Castaway

One day I woke up and I didn’t exist. In our bathroom, I checked my reflection and did not recognise the face staring back at me.

I brewed coffee, as usual, and switched on the news in case I misunderstood the results from the previous night. There was nothing good to speak of in the world, not a clue as to who I was in this global shift.

I checked my social media; platforms that would never lie, at least not to me personally, and I was a ghost. My name search came up blank, so there you have it—I was gone. My neighbour passed me in the corridor and seemed to look right through me as if I were a complete stranger.

Sunlight stung my eyes when I entered the local park, where the seagulls still shat on my favourite bench. The incessant chatter of birds drowned out the pantomime dame, flipping bacon onto rolls, but they didn’t remember my order. Dog walkers sat in rows; they always knew my name before, throwing balls from a sedentary position, but with strange detachment.

Had I slipped into another reality or alternate dimension, where everything was the same and yet unfamiliar?

I let my mind drift, a last attempt to find myself, back to the church hall where the die was cast. I was rewarded for my efforts by a discarded paper on the floor with no X in the box and a string of profanity. Shamefully, written by me: evidence that I do exist, but not in this time and not in this world.