Ad Infinitum

[albay]

A man encounters a time-travel situation and is sent back two years, comes face-to-face with his former self. After both get over their initial shock and exchange a few words, the future version of the man becomes enraged, frustrated beyond reason, and attacks the past version of himself with intent to kill. The obvious implications of committing this act escape the man, such is his rage. Yet for some reason, after the man succeeds in using everything at his disposal to bash and brain and make indistinguishable this annoying, whiny, past version of himself from the splattered concrete below, the man remains alive. He’s covered with blood, two hands clenched around bricks, panting, knees deep in pulpy murdered mess, but somehow he continues to exist. And just as this realization begins to dawn on him, there is a mysterious and loud noise, and out from thin air pops another version of the man, even two years older. And after only a few moments of interaction, this new arrival begins to assault the old, just as before. Then a third time. A fourth. For days this continues, the man appearing over and over in the old, unused parking lot where this happens, again and again, the lot hidden by its disrepute, concrete cracked by weeds and grass, man after man after man, until a point is reached when the men become too old to act yet continue to come, and the bodies writhe, pile up, higher now, starting to teeter_