To Flow

Alice keeps a notebook to keep track of all the events the narrator skips, but even this notebook has missing pages. Theodore writes letters pleading for answers– he wants to know why the narrator erased where he finally punches Marvin. Marvin smirks because he knows the punch happens on unseen pages.  

Alice paces in the margins, muttering about breakfast that never happens, toast that burns in the pan. Theodore stares at the blank page where his first kiss should've been. “She’s skipping it again,” he groans, snapping his fingers. The narrator grows twitchy— wants them to sink into the gaps, the potholes in her brains. 

Marvin cries. He kissed someone. Alice? Theodore? Hormones explode. Everyone is obsessed. They scribble and draw diagrams. Stretching and recentering. Lines and arrows. Illegible writing. Timelines going nowhere. Diagrams of invisible maps.

Alice learns and  jumps, hops, over lunch time, skips the subway rides, skips the plot twist that could’ve solved everything. The story has teeth now; it gnaws and mangles between the grooves of the sulci. Theodore argues about a date that never happens, Marvin dreams in slow motion about skipped kisses and burnt toast. But Alice knows.

“Start in the middle: the narrator hates beginnings.”

Theodore and Marvin gnarl and kink: one leg in the present, two fingers reaching into the past, one arm reaching the future. They snap and twitch as the story skips and jumps and cartwheels through the plot. And eventually, they realize they are fragments– all except for Alice, who rides the wave.