Going the Cycle
Ethan and Heather watched as the two below approached from across the parking lot. The knoll they stood on was just high enough to allow them to monitor their progress in the deepening twilight. “What do you think this place is?” asked Heather. Ethan shrugged. They had both asked the question a hundred times.
“It could be hell. Or Purgatory. But…” He stopped.
Heather’s eyes grew round. “But what?”
“But…I’m afraid this might be heaven.”
Heather shivered. “You never told me that before.”
“You’ve never asked.” She had, but she hadn’t. She didn’t know why this time was different. “It probably all has to do with that.” He nodded to the portal on the far side of the lot, the side they couldn’t get back to, “and with them.” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder, where a hundred Ethans and a hundred Heathers stood, gaping, slack-jawed, and in various stages of starvation. A hundred pairs of themselves, shuffling around, too stupid to feed themselves. The oldest pairs had already died, rotting right where they had fallen. This was a dead zone, and there was no escaping it.
The progress of the others had slowed, but in a moment they would come to the emptiest section of the lot.
“Think they’ll make it?” Heather inquired.
Ethan shook his head. “Probably not. But still, they have to try. They always do.”
The other two took their first hesitant steps into the open space.
“Here it comes,” Ethan murmured, “the moment of truth.” Heather nodded slowly. She never enjoyed watching this next part. She had seen it a hundred times; she would see it just this once.
Ethan heard the hum a second before the lights kicked on. “The lights know. They always know. There’s no escaping them.”
The glare of the floodlights atop their high perches blinded the Ethan and Heather in the parking lot. The next moment they were writhing in agony, their screams dead before they left their lips. They were lifted up and flung violently to land with a crunch a few feet away from where Ethan and Heather watched from their knoll.
The Ethan and Heather on the ground looked up to see copies of themselves rushing toward them. “It gets better,” Heather heard herself say, “but not much.” The eyes of the two on the ground grew round with horror as memories they had never possessed came rushing back to them.
Just then all four heard the portal’s whine and looked as one to see Ethan and Heather fall out of it. As they did so, the Ethan and Heather standing over the Ethan and Heather on the ground became like the other hundred pairs of themselves – gaping, slack-jawed, and stupid.
Heather moaned. “Oh, God. 101, and no end in sight.”