Q

Almost every time I cross the road alone, or not sufficiently occupied by the company of another, I imagine an alternate universe where I get hit by a vehicle.

In all these scenarios different things can happen. Most of the time it’s fatal, each death has varying effects on the people around me. Sometimes I am injured, other times my thoughts end with an immediate death.

I’m not sure when this started, and am aware but never bothered by it. It is a strange but unobtrusive compulsion – like when you stretch your right knee to even out stretching the left. It’s just something I’ve done over the years without worrying much about.

But now when I look back at all the roads I’ve crossed, I think of all the deaths I’ve littered behind me, all the dead or injured me-s I’ve carelessly conjured and left around the island, all the people I imagined would grieve over me grieving in their respective worlds.

It’s so weird that I have these scattered universes orbiting around the roads i’ve visited. It’s also morbid that in most of them my death is the predominant theme.

Sometimes I even wonder if i am the alternate universe. If I had left my real, dying self behind – spared of this death by entering into a alternate world where i get to live on to be killed by some other way in the future.

it’s always disorientating when i get these brief, surreal moments.