Time is Looped
by Oleg Volkov
You’ll start boozing, partying, mainlining ketamine, and popping pills in damp basements filled with pale sweaty bodies as a teen, transgressing against every rule in the good book. Stealing from friends and family might be the only vice you won’t partake in, as you’re relatively rich. Unless your mommy squanders all the family wealth, leaving you penniless. But in the grand scheme of things, that’s meaningless.
You’ll try to justify every sin, every stranger blown, every drug taken, every person you screw over as emanations of childhood trauma. Your therapist will use fancy words like “emanation” and they’ll creep into the way you talk about yourself. All the better for your mission to paint yourself as a martyr, to frame your story as one of recovery, and not one of recklessness. A spoiled brat against the world.
At some point, you’ll get over it, get your three-years chip, get a buzz cut, sprinkle your head with ashes, and build your own metaphorical ashram. People will come to you for advice, which you’ll give out handful after handful like Halloween candy. If I’m still around at that point, I might even seek out your interviews, just to make sure my prediction came true.
It’s funny how everyone will look for redemption and reward in your story but only people others consider vile and unfair will ever think of punishment. But those are heathens, who don’t get the simple fact that time is a dimension that serves no purpose when it comes to anyone’s celestial tally.
Time is looped, it’s all simple math, really. And in your equation, the punishment precedes. I am merely a tool in it, and my action of shutting this door is just a stone breaking the time pond’s gentle surface. A stone summoned by the ripples. Maybe you’ll understand it one day, once you accrue enough sins to balance out the punishment. And from the tears in your eyes I can already tell you have complete carte blanche.
Oleg Volkov
Oleg is a writer from Lithuania interested in the interplay between memory and language.
More: http://www.theobservational.net
Comments
Aw Oleg, I dig how well you can story in such a short space. Can't wait for your book. . . .
I relate to this piece because I see myself in it, or at least an earlier self. It speaks to an all too common condition of the human psyche. Nicely done. Thanks Oleg.