6

Then.

You are lying on concrete, beneath artificial lighting. Underground, you realize. In a parking garage. You were hurt, badly. There was blood. Oh so much blood. And shouting. You? Or somebody else?

There is no pain, now. You roll over, onto your knees. And then you stand. Why is there no pain? No blood?

No, this is wrong, wrong, wrong. This has already taken place. This is the doing of that damn curious, red-rimmed door. It has not pushed you into the past, exactly—rather, it is pulling the past into the present, so that it overlays the now. Is that what's happening? The lessons of the present are momentarily forgotten as you become the person you were some months ago.

On the day you realized you were dead.

No, this is that day. Shift to present tense: you are dead. And…however you came to be here…you do not know. This is not the place where you died. You were not killed by a car, but by…something else. Yet here you are now, and you don't know why.

And worse. You do not know who you are.

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