Cosmic Confluence

Chapter 4: catching the sickness

I woke up to the sound of my alarm, and not to the sound of God's voice telling me I was dead. If you want to know the truth, I actually almost started crying from how astonished I was to be alive. It was strange, because I had never really felt that way after waking up post-knowledge that The Man with Long Teeth wanted me gone. I figured today was just going to be a weird day.

This time I put more effort into noticing my surroundings in case there was evidence of an unwanted arrival last night. No crow feather. No decapitated head of a loved one. I was confident I spent last night alone. My mind only changed until I opened my sketchbook later that day, but that was to be explained in time.

I had gym before lunch that day which was good because my body didn't respond well to a hard workout right after eating— like anybody else's body would. That wasn't to say I had thrown up in front of everyone though, mind you. You know what I mean. Besides that, I was excited to see Jaymie during gym. It was one of the very few classes we had together and I hadn't had a chance that day yet to hear an update on her practicing of the musical 'Grease' in her drama class. I think I might always remember how unusually excited she was after she got the part for the main female role 'Sandy' like she had hoped. Jaymie didn't seem as excited about singing Sandy's parts nowadays since she had gone over each song about forty times, but I could tell her determination to make her performance perfect never faded from the start. After her last practice she always had at least one new story to tell about someone doing some fuck-shit; Jaymie usually saying something along the lines of "if Dominik ever even comes within a twelve metre radius of me— I'm not even kidding you— I will scream". Jaymie had a knack for telling stories that were supposed to make you laugh.

So I waited at the entrance of the girl's change room, assuming Jaymie would have to come by eventually before gym. I waited until the second bell rang and class had officially begun, then once again deducting that today was just a weird day and there must've been an odd reason she was late.

Fifteen minutes into gym and still no Jaymie was only logical for me to assume she flat out wasn't even at at school since I hadn't seen her that day. Asking the teacher to go to the water fountain, I instead took my time to text her asking the obvious, then checking other notifications as I waited for a reply.

She was quick to text back, I mean, maybe it was only because I liked to spam her with far out alterations of her name until she replied, but I didn't think much of it when there was still no reply by the time a classmate had to pull me back into my shift in floor hockey. That is to say I should have, I should have worried more. In a way it was good, but in general I just didn't worry about most things really. The Man with Long Teeth did make me anxious, yes, but I wouldn't be anxious unless I had four brain cells— he was a very real threat. Jaymie somewhat understandably not texting back was not a very real threat, at least I didn't think so at the time anyways.

Gym had been over for awhile at this point and I was sure she must've been, I don't know, sick and sleeping at home because there was still no sign she was coming to school. I sighed, knowing there was one less person to let all the stuff I talked forever about out onto. Kenzie interrupted me quite often when I talked to her but that meant she was just like me. It also made me realize having an exact duplicate of myself would make me frustrated sometimes actually because our self-centred and dominant our personalities would clash like that a lot.

I had begun to think about that hypothetical clone situation a lot throughout most of lunch. There hadn't been an instance that day where I saw Kenzie yet either, I realized when I took my mind off of having a clone. She had sent me something on Instagram earlier so the idea never really crossed my mind that anything was off. Before going to where we hung out at lunch, I stepped outside because it was something I liked to do from time to time. I felt like if I went out, I would see something. Not really sure of what kind of thing I expected to see, it was hard to explain.

Many different things can happen at many different times and a lot of people don't realize they can catch those memories by doing simple things out of their way. One small push can go a hundred miles, like I've said.

This time, I was so excited to of actually hooked myself into the kind of bizarre turn of events I fantasized about.

Jaymie stood idly at the sidewalk not very far off from the front doors of my school. Utterly delighted, I bounded to the girl. Once Jaymie noticed that I, out of all people, was coming for her, she sprinted to meet me halfway. Something about her expression when I could see it more clearly flipped an emotional switch in me. It wasn't the right expression for what was happening. There wasn't something that was right all over.

"Mary, Mary?" She said desperately in a way that very much surprised me.

"Shit, uh, where were you? Why're you out here?" I tried to lead her into the explanation of the things I anticipated learning the most since I was an impatient person when it came to explanations.

"Mary, I think I've gone batshit crazy."

Nothing else Jaymie had ever said caused me so much pure terror than it did then.

I was very smart to of already known what was going on.