Running out of Time 10

“You’ve been waiting a long time, blah blah blah.”

            “You don’t have to ruin everything with time travel. I get that you can manipulate time, you don’t have to rub it in my face. How about I just rub the immense power I have in your face with your apartment.”

            The apartment went to shrink again, and instinctively I went to the door, but the knob shrunk to the size of a cherry. Again compelled beyond reason, I kicked the door. My body shifted to the other side of the door, where my foot was still pressed against the door. I was starting to understand that I had created a loop by kicking the door at the same time as my past counterpart. I was trapped in an endless loop of kicking the door, until one of us didn’t kick the door.

            Even with that knowledge, even with that in my mind, I couldn’t stop myself from entering the apartment. I was dragged into it, as if it were destined. The wall began to talk, but I shushed it. “No need to be rude,” he said. “I was going to tell some really good jokes and then kill you, but you sort of ruined it for me. I’m just going to kill you now.”

            “They weren’t going to be good jokes,” I said to the wall version of myself.

            “I guess we will never know.”

            “No. I already knew.”

            The walls started to shrink again, and despite I knew that it was going to be an endless loop, I moved towards the door. In a moment of clarity, as time became cisper and easier to understand, I shifted my foot only slightly to the left as I moved towards the door, and it caused me to twist my ankle and fell before I could kick the door. The red and blue energy consumed the door, and it briefly switched to its normal size despite the room being shorter than I was. The ceiling pressed into my back, and squeezed oxygen from my lungs, causing me to wheeze. I punched the door and my hand went right through. I grabbed the knob on the opposite side, and twisted the door open. In the moment that it was about to crush me, I rolled through the open door. The ceiling fell a bit more, and then smashed down, blocking the exit of my apartment. I survived.

            I wanted to leave this place, this time, this reality, and this me, so I skipped backwards to the tree. Returning right back to where I had appeared almost directly after I had left.