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.