Getting Out Part 1

(Holy hell this is long. I'm splitting it into two to make it easier to read.)

It occurs to me I haven’t been posting music! Let’s fix that. And maybe a picture too.

That out of the way, I am now out of the hospital. God, I’ll never take sunlight for granted again. I’m going to stay in this sunbeam for the rest of my life, sunburn be damned. It’s so warm. And wind! Something other than still, dead air! And trees! Aren’t trees amazing? I’d kiss them, if I wasn’t sure they were working for the enemy.

As you can maybe tell, I was getting severely outside world deprived at the end there. To the point where when people other than Jack appeared, I went and hugged them from behind a corner at high speed.

Well, this would probably have been a bad idea even if they hadn’t turned out to be Proxies. There’s probably something about a blood covered madwoman lunging towards you with a fire axe that makes you immediately not think of hugs.

There were two of them, one wearing a grey hoodie, the other a black one. We’ll call them Black and Grey for lack of anything else. It’s at times like this I wish I had a camera since Black was completely floored by my hugging him. I’m not sure what reception he was expecting, but it wasn’t that. His expression was priceless. He gave Grey a help what sort of look, and Grey rolled her eyes, drew a knife and stabbed me in the arm. Down to the bone, it felt like. I yelled and let go and reflexively swung the axe.

There is no ‘blunt end’ to a fire axe. It has a pick on one end and well, an axe blade on the other. The inexpertly swung pick managed to smack into Grey’s head with a nasty sound, and she dropped. All this happened in the space of a few seconds. I stood there for a few more, holding the dripping axe. My hands started shaking.

Black growled and drew was that a sword!? I pushed the axe between him and me to get enough time to turn around and started running off down the hallway, doing my best to put the MRI room out of mind and distance between myself and the pissed off Proxy. I turned several corners, went up a flight of stairs and opened a door to immediately find myself, younger, scared looking and with both eyes intact and was immediately assaulted by a wave of déjà vu.

I did not have time for this. I could do everything I’d seen myself do, keeping the time loop intact, or I could mix things up a little and cause a paradox, by saying something like “Jack is an ass.” Or “Don’t go to the roof, it’s not fun at all.” Or even “Don’t give a mentally unstable woman torture tips you fucking idiot.”

So I did. I rushed it all out in one breath. Bad idea.

Both of us were immediately struck by a huge headache. I think I was the worst off, but you know how memory fades with time. It was more sensation than actual physical event, a whole world sound, something trying to be interpreted by the senses that really couldn’t be. New memories: ones where I didn’t go to the roof, ones where I did, ones where I took the Risperidone, ones where I didn’t, ones where I didn’t post that comment, ones where I did, ones where I went in the basement oh god, ones where I didn’t, in… doing the math now… roughly 14 combinations. That’s not counting the ones further out into a more indistinct and fuzzy sea of probability, where completely different events occurred and I gave correspondingly different warnings. The universe flickered and twisted in various transition states, the equilibrium swinging wildly, until suddenly it snapped into the lowest energy state and stayed there. I opened my eye and my past self was staring at me with a what happened to you expression. As the ghost memories began to fade, the ‘real’ timeline came into greater focus. The only thing I’d managed to change was going to the roof. I could have kicked something right then.

Then there was a yell from behind me, and a thunk, and I looked to my right to see a knife embedded in the plaster worryingly close to my head. As my past self craned her neck to try and see what it was, I slammed the door in her face and turned in the direction the knife had come from.

It was Grey. She’d come down the corridor in front of me, and was clutching her head, which looked like a blood explosion had detonated on it, and her expression was both murderous and quite terrifying. She walked towards me slowly, fumbling for another knife and dragging her right leg, which didn’t seem to be working properly. Oh, that’s right, I thought. The left side of the brain controls the right side of the body. Then I smartly turned around and continued running, trying doors as I went. They were all locked. The only direction to go was back to the staircase, where Black was waiting for me.

He swiped at me with the sword, I tried to block with the axe, misjudged the distance, and got a red line across my shoulder for my trouble. I swung the axe in front of me as fast as I could, not really looking to hit him, although that would have been a nice bonus, but more to keep that sword away from me while I backed away up the stairs. Surprisingly, he let me. I found out why after I’d advanced a story only to find him there ahead of me. He’d mazed the stairs, and his grin said it all.

With Grey approaching, there was only one thing to do. I jumped down the stairwell and hoped for the best.