Simple Stories by a Simple Man

“How many Stevens have you met?”

“263 so far. Though I must admit, many are similar, we seem to follow a few templates. First, we focus on sports, like you have with football, but the sport changes often. Second is those similar to myself who focused on science, or math, or some other similar education. Third and most rare are the versions of us who decided to dedicate themselves to writing, or art, or drama. It would seem we don’t lean that way often and if I’m being honest, that should be rare, we aren’t great at creative endeavours.”

“If I’m not part of a rare version of Stevens, why do you need me?” It feels like I’m starting to come around more and more. The blandness of the room we are in is fairly upsetting, feels like an operating room in its cleanliness and something about the corners feels wrong, corrupt, evil.

“Ah, you see it, don’t you?” The other me clapped his hands and started to spin in excitement.

“See what?” I ask as I turn my attention away from my surroundings and back to the other Steven.

‘There is something wrong here, if you focus on it, it goes away though which makes it so hard to figure out. And that is why I brought you here, you like myself can see this corruption, not many Stevens can.”

“And you don’t know what it is?” I say as I turn back to inspect the corner. While turning my head I can see it, but when I focus on the corner it simply vanishes. “Huh, that is odd.”

“I’ll say, but you felt it right?”

“Yeah, it felt wrong. Like I wanted to hurl the first time I laid eyes on it. Which now that I think about it, you don’t see it do you? It’s more of a feeling.”

The other Steven clapped his hands. “That is exactly what I thought. I don’t know what is wrong with this dimension, but whatever it is you don’t see the wrongness, you feel it when you look at it, but not when you look at it directly.”

“Odd. It hasn’t returned to that corner since I looked at it either.”

“Oh, it won’t. Once it knows you are on to it, it refuses to relocate back to the same spot. I had mostly made this meeting spot impossible for the corruption to return to by looking at it in every spot. The corner you saw it in, and that one,” The other Steven points to a spot near the door, “Are the two spots I hadn’t pushed it from yet.”

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The third section of a large story that I’m writing with roughly a week between each section. I have no idea where the story is going yet but in part that means you also will have no idea. What is this corruption? Is it alive? We will all just have to sit back and find out.