It's been almost two weeks since Bally's been gone. I've almost gone out of my mind with worry.

Roland has tried to reassure me. "You were gone for two weeks, too," he said. "And we managed to keep it together." I told him that they knew when and where I would reappear, but Bally's future self doesn't appear to want to tell us (or is already gone - I haven't seen her again, so either option is available).

"Time is tricky," Mona told me, like I didn't already know. "Two weeks can pass, but for Bally it could be just one night."

Shut up. I know that. You think worrying is rational? Fuck.

At least I haven't had any visits from the Unchanged. I think if one of them appeared, I would try punching them.

Where are you, Bally?

Return

Roland and Mona are back. They arrived about an hour ago.

I told them about the visit for Bethsaida and about seeing future Bally at the supermarket. Mona became worried, while Roland was quiet.

Finally, he said, "Listen, there's nothing we can do now until our Bally gets back. Then we'll have a group meeting."

That's slightly complicated, however: we've never had a situation where there have been two of us at the same point in time, so we assume that that never happens. If future Bally is still here, current Bally won't be returning yet.

"So we wait," Roland said.

Great. I hate waiting.

Burned

I saw future Bally today. I guess she has been following me around. I'm not that good at telling when I'm being followed, which I guess is a bad thing.

But I was in the supermarket, checking out the cantaloupes, when I saw her. She was trying to act natural and pushing her cart, but I could see her surreptitiously looking at me. She was wearing a dark grey hoodie and when she saw that I had seen her, she turned and rushed away.

But I got a good enough look at her face. She was Bally alright, but half of her face was burned. It...didn't look nice. That was probably why she had the hoodie up. I tried to follow her, but she was gone before I could see her again.

Between the warning from Bethsaida and Bally's burned face, it's not looking too good for the future right about now.

Well, fuck.

Bethsaida

Roland called today. He woke up in, of all places, Ontario. Said it was freezing. Mona's going to get him. I told her to pack warmly.

And now I'm alone in the house. Just me and my thoughts.

Which means I turned on the television just for the white noise. And with the noise of some stupid commercial playing, I didn't hear the footsteps behind me. Or perhaps there were no footsteps, perhaps he doesn't have feet at all, perhaps he just hovers over the ground, never touching the earth.

I'm getting off-topic. What happened was: I was cleaning the dishes, I turned around and I saw him.

Bethsaida. He was standing in the middle of the living room, his dirty red robe around him, that heavy book in his hand which looked so old that it might be falling apart. The seams certainly didn't look like they could take much more.

He was wearing a blindfold, but I've heard others say they've seen him with sunglasses. Somehow, thinking of him with sunglasses makes me laugh. So I started to giggle.

Then Bethsaida smiled and I stopped giggling. His teeth were brown and crooked and there was a thin film at the edges of his mouth. I imagined him opened his mouth wide and what that might look like and it wasn't pleasant.

"What do you want?" I asked.

He didn't say anything. Instead, he opened his giant book and took out one of the loose pages. He started folding it until it was in the shape of a house. This house. He placed the paper house on the table.

"Why?" I asked, fulling expecting no answer.

"Cause," he said, his voice soft and low. He was pointing at me. Then he pointed at the paper house. "Effect."

The paper house began to burn.

Bethsaida looked at me and smiled again.

Then he was gone, leaving wisps of smoke in his wake.

Calling

Woke up to find both Roland and Bally had become unstuck during the night. This'll make it harder to find them - generally, we want to find them when they come back immediately, but I don't think that'll be possible this time. We're going to have to wait for one of them to call us.

Which brings me to the weird thing of the day: I got a phone call from Bally. Not our Bally, but a future Bally.

I didn't know that, though, so I asked her to tell me where she was, so I could pick her up. "I'm sorry, A," she said. "It's better if you don't. I just wanted to hear your voice." Her voice sounded tinny, as if she was a long way away.

"Bally?" I said. "What's wrong?"

"Just remember," she said.

"Remember what?"

There was a pause and then the future Bally said, "Remember that it wasn't your fault."

And then she hung up.

Good Night

So I finally had a good night's sleep last night. And I didn't wake up in the Sixties or the 1840s or the Middle Ages. I woke up in my own bed in my own time.

Which left me with a full day to do things. So I did my laundry (including the bits of clothing I've picked up from my jaunts in other times) and cleaned the house. Roland was out checking on his investments, Mona was out shopping for food, so the only one left in the house was Bally. She was sitting on the couch reading The Sirens of Titan.

"I don't think I get it," she said. "I mean, it's just so confusing."

"Then stop reading it," I said. "Read something you like. Something you want to read."

"But I want to read this," she said. "Mona told me I should. Said it would help me understand. I mean, I've read Slaughterhouse-Five and I know why that's relevant, but I don't understand why this would be. I mean, we're not...smeared through time. We're just unstuck."

"I don't think she meant it like that," I said as a swept up the crumbs around her. "She didn't mean the situation applied to us. I think she meant the philosophy."

"That's what I don't understand." Bally bit into a new cookie and I swept up the crumbs that fell from it as well. "From what I read, it seems like...nothing can be changed. Everything is sort of futile. And that's just depressing."

"That's why I recommend reading a book you like," I said. "You don't have to read what Mona wants. You don't have to believe the things she does. Heck, you don't even have to call yourself a Pilgrim."

"But I want to," she said. "I don't want to meet Shivering Johnny again. I like being part of a group."

"We're still a group even if we don't all believe in the same thing," I said. "Personally, I don't believe everything's futile. If I did, I wouldn't care about anything and I do. You just have to decide what you believe in."

"I don't know," Bally said.

"I don't mean right now," I said. "You can take however long you want. Hell, we have all the time in the world."

So that was my day. Cleaning and discussing philosophy.

Now let's see if I can have another good night's sleep.

Hotel California

You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave.

What? I was supposed to title my return post something else?

Okay, I didn't exactly know where or when I was when I woke up. It was dark and I was laying on a wooden floor, so the first thing I did was try to get the kinks out of my neck and limbs. I noticed that I was wearing actual clothing this time - not the clothes I had gone to bed in, but some random blouse and skirt. Still, it was cold and dark and I wanted to get out of there.

Fortunately, I was in an area I later learned was the "anteroom." Instead of going into the larger room (the "Embassy Room"), I decided to go left behind the podium and into the kitchen area. I slipped past the tables and the ice machine ("Where Robert Kennedy was shot," Mona said and I think she feels jealous that I saw it and she didn't) and finally came out into a dark corridor where, thankfully, I found the little girls' room (I cannot tell you how many times I've had to go pee, yet there wasn't a restroom in sight).

After my jaunt to the restroom, I walked down another corridor and found myself in a long lobby. I heard a noise at one end and as I turned, I saw it. I saw its pale skin and black eyes as it darted away and disappeared from view.

The Rover was here.

I don't know why. I didn't usually encounter the Unchanging on my trips, but these last two were different. I saw the Rawboned Man and now the Rover. (And if you're wondering why we called it that, well, I guess we just like being pretentious.) What was different? Both places were where people were assassinated, but never at the time of the assassination. Same year, yes, but from what I could tell, this place was empty and quiet as the grave. Nobody was here.

I went in the opposite direction of where the Rover had gone and eventually found myself in a large nightclub area. I opened up the door and saw the sign: the Cocoanut Grove. Closed for renovations.

I shivered. I was now outside and, even though I had clothes, I didn't have a jacket. It was cold and windy and my teeth chattered. I didn't want to go back inside, not if I had a chance of encountering the Rover. So I walked across the lush green lawn and tried to find a place to sit, a place to sleep. I felt so tired, even though I had only woken up twenty minutes ago. Something about this place felt wrong.

Finally, I sat down next to a palm tree and closed my eyes. I felt myself drifting off and tried to get into a comfortable position to sleep.

Then Mona was shaking me awake. Later, she told me I was lucky I walked out of the Hotel - the entire place was demolished back in 2005. If I had stayed inside, I don't know where I would have found myself.

I just want to get one goddamn night of sleep without waking up somewhere else. It's happening so often these days. It used to be I'd go a month or two without becoming unstuck. Now it happens every week.

At least my future self told them where to find me. Though I'm unsure about her posting here, but I guess it's my blog in the future, too. I just hope it won't get too confusing.

Sleep

So I've been laying here on my bed waiting for sleep to come. Waiting to close my eyes and open them in a different place, a different time. Perhaps I'll be pulled back to my time - plus a few days or weeks. Perhaps I'll be pushed back to some prior year, to barely miss another significant event. Perhaps I'll even see one of the Unchanging, like the Rawboned Man or Shivering Johnny or the Bloodletter.


Of course, none of that will happen unless I fall asleep. Which won't happen if Bally keeps asking me questions.


"So how was it?" she asked. "Thriller? I haven't seen it."


"It was fine," I said. "I liked Fantasia better though."


"Oh," she said.


We all changed our names when we became Pilgrims. Bally changed hers to "Ballerina." She thought it sounded beautiful. It did, but it also felt silly to call her that, so we just call her Bally. It would probably make more sense to call her "Rina," but when have we ever made sense?


"Is there," she started to say and then stopped. "Is there anything I should know? About the next year? Is anything bad going to happen?"


There was a long pause, since I didn't exactly know what to say.


"No," I said. "Nothing bad's going to happen."


"You swear?" Bally asked.


"I swear," I said. "Now be quiet, I'm tired and I want to get a good amount of sleep before I become unstuck again."


"Okay," she said. She went to leave, then turned back to me and whispered, "Thanks, A."


"You're welcome," I whispered back, then closed my eyes until she left. Then I got up from my bed and went to the computer as silently as a could and typed this entry. Because, before I go back, I just wanted to say one thing:


I'm sorry for lying to you, Bally.

Taking Stock

"I think I figured out when and where I am," I said.


"That's good," Roland said. "But first things first: do you have any new stock tips?"


The others - Roland, Mona, and Bally - all looked at me with anticipation. The stock market was how we made our money mostly. If we found ourselves in the past and we were able to scrounge up some cash, we could invest in stuff we remembered; most of the time, it wasn't very much, but sometimes we were lucky. Roland, early on, managed to get a tip from his future self that turned out to be very lucrative. We've basically been living off of that for a while.


"Sorry, guys," I said. "I'm only from about a year from now. And I actually came straight from 1983."


"Really?" Bally asked. "How was it?"


"All ponytails and legwarmers," I said. "I did get to see Thriller in theater, though."


"Fine, fine," Roland said. "So where are you now?"


"Los Angeles, 1968. The Ambassador Hotel."


"That's weird," Roland said. "Isn't that where Robert Kennedy was killed?"


"Not while I was there," I said. "Anyway, you guys go to LA. I think I'm due to show up there in a few days."


As Roland went to pack, Bally turned back to me. "Is there anything you can tell us about the future?" she asked.


I took a sip of coffee. "Yeah," I said. "Buy a new coffee maker."


"Is the old one going to break?"


"No," I said. "It just tastes like crap."

Something Strange

So here's something strange: today, I woke up in my own bed.


I got up, took a shower, walked downstairs, and started making coffee. And then I noticed I was using the old coffee machine, the one we had thrown out last year. So I looked around and noticed other small, subtle differences. The television in a different place. The stack of books we still hadn't unpacked.


I had woken up in the past, but in my own past. This hadn't happened to me before.


I mean, the other Pilgrims have met future versions of me, so I knew that it had to happen someday, but it hadn't happened yet.


I guess I have to figure out where the current me is and tell the others, so they can pick her up. Crap, I hate untangling timelines.


Well, at least she already created this blog. That should make it easier to pinpoint her.

A Duty Dance with Death

That's what some of us call him. Death, the Rawboned Man.

Over the years, we've found others like us. I don't exactly know how - perhaps it's the result of some 'fuck causality' mentality, where our future selves found them and they found us because of our future selves. It'll give you a headache if you try to think about it too much.

Anyway, we call ourselves Pilgrims. Not for religious reasons, but, well, because of Billy Pilgrim. He's fictional, sure, but we've all read the book. It's like a bible to us.

Fuck, I'm tired, too tired for explanations. I gotta get to sleep soon and...fuck, I don't know when I'll wake up after that.

So listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time.

And so have we.

Unstuck

I woke up yesterday in 1963. I knew it was 1963 because I was apparently homeless, sleeping in an alleyway, and using a newspaper as a blanket.

The newspaper headline wasn't anything important and my whole body ached, so I wrapped the newspaper around my body and tried to get to sleep again.

And then he walked into the alley. The Rawboned Man.

He looked different in this era. He was wearing his usual suit and tie, but he also was wearing a fedora on his head. It was black as the night and yet, somehow, it fit him.

He looked at me.

I felt my skin shiver with an unexpected chill. It was happening, yet I was still awake. It had never happened when I was awake, always after I had fallen asleep.

The world began to blur and I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see what was happening. I had heard from one of the other Pilgrims that if you were awake and saw how you got to where you were going, you would go insane.

My head started pounding and I put it between my legs, begging myself not to vomit. Finally, the pounding stopped and I cautiously opened my eyes.

I was still in the same alleyway, but the newspaper I was sleeping on said it was 2012.

Now all I had to do was get back home, so I checked the city I was in.

Dallas. I was in fucking Dallas. I wondered how I would get home, when I car pulled into the alley. A man got out; it was Roland. He took off his fucking douche sunglasses and glanced at my relative lack of clothes. I didn't particularly care.

"Are you gonna gawk or give me something to wear besides rags?" I asked. He smiled and tossed me a bag filled with clothes. "So how'd you get here so fast?"

"You've been gone two weeks," he said. "Another you showed up though. Told us where and when you would be."

"Doesn't that fuck with causality or something?" I asked slipping on a sweater and jeans.

"Fuck causality," Roland said. "Us Pilgrims got to stick together." He opened the car door for me and I got in.

"That should be our motto," I said. "'Fuck causality.'"

He laughed and drove us away from the alleyway.