Recursive

The subway decelerated as it came around a bend, passengers swayed like gentle reeds under the sleeping city. Logan accidentally bumped into the man next to him. For a second he debated whether to apologize or pretend it never happened. That moment of indecision made another Logan appear with a shimmer a few inches away, wearing the same bright orange puffer jacket and tattered red Converse. The new him grunted an apology to the man they’d bumped into. 

Logan held his tattered box to his chest, the aged yellow tape threatened to disintegrate. I have to just be me tonight. Just me. I have to be alone when I give this box to... He gritted his teeth, willing his twin to vanish in the same mirage-like shimmer they always appeared in. When he opened his eyes, the new Logan was still there.

The train came to a stop. A hiss of hot musty air blew across the occupants as the doors swooshed open. People got on and off, their lives passing each other with a practiced nonchalance. Logan managed to snag a seat before the doors closed. The train car began to move again. 

An elderly woman looked over at him with droopy, judging eyes. She was the only one standing. Anxiety fluttered up his lungs like an electric shock. As he got up and began to offer his seat, two more of him appeared nearby and they all began to talk at once.

“So sorry I-“

“Please take-”

“Didn’t mean-“

“Go ahead-“

The handful of Logans all spoke over each other, their words lost in a seafoam of anxiety and indecision.

The old woman looked at him balefully. From her point of view there was only one of him. Just one sweaty, anxiety-riddled man standing in front of her and sputtering excuses. To him however, he was always haunted by paths untread. The old woman sat down in his seat, pulled out a slim novel, and left his apologies hanging in the air. 

All the Logans looked at each other with an awkward glance. Silently agreeing to get off at different stops and praying their nights didn’t intersect again. 

He got off at the next station, by that point there were even more doppelgangers crowding the train car and the walls felt as if they were closing in on him. 

His grip tightened on the box as he made his way across the terminal, a man playing acoustic guitar sat on an orange milk crate. The calming notes drifted out and echoed off the grimy tiles of the subway station. 

Next to the man was another Logan, one wearing a purple leather jacket and tattered jeans. This shimmering version of him was playing the violin. Haunted melodies from the neighboring universe intertwined with the guitar and mingled like champagne seeping through sand.

Logan couldn’t help but stare at the violinist. He admired the dexterous way hands flew across strings, the way he leaned against the chinrest of the violin as if asleep; in a dream he wished to never wake from. Logan turned away, closing his eyes tight against the might-have-been.

The late winter sun sank below the line of buildings and bare-limbed trees. A single horn sounded off far in the city, a lonely loon’s call across a concrete lake. 

Logan stumbled, the sole of his ratty right shoe split and caught on the uneven lip of the sidewalk. The tattered box he carried hit the ground with a crack, the contents inside collided with the noise of glass breaking. He lay on the ground for a long silent moment. Several doppelgangers appeared with a glint as anxiety fluttered in his chest like a bird trapped in a too-small room. They all clustered and muttered to each other nervously. Nearby, a flock of dark birds fluttered to fill an empty tree. 

“The picture frame” whispered one of the duplicates grimly.

“I need to check,” said another.

One of them came to a knee, grabbed the box in their universe and looked inside. Logan’s ghostly twin grimaced. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he said to his other selves and got to his feet. His voice startled the birds and they flew from the bare-limbed tree, one or two of his ghostly duplicates vanished at his determined tone. 

Let’s just get this over with, he thought and continued limping towards his destination. I need to just be me tonight.

It was a long walk and Logan had taken several wrong turns on purpose, always shedding copies of himself as he did so. Eventually, he made it to his destination, alone. 

He stared at the buzzer that had once been a herald of the best nights of his life– now full of dark promise and bitter endings. If he pressed the buzzer, there would be a wait– exactly ten seconds- before the door unlocked. Always ten seconds with Blake. 

He felt his heart leap as a version of himself walked through the solid door ahead of him, returning without a box. There were tears in his eyes. 

"Don't bother," he said and walked away with a barely restrained sob. 

Logan sighed and pressed the buzzer. The shiny well-worn button clicked and hummed. There was a wait of ten seconds then the door buzzed loudly. As Logan walked into the apartment building, he tried not to look at a laughing couple, two universes down. Blake and him, trying and failing to get a mattress up the twisting steps. He walked through them. 

He ascended the old wooden staircase, his feet remembering the path to Blake’s apartment with a bitter fondness. There was the familiar smell of Indian food and ancient leather.

Blake didn't get up when Logan opened the door to the apartment, he simply sat in his sagging gray armchair in front of the old Ramones poster they had bought together. 

"Brought the stuff you asked for.. and a few other things I didn't want anymore,” Logan murmured as brightly as he could. Blake nodded, his eyes not leaving the fraying black carpet.

"Anywhere is fine." Blake’s voice was familiar and husky. 

"Alright." He left it at the doorway and turned to go. 

“Thank you for everything,” said another Logan, appearing with a shimmer in a neighboring universe, the Blake in that world looked up at him. The new Logan walked over, pressed a hand warmly on his shoulder and began to leave. The ghostly Blake stood up to stop him, grabbing his arm. They embraced and began to kiss, tears streamed down both their faces.

“What do you see?” asked the Blake here, in this universe. 

Logan shook his head, looking anywhere but at the perfect, haunting vision in front of him.

“What I should have said,” he rasped.

“Thank you for everything-” Logan started, parroting the words he’d heard– but he was cut off by a sad shake of the head. 

It was too late now, the future in front of him had passed him by. He had blown past the stop - his own train speeding towards some lesser ending. 

He bit his lip, his eyes hot. He made a gesture like a shrug and a farewell, and dozens of new doppelgangers appeared around him. He was losing Blake again, and again. The room began to fill up, arguments and bitter apologies filled the air like so many fluttering birds. In just a few seconds Logan couldn’t hear over the shouting. Each version of himself trying some new tact. They were all losing. 

To Blake, they were alone in a quiet room. To Logan they were enmeshed in every half-baked excuse, petty grievance, and unkind word that led to their breakup, the words and the arguments cascaded into each other like waves of cold ocean water. Logan was drowning. He opened his mouth faltering for air and more horrible ideas appeared around him– more desperate pleas.

He spun on one heel, running from the room with hot tears spilling down his face. He ran down the stairs, at one landing he was side by side with Blake, laughing over spilt ice cream. Another he was helping an old woman heft her couch into her apartment, sweat coating his ghostly brow. There was a version of him carrying a baby carrier up the wooden steps, love and pride projected from his face like a fatherly lighthouse. Hundreds of spectral possibilities popped into view everywhere he looked. 

Logan stumbled down the old wooden steps. Outside, the roads were so thick with cars that they were a single multicolored metal snake wrapping through the city streets. The sky was a solid, feathered thing, flapping and undulating like the waves of the ocean. His breath came quickly and his heart raced through his chest. His hands tingled, he looked down at them to see many dozens of fingers floating out of his hands like the intangible tentacles of some pale sea creature. 

There was a loud screech in his ear, a hundred police sirens going off in a horrible discordance that threatened to tear him apart. Everywhere he looked he was overwhelmed by faces and shapes and bodies. They all went right through him, they weren’t in his universe, but they were taking up all the space he had. 

He blindly stumbled down the sidewalk, for all the world looking like a drunk man on a bender. He couldn’t cross the street, the whipping metal snake of every car that might have passed by made a solid wall to him. The sound of their tires and horns filled his head to the point of bursting. 

The sidewalk was cluttered with every version of him; every could-have, should-have, and might-have-been, all part of a chaotic parade of potential. He would die on this block, right outside Blake’s apartment. There was no way to cross the street, or ask for help, the solid feathered sky roared like turning pages above him. Even the metal street signs flickered incomprehensibly. Every potential stop of the train was here, colliding in a nexus point of pain with Logan at the center. 

A breeze picked up, throwing a few scraps of paper and trash into the air. They looked like long white threads to Logan as they flew through their potential paths. Without knowing why, he reached out and grabbed one. He hungrily read the page even as the words blurred into every variation of font and size. 

Ｐｉａｎｏ ＬＥＳＳＯＮS － ＄４０ ａｎ ｈｏｕｒ － ａｎｙ ｓｋｉｌｌ 

ｌｅｖｅｌ

There was a phone number to call below the blocky text. Logan had never committed to an instrument. Not when his other selves played so beautifully. A silly idea now that the world screamed itself apart around him. He wished for the simple pleasure of doing something poorly. Something utterly him. 

He shook his head at the thought, and felt something deep within and far away shift. 

He took a deep breath, for a moment there was a glimpse of sky through the feathers above. Gaps appeared in the monstrous traffic and he could make out individual vehicles. 

I am going to play so horribly, he thought, that nobody can possibly be as bad as me. I will be the absolute worst piano player in any universe. The crowd of himself began to thrum and trickle away as he gritted his teeth. I just need to be me.

Logan closed his eyes and drew quiet night air into his lungs, air that only he had ever tasted. When he opened his eyes, he was alone.