Ever feel as if you are caught in a perpetual moment of déjà vu? Or have you ever been somewhere and for a moment or two, perhaps longer, you have no idea as to how it is you managed to get to where you are or why it is you are there at all? Yeah, ... that kind of situation, ... it can be quite disorientating.

You are where you are though you feel somewhat out of place, and the memories of what came before ... well, they just aren't ... there.

What if such a moment kept resetting like some sort of video game with you in a lead role also coming with the exception that it is at least a little different each time, just as if tasks are being presented to you for not only your attention but for you to react to and complete in whatever manner you see fit?

Is this a game? Is this just something for others to observe? Who knows? Like the memories of before, the answers just aren't ... there.

If you take all of you do know on merit, then your natural instinct to any task of any seriousness presented to you would be for you to go on and do the right thing despite your only desire being that of wanting to move on with your regular life, to get back to your real world, to get away from your place of endless déjà vu ... whatever that real world is.

As horrible as it would be to go against your desire to be a good Samaritan and provide aid where it would appear to be needed, your moments keep resetting and beginning anew in an endless cycle, a nightmarish loop to the point quite possibly where it will even bring you so far away from your former real-world life, it could and would be easy to lose your mind.

And again, you can only be unsure as top if there is some other real world, you just know what is in the here and now. A loop too ... when it comes, you do remember your previous trek through it.

What could you do with all this? Keep trudging on through, in the hopes that all will be restored to what your life should be, whatever that is? Or perhaps do nothing, wait it out and see where that might bring you?

At what point would you decide that enough is enough? At what point do you decide you are not willing to play games? Could such a decision be made? Can such a time come? Perhaps there would be other means to move on from the nightmare you have unwillingly come into. If there can be a move onto some kind of normalcy, could that be achieved by reaching some game like checkpoint or finishing line?

Games, however, do not play out with situations of reality ... not usually anyhow.

1.

John takes his pocket watch out for a third time, only two minutes have passed since he had last checked the gold rimmed piece and his train in this moment is still five minutes away from being due. He begins tapping his right foot, then checks that his brown leather briefcase is still at his side and soon decides to stay standing right where he is rather than try finding something to occupy his mind for those incoming five minutes.

The train will arrive soon enough, and it might even seem to arrive all the quicker if he could manage to refrain from continually checking his watch. There is an impatience to this moment. His watch, there is something important about time, to hell if he knows what that something important is. The watch too, is it actually his, or is it something that belongs to the moment he so happens to be in? What an odd thought this is.

He feels as if he has been here ... forever, as he also feels as if he has only just got here, also without knowing how or why. If only he could properly remember. Why can't he remember? What came before? Why is he here other than to get onto a train? Ang indeed, why is there to be a train? Is he meant to go somewhere else?

A reset, a start over, and a way out should soon be here, so he thinks to himself before wondering why he is having such thoughts. Still, this all is quite strange. There is a train coming and he feels a need to be on it.

An awareness isn't quite there about the numerous mind wipes that have already occurred, one more severe than the others, all of which have placed a haze over what has come before. His initial transit here to this place has gone a long way with creating that haze. If for a moment he has forgotten how and why he has come to be here on this train station platform, then it will return to him soon enough or so he would be sure. What is for sure and somewhat unbeknown to him is that something is about to come his way. There is something he is supposed to do, isn't there?

Irritation and anxiousness would soon join his impatience and forgetfulness when a boy no more than six or seven begins to walk the edge of the platform as if it were a tight rope and this occurs no more than two dozen feet away from where John so happens to be standing ... waiting. Two adults near-by, possibly the boy's parents, are distracted by two other children and both continue not to pay any attention to the platform edge walking boy.

Feeling as if he should say something, John holds himself back. Indeed, time moves faster when it is not being watched as it does if the mind is distracted from watching it, for off in the distance he can see heavy and continuous dark plumes of smoke bellowing out into the air as the train itself closes in on the station. Seconds pass, the train keeps coming and the boy still plays at the platform's edge.

'Little boy ...' he says feeling more than a little bit nervous, how he now wishes that he had a few more minutes before the locomotive would be due.

'Christopher ... get over here' calls the woman who is still distracted by other children, indeed and surely the boy's mother.

John is more than a little shocked that she does no more than just call the boy. She is not even properly looking his way. Then it happens, the boy falls onto the tracks. He lands on his feet but the train; it is oh so close and it is still coming. John has to act quickly and act quick he does.

He instinctively moves from his position on the platform down onto those tracks. Finally, attention is being paid to the boy by his parents. John grabs Christopher and hands him off with seconds remaining to remove himself from certain disaster. The train whistle blows its desperate warning. The engine may be slowing but it is still moving too quickly to come to a complete halt. In the rush to return up onto the platform he slips ...

***

According to his watch, the train is five minutes away. What the hell? He looks to his left, he looks to his right, is he is still alive? A reset perhaps, and unlike before ... not full or complete and also without the full-on haze? A haze is still there of course, but the platform walking boy, his fall, and the oncoming train ... he remembers all that perfectly.

What just happened? John has no idea. There is an awareness but of what, exactly?

A brown leather briefcase is at his side, his briefcase? John tries to grab it, but he can't, his hand apparently seems to phase right through the handle. Another man approaches and without even acknowledging John, this stranger picks up the briefcase and moves away.

'Excuse me ...' speaks John being almost sure that the briefcase is his own.

That stranger, who oddly enough is in a way ... familiar, continues to move on as if he had heard nothing. Maybe he has heard nothing. He moves into the main station room area and looks around as if he were searching for something or someone then moves on to leave the facility altogether, and John follows to the point where he all of a sudden finds himself back standing on the platform looking at his watch with the time being five minutes until his train is due.

What the hell? How is he back here? How is his train five minutes away if it had already come? And if it had already come, like he is sure it had, then where is it now? Also where are that boy and his family? What is all this? What is going on?

He, being at as much of a loss as he is, indeed can't help but wonder as to what is going on. The man he had followed had entered the station from the platform side to possibly leave it completely with the briefcase in tow, and with a train having yet to arrive, perhaps for a second time. Yeah, what the hell is going on?

Is John not able to leave the station? Is this why he is back on the platform? As if a reset button had been pressed? If so ... then with not being able to pick up the briefcase and apparently not being acknowledged ... is he ... dead?

Why is it too, that he is waiting on a train? Is there somewhere he needs to be? He had been sure of such not so long ago, or at least he thought he was, and now he definitely is not so sure.

The family who had been on the platform, Christopher's family, they are now nowhere to be seen. If John is indeed dead, then the fact that the family is nowhere to be seen makes sense to some degree for they surely have moved on. If a reset did occur, then why has that family nor been reset?

Alright so ... John, in a strange way, can handle that partial extrapolation even if he is stretching his reasoning, for maybe this train station platform is some sort of purgatory though with being dead, if dead is what he is, why is he unable to leave the platform? Is he being punished for something? The boy and the others before and during the track incident, how was John able to interact with them? And there is the fact that the train had arrived, why now is his train once again five minutes away?