Strange Times - Part 8: Strange Loop

[1980]

Eighteen-years-old and desperate to cure my writer’s block, I put an ad on the town notice board: Have something to say? I will listen to you: tell me your stories.

I got a few responses at first - which is what I expected - but what I didn’t expect was a line stretching from my bedroom out onto the street by the end of the month. There must have been a lack of people willing to listen in Haverbrook. I had nearly a hundred people, all wanting to spill the beans to a complete stranger like me. And as I heard them all, word about me spread across town: the girl who will listen.

People rambled on, vented complained and generally tried to get the thoughts out of their head and into the air. Like throwing a coin into a deep dark well, they wanted something to happen by doing this. So I listened, absorbed their words like a sponge but none of their stories were especially helpful to a writer. These days, I couldn’t write a single word without breaking into a nervous sweat. I needed something to happen to me.

One day, after a long afternoon of listening and absorbing, she came to me.

‘Hey, are you the girl who listens to people?’ she asked from the door of my room.

I turned from my desk to see her there, wringing her hands. She was older than me, black hair streaked with grey. A familiar looking face, although I’d never seen her around town before.

‘Can I tell you about something?’

I told her to sit down and start talking whenever she felt like it.

Her eyes darted around the room. I sat there, free writing my thoughts onto a legal pad. The sunset streaked through my dirty windows in orange rays, highlighting the floating dust that hung in the air. A distant freight train rumbled across a bridge.

‘Do you believe in parallel universes?’ she asked me, voice breaking. She had leaned in to ask that question, her greying hair falling over her face.

‘No, not really,’ I said ‘I read about it once…some book at the library. It’s about universes with similar stuff to ours, running alongside ours right?’ she nodded ‘Well it’s a fun theory, but just that; a theory. Most of this science stuff is just theory, I'd need proof’

'Do you think it's just a theory?'

'Well, like I said, I'd need to see it to believe it'

‘There’s a way to see them. There’s a way to see another world’. She said. I'd had weirdos and conspiracy theorists see me before but something in her voice made me think she wasn’t pulling my leg like the rest of them. She coughed and went on.

‘There’s these places where the walls are thin, weak. There you can jump across between worlds. They’re special places,’ she said.

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

‘Because I jumped across from another one to here’ she replied.

We lapsed into silence. She stared out the window as the dust fell into waves. The distant freight train continued to bellow like a wounded animal.

‘I noticed it immediately, all the details were different. Shops, names of brands and places, my own house. It wasn't much, to go on but I realized that something had gone wrong,’ She stared at me. ‘I think I fell out of my dimension into this one. I crossed the points and jumped across.’

As she explained to me how she thought it all worked – parallel universes and infinite probabilities – I found myself doing the strangest thing of all; believing her. She just seemed so earnest about it all, like she believed what she was telling me.

‘I’ve done some research, people think that these universes run parallel to ours. They don’t. They bend and loop, arc and…and they make contact. The points of contact are where you can jump across…sorry, I’m nervous, not explaining myself proper. Properly. Sorry’

I picked up a pen. ‘These points, where the walls are weak…what do they look like?’

She blushed and looked away again. ‘You’re really not going to believe this…’ and she didn’t respond. I pressed for an answer. ‘Here, in your world, it’s the freight rail bridge. When a train passes overhead, you make the switch…’ and I smirked at that. ‘See, I knew you wouldn’t believe me’

‘Would you believe you?’

‘Well…’ and she stared at my pen. She smiled a quick smile ‘So you’re an author?'

‘No, a writer’ I corrected her.

‘Is there a difference?’

‘An author is published; a writer isn’t…but maybe it’s not as clean cut as that,’ I fiddled with my pen. ‘It’s writer’s block

‘Ah.'

‘It’s only temporary’

‘Like most things’ she stared at me ‘I wanted to be a writer too, a long time ago.

‘What happened to that?’

She smiled again ‘Only temporary’

As I scribbled, the room was lit in dying light. She coughed to get my attention.

'You're not going to go there, are you?'

'I might, I mean...it's in my town. Of all the places, right? Too much of a coincidence to not go see it' and I laughed.

Her face got serious. ‘If you do cross over, you’ll have to find a way back here. Entering is easy, leaving is another matter entirely.’

‘Yeah, sure’

‘Listen to me,’ She grabbed my wrist tightly, a look of wide eyed panic in her eyes. ‘I’ve been trying to get home for the last thirty-five years. I’ve seen countless versions of the same possibilities, I’ve seen things you couldn’t imagine.’

I yanked my wrist away ‘Then why tell me how to do it?’

‘We’ve done this before. This conversation. Four-hundred-and-twenty-seven times. Every time, I’ve told you not to go; you do it anyway. It always comes back to this: you, me, the choice and this room. Hundreds of rooms, hundreds of choices. I've tried so many ways that weren't even talking to you. I tried to blow up the bridge, delay the train...even by hurting you. I’m trying a different approach this time by telling you. This time, don’t do it. That’s my advice.’

She left me in my room with that decision.

I shouldn’t have believed her like I did, but it was her belief in her story that got me. She seemed convinced by herself. She honestly thought it was a real possibility, and it began to strum away at me, shaking everything I thought. It just wouldn’t unstick itself from my mind. I had to know, I had to find out. I couldn’t write it without finding out.

The rail bridge sat on the outskirts of town, passing over Bass Straight Road as it curved its way out of town. It was dirty rusted iron and crumbling brick, it creaked and rattled as trains passed overhead but nothing suggested it was a portal to another world.

I stood underneath it for an hour, listening to the sounds of noisy crickets, rustling trees and the roar of passing trucks. A freight train finally rattled overhead. I held my breath. A bellow that shook my ears as it passed overhead. Screeching metal. Thumping. Then it was gone; but I was still here in boring old Haverbrook. Nothing.

‘Liar’ I muttered.

She’d just lied to me. I’d believed her and she had made it all up. I walked to the supermarket to grab something to drink. I needed to cool off, let some sugar into my mind.

‘What the hell?’ I muttered aloud. The supermarket didn’t have Coke – or they rather did, but it was mis-spelled as CUKE. As I walked home, I kept staring at it; how did they make an error like that? The other cans had it too. A printing error? Someone somewhere in a distant factory had changed an O to a U? But what were the chances of that anyway...

Walking back through the dark streets to my house, a sense of unfamiliarity crept over me. I’d walked the streets of Haverbrook a hundred times before so none of them should have seemed unfamiliar. Something was just off and it was on the tip of my tongue almost; I couldn’t place why or how but it just did.

I unlocked the door to my house and stepped into my bedroom. A group of dread-locked bearded men were sitting on my floor.

‘What are you doing in my room?’ I asked, coughing from smoke.

‘Your room?’ One of them asked.

'How did you even get in here?’ another one asked.

I looked around the room, taking it all in and realised all my furniture was gone. None of my posters adorned the walls. Stepping out of the smoky haze, I checked the photos in the hallway; I wasn’t in any of them. I didn’t belong here.

‘Where’s Mum?’ Dad?’ I yelled out and began to walk further into the house. I felt a large hand on my shoulder.

‘No mum or dad here girlo, this is our place. Not yours’

As they pushed me out the door and into the street, I felt a sickening lurch in my stomach. It was a hoax, a trick, my parents had finally decided to get me back for the pranks I played all those years ago. I kept saying it over and over. A hoax, a trick, a lie, a joke.

Then I saw it hanging in the sky; a bright blue moon. Brilliant blue on a cloudless night sky. Panic reared up in me. I realised what the unfamiliar feeling was, I started to notice the differences around me; the points where things had changed.

I’d done it. I’d jumped across the points. But the woman’s words rang in my head: I would have to get back.

I had to find my way home now.

- Abigail, 53 years old

#mystery #paralleluniverse #surreal #StrangeTimes #Haverbrook #fictions #alternateuniverse #dialogue