The Last Cynthia

Journal of Thomas Tinker
July 17, 2010

Lately I feel like I've been buying a lot of jeans. Metaphorically. That may not be the best descriptor, but I don't have a lot of time to write this, so this may not be Shakespearian in quality.

You know when you try on jeans at the mall and there is a mirror in front of you and behind you? If you look ahead or behind yourself you see an infinite number of yous, all trying on a pair of bootcut jeans that don't feel quite right.

Now, imagine that each reflection of you was like those jeans, just slightly off. One might have a different color eyes, while another is blonde, and a third hates your favorite food. These are some of the easy differences to accept about multi-dimensional travel. You don't want to know the harder ones.

How do I travel? It's sort of technical. And proprietary. Look, I've been busy and haven't filed my patent yet, so I don't think I'm going to put something like that out on the internet. Besides, that's really not important.

I've met someone. A girl. No, not just any girl, The Girl. We were on the same zipline tour in New Spain. That's what Mexico is called on this particular earth. Anyway, she's perfect. Cynthia. Her smile is like sunshine and her laugh like music. Ok, now I'm going on and on with similes, but the fact of the matter is that I love her.

And I think she's starting to love me. In all the world's I've been to, I've never met someone like her. I've also never seen another Cynthia on any of them. She's totally unique. We've had several dates in the past month and things have been going really well, until I found out she was seeing someone else on the side. Me.

It makes sense that if I could develop interdimensional travel, then another "me" from another world would do the same. Several mes in fact. In the past 28 days, Cynthia has been out with me and at least 3 doppelgangers of me.

One is funnier than me and another can play the guitar. The third is the one I'm worried about. I followed them to a museum one evening and I saw the way he looked at her. A dark hunger smoldered in his eyes, one beyond the desires of a normal human.

Then I started doing some research. Thomas Tinker 3, as I've dubbed him has been a busy little nasty. It turns out there is more than one Cynthia. Or there was. During a date with Cynthia, I dug through her purse and snaked out her drivers license. After writing down her social security number, I put everything back. I still feel guilty about this invasion of her privacy, but I needed to do it.

Knowing this would be inexact - what are the odds that Cyntha would have the same social in every permeation of reality? - I started my search. And I was right. And now I feel sick.

On one earth she'd been poisoned. Drowned in another. Stabbed, shot, buried alive, strangled, the list goes on. Thomas Tinker 3 is an interdimensional serial killer of one woman, and it ends tonight.

I've gathered funny me and musical me, and a dozen others, and we're going to stop 3. I don't expect all of us to survive, but we all know what we've signed on for. None of us have a stomach for violence, even body builder me is a pacifist, but I swear on everything that is holy that he will not lay a hand on my Cynthia. Our Cynthia. The last Cynthia.