The god of the crossroads came to me
in a shabby cafe in Missouri, during
a time of confusion and malaise -- a
personal infestation of spiritual lice,
a hundred chigger bites on the flesh
of my sense of purpose, you might say.
The god rode in the head of my coffee
server, a displaced punkette with
mismatched eyes and buzzed-black
hair and a silver ring in her left
nostril. I recognized the god's arrival
by the usual signs -- the scent of copper
and vanilla in the latte steam, the jingle
of the bells hung on the door like
garlands, the revving and honking
and backfiring of cars in the street
trying to go every direction at once
and tearing themselves apart in the process.
"You're waiting again," the god said in
the punkette's sexy-raspy voice. "What
are you waiting for?"
"I can't do it all," I said, stirring
cold coffee with my forefinger. "I hate
to make decisions I can't revise
later. I used to take comfort in quantum
uncertainty and the many-worlds theory,
the idea that somewhere else, some other
me was doing everything." The god
snorted and said "Every other you is sitting
in this stupid coffee shop with the water-
stained walls and the rude waitstaff, or else
crouching by a rock staring at a stream, or looking
up at a flyspecked motel ceiling -- and all of you
are getting yelled at by me." The god came around
the counter and thumped me in the chest. I
gasped as my heart sputtered, stuttered,
stopped
and then started again as all the engines
outside revved and the cars surged
forward. "Every road ends," the punkette
god said. "You can't linger
forever." Her mismatched eyes were one
color now, the morning blue of a sky
I once saw in Georgia, and I wondered
how many dawns and journeys I had left.
The god departed, and I whispered
my thanks to the punkette,
pushed back from the table, stood up,
and walked into the remaining
hours and miles of my life.
Copyright © 2001 Tim Pratt
Tim Pratt is a southerner, a graduate of Clarion '99, a fantasist, a poet, an occasional writing teacher, a lapsed performance artist, and an inveterate list maker. He has poetry upcoming in Asimov's and Weird Tales. Tim's previous appearance in Strange Horizons was "The Fallen and the Muse of the Street." Visit his Web site for more information.