The Unending Chase

It’s happening again. After thinking that going through it before could help me control it this time. At least, that’s what I thought about it last time.

Every time I find a way around, it goes around, escapes, and comes back.

I’ve tried trapping it before; it didn’t work.

I’ve tried running away, begging it to stop, trying to set it to chase someone else. Never worked. It has its sights set on me.

So, I decided to give up.

“Take me,” I said.

And, to my surprise, it stopped chasing me.

You couldn’t imagine the relief I felt. For the first time in years, I haven’t been on my heels or stressed.

My face had swelled up from all the years of stress. My knees withered beyond repair from running. My brain fried with endless anxiety until it couldn’t be fried further.

I thought I could finally rest when it began prodding me again.

It couldn’t bear to watch me give in. It wanted me to fight and run, but it would never catch me.

It threatened to end me. But I didn’t budge this time. I asked it again to take me.

It began to wobble and struggle. It began to writhe in pain. I could hear its squeals grow faint by the minute. I could feel a light emerging from it, and there was a huge bang and a flash.

I’ve seen some explosions in my time, but never one that took me out. This was a first.

I woke up in a nursery school. There was a teacher making the children recite their first rhyme.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star…”

You know the rest of it.

The children seemed to have just realized their gift of speech and were putting all their efforts into getting the rhyme right.

There was a boy who seemed to have gotten it right the first time and seemed happy about himself.

His happiness seemed to be short-lived, though. As soon as he caught sight of me, he began to run away.

The teacher and the rest of the children seemed confused as he was pointing towards me.

Everyone except him was looking around, trying to find what he was running away from.

I quickly realized that only he could see me.

I got this involuntary urge to chase.

I felt bad making him run; I just couldn’t stop running.

He ran and ran. I watched him grow through his teens and into a man. He got married and had 4 wonderful children.

But I never stopped chasing, and he never stopped running.

I felt disgusted at myself. I tried stopping myself from chasing him so many times.

I waited for 85 years before he finally said, “Take me.” Tough kid he was; he got chased way more than me. Ironically, the chaser was the one more stressed than the chased.

“Why are you giving up! Get up! Run! Or I’ll take you down!” I said. I finally felt some relief and was waiting for it to get done quickly.

“Take me,” he said. The same as what I said when I was chased.

Now’s the part when I blow up.

I waited, and waited, and kept waiting.

“Want me to start running away again?” he sniggered.

I was dumbfounded. When everything else had played out exactly like the last time, this one, the supposed end to my grief, had taken a major detour.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” he shouted this time.

“Yes, yes, this is what I wanted,” I replied.

“Then take me!”

“I don’t know how.”

“What! All my life, this is what you wanted. You’ve made my life hell and I just had to live with it. When I finally give you what you want, you don’t know how!” He had become the chaser now.

He began to run towards me. I thought that I would meet the end to grief at least this way. But I got this involuntary urge to run again. This time as the one being chased, again.

I began to fear being trapped into this cycle again.

Sure enough, my fears were real.

I chased or I was chased. There was no escape. I’ve lost count of the millennia I’ve spent going through this.

There was one time that I decided to tell my story when one of them asked me to take them.

Fortunately enough, she was ready to listen.

Every time I told a line of my story, she predicted the next line exactly as it happened. My fears about cycling between cycles rose again.

She laughed.

“Don’t think that, whatever you’re thinking.”

“Why are you the one willing to listen to my story even though you already know it? No one else before you was even remotely interested.”

“As you’ve guessed, we’ve lived the same lives.”

“Don’t we have an escape from this?”

“Why do you want to escape it? You chose this…”

I wasn’t taken aback because it was hardly surprising. Yes, I chose it.

It’s been so long that I forgot I voluntarily chose this path.

I think the year was 2059. Humans had found a way to transfer their consciousness beyond their mortal selves. I think she joined the program a few decades after me. Although I never met anyone from my batch, the first batch.

There was a big hue and cry from the religious fanatics about the program when it was launched. But we thought they were of irrational minds. I still haven’t changed my mind on that, though. They thought we were trying to become gods. They weren’t wrong.

“The immortal ones lose their purpose,” those phony spiritualists said while they charged exorbitant fees to simple-minded corporate slaves.

When I existed in my human form, I had it all. All my wealth, riches, anything that could make me happy. Maybe that’s why I wanted more.

I never believed in chance, yet ironically, it was chance that I met a fellow proponent of the program here.

“Do you regret it?” she asked.

“Regret is for the mortals”