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.