when the fish asks you if you're a god you say yes

jerry and rocketboy, first in a while...



i lost rocketboy upon our arrival at these great smokies. he was there, i swear he was, but i turned to light a cigarette and he was gone. i figured he might have just gone ahead so i followed the trail before us...me.
that was almost a year ago.
and here's me, still following this spine up the east coast of the former continental united states, great beast that it was. i might have been looking for my lost comrade. i might have just been following the path. probably both.
as the north carolina (formerly) snow skirls before and behind me, i get depressed. it was this search, this compulsion to follow a path that's off the beaten, that got me started so many years ago. i'm still chasing the same dreams. the only proof i have is a pair of worn out shoes.
i get depressed because i've come full circle, and i hate circles, daddy-o.
no recourse, save one, and an unreliable one as the case is. i don’t know how to use this timespike. i have the gist of it, in a point and shoot kind of way, but there’s no precision involved.
something i’ve noticed about travel by timespike. the more i do it, the longer i stay in the flow, the more my rough edges get worn down. time is not something to trifle with.
there’s also my growing concern and paranoia that the device will stop working, run out of batteries. what then?
i think i’m losing my resolve.
i cast the spike and wait for it to catch. it’s less reliable now than it was when i found it, when i met rocketboy. man, how the fish used to bite. thirty two minutes pass before i feel it this time. not the longest, but notable.
the timespike pulls me out of now and plunges me into

now.
swinburne island, just off the coast of another that i know. i recognize the crematorium and the cold wreck of the narrows bridge. it is sunny, tho. and there are sunflowers everywhere. there’s nothing else here, save a boat, but that’s all i really need. it floats and i’m not going very far.
the sea is calm and slips beneath the prow as i scoop the oars. i’m reminded of youth, but that’s a different type of spike.
i reach the opposite shore and follow the beach a little before i head inland. things are familiar, but everything is so blasted to incoherence that i could be anywhere, and once you’re anywhere….
‘hey jerry, you have a smoke?’
i turn and there stands rocketboy. i hand him his cigarette and hold the lighter ready.
‘where you been?’
i shrug in response and flick the lighter to life.