I'm writing this on my phone, hunched over a table in a Nebraska Starbucks, so please forgive me for any typos. My laptop is about a thousand miles away right now so I don't have a lot of options. I'll probably have to get a room at the Quality Inn right outside, so I guess I could use their business center.
I'm sorry I'm rambling. I don't really want to get to the point, it's going to make me sound like a crazy person. It's possible I really am crazy of course, though I don't think so. And it's possible that my problem - the most immediate part of the problem anyway - will just fix itself. That's why I'm at a Starbucks, actually.
Here goes: I don't have any fucking idea how I got here. This started a long time ago I think, back when I was maybe eight. I remember we went to a restaurant and I got up to use the bathroom, but when I came back out everything was different. Different tables, different customers, different decorations. I just stood there and stared for a bit, then walked outside. Across the parking lot I could see the correct restaurant, with my mom's old station wagon parked out front. I ran over and found my family and didn't tell anyone. What would I have said?
There were other times. I got onto the correct bus at the end of the day once during my sophomore year but after a while realized it was on a different route, and when I looked around I saw blue eagles on the school jackets and folders the kids had. I wasn't just on the wrong bus, it was a bus from the wrong school entirely. Again, I didn't tell anyone. I had minor incidents, ones that might have been my imagination. I would go for a walk and end up too far away from home. I would turn down an aisle 9 in the grocery store even though I had just left aisle 23. One time I got drunk and ended up in the wrong bar. Those ones were all easy to shrug off.
The thing that was always the same, that it took me a little time to notice since it didn't happen very often, is that I was always tired afterwards. I would get "lost" and then feel weary, like I had just worked out. After I noticed I got paranoid, and whenever I suddenly felt tired I would look around in a panic. There were plenty of times I hadn't moved, though. I decided I was just seeing patterns where there were none, and went on ignoring the "glitches" as I thought of them. I almost posted to Reddit about this once before, but had one of those sudden feelings of exhaustion right in the middle of it and lost my train of thought so I just went to bed instead - and then in the light of morning it seemed too crazy. I deleted it all.
I've been tired a lot, lately, even though as far as I can tell I've only glitched out a few times. I ended up on the wrong level of the parking garage last week, and left a different conference room than I had entered a bit before that. Nothing extreme. But I was tired all the time, and I got a few comments on it. My coworkers told me to get more sleep, and Ian - who is particularly blunt - told me to go shower and shave. He wasn't wrong, it was like I had stayed up all night in my office even though I had actually only been there for forty-five minutes.
All this I could handle. It was worse than when I was a kid, gets a little worse every year, but it's not the end of the world. But then about an hour ago I got on the elevator at work and as the doors shut I noticed it was all wrong. The elevator was dingy, and it only had buttons for two floors. I assumed I was somehow in an elevator in a parking garage, but when I pushed the door open button I found myself at a Quality Inn somewhere in North Platte Nebraska. My work is in Phoenix Arizona.
It's never been this bad. Never. I've moved maybe a hundred feet most times - a few were probably further but even then it couldn't have been more than a few miles. This was at least a thousand. My phone was dead somehow, but that's been happening a lot lately so I had a recharger. I got it started back up and called my boss, let him know I wasn't feeling well and left early. He was surprised since he had just been talking to me and I seemed fine - as far as he's concerned he spoke to me right before my noon meeting which means either I hallucinated that phone call or I'm not crazy. It's not physically possible to get this far that fast, not even on a plane.
I came to the Starbucks partly because it was right outside the Quality Inn, and partly because I had the thought that with Starbucks all looking the same it might be easier for me to get back. I mean, I go from a bathroom to another bathroom - a hospital room to another hospital room (don't ask), a bus to a bus. If it's going to happen anywhere a place like this should be the easiest. The thing is, I've never done it on purpose before and the more I think about it the more I think I don't want to. I used the bathroom right after I got here, and I've got a good three days’ worth of stubble on my face (I don't grow beards well so that's not as much as you might be picturing). I'm not just tired but almost ready to collapse, and my feet feel like they have blisters. When I connected to the Starbucks wifi, my phone said it was backing up my photos - I looked and there's just a picture of a long dark tunnel (I can upload it if you need but it doesn't really show much of anything). It says it was taken at 4:37pm today, but it's not that late yet.
So I'm thinking maybe it only seems like I just around instantly. Maybe I'm actually going somewhere, spending time there, and then returning - and it's just that I don't always come back to the right place. Why else would my phone keep suddenly being out of charge? Why do I need to shave? Why am I so tired? I think that photo was taken about three and a half hours after I vanished out of an elevator at work, and then I was there long enough for the battery to finish dying. Maybe much longer than that. Days, probably. I don't feel hungry, I could use a shower but I don't think I smell bad enough for it to be that long. It doesn't totally add up.
I don't really care about that part though. Mainly what I'm worried about is the question of what happens to my memories of that place. If I'm right, if I'm going somewhere, do I forget afterwards? Or am I not aware in the first place? Is someone - something - in control of me? And yet, I have to hope it happens again and takes me home. Maybe I'll crash at the Quality Inn instead, then rent a car in the morning and start driving. I don't know what I'll do if this keeps happening. Will it keep getting worse? Will I appear on the wrong side of the planet, with grey hair and tattered clothes? I think there's nothing I can do but hope it all turns out okay somehow.
I just did it again. I had finished this post, everything up to the paragraph above, and was trying to decide if I really should submit it. Once I put this out there it's admitting that I'm probably crazy, or worse - if I'm not crazy that something that can't be understood is happening to me. I was stalling, and got up to buy one of those muffins that always look so much better than they actually are. I paid the barista, and then when I turned to go to my table I was at the far end of the Starbucks. The barista didn't seem to notice. I was still holding the muffin but it's moldy and crushed, like I clenched it in my fist. My wallet had been in my other hand and was gone, so I reached into my pocket and it was there along with something else - a torn sheet of thick yellow paper, with a few words written in what I hope is ink but smells like the inside of an abandoned sushi restaurant. 'DONT TALK ABOUT IT' is all it says, no explanation or even punctuation.
So maybe I shouldn't post this. I'm thinking about the other time I was going to post this, where I glitched out and then felt too tired to keep going. Was that a coincidence, or was something trying to make me change my mind? But that photo of the tunnel, and the thick black 'ink' on that paper - both fill me with dread somehow, the same feeling as that time I found bloody tooth in my jacket pocket. I haven't thought about that in a decade, but now I'm wondering again where it came from. Fuck it. This is something I have to do. If whatever is behind this is evil, so be it. Better to get my story out there. And if I'm crazy, or if I wrote the note myself... I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I just can't think about this anymore, not by myself. Wish me luck.
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