Armies of Mes and Hims

Chicago. This goddamned city. I have lived here far too long. I walk past people I knew or fucked all the time. People that I am not facebook friends with...One day I fear that I will run into myself. Maybe on the bus or train that I take hundreds of times a year. There will be some rift in time and I'll run into myself. I'll have forgotten to look in a mirror for a month and not realize that I have put on another ten pounds. That my eyes are sunken and circles beneath them are blacker. My hair is longer and my face unshaven. I'll look at that prick, who is going to work and living a life, some life that he doesn't want to live but secretly does, and I'll say "I won't die today, if a schmuck like that is alive then surely I'll be okay for at least another day." And then I'll walk to work, behind the asshole and he'll cross the street and I'll get the red. I'll randomly turn to my left and see my reflection in a window and whisper "what the fuck." And then I'll walk into traffic and die. The other me will punch in and continue his thoughts, the ones he had on the bus where he thought he saw himself but just assumed that he was hungover and delusional. "What am I fucking doing?" he'll say to himself as he stocks beer and puts fresh bottles of whiskey and vodka on the shelf. He'll look outside and see an ambulance carrying me, a guy who looks like him on a stretcher. He'll visit me in the hospital and eat me, to avoid getting hospital bills...the logic of this fucking guy! He'll go back to my life, his life. Drink and smoke and shit and wonder...and wait. But now he has a new feeling: paranoia. Because there may be another rift and another him. Or worse, an army of hims...and an army of mes.