Running out of Time 8

I skipped forward and as my foot touched the ground, the tree leaves turned orange. Then as I took another leap, the trees were covered in snow, then finally the world looked like it did when I had started. Now, it seemed as though I was directly in front of my apartment. I didn’t recall being close to the building before, but I had underestimated the space.

            I moved up to my apartment door, and as I went to grab it the door became smaller, and the knob moved lower than it had been. At first I thought it to be a trick of the light, but as I went to grab the knob again, it shifted away from me as it moved closer to the door.

            “Help! Help!” I heard myself scream from the other side. I couldn’t tell by the voice if that was actually me, or if it was Anthony. “I know that you are out there! Help me!” The knob jiggled, then it shrank in caparison to the door, until it was about the size of a cherry. The other version of me was trying to kill Anthony. If I didn’t think quickly, then I was going to die in the future. Granted, was it possible for me to die if Anthony existed to tell the tale.

            Instead of question reality, I kicked the door with my foot. A blue and red energy wrapped around the door, and it shifted to its normal size, door knob and all. I grabbed the handle and pushed myself inside. Rather than seeing myself standing at the door panicking, I was greeted by the regular version of my apartment. It had to be the moment before my apartment shrank, but how much before it was it?

            My face appeared raised in the wall, and it laughed at me. “Greg,” it said. That had to be the other version of me. The space case version of me. “I’ve waited a lot of time for you to be here. Like a cotton shirt in the dryer, things are going to get tight around you.” The wall laughed and then stopped. “Because I’m going to crush you…to death.” The wall clicked and it looked as though, I was getting bigger rather than my apartment getting smaller. “Wait!” The shrinkage stopped. “I’ve got a better one. How about a little breathing room?” The wall returned to its flat state, and then everything became smaller again. Almost instantly, I moved to the window, but the glass turned into cement. “Your death is cemented in this place.” The walls said again.

            As the ceiling touched the top of my head and I was forced to duck, I became very aware that I was going to death. I found myself yelling the same things that I had heard, despite the fact that it should have been less likely for me to say them since I had already heard them. I tried the door knob, but it shrunk away to the size of a cherry. “Better cover your brass!” The walls said again.

            In a sudden moment, I had the bright idea to kick the door, since it had worked so well for me previously. I kicked the door, and the same blue and red energy consumed the door. My body shifted, and I found I was standing outside the door again, my foot pressed against the door still as if I had kicked it on the other side at the exact same moment. Had the thing with the other version of me never happened? What had I done? I was compelled to enter the room.

            “Greg,” the wall face said again. That had already happened. I was repeating what had happened.

            “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.