The Town Where Every Third Monday Rewrites Who You Are

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1:05Hello, I'm Wilkins. Stories all the time. Glad you are here. Let's get into it. You could say I keep to myself, but it's more accurate to say Blanhand Crossing keeps me to the edges. I don't blame the town. My mother would call me slow to root. I can function and routines and yet never belong to them, a shadow sliding along the tracks everyone elsewhere is smooth. On third Mondays, I usually stop for garden gloves at the hardwurst door because it's my official day to get out, be seen, by a useful thing. I invent such rituals when another week threatens to flatten itself into the beige wall of my tiny house. This third Monday, I cut through the cool blue morning, a brief taste of spring fighting up to left over winter. The air tingles are faint static about the time I step under the shot's flat white awning. Aldmus Parker from up the canal holds the door for me. She barely nods before bustling to the paint aisle, hips weighing like clock pendulums. Inside, it's a slide into habit. The hardwurst door starts with a rack of postcards and teak truckters in the town's tiny clock tower than a cluster of sea packets and gloves arranged like flower petals. I turn right, eyes on the new fiscos display, then slip path

2:07the buzz of a radio argue and softly in the brick area. It's always radio here, never music, low local voices reading the community calendar, thick accents softening the edges of every vowel. I'm halfway down the aisle toward the trolls before I sense the air change. Just a pressure like standing near an old CRT television, something froming under my skin. The ceilings fluorescent lights buzz in and out of step. I tighten my grip on my shopping lists, not looking up, telling myself it's a truck of leftover nerves. That's when they appear not from an entrance, not from behind a shelf, simply there. Two elderly figures. Both short, white hair moving with the careful speed of people who don't trust their knees. Each wears a faded blue windbreaker at the sort that once might have seen smart for rain, but now only remembers decades of being hung and re-hung on the same hook. The woman's eyes are faded green and man's mouth purses with silent words. They meet at a tea intersection of shells, both hands outstretched for the same brand of garden trowel, silver blade, rubbery green handle. For a second they freeze, mirroring each other like dancers who forgot the steps. Nither looks up. Neither speaks. The sound in this store warps.

3:12I look again. The aisle is empty. My heart trips. The trowels are gone no empty hooks, no out of stock tags. Just space enough that I could almost believe maybe I'd misremembered which shelf held them. But I know this store, or at least I thought I did. The echo that little encounter the torsion like deja vu with teeth rattles as I walk on. Further up to employees kneel by a stack of mulch bags. Should we take lunch early this week to the younger asks. The older one darling, with a heronet and fox tattoo hidden behind her ear replies, didn't we already. They both laugh, a trickling sound layered one over the other as though their voices were played on a delay. I put a pair of gloves in my basket, hands trembling faintly. My skin feels too tight. My wristwatch, an old wind up, ticks a steady indifference. Yet the numbers in the register display stutter and blink as a customer two carts ahead pays for a single light bulb. I glance into corridors of gardening tools, searching for blue jackets not so just a man in ill-fitting overalls humming and unplaceable looping tune. I know I'm fixated on hiding my confusion. I wait for my turn at checkout, answering the cloaks find everything you

4:14need with a practice just the basics today. She hands bat my credit card with a smile so wide her cheeks fade into the glare of the overhead bulbs. I collect my receipt to notice nothing strange on it at first. Only later in the privacy of my car while I realise my name is typed as H. Culpepper. I am not and never have been H. Culpepper. I drive home with a feeling like tiny moss in my lungs. My bungalow lurch is up from the mud at the edge of town. No foundation is truly safe out here, not with the water table so high. The clapboard is a patchwork of peeling green paint I keep meaning to replace 1960s renovation stacked like geological layers. My back yard ends in a tangle of wool out and a slice of the old canal. Sometimes I think if I died here the house would simply rot and slouch and no one would know. I make lunches the kettle his his fried egg thick bread from last Sunday's farmer's market. The news from the clock radio is all pancake breakfast and the high schools run in the regional aggregate quiz. Everyone's tied together by these small breeds of news and repetition. The phone rings then stops, the tone lingers in my head. Maybe round number, maybe something else. I journal in the strapped yellow book I tell myself I

5:18do it for mental hygiene. Recording the every day chicken feed up 8 cents, bakery out of gosses again. Mises have horse-installed missing. The garden centre next door to the hard restore gets a page of its own petunias this year and a little skecker painted in overalls, its face already peeling. Later I walk into tamper upper, low shops, a cafe whose sign is a cartoon chicken, the air syrupy with cinnamon, and tell myself I'm settling in. But when I stop at the bakery, the regular crudleens over the coffee like a hedge, closing ranks. Talk is of the town's old rhythms when the canal froze two winters in a row while how Mises leavened and sons each married up the river. At the counter, the younger kashir asks, the Monday already, and pronounces it with a sly wrinkle, a secret handshake in syllables. My hands start to sweat. That phrase shivers along my spine a memory of blue jacket and vannish trials. On my way back, I swing by the bakery garden. Neighbors several old men in Capstan and loose clusters, debating whether petunias or impatience were the ticket last summer. The wind snaps the smell of wet earth over the fence, the edges of the group seem to waver as though the boundaries of the world are less certain beneath the young apple trees.

6:22I tell myself to breathe, grip my shopping bag so hard at crinkles. There is a break room and the store consumers don't go in, but I once glimps the wall for an open door, 12 newspaper clippings, poorly mounted, yellowed and curling, with bold dates and hand red ink. Lost and found border set after of gathering, third Monday. Another, council baffled by shift in attendance, meeting repeats itself, seasons amused. Photos of people standing in almost identical poses, but their faces each slightly blurred, as if the camera or the paper itself was trying to forget something. I write all this down when I get home. I use the words to clip the day's shut pin reality in place. The blue windbrickers, the egg in my chest after the store, Mrs. Havocens missing dog amic lists and force myself to obey them. Most nights, I tell myself the only problem is I'm lonely. A week drizzles by, days smearing out like rainbows on spilled oil. I wake early, shower, pick up breakfast. This time I result to repeat the hardwist store routine if only to prove to myself last week was nothing. The second trip to the stores, at first, ordinary in all the right places. The basket handle is sticky,

7:23with fertilized dust. A chalkboard near the door reads welcome, gardeners, in big wall-beast crypt. I head for the gardening aisle. This time I stayed down the corridor if the trolls are arranged at the end, but the up positions are off. Yesterday the pro-garden outline was above the valiant brand, now it's reversed, the labels facing outward at precise right angles. There, a child with dock curls and mismatched rain boot stands by the counter, asking about host bledders. The staff member, woman with an infinity to chew on her wrist, winks at me. I see detailed and profile, adult tall hands fidgeting near the registers. Then, as I blink, he shrinks mid-conversition until his hat nearly covers his eyes. Allowing Garland's ambush me at the end of the next aisle, bats and pumpkins in July. I startle, then turn to find daftle bulbs and Easter baskets on sale beneath the rack of snow shovels. This feels like a joke no one told me. I snag a bag of soil, my hands are sweating, my breath comes short. At the register, conversation starters between two employees over which day shipments arrive. Tuesday, always Tuesday, says the younger flipping her hair. The other shakes

8:24his head, Fridays for as long as I've worked here. The argument dissolves as soon as I step up, like the air between them stiffens, sealing me out. I see a new bag of fertilizer behind the calendar, is labeled unreadable up close. The font doesn't register, the words dissolve into a tundle of shapes if I hold my gaze too long, like a crossword puzzle drawn in water. A tome later, I will turn the bag in my hands, rub it between my palms, and the print will resolve into Dsmann's nourish Roy, but near to Google nor my neighbors have heard of it. When I leave the store, my hands are shaking. The cashier hands me a receipt. I skin it out of habit in the car, expecting to find a potting soil. Instead, it reads, bag of screws, $4.28. I have no screws in my back, only earth, and those gloves. It might be a mistake, but somehow not by human hands. I'm more angry than frightened. Maybe this is what madness feels like no thunderclap, just the steady drip of things that won't resolve. I'll prove it one way or the other, I say it loud in the kitchen. The words sound brittle in the lemony light. So I start keeping records, which are lashing the shopping hall with third Mondays and

9:28sometimes in between, each time noting Brown's prices, layoffs. My notebook fills with odd sketches a plan of the stores front half, strange scattered dates from receipts. The apple tree in my yard inexplicably drops a fruit in early April, snow in the forecast. I record that too. Over these weeks, more strangers pass through the store. One, Mrs. Havorson the Doboswooder, who always brings banana bread to temp hot looks brushes by me at the seed rack, a purse banging into my thigh. She glances blankly at my face, pardon, Miss, do you work here? I stammer out a no. We spoke just yesterday, but she recalls as if I'm peddling snake oil and shuffles for the exit her eyes clouded. On my next trip third Monday, marked and believe in my notes I interprepared. This time a shop-aid employee is arguing with Darlene about whether the dismembered brown paint always sat in the end cap. Always there, Darlene insists, but I excavate the half-use paint at home and the label's wrong or diner glowed instead, barcode off by a digit. It's a little thing, just enough to bruise my faith in memory. Security screens flicker in the corner of the manager's cubicle. For a moment I stand in the shadows and watch. The current feature was the

10:32main aisle carpeted in a dull purple, with a potted fan near the emergency exit. But from the door behind me, I clearly see blue carpeting and no fun. Other screens show the window displays various jack-o-lantons, then flags, then ones assigned for a lost time sale, gone the next second. At the next register over, I watch a middle-aged man purchase six identical battery clocks overcoast draped over his arm. He catches my stare. You can never be too sure about the iron, he says, wagging a clock at me is mouth-pulled too wide in an odd grin. I carry home a trowel. Or so I believe. Only later, sorting through the shed's mess, to realize there are two in the trowel slot near a late identical except the handles that stand with different model numbers. My memory hitches. Did I buy both? One is new, the other shines with age. The notebook, too, as double, two receipts with the same pair of gloves, purchased a week apart numbers off-eye sequence, dates blurring. I approach my neighbor's trying to anchor myself to build a wall of real data. Wasn't the delivery truck late last week? I ask. No delivery is, we pick up everything now, last man who lives up at the bakery.

11:37His wife insists they always come Thursdays, don't they? The conversations dangle off into polite silence, as if the air behind my words was full of wasps. President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years, but you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. You know what? It sucks to be bored, but when I get on my phone and play real casino games on SpinQuest.com, the time flies by that two-hour wait at the DMV seems like 10 minutes. Play your favorite spots, live black check, live preps with a live dealer. New players, $30 coin packs are on sale for $10. Play SpinQuest.com and you'll never be bored again. SpinQuest is a

12:40free-to-play so sure casino, voidware prohibited visits SpinQuest.com for more details. One shot and sage in another. I tell myself it's chemical air. I yank out boxes, compare gloves the tags blur as if exposed to too much sun, the edges of the garden shears free into a subtle new pattern. At night, my dreamed collapse, aisles doubling, neighbors talking backwards, low green lights building out from under the garden center's doors. Sometimes, sitting apart in my kitchen with sunlight pouring in, I'll pause mid-bite into toast and wonder if I've eaten the smell before. I think, did I buy those gloves or am I wearing the memory of buying them from a different week altogether. Conversation with other blendhand crossing residents brings the tension forward.

13:45Sandra, who used her way from the library desk, listens as I admit, things in the store are strange, I see things out of order, products switch, days blur. She shits the book she's reading, spine cracking. You get used to it, she says, voice flat. After a while, you just do. Then she turns away, eyes moist and shaking. One day in the post office lobby, a stooped man with a thick, cane-old school blazer will cappulls me aside. Don't chop on the Mondays, not unless you're ready to see. His breath smells of cigarettes and mint. He doesn't elaborate, but for an instant, his pinch face seems almost animal, wise or deeply afraid. I've heard the hardware store for five days, thinking this will break the spell, but oddities follow. Road signs at the roundabout read a walk of instead of welcome, later they're back to normal. I made a neighbor in the alley behind my house. She waves, calls me by my full name except she swapped my middle initial, as if reading from a poor copy. The town paper announces the annual founders festival on its front page, but flicking back a day, there's a headline, clean up after festival is success. It's as if time falls and on itself here, twisting with invisible hands.

14:47The garden center, which should be domined this time of year, overflows with apples firm, red, and cold, piled fory deep across the entrance. People carry baskets of them, pass pod to narrow goals, buying cider at a table with printer Christmas napkins. I stand at the edge of the crowd, the collision of seasons grinding against the base of my skull. Sleepy comes impossible. Dark frantic scrolls film a notebook. Dates, food items, names non-stable. Sometimes a judo isle repeating like the grooves of a record, figures in blue jackets mirroring endlessly. My apartment smells of rot and honeysuckle. The next third Monday, I can't help myself I have to go back to walk the loop from entrance to seed packet, but it's time with the determination born of desperation. The sidewalk comes, the lightlands is across yellow lands in the parking lot. Each step brings resistance, like water thickening around my ankles. The store is both the same and not window display familiar, but double stacked. I open the door and the bell times twice notes overlay. Inside, I freeze. There's another me in the tomato seed aisle hemmust, codons it, lipped pressed in uncertain focus. Our eyes meet, then slide away, as a frameathing in a mirror

15:51tilted off angle. I turn hot slammer. Their vibre is not north or south but all direction, as though I'll spiral out into a dozen nested loops. Each customer flickers between outfits, coats while pats dissolve. The fluorescent light strobe, dying everything in pale blue and hospital green. Pushing onward, I find myself face to face with a doppelgainer me, holding a green handle trowel, the other me holding the same. We lock eyes. Behind us, the shells multiply infinite reflections, dozens of others like us, each clutching a slightly different item, some hold receipts, others pearl handled scissors, a few stand empty handed. Time is not time here. The radio is not a radio as voice is a chorus, over laughing announcements, safer the adjustment, please complete your purchase, return on third Monday, return on third Monday. I panic, whirl, and my hand closes over two receipts one day to day, one day to twelve years ago, both for the same garden soil. The pain in my palm is sharp, a cramp that feels old before it even peaks. In an instant, the store snaps back. The aisle shrink, the duplicated customers vanish. Darling and two new employees gather around me.

16:55Best not to linger when the aisle stretch, one members. It takes something out of you. Darling brushes my arm, leads me gently to the front door. You must remember, sheen tones, voice layered in echoes, third Monday's offer adjustments. Behind me, the formally empty shells reputulate, garden gloves multiplying in raps, trials shining like new teeth. My vision swims. The world outside is glazed with twilight. I step out into a street where the sky is smeared with double moons, watery and bright, and the shadows follow in wrong directions. I do not know if I'm the same person who entered, or if I ever was. All I know is that my left hand throbs clutching receipts that do not agree, and every window in town glints with the blue of rain jackets, waiting, watching, counting the rhythm of those endless third Mondays. I linger in the threshold because the ordinary world feels brittle, the parking lot lacquered in a reflective haze, as if the line since cells could slide off the asphalt with enough rain. I try to breathe something in my long shoulders, as if air itself has changed frequency. With each step away from the store, reality thickens, the tugs the ground a little softer underfoot,

17:56my shoes rise in a fraction too slow. I clutch the conflicting receipts, so hard the blue one crumbles, the paper giving way beneath my thumb. Once in my car, I lock the doors automatically and sink into the heat sticky vinyl, and drill whether I should be grateful for the familiar rattle of the van though now it cycles between a high wine and a juttering beast that makes my teeth ache. On the passenger seat, the sharpened back sits at attention, the travel perhaps the pro gardener from this aisle, or the valent from another week rest awkwardly at top a sack of potting soil that seems suner lighter than it should. I peek again at the handle. The sticker reads Model 380-7GK June edition. At home, an identical trail claims Model 380-2GK May edition traces of red clay still clinging to its blade. I touch the back of my neck, half convinced I'll find a bockered or an unsuppressed there. The drive home is slow, every turn familiar but sticky street sign shifted. Instead of locked, the cross street is marked to large, the paint too new, blue leaking into the curb. After noon, he slants two parallel streets, the houses twist him out, extensions and porch swings duplicating. I count mailboxes. I count stray dogs, each with a

18:57white patch somewhere different. When Marlow greets me at my door, he scuttles around my ankles but when I kneel, his eyes flash amber and blue, then settle back to copper. I carry my purchases inside. My hand, still cramped, leaves a ghost of sweat on the door knob. In the kitchen, I start to set the new trail with the others, but hesitate. On the trail rack, three green handles gleam, each carrying a slightly different shade of plastic. My palm makes, so I place the new one on the counter and, without meaning to, bury it beneath the tea-tell. The notebook thumps out of my bag onto the kitchen table. I flip to the last few pages. My handwriting wobbles let us marching off their lines. There are overlapping lists, one tracking dates, one sketching aisles that branch and rejoin in loops, spattered with frantic margin notes. Breakfast at the start of receipt, I think then a scribble, then see duplicate receipt one draw over and then, in another pen, a looping script I barely recognise, record only the first purchase, not the corrections. I turn back to the receipts, flattening them. One is dated today though the time reads 13.45 slash 15.2 unlikely unless I meet two purchases. Beneath my name I now restore to

20:01its usual spelling, a card use traces the right bank there are two items, potting soil and glove floral blue. On the other receipt, older paper, the ink blurred in places, the items are in the same order but model 300 A to 2 GK travel as listed, the price off by a dollar. I dig into the bottom of the bag for the gloves. Blue flowers on black, sure enough. I already have an identical pair in my gardening drawer, but a logo on the cuff is flipped, as if stamped with a mirror. I hold both up to the window. In the last light, the dye warps and weaves uplining shapes that evade my memory. The phone rings. I let a blur into silence, when the machine picks up, the playback is alooped click no message, just airshifting, as if someone were pressing the receiver against a grainy wall, trying to leak through. I scourge my chest, suddenly desperate for the feeling of something anchored in my own smell, the familiar ink in my wrist, the exact pitch of the refrigerator's hum. I need to see these things from a distance. So I pull up my phone, launch the camera, and take shots of each pair of the trolls lined up, the gloves displayed side by side, receipts overlaying one another. When I scroll through, a few images are missing.

21:03In the gallery, some files appear again and again tacked with the same time stamp, though the lighting and angles differ. My reflection bobs in the screen hair and wash, face pale, eyes uncertain. Dinner is perfunctory, I eat standing at the counter, half-tasting cheese and olives. Dust crawls in. Through the back window, wool or branches shutter against pink sky and above them, the moon is a smeary double disc, barely visible but doubled, it's twin-hanging askew to the north. I photograph that too, but the phone produces only a single round blur. Before bed, I try the old exercise, make a listenker myself. My name is... the letter-stole. My name... My name is what I say it is, I decide. This moment will have to do. Below, I write, I bought salt and gloves, not screws, there are two trolls, Marlow's eyes are copper. My writing swells and shrinks as if the pen itself is instead. That night, my sleep is liquid, ongoing. I drift for rails that split like tree roots, pass familiar faces whose names melt in my mouth, wake three times into bedrooms not quite my own. Once, I sit up in bed with the clear

22:04memory of ringing a bell at the hardware store counter, but my hand holds a library car. Morning is sharp, the world honed to an edge. I stagger through a shower in, while tallying off, see not one but two toothbrushes on the sink both blue, one slimmer by half an inch. I do not own the second. I run my fingers along the bristles, the memory of buying it slides out of reach, determined to escape. I dress and step out. The town is bright, the streets rinse clean by last night's drizzle. On main, the cafés specials board reads Monday, alem tomato bisque. I pure out the day. My phone claims it's Wednesday. The paper in the box reads Thursday. I hold both up to the sunlight, waiting for one to reveal itself as a fake. Passing the bakery in my eyes drift through the painter glass. The usual crowd huddles are the window table though someone's chair is empty. Vaughn to the hardware store, perhaps, or simply raced. The young cashier with the eyebrow ring waves and says, third Monday gone already? I open my mouth to reply, word fill. Aswalo forces mile, move on. Business and Blinine crossing proceeds with the inertia of habit. I seem assess have

23:09worsened learning groceries into her battered sedan or mouth set in a straight line. I venture a good morning. She nods without recognition, but her dog got rusted area or perhaps a black lab now emerges from the passenger seat barking twice. I bent a pet it, but the dog flinches from my hand as if I've touched the memory of another animal. Across town, signs multiply. Though found as festival is promoted across two conflicting billboards, the dates of lapping went on the 22nd, one on the 29th. I stop at the canal, wind ruffling water the color of old coins hoping for solace. The lamplight weavers, catching flakes of pollen swirling in cross currents, making the surface ripples they were calling to a different wind patterns at once. People pass familiar enough, but often orientation as if their shadow of false twice is long. I try to repeat names, build a list, find anchors. At the library recently repainted, though pink peels from two panels in you by Kona Sandra. Have things always been this changeable? I ask. She looks past me, her voice wouldn't. Hiles move, shells move, you just learn the new layout, you get used to it, you have to. Her

24:09resignation is terrifying. I ask her about the elderly man with the cane to one who warned me about third Mondays but she shrugs, clancing toward corner of the reading room as if searching for cues. I don't know who that is. The next few days, every attempt to fix myself in the town's lats work breaks down. At the post office, my package is addressed to Eva Culpepper, a name that rings only faint bells. I sign anyway, grateful for the proof of a signature in my own shop, slandest crawl. My routines become frantic rituals. At sunset, I inventory the contents of every drawer. I photograph the arrangement spoons, forks, wine opener, a pair of sugar tongs I don't recall buying. I'd open the refrigerator at the cream jugs logo changes between glances sometimes lanced dairy, sometimes losses family farm. The extras in the bin have brown speckles then white. In the garden, I kneel among bulbs that bloom out of season, fingernails packed with soil. I examine the gloves now to repairs, all different sizes. When I reach for the water and can, I find two. My hands shake so hard, I dig my nails into my palms to stop the tremor. On the town's social page, I ask anyone else find garden center schedules oddly.

25:15Replyers come quick and hustle, go outside, touch grass to gardening center, always open Mondays, where have you been, sounds like you need a break, hun. One, by an account with a blank avatar, simply says, you are late. I try calling family. The connection crackles then drops. When my sister answers, she sounds both like herself and not at all have voice overlaid with a deeper register, questions out of sync. Are you coming home for Thanksgiving? She asks in April, and when I hastenly reply, she laughs, a hollow sound, and the line goes dead. Inside, I search for reassurance, but the familiar betrays me, Molo leaps onto the windowsill, his shadow doubled against the blinds his fur flares with a tabby swirl, then with the tiger straight stripes. He mows, then cheerups, then winds in a voice nearly unfamiliar. For a moment, I call him how he and he answers. My handshake so badly, I spill tea across the tiled counter. Sunday, I force myself to cling to polish the table, to vacuum the hallway to try to polish the dread from the baseboards. I come across my own handwriting, and a notebook I have not used. Inventory Mondays, always check, don't forget the second list. The words are slanted upwards, flourished at the end,

26:18not at all my style. Beside it, scroll vertically and jagged letters, there are times the charm if you're not first, be second, if you're not seconded just. When the clock gongs midnight, that message drops beneath the mattress springs as I lie awake. I can't teach her all in the paint and the ceiling. I tally the night sounds. Agripp myself to reality. Whether it's slots or live dealers, SpinQuest.com has the fun and action you're looking for, with SpinQuest exclusives, Blackjack, Roulette, Baccaro, and even live dice with craps and bubble craps. The games never stop, so you don't have to. And right now, new users get $30 coin packs for just $10. Play now at SpinQuest.com. SpinQuest is a free to play social casino. Boydware prohibited. Visit SpinQuest.com for more details. President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years. But you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing

27:26field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Advances and hesitates, like a clock being potted by different hands. The hardware store glimmers across the lot light stubbled in rain puddles. The awning, battered by Gus Flicker's lawn its edge between Niesti 1967 and since 1965. Each time I blink, a different date. There is an urge rising in the pot compulsion pot. Hope that may be seeing the inside, witnessing from a new angle will break the fever. I march to the door gripping my notebook so tightly the cover threatens to tear. The bell overhead shines a tangle, braided note.

28:26The send of new mulch of ozone and paint hits hard. Inside the store is mobbed. Shoppers flow between aisles but their faces double below their footsteps echo in triplets. The radio has gone cicato advertising time the adjustments. I keep left aiming for the garden section eyes fixed on a pool of rain water growing near the hoses. At the junction to aisle 7 I slow here the world doubles again. One rack of plant fruit dissolves into two, one stacked blue, one green. I allow myself to to the line between my heart hammers. Nobody notices my movements they thread past me or through me like boders and two dimensions. A woman in a checkered rain bonnet pushes her cut to the paint section twice she's there they're not then reappears in a different hat. Someone in a barma jacket reaches for a garden rake but their arm flickers becomes to both select rakes, both slot them into carts, both vanish down opposite aisles. I make for the break area thinking maybe I'll glimpse the clipping wall again, something to explain all this. The doorways guarded but in the corner of my eye the manager's cubicle is cracked open. The security screen showing unrelated sequence an empty store

29:28in daylight, one with every aisle in red carpeting, one with shoppers arranged like chess pieces, motionless. A sharp voice interrupts, can I help you? I stammer something about wanting to check stock on trials. The reply is tight-lipped you might want to try aisle 7 again, not all of them are the same this week. The plastic badge on her a vest reads darling manager in block ladders though her hair is blonde now, not red as last time I saw her. I back away, bumping into a display of water and cans. Two topple both the same brand but different sizes. I wonder if I've crossed into the other store again or if all versions cohabit in knots and walls reunite at each third Monday. I hover by the counter trying to slow my breathing. No one else seems troubled. They buy the chat they adjust. I see the clockman from earlier loading up on cheap plastic timers grinning thin-lepped eyes blinking with static. I fetch another pair of gloves this one with a yellow tack, not blue. The woman at the register scans the item three times. The receipt prints three x gloves, one x soil, two extra last eight blanks last cleric

30:28blank. My hand spasms. I clutch the slip and force myself to leave surging into the drizzle. Again, the double moon sky. As I look up the clothes part, spilling pale beams the street is lit in stripes, edges flexing, the car's wavering between different colors one moment my hatchback is green, the next brand. At home the evidence is multiply. I strip my bag, three pairs of gloves, three trials, two kinds of mulch. The notebook now bulges with pages, some in my hand, some in that jagged stranger scroll. One loose sheet fluffers out, marked or return only what is doubled, keep what you can hold in one hand, third Monday corrects the difference. I stagger into the bathroom, grip the edges of the sink, then stare into the silvered mirror. My face blows the angle shift features ripple. I blink furiously until the lion solidify and myself, I think my name return to the tip of my tongue hot and uncertain. Outside, wind skyers the eaves. The town pulses with the blue of raincoats flickering through every second story window. The hardware stores for us and clothes dances in puddles at the end of the lane, daring me to fix a point, daring me to hold

31:30steady but everywhere, the world's ways, slightly out of phase, the orbit of my routine pulled by strange gravities. I do not know when my next third Monday will arrive or which version of myself will greet it. But for now, I close my notebook with trembling hands and force myself to sleep populated as always by double dials, mirrored faces, and the gentle endless hum promise in the next adjustment is never very far away. The night after the double dials, the cracking radio voices, the carpet faces after that third Monday and whatever adjustment took place my body wouldn't let me sleep. Not deeply, not at all. In thin iris, accounted wings and aches, twisted sheets, the slow, shivery realization that my hands felt older than last night, rests stiff with a ghostly ache. Every so often, I lifted them into moonlight, flex, searching for proof of some difference or injury, but found only the normal swelling that comes with age or gardening or nervous, endless clenching. Through the glass of a kitchen sink, the world outside smudged itself into a distinct house, one moon, then two, then a jumble of bright silver puddled into one. I drank water that tasted faintly floral, my faintly sire, and found myself talking aloud. Okay, you're home, that's your

32:32house, that's your cat. Molo, at least tonight, Molo regarded me wearily than cold-tider, tail-covering his eyes, refusing to mediate between versions. I made coffee at four, let the kettle screech, and scrolled today's aid in my battered notebook, Tuesday, May 18th, although the phone flashed Wednesday. I chose not to fight it not yet. The receipts both all sat in a pile under the fruit bowl, they're tight muddled but static for now. A parade of tiny differences waited in the morning. The mail arrived earlier, and the postmark on the weekly circular was smudged, blurring the year. The ad inside welcomed friends of Blenhan crossing I traced my name in the address label, Culpeper E slash Willabend. Some piece of meat-ittered. I'd never live on Willabend had I. From the front porch, I scanned the mailbox number 452. Yet the house key still bore a battered black tape marked 462. I tried both numbers on my phone, my peach brought up my own front door. I tried to take the day from another angle, cleaning and sorting, spinning lotions, and bottles in the bathroom to line up their faded bockered and bottom stamps. I caught myself counting once

33:34allowed, then softly and more panicked trying to reassure myself there were only two trials, not free. I texted Sandra at the librarian half expecting a bounce back. Instead, library opened till 7, stop by if you need a cup of tea. The words calmed me the invitation echoing obby as if we'd already had the conversation in reverse. Marlow trailed me twitching tail as I checked the back garden. I found the earth's sawdorn but an disturbed tulip shoots pointed the memory apple blossoms pulling in the grass-like delicate confetti. If I had more trials than hands and more gloves than memory, at least the flowers bloom mostly to schedule. I paced the kitchen with a phone against my cheek, waiting for my sister a real voice someone outside Blenhan crossing. The call ran and rang and then a chorus of horse's mind, then my father's, then a thin child's answer back through the line. I swore softly to stood the cord into a snarl hung up and told myself she'd call if it mattered. Panic, subdued but insistent pressed at shoulder height all day. The house didn't feel right as proportion shifted. My bedroom seemed two square in the morning, then stretched long and low by afternoon. Marlow vanished for Ayers, his ordinary appetite replaced by brooding, bail for

34:37regard he stopped the holes of sata moving in the winter, ice flashing from copper to blue to nickel depending on the angle. I forced myself up for air, walking the lipping little streets. I passed the bakery not the one I usually did, I thought but here it sat, in the same place as last time pastry cases, clothing beneath golden lumps. The specials board read Monday, ale and tomato bisque, Tuesday, lemon puff. No mention of the day's date but the arrangement comforted. I ordered coffee to cut part in my palm, then linger too long over the heat, waiting for someone to ask how I was able to notice the nervous trimmer in my laugh. The streets of Blenhan crossing appeared and changed, save tiny whoops, curl accused in the stucco, window boxes set with blue instead of yellow panses. I nearly stopped to ask a stranger about local deliveries, only to catch sight of my own face in a mirrored storefront, wild eyed and certain split by the reflection and image I hoped no one else would see. The wall was slippery now and that slippage built minute by minute. Faces I half knew hesitated before offering names. Twice I tripped over curbs I was sure hadn't been there yesterday. The can also, solenoge passed in the valley,

35:38its water brownlays with pollen and at its bans a shimmer of apples hung from branchless trees, as if the seasons themselves stopped ato each time they circled this part of town. After the third time the postman handed me a letter dressed to Alina not Eva, not the other names because I laughed and pressed down full open to my coat. Inside, a blank sheet, safer a cove line that might have started as my signature, or someone else's. Back home I lined up the trails now three, definitely three, they're handles shifting from green to blue, they're rubber grips soft one moment and cracked the next. My hands ache to new and knuckle swelling then was eating, as if I'd been gardening for hours. Perhaps part of me had in some version of the day. I bid down on the urge to walk to the hardware store. I tried instead to call Sandra Fone to ear, breath shallow. This time she answered on the third ring. Library she barked then, softer, Eva, you there? Yes I need to see you. I sounded desperate childish. Things are strange again. I expected denial or gentle evasion. But Sandra only said, Iles close in an iron, come through the side, we'll talk in the genealogy room.

36:41I slept on boots, stirred the troll receipts in my pocket and hurried down the lane. The wind picked up and with it a smell of tin and rain like all batteries under a bridge. At the library's side door Sandra met me in a blue cardigan, her eyes flitting to the shifting sky. She led me to a windowless room cluttered with fire cabinets and photo albums the genealogy room. She poured weak tea in while I fumbled with my notebook, said, you look tired. I haven't really slept, I've made a breath fogging the cup. Things keep doubling, garden tools receipts even a cat, it's like like the third Monday stretch out too far. Sandra poured her own tea, hands only shaking a little. The longer you notice the more it happens she said quietly. I don't know what it is, I've stopped asking. I slowed three receipts across the table, same purchases, three dates, three spillings of my name. Sandra fipped them silently, tracing the numbers. You ever look up census records, they're full of doubles too, same last names, timber thays, sometimes just an extra initial out of nowhere. I nearly spilled the tea. Sandra did you ever see someone yourself at the hardware store? She met my eyes and didn't blink.

37:45I saw a boy once look just like my old brother, he's been gone twenty years now but on a third Monday he was shopping for a host split kits mild at me like he wasn't sure who was supposed to speak first. I press my hand fat to the table. What does it mean? For the first time she looked afraid. I think blendham crossing it doesn't always remember which people belong to which year, so it keeps everyone just in case. I left her soon after heard by still ringing in my ears, don't go back, if you can help it, if you do, anchor yourself to something, anything real. By sunset, another letter arrived in the post this time address probably, though the writing was unfamiliar, tight, looping, almost childish. Inside, a single photograph blowed, showing two identical dogs sunning on a porch. One had a trouble in its math. Gravity thickened around the house's darkest fell. Marlow howled at the back door. I double locked it and on impulse propped the shovel against the knob. Trying to ignore the sudden chill, I checked every drawer and closet hunting for signs of further breaches in reality. The kitchen held three bottles of milk each a different brand, each nearly empty. The bathroom counter bristle with

38:48mismatched toothbrushes. On the bookshelf, titles rearranged themselves, the almanac of cycles warping into gardener's almanac pages the same but covers an author swapped. I didn't my closet, two identical rinkers, one missing a button, the other still new tagged, sleeves too long, fatigue lay over me like wet wool. I sat on the edge of my bed, hands clutching the notebook so hard the paper ripped. Something was fraying inside and out. By midnight thunder nod at the horizon. The sky was lit and cheated flashes when shuddering the wind of pains. Every so often, out of the black, the hardware store sound flickered into view, luminous blue against the rain. Each letter stuttering as a trap between years. Blendham hardware eastern slash six-minus seven-slash yeasty 1967. I should have slept. Instead, a full-pages timeline, sketches of the doubled moons, the almanes warning about not unless you're ready to see. The rules seemed clear now, third Mondays, the store, and adjustments. If I didn't go back, I might manage another cycle, but would it be my own? Molo prowled the house, brushing against me as lightning cracked.

39:48For comfort, I pressed my palm to his back, felt the slow firm of his heartbeat echo in my own. We just hold on, I murmured. I didn't sleep, but by morning the storm had lifted, and with a strange bubbling calm. I walked the garden, counted shoots and paddles. Then, as if at someone else's direction, I pat my notebook, trowel, and threem's match gloss into grocery bag. My body moved independent of resolve. I locked the door to ice out of habit and compulsion, and walked toward town beneath the heavy, sored on exam. Along main, the world unfolded with more holes and fabric. The street signs flexed between spellings, the store windows gleaned with street reflections. People moved in toine peasant woman and her echo, a boy chasing his own step, an elderly man and two distinct hot sprint and flat simultaneous stepping off the cup. What's up, baby? It's brezky, and I'm here to tell you that spinquest.com is giving out free, sweet coins. All you got to do is purchase a $10 coin pack, and guess what? They're going to give you the coins from a $30 coin pack. That lets you play all your favorite games like Blackjack,

40:50Wanted Dead or Wild, and we're talking real cash prizes, baby. Spinquest.com. Spinquest is a free-to-play social casino. Boydware prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years. But you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. I reach the canal bridge. The metal rail hummed into my hand cold and electric. From here, I could see the backs of buildings doubling and blurring their bricks breathing like living things. I shut it then pressed on, each step strange and taught. By the time the hardware stores signs snapped into stark focus, I could taste them at a telecom of a place the air charged

41:50with waiting. Puddles outside through fractured moons, the windows, tight with condensation, held ghostly images of shoppers pacing the aisles in the military symmetry. The moment I pass through the door action overtook memory. The world flexed to aisles widened like an accordion, shell spun, the register chatted in two tones at once. I spotted Arlene Hess over now, named Badd crooked herringer woman in a floor scuffed toward the garden centre. The air was sweet with blue bells and mulch. I stayed close to the wall, shoving my bag behind a display of spades. My hands shook, but inside the bag one trail felt real enough cold, chopped, the blade next as I remembered. I rolled a handle between my palms, grounding myself. Overhead, the PA system scorched. Welcome back, shoppers, please proceed to your usual aisle for third Monday adjustment, all errors in inventory will be corrected at this time. The voicemail, but slowed in spallice with static. Everywhere people hung back or surge forward gritting their teeth. Some faces shivered into new arrangements as of deciding how to organize among possible cells. The two elderly shoppers returned to man and woman in blue in brickas,

42:52arm and arm, heads down. They passed the trail rack and movements so synchronized at pain the eye. With a single, seamless step, each plucked a blue handle trowel from the line up and slipped away between aisles. I darted after them, breath colliding with the scent of peat and growing things. As I turned a corner, the story arranged itself the display beside me now blooming with apples and daffodils, cheap Halloween masks dangling nearby. The PA drone, third Monday policies in effect, please complete your adjustments and proceed to check out six. A child and a carrot or a drinker blocked my path, then flickered out of sight. I followed the twins, barely glimpsing their hunched forms until they reached a garden center's fire door. Sunlight for its memory stream through the glass, illuminating rows and rows of blue flowers. The trim stooped over the soil, each planting trowel, then patting the dirt and sink. They never looked up, never acknowledged my presence. A cold prickle warmed its way along my neck. I knelt, keeping my distance, and dug into my bag for the old trowel the one with the chip. The act felt loaded, ceremonial, a rustle at my side.

43:52Darling appeared, a rim of slits clutched in her left hand. Adjustment lined forms by the paint section she barked in a voice that was, impossibly, my mother's timbre. Present your inventory, clean your receipt, sign, and you'll be on your way. I stiffened through tight. What if I don't want to adjust? What if I'm done with this? She regarded me, eyes shadowed. He always have a choice, refused to reset, he might end up nowhere, sign, and you sorted part of the hole. Her hand hovered fingers trembling fractionally. Beyond her, the shell slid again, like tectonic plates. This store doubled back on itself, the very air-charged with indecision. I stood, knuckles wide on the trowel. Show me the form. My voice didn't sound real, but it stirred something in the armlookers. Darling handed me a blue slip they reset form. In wavering block letters, it read. Reconfiguration third Monday adjustment, print name, mark what changed, initial below. I stared at the space for a name. In a moment I could not be certain what to write. My signature or one from a receipt. The air flicker, heavy, and a chattering wine rose from the security screened behind the counter.

44:56I glimpsed versions of myself one entering the store, one leaving, one frozen mid-gesture, all rendered in sickly yellows and rids. Peck, darling whispered. We're running out of time. For an instant, the impossible back rooms welled open behind checkout six. I could see shelf stretching forever rose and rose of blue glowing flowers, duplicate trowels, endless notebooks. Faces emerged and receded a cast of extras waiting to be assigned. The buzz of conversation my name, other names questions about how long I'd been here, whether I wanted to be well through the room tangling my nerves. Outside thunder cracked. The lights flickered and burned, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. Was I choosing my way back in, to the falls to remain, to be anchored not by who I was but by the rituals, by the resetting of all these endless Mondays? Where did I refuse, risking a believe in, or exalt to some side wish-elf? I pressed the chiptrial hard into my palm, so hard it almost stood. Below, collective memorable from every aisle. In nervous, greedy hope that someone would be first, or last, and so to find the rest. Somewhere a bell rang, sharp and final. Breath coming fast,

45:58and astute I couldn't leave these shelves any of them without a decision. Darling's hand hovered, blue slip extended, her own face flickering, sometimes old friend, sometimes mother, sometimes stranger, each version patient, expectant exhausted. I took the pen. I printed my name and not the latest, not the ear-list, but the one that felt tourist in my bones in that charged instant. I marked the changes, troll, gloves, memory. I initial chakily then pressed the form back to her. The moment the slip left my hand, the world swung hard. Bite condensed, snapping the doubles bag into single shadows, aisles ruined, faces reconstituted. I was on the threshold of the garden centre, a bag of gardening tools clinking at my heels. Thunder cracked, but the storm outside was subsided in a single moon above the parking lot, swollen and silver. Shop a stream passed, most silent, a few smiling shyly, all marked by that blue shadowed exhaustion. Near the door, the trends in their windbreakers padded earth into blue blossom drawers, their backs curved in perfect symmetry. Darling, now only a little older than I remembered, stepped behind the register. She handed me my final receipt, smiled tight at the corners.

47:01You're all set as she said, boys gentle and distant. Enjoy your garden. The forms carbon copy was already cooling in my pocket. I found two trials inside my bag both familiar, both real. My hands felt wrought new. A boy in a carrot-colored raincoat waved goodbye as I stepped out into the dusk, the bell ringing in a single, clean tone. As soon as across the parking lot, Marla darted out from behind a hedge, cooked bristling and as clear, cold and again. He threaded between my ankles, then viewed off toward home, till high. Sunsets loose the sidewalks in orange and blue. The doors at the hardware store close behind me with a hush just one set, no echoes, no split or mirrored entry. I kept walking, one foot after another, my breath threading with the cold air, the weights of two trials balancing in the bag at my side. Back at my house, the porch lights flickered on. The front door recognized my key on the first try. Inside, the kitchen glued normal, the smell of bread and peat and cat hair rising, almost painfully sweet. I set the back of garden tools down beside the boots and put the notebook receipts and slip in a drawer. Then I filled a cup with

48:01water and sat by the back window, Marla called on my lap, feeling the pulse of the evening saddle around me. I listened for small noises, a creek, a quiet laugh on the sidewalk, their mystical thump of a cat leaping to the floor. My hand stung where I pressed the trial. I traced the line of the scar and wandered if it would feed by the next third Monday. After a while, I got up closed the curtains against the last streaks of dusk and turned out the kitchen light, my own movement simple and certain. I sat there a long time, I'm moving until even Marla grew impatient slinking from my lap with a decisive hop and an indignant flick of his tail. The house whispered its usual night sounds, the refrigerators rattled the faint shiver of the pain as a late car drifted past, wind pulsing softly under the eaves. For the first time in weeks, everything seemed to hold still. I scratched absolutely at the sting on my palm and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. But rest wouldn't hold me. My mind kept soaking the shape of what had changed, unable to settle. I couldn't fully believe the world outside had resolved itself. With each minute, the silence pressed deeper, threatening to reveal a seam. I made slow to liberate runs through each room, counting towels,

49:03feeling for the warmth left in a quilt, squinting into mirrors to see if my own reflection recognized me. Marla reappeared as I locked the back door for the second time, silent but with his tail-colded question mark. He watched my routines with abaculocat patients, neither approving nor accusing. Nothing in the house doubled. No objects leapt from drawer to drawer. No notes in strange hands, no flickering to the announcements, no lights stuttering across the floor. The scar on my palm it was new, but, for now, it was the only evidence anything had happened at all. Sleep, when it came, was brief punctuated by half-remembered dreams. I worked with the heavy certainty that I was missing something a conversation cut short, a detail misplaced in the tangled brand scheme of my own life. My body ached, but the ache was dulled as it folded into the day's routines. At summarise, the kitchen was warm with bread baking somewhere down the block. Marla about it is fruit-ish in the usual petulant rhythm. The new- forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on spin quests. And there's never been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get $30

50:04coin packs for just $10, all the table games you love, with hundreds of slot games and real cash prizes. That's at spinquest.com, SPI-N-Q-U-S-T dot com. Spinquest is a free to play social casino, voidware prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years, but you can stop them. By voting yes, by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes, by April 21st. Paid for by Virginians for fair elections. Whose paper and the poetry to correct date, Cross Street was once again large. Sunlight gathered up the edges of the rug in the hallway, and when I glanced around the living room, no shadows split themselves into two. Walking through Blenheim crossing after, the world did not pull

51:07a pulse. I moved among neighbors Sandra waving from her uneven stoop, Mrs. Havocyn Whistling as her dog, just one dog, strained at the leash. The bigger his specials board posted mango scones out at eight, and nobody greeted me by an old or unnamed name. People smiled maybe more than before, or maybe I was simply seeing better now. Yet I couldn't shake the sensation that every glance lingered a second too long, that every face carried a glint of knowledge that settled back into place, turned into town smith and whole once again. But the changes showed in the small things things I never used to notice. My keys hung from a slightly different hook. The flower bed outside the skull had a row of daffodils in place of last week's tulips, yellow for white, as if a bit of colour had bled between worlds. At the market, when I exchanged the lows, a caught the tiniest, winds as a pinch at the corner of a smile, fingers culled just a touch tighter on a carton of eggs. Children on the side walked greeted me with my right name, but one, a boy in a striped cap call, by Miss Alon, before bolting off. I stumbled, for a moment lost in the last work of updates, no beast book of openly. I didn't mention the store, but the knowledge pressed at the

52:08lining of every interaction. After what happened, I wondered, did the others remember the doubles due to the kitchen's hole duplicate mugs and shadow of memories. Or did they, like me, only have to rest the morning's certainty, one slip away from the old dream returning. At the post office, the click gave me a knowing nod more intimate than I expect from someone who'd misadressed letters for months. I'll sort it out then, she asked half-smile sliding like a bead of water across glass. I nodded because what else do you say? And took my package, light as a promise. That night, the town creaked and glittered under its ordinary lamps. Rain came and shushing breasts, softening the gravel on my walk home. Through every window, real families followed familiar jokes over dinner and real dogs dozed beneath real tables, therefore brushed in only one direction. My own kitchen glowed a forgiving yellow, my hands trembled over notes in receipts, shuffling them to the farthest edge of the counter. Above my mantle, the neutral hung in a spot I was sure I'd cleared long ago, next to the chipped one, both tagged with the same month and year. Marlow curled, single and adoubled, along the baseboard heat. But Blenhan crossing

53:09didn't become fully ordinary again, something structural had shifted, a warp in the town's social muscle, even if everyone else pretended not to notice. At the library, Sandra met my gaze with a brittle sword of prior exhaustion in her posture, a sore kinship or recognition of something survived. She never mentioned that night or the genealogy files or her vanished brother, but she no longer gone side-lawnet her own shadow before leaving a room. Days bled by, inistinguishable and yet strained. The windalon, the canal brought smells of mud and blossomed out of season, and the apples on the scullio offense still clustered thick and shining in March and April, then vanished all at once. I documented less and less trusting the receipts to settle without further contests. Each week, affained, Archie'll set through the sensation of being, at last, woven into the warp and left of the town, but only because I had agreed to my place. The neighbors who'd once regarded me like an intruder now-made room rearranging their histories to admit heavered or a leaner, or culpapper, or a variation of me close enough to pass. Yet now, routines hung heavier. When the hardware discount newsletter arrived in the mail see you next third Monday, stamped in eager, familiar odd handwriting I tore it into, but the

54:12shreds were already duplicated, waiting to be recycled again. One dull on, I walked the edge of the canal. The water reflected only a single sky, but in its surface, I could have swore in colors flickered, double, then merged. The bakery window found the scent of cinnamon and burnt sugar. I bought a loaf without looking at the date of nursing. Soon enough, another Monday approached a marked, unremarkable, just a day among many. But I felt the anchor's shift again, waitless and peculiar, as if the world had held this breath, waiting for me to catch up with whatever part of myself was missing. The following week, a little girl handed me a blue flower, for your garden, daddy says you're new, but you smile like you belong. I tucked the blossom behind my ear at the pedal cold and real. When I crouched a thinker, she looked past me. There you are, I knew you'd come back. Asterus, asterus, asterus. I spent the next nights haunted not by terror, but by the memory of the possibility of the store's infinite aisles, the choice offered, the hundreds of versions I'd almost become. When I sat at the kitchen table, reading cold receipts or fingering the jagged print of my reset slip, I wondered what version of this action the world

55:13preferred, the obedient, real-following customer, or the bold denier, the angler's extra. I kept my head down at the market, but sometimes when the sunlight slanted a certain way, catching the rain tracts in the window, I caught my own expression in the glass, hastened and searching, as if checking that I was the only observer in the room. Each third Monday, the store still sent its millings, crisp and rituals church. I didn't go for a time. I kept to familiar routes, counted boots and barcodes, carried my purchases with both hands. When the urge arose, I worked it out in the soil instead of turning the ground, plunging the troll deep, following each route into the dark to be sure no second seed lay hidden. But sometimes, watching others in town at the bakery, in the aisles of the store, I recognised the flicker in their manner, a quick hitch in the voice, as if they too paused to see if the world snapped back to a single line or fluttered with template and error. The learn-hand crossing, I realised, endured by never naming a repair by folding its errant ages beneath politice and small kindnesses. I grew expert at small talk, at the measured surprise of seeing someone twice in the same day, at the way time looped quietly on a self just out of sight. It took a while, but I began to trust

56:14that most things would stay as I anchored them. Most of the time. Asterisk Asterisk Asterisk. The next third Monday arrived, chopped-edged and gilded by promise of spring rain. This time, I didn't plan to visit the store, nor did I void it. I let the day take his shape. My mailbox yielded only ordinary bills, my poor child only one dormant. When afternoon came, it stood at the window and saw the stores blue awning ripple and disturbed. Low and carpooled inside the main doors, a man in overalls fussed with an armload of patio bricks, a transaction's mundane as any in memory. But toward dusk something tugged at me, a thread woven into my sense of myself, or into the town itself. A gathered mallow and the crack of my arm stepped onto the porch, and watched Blenheim cross and drape itself in the comfort of clouded sky. In nut half light, the roads returned to their old, unslippery topology, the garden centres greenhouse watched me shrewly from the edge of the lane. A breeze shifted. Headles from a scene blossoms tumbled over my stoop. In a distance, someone laughed the sound pitched a little too low, or maybe two voices interleaved. Without conscious plan, I crossed to the end of the street. I turned onto the footpath that sneaked past the back of the

57:17hardware store, thickened out with the growth of the season. Marlow followed, weaving in and out of new grass, his furor clean and interrupted orange. The lights inside the garden sent a glowed faint blue, pulling beyond rows of vegetables and trailing petunias. I paused at the edge of the glass. Blue blooms lined row upon precise row, each one lustrous under the LED. Untending them were the two elderly figures and blue windbreakers the twins moving methodically, each mirroring the other to heads bowed in unison. A spade flash patting Earth's move in one rhythm then again, a second time. Without looking up, this swapped tools, there backs forming a perfect symmetry over the beds. Something prickled in my scalp. I leaned in, careful not to fog the window. For the briefest instant, one of the twins may be a woman, maybe a version of her folded from someone else lifted her face. Her gaze found mine. Across the glass, her eyes caught the light and fractured at her mouth working through a silent question. My reflection ghosted in the window, not alone, not single, but layered, a series of faint images. I blinked. The lions behind me not the street, but my own face, my own carriage

58:20multiplied and brightened, becoming a silent crowd. The twins lipped curled in the smallest suggestion of a smile. Her trowel flashed once, as if in greeting or warning. The petals at my feet shifted in the half breeze swirling over the toes of my shoes. I touched the glass, feeling its cool certainty, and held my breath. The air behind me thickened the waiting hash of a garden before nightfall. In my reflection, two images stood, one's lightly ahead of the other, their hands glassed behind their backs, waiting to see which return home first. For a moment, it was impossible to tell which one was real. Behind the glass, the twins moved on, the blueflow is glimmered in their wake, and the moon, doubled and pale as glass, slipped into place over Blenheim crossing. And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and I will see you in the next one. Forget whatever plans you have this weekend, because you're staying at home and playing

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