The Pants From Last Week By Jared Waddell Copyright 2000, Jared Waddell --- They were pants, that much was certain. They were jeans, if that made any difference. They were worn, which meant they should have been familiar, and they were, just not in the way Brack expected them to be. Brack pulled the wet jeans out of his small white washing machine, his Skeptic's Eyebrow at full attention. He didn't remember putting them in there, but he was the only one who used the washer regularly, and no one had even been in his apartment since the last time he'd done laundry. With a shrug, he told his Skeptic's Eyebrow to stand at ease. This was no small task, as Brack was a Skeptic at heart, but he was also a Realist, and the Realist in him was saying to just put the jeans in the dryer and resolve the matter when less dirty clothes remained to be washed. Well, who could argue with 'less dirty clothes'. So Brack put the jeans in the dryer and finished the minor task of setting the next load to wash before heading over to the kitchen area to make some lunch. While mixing mayonnaise and tuna with the same precision one might apply to disarming a nuclear weapon, Brack considered who might own the pants, running them over in his mind as it might trigger some weaker memory. By the time he'd finished his second (and hopefully last) sandwich, he still didn't have the slightest clue where such pants might have come from. Sitting heavily on the small sofa in his Lilliputian-sized living room, Brack tried to relax a bit. It was a weekend, after all, and it wouldn't do to end up more exhausted after the weekend than before. His apartment wasn't a large place. Indeed, Brack had seen modest homes with TV rooms larger than his entire living space, but home was home, and it was plenty comfortable for one bachelor without a lot of people or family tromping around. It did get to the point of being uncomfortably crowded when he had about half his friends over, which put him into a peculiar mindset after five years here: He only had half his friends over at any one time. This had caused some disastrous misunderstands until he explained to everybody he knew (one person at a time, to the bane of larynx), that there simply wasn't enough room to have everybody over and if they wanted to throw a party, they'd have to go somewhere else. And that was the end of it, as far as Brack was concerned. So, why then, were jeans appearing out of thin air and dropping into his one-man washer, now that no-one came over to do laundry (the leeches!)? Questions, questions, questions. Brack went to his bedroom after his mid-Saturday, post-lunch rest, and after a small amount of straightening up, Brack was confronted with something he hadn't seen in a while: His bedroom floor. He was also confronted with something that would change the course of this day, if he had bothered to think about it: It would take him back to the laundry. After switching loads and folding a few minutes, Brack again came upon the mystery pants, looking at them more closely this time. They seemed about his size, and pretty worn, like his pants. In fact, just like the pair of pants he was wearing. Even that stain that... wait a MINUTE! Brack stumbled out of his current pair of pants and hopped up to the mirror in his bedroom, one foot still caught in the leg of his pants. Finally yanking the resistance material off, he looked in the mirror, flipping the pants back and forth; now, they looked identical. He put on the warmer, cleaner pair of jeans and looked at how they fit him in the mirror. The mirror him stared back in disbelief. Right down to the smallest detail, these WERE the pants he'd been wearing. He didn't have two pairs of jeans, he had the EXACT SAME two pairs of jeans. Brack slapped his forehead, too shocked to speak. A knock came at the door. After a few seconds of stumbling around like an idiot (but without a leg trapped in his pants for an excuse), Brack made it to the door in a pair of shorts he was lucky to find wedged under his bed. He opened the main door to his apartment to be greeted by the frown face of Marilyn, his friend from uptown. Marilyn of the brown hair and brown and eyes, with pale skin, the skinny girl who always wore red clothing. Today she was dressed in a short red skirt made of something like satin, except one could tell it was some cheap imitation just by looking, and a nice red cotton blouse. He fingernails were painted silver today, and her dirt-brown bangs were darkened by water and hung low over her forehead. Her face, as always, sported a cute, carefree smile as she looked Brack head-to-toe without saying a word, as she always did when she came over unexpected. It was like she tried to catch him off guard, teaching him to be presentable, as if she was the model of 'prepared for the world' herself. "I assume you want to come in?" Brack said finally. "Mr. Stonenm, I wouldn't dream of imposing, but if you insist." She said in a musical voice that reminded Brack of children's toy bells. As he stood aside, he realized he was still holding the twin pants up like he was offering them to her, and remembered to toss them over his shoulder onto the couch as she walked past. Now what was she doing here? Marilyn never came over FOR anything, she was always 'checking up' on her vast network friends, always relating to Brack this thing or that as it caught her attention. Very often she would come in, talk nonstop, expect him to reply to the entire conversation in a similar verbal flood and allow her to go on her way. Presumably, to her next friend, where the process would repeat, ad naseum. Sometimes, it seemed that Marilyn talked to her friends for a living, as the coherent parts of her mouth spillage usually concentrated on her sole reason for living (according to Terry, not Brack himself), her friends. "Pants?" "Excuse me?" Marilyn asked, turning to him. Brack didn't realize he'd spoken out loud, but having Marlin's fully attention focused on him was far from a comfortable thing, so he foraged ahead, explaining the pants situation in detail, and finally presenting the article (articles?) for evidence of his story. It sounded crazy even to him, and he was secretly hoping that Marilyn would some easy explanation in her vast realm of conversation experience with which to dispel his discomfort. No such luck. She took the pants in her thin, frail hands that didn't look like they'd hold their own weight, much less to large pairs of jeans, and examined the material closely, taking every detail. "I take it you were wearing this pair?" She said after a while. "Yes, in fact, while I was pulling these out of the wash." "Where they weren't to begin with?" "They aren't even mine." She raised an eyebrow. "Okay, the pair I was wearing certainly is, but those aren't!" "They are the same pair." Great, she was repeating his conclusion. He didn't _want_ to hear his conclusion, he wanted _her_ to rebuke it. "Now Marilyn, that's just impossible. I can't have two of the same thing." "You have two shoes." "One for the left foot, one for the right. Not two of the exact same shoe." "So where do you think it came from?" "The washer, I told you." "No, how did it get into the washer?" "I dunno. It magically appeared?" Marilyn fixed Brack with one over her 'you are _dumb_' looks. "Really, where else could it have come from?" "Another time, perhaps?" "Don't be silly. Pants don't travel across time, and certainly not of their own free will." "How do you know? Have you ever talked with your pants?" Brack gaped at her for a few moments. "I'd love to stay and chat, dear, but I've actually come for my video. I wish to return it today and that won't be possible if it is not actually in my possession, which would cause it to be late, and we wouldn't want _that_ to happen, would we?" She said, leaning into Brack's face and handing him his mysteriously duplicated pants. "Uh... no. It's by the TV." "I know, dear. I'll just be off." And after about fifteen seconds, she was, video and all. "Time-traveling pants..." Brack mused. --- Written on the evening of October 9th, 7:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Author's Notes: It's weird, I was doing laundry and this just popped into my head. Too much thinking about writing and not enough actual pen-hand/hand-on- keyboard action lately I supposed. Well, this'll be it for the pants, unless anyone wants me to continue it, which I could, bringing in additional existential conversations about the nature of clothes, time, space, and everything, but then I might have done that and titled this 'Clothes, Time, Space, and Everything', which might be seen as some kind of copyright infringement, which I didn't so it wasn't. Farewell and good reading/writing! Jared Waddell.