both clear it in time. I had to decide in that moment, which one of
us was going to die. The space between us seemed to grow larger and larger, but
she became even more recognizable. “Run as fast as you can Greg!” She screamed.
I went to move towards her, to help her, because I felt compelled to do
something.
I twisted me head, just in time to catch
the face of the truck driver. It looked like my face, but it was just different
enough that it could have been someone else’s. His hands were wrapped in golden
colored gauntlets that gripped the steering wheel. It was then that the
crispness of time became distorted, flickering like the image on an old TV. I
knew just then, that the truck was going to kill us both.
It was a strange thing to know that I was
going to die, but I accepted it as a reality. Before the truck could hit me,
the air was knocked out of my chest as a man tackled me onto the ground and out
of the way of the truck. As I looked up, the truck was gone. “How the hell
could you be that stupid? We had every opportunity to move out of the way, but
instead you stood there staring at a freaking truck?” I looked over at the man
who had rescued me from the mirage, and he looked like me too. I was starting
to think I was egotistical. Why was everyone starting to look like me? Was I going
crazy? “You are crazy. Stop being an idiot. How was I ever as stupid as you?”
The other me, which I figured I would call Greg 2 moved closer to me. Greg 2
punched me in the nose and blood started to pour down my shirt. “I know what
you are thinking. How about you call me Anthony. Every time you see yourself
show up and he’s just as much as an asshole as you, from now on call him
Anthony. If you show up, then call the other you Greg. Got it, Greg?”
“What kind of jerk punches himself in the
face?”
“The other guy did it to me. So, I had to
do it to keep the temporal flux or something. Wouldn’t want a hole ripping in
the fabric of blah blah blah. I just felt like calling you an idiot and
punching you in your stupid face? Is that so wrong?”
An anger flushed through me, and I punched
him square in the nose. “Go to hell.”
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