by Oliver Kiemschies

You're driving down the highway. You begin to realize the road does not look all that familiar. It isn't, however, completely unfamiliar. It's just bad enough for you to wonder if you should go back or keep going. You see one building that looks familiar, and then another that you've never seen before. You become uneasy. Do you turn back, or keep going. If you don't see a good landmark soon, you'll just turn back at the next opportunity. Now you see another familiar sight, then an unfamiliar one. You begin to drive faster. Some part of your brain tells you that your doing this to see more landmarks in a shorter time. This, thinks that part of your brain, will help you reach a decision faster. You don't, however, come any closer to resolving the dilemma, so you travel even faster into a direction you that may be completely the wrong way.

Most people have been in this situation, and have always resolved this situation one way or another. But for a second I want to you to put yourself into that frame of mind. Imagine finding yourself in an uncertain situation, not being sure which path to take, speeding ever faster towards more uncertain territory. Now imagine there is no way back. You didn't leave a trail of bread crumbs, and there isn't somewhere to follow them back to anyway. You can't turn around, but you still feel that maybe you should stop. Can you imagine this? Good, I just wanted you to be in the proper state of mind.

He stopped to look at his watch, yes he would have time to do his banking, but not enough time for lunch. It didn't bother him much he hated eating alone, and he wanted to lose 5 or 10 pounds anyway. Somewhere in the back of his head he hoped that would help him get a date. It had been nearly two years since his last date, roughly since he graduated from college. He had a social life in college. He dated, he had friends, but ever since then his social life consisted of reading and television. He would never admit it, but he'd be hard pressed to name someone that would currently call him a friend, or even an enemy for that matter. As far as family was concerned, he thought he had a cousin in Indiana. His mother died while he was in high school, and his father died during his senior year of college. By that time he was paying most of his way through school, so he mourned, finished school, and got a descent job upon graduation. At this point in his life it could easily be said he was utterly alone. He would have been very depressed if he ever stopped to think about it, luckily he never did. Even loners, however, still need to do the occasional banking.

Once at the bank he was pleasantly surprised to find that the line at the bank wasn't very long. He picked the line which looked the shortest and stood at the end of it. It wasn't very long before he realized two of the other five lines moved significantly more quickly than his, but since he'd already invested the time in this line, he'd just stay in it. He was so preoccupied with the movement of his line, he didn't even notice the two armed, masked men enter the bank. When one of them shot the security guard, however, these men had his undivided attention.

"Listen up, do what we say and nobody else gets hurt!" said one of the men. Somehow, even in this grave situation, he couldn't help think about how cliché that comment was. He hoped that if he ever robbed a bank he wouldn't be that unimaginative in his threats.

"Everybody, down on the floor!" yelled the same bank robber. Everybody thankfully complied. As he was laying down on the ground, his mind again turned to thoughts of cliché.

"All we need now," he thought, "is an hysterical pregnant women." Just as that thought formed in his head, he noticed a women beside him was whimpering. He looked over at her and looked into her terrified eyes, and realized she was moments away from complete panic. For some reason she wasn't quite lying all the way down. He tried to fight the urge, but he had an irresistible compulsion to look down at her stomach. Slowly, he did look down, and she was definitely very pregnant. She was on her hands and knees and was obviously afraid to lay flat on her stomach. He felt a smile building in him. He felt very sorry for her but he couldn't help it. He turned his head so she wouldn't see him stifling a laugh.

"I said get down you cow." said the bank robber who's job obviously was to control the people in the bank.

"Please, my baby."

"You'll get down, or else." This was to much for him. The bank robber's dialog was so stereotypical, that by this time he was turning red trying to hold back his laughter. That's when the bank robber lost interest in the crouching woman, and noticed him.

"Hey you what's so funny?" said the bank robber as he pointed the gun at him.

"Oh God, he thought, please don't say what I think you're going to say.", he thought

"I asked you what's so funny, do you think this is some kind of joke?"

"This is too much," he thought, "I just hope he doesn't say...."

"Maybe I oughta wipe that smile off your face." said the bank robber finishing his thought. There, the bank robber said it. That was the last straw, and he finally couldn't help it, and began to laugh hysterically. As he laughed he could tell, even through the ski mask, that the bank robber was unsurprisingly becoming agitated.

"Stop laughing at me!" yelled the bank robber. But he couldn't help it, even as he could see the bank robber shaking with anger, he shook with fateful laughter.

"Cut it out or I'm going to blow your head off!"

"What's going on out there!" yelled the second bank robber, as he joined the first. Through his laughter he noticed the second bank robber held several full bags, indicating he was finished, and it was time to make their getaway. The first bank robber, however paid his accomplice no mind and continued concentrating on the laughing man on the ground in front of him.

"I swear I'll blow your head off!" His laughter only got worst, soon he'd be out of breath. Even though his head bobbed with laughter, and his eyes were bleary with tears, he could still clearly see the bank robber pull the trigger. There was no sound. That was the thing that he found the most interesting. He never heard the gun fire. There was, however, an almost instant sense of disorientation. He couldn't tell if he was floating, falling, or spinning, but it was definitely very uncomfortable. Suddenly he felt slammed into place, like a puck in an air hockey game swishing into the goal. He was definitely in a different position then before. He wasn't on the ground anymore. He was looking down at something. Even though his vision was perfectly clear, he had trouble making out what he was looking down on. Even though he should have recognized the object before him as a human body, it just didn't click.

"It's missing most of it's head!" he thought. "That's why I didn't recognize it, most of it's head is missing." he thought with the relief he might have felt if he solved a simple riddle that had been bothering him all night. That wasn't enough to explain why it took so long to make sense of the form before him. There was a part of his mind that was purposely holding back recognition, it didn't want to admit that the lifeless body laying in front of him was wearing his clothes. He couldn't hold the thought back forever though, slowly the possibility that is was his body dawned on him.

"I'm dead." he thought. "I'm dead, and I'm having an out of body experience. Soon I'll see Mom and Dad, telling me to come into the light." For a dead man, though, he noticed he had an awful lot of trouble breathing. That's when he became aware of his limbs. He was also aware of his ears. There was a distinct ringing in his ears. Some part of his mind knew the missing sound of the gunshot was the reason. He was not a disembodied sprit, he definitely had a body. He was standing on two legs, he had two arms, and two hands. He was holding a gun in his hands, holding it and pointing it at the body on the floor, presumably his dead body.

"Gun looks different from this side." he thought casually. How he ended up on that side of the gun remained a mystery to him. "All right, I got the gun away from the bank robber, and shot him." he reasoned, "and then, for some reason, I switched clothes with him?" No. That was obviously wrong. He concentrated on the dead body. Even with the damage, he could still make out many of the features. There was the same slight chip on one of his teeth, just the right amount of beard stubble, and the same cheek bones. Then there was the eye. One of the eyes was left. Open, lifeless, but it was still his eye. He caught a glimpse of a mirror directly across from him. The entire side wall was a mirror to give the illusion of more space. He looked up at it and at a reflection of a man wearing a ski mask, and holding a gun in his hands.

"Yeah, that's the way the gun looks form the other side." he thought. Sudden revulsion directed at the gun he held caused him to drop it. As he dropped the gun, so did the reflection. He pulled off the mask that was impairing his breathing, and so did the reflection. He stared with confusion, at the unfamiliar face in the mirror, which stared right back at him with the same confusion.

"You really screwed up now Nash." said the other bank robber, who nervously began to back away.

"Nash,...... Nash the bank robber," he thought, "even the name is stereotypical bad guy name.

"I'm outta here." said the second bank robber as he ran outside, presumably into a waiting get away car. Nash, never did find out what happened to the second bank robber. Apparently the getaway was successful. He, on the other hand couldn't move much, because any slight movement he made, was mimicked by the man in the mirror, and he very much did not want to be the man in the mirror.

"This is like one of those mime sketches," he thought to himself. "The kind with a one mime pretending to be a reflection of another mime. God I hate mimes." he joked to himself. He wasn't finding anything funny anymore however. The unfamiliar person in the mirror was him, alive, and the familiar form on the floor used to be him, and was now dead.

One of the bank patrons took advantage of his disorientation. He saw the bank robber drop his gun and his partner abandon him. The customer decided that was the time to jump the murder, before he came to his senses, and it would give him a hell of a story to tell the guys in the mailroom.

"You murder, you killed that guy in cold blood." yelled the young customer as he tackled the man he considered to be the bank robber.

"No you don't understand, it's me, it's me." he yelled with an unfamiliar voice, as he was pinned to the floor. It was something he would continue yelling for some time.

"Somebody get the police!" said the hero as held down the bank robber. Nash seemed to be rather strong, and could have probably escaped the man holding him, but instead he laid quietly on the ground as the police rushed in.