For the 2022 Writerwerx University short story contest, Ian Phillips’ “Shades of Me” took home the gold!
Ian Phillips of Mount Crawford, Virginia is the Award-Winning Author of “Shades of Me”
Ian Phillips is a senior Media Arts and Design major at James Madison University with a minor in Creative Writing. He has been writing since he was five years old and puts much of his effort nowadays into developing and hopefully publishing a series of fantasy novels. He plans to join a Master’s program in Creative Writing after he graduates.
“Shades of Me” by Ian Phillips
I never died, technically, but I’m still locked in a room with me, myself, and I. There’s Young Me, sitting in the corner with a matchbox car in each hand. Nearby is Middle-aged Me with his balding head and potbelly, reading a magazine. Then, of course, there’s myself—College Me—slumped in my chair by the wall, and well away from the others.
The door to the room opens, and the last of us arrives. Old Me, with his cane and tatty scarf, is ushered inside. I glance over but say nothing. I stay where I am, scratching idly at the paint on the blank, white wall. Middle-aged Me takes notice, though. He looks up from his magazine as the door clicks closed and Old Me settles himself into a chair.
“So, did we finally kick the bucket?” Middle-aged Me asks. Old Me nods his wrinkly head.
“Yep. Sure did. You know that wobbly brick on the steps you never fixed?” “I remember it. You didn’t die on it, did you?”
“I did. Sure did. Went right out from under foot like ‘Woah!’ And then I died.”
“Well that sucks. I always thought it was gonna be heart disease.”
I continue scratching at the wall, trying to ignore their words, but they pierce my brain like needles, even drowning out the endless vrooms and fake explosions coming from Young Me and his toys.
“I see the rest of the gang is here,” Old Me’s quavering voice says. “I haven’t seen them in a while. How’s it going over there?”
I feel Old Me’s eyes drilling through the side of my head. With an audible sigh I turn to meet the old man’s stare.
“I’m doing fine,” I answer, before turning back to the wall.
“What’s up with him?” Old Me whispers.
“You know how we were at that age,” Middle-aged Me says.
“And you’re happy you grew out of it,” I call across the room. “You moved on to cars and football and other stuff.”
Old Me frowns. “Do you have a problem with football?”
“You know I didn’t like it. You were me…at some point, I guess. You don’t see me asking what parties you’ve been to, and I know for a fact you don’t play video games anymore ‘cause Dad me here doesn’t.”
Middle-aged Me frowns. “You gotta learn at some point that you can’t play electronics all day. That’s a part of growing up. Look…”
A knock interrupts him. I turn towards the entrance as the door swings open. A man with receding hair and a trim suit strides through, a clipboard in hand. He pulls up a chair next to Old Me and sits, resting his ledger on his knee as he begins to scribble some notes. After a moment, he looks up.
“Dominic, Dominic, Dominic, and Dominic, it’s good to see you all here at last.” Young Me sends a matchbox car whizzing along the floor to bump the newcomer’s foot. He glances down and kicks it back before continuing. “Momentarily, I’ll be leading you through that door into the afterlife.” He inclines his head towards an empty wall, and a massive set of golden double doors materialize. “You can call me Gates.”
“Is that supposed to be clever?” I ask.
Gates turns to me with calm but humorless eyes. “No, it’s supposed to be metaphorical.” Middle-aged Me chuckles and turns the page of his magazine.
“So, are you all ready to come together into one soul and cross that great threshold?” Gates asks.
My eyes narrow. “I don’t like the sound of that metaphysical BS. What does that entail?” Gates shrugs. “Well, you’re all part of the same spirit, just at different times in its lifetime. The last stage is done…” he gestures to Old Me. “So it’s time to move on.” “And you need us…together…for that?” I ask. “Aren’t we already together?” “No, no, no.” Gates shakes his head, and I swear I can hear a patronizing chuckle behind his breath. “We just need the four of you to become one mind, so to speak. It’s an outdated system, really, but you know bureaucracy. We keep the old stages around and combine ‘em together at the end. It’s perfectly routine. It’s like aging, except instead of happening over fifty years, you just—” he snaps his finger. “Become old you.”
My brows furrow deeper. “What about me, then?”
“I am you,” Old Me says. “Just down the line. I don’t know if you understand, son, but we’re all you.”
“Yeah. I get that.” I glance around the room, struggling for words. “But…you’re not me me.”
“Sure he is,” Middle-aged Me says. “I remember everything about you, and so does he. You’ll just be getting our memories.”
“It’s as simple as that,” Gates says. “Now, if you’ll sign this paper here.” He hands off his clipboard and pen to Old Me, who jots down his name without hesitation. The paper passes to Middle-aged Me, who signs with a flourish before going back to his magazine. Gates calls to Young Me, who dashes over and, after a brief explanation, scribbles his name too. Finally, Gates
stands up and crosses to me. “Ready to sign?” He slides the clipboard and pen into my hands, but I keep my gaze fixed on him.
“And what if I don’t?”
Gates blinks. “Well, that would be…highly irregular. Just go ahead and sign, and we can get you on your way.”
“You mean get him on his way.” I jab a thumb at Old Me.
A trace of frustration enters Gates’s tone. “I thought we’d covered this. He– You’re being difficult, Dom.”
“Why is he the one that goes to the afterlife?” My mouth twists in a scowl. “What makes him more me than me?
Gates glances at my older selves with a nonplussed look and then turns back to me. “Well, he’s the last chronologically. The natural evolution of you. Just sign the paper. I have a lot of people to get through today.”
“So he’s the only one that matters. The rest of us are what? Imperfect versions? No. I’m me now, and he isn’t. Sure, he might have my face and my memories, but he isn’t me. Like…if you replace the engine in your car, and then you replace the tires, and let’s say eventually you’ve replaced the whole thing so there’s nothing left of the original. You can say it’s the same car, but it’s not.”
“I forgot how much I used to like Mr. Bennington’s philosophy class,” Middle-aged Me quips to Old Me, who chuckles. I glare at them.
Gates’s smile is gone. “Dom, if you don’t sign, I’m going to have to get permission to forcibly reintegrate you, and I don’t want to do that.”
“But what happens to me, Gates? And no more bullshit half-answers. You know what I mean.”
Gates sighs and scowls at the paper, his jaw working. Finally, he looks back at me. “You’ll be however the last you remembers you.”
“So I’ll just stop existing? Poof.”
“As you think of yourself now, yes, but remember…” he points to Middle-aged Me. “You turned into that version of yourself in the physical world. You did it willingly.” “You want me to erase myself from existence.”
Gates groans and rubs his temples, his face etched with frustration. A strange pride surges in my chest, cutting through the anger and fear. I glance at Middle-aged Me and Old Me. Both glare back with frustrated scowls. Finally, I turn my gaze on Young Me, ramping his matchbox cars up onto the seat of a chair and then back down again, probably envisioning some epic jump. He doesn’t understand any of this.
I give a wry chuckle and turn back to Gates. “Here’s a proposition for you,” I say. “If it doesn’t matter if I become part of him, then why don’t we flip this around? I’ll sign your page, but only if you change the conditions. We don’t become old guy. Everyone becomes me.”
“What?” Old Me says. He rises to his feet. “But that’s not fair! I like me. I have the world figured out.”
I smirk. “How quickly your tone changes now it’s you on the line. I’ll ask again; what makes you the definitive I? What makes any one of us better than the others? We’re all different. We might as well be separate people.”
“I remember being you,” Old Me says. “Everything you did.”
“I don’t remember you, because I never was you, just like the kid over there doesn’t remember being me.” I point to Young Me with his cars. “Why don’t we all just become him and play with cars all day?”
“It’s juvenile,” Old Me says. “You think so too.”
“He doesn’t. To him it’s the best thing in the world. You want to take that away from him?”
Gates stands on a chair. “You all are being completely absurd!” he shouts. “None of you are more important than the other, but the united I—the united spirit, that’s the important part. Do you want to be fractured like this forever?”
I cross my arms and lean back in my chair. “Yes.”
Gates’s shoulders fall, defeated.
“Can’t you make him sign?” Old Me snaps.
Middle-Age Me nods an agreement. “Yeah, isn’t that your job?”
Gates clenches his fists and spins to face my older selves, his voice reverberating off the walls with protestations. I look down at his clipboard still in my lap, at the three signatures of Dominic Arne. All fake versions of each other. I glance at Young Me, oblivious and unconcerned. I suppose there is one original me. Maybe he’s the best of us. I can’t say. I snatch up the pen and start to scratch out text, reword phrases, replace Old Me with Me Me. Gates spots me. His eyes widen, and he opens his mouth to speak. The movement draws the gaze of my two older selves, but I sign the clipboard before they can even blink.
A torrent of thought rushes through me, memories of places I’ve never been, people I’ve never met. I watch myself turn into Middle-aged Me and then into Old Me. Pain splits my skull as I fall down the steps outside my house, and all at once it’s over.
I blink and stare at my hands. They’re unchanged. I rub my face, and it’s still smooth. But in my mind, I feel strange. Thoughts and ideas jostle for position but find no place to roost. I look down at the ledger, changed to preserve my own identity, and an unexpected ache fills my chest—a regret—punctuated by the sudden silence in the room.
The space is empty now, save for Gates staring opened-mouthed and stunned. Two abandoned matchbox cars rest on the floor, one upside down with its wheels still spinning. A magazine hangs over the arm of a chair. A cane and scarf lie bundled in a heap.
Middle-aged Me’s experiences drift to the surface, and all at once I’m not quite myself, and yet still the same person, as if the balloon of my mind had suddenly expanded. The dark roads become illuminated with street lamps. My thoughts and interests change, altered by new experiences.
And then Old Me totters by, tying up routes of exploration in a neat bow, passing by other, unexplored paths and sealing them off forever. After all, I’d done enough soul-searching for a lifetime, made enough mistakes in my younger days. I remember those mistakes, and the wisdom I took from them—the lessons that changed me.
I slump in my seat with a shuddering sigh, my young hands shaking. Young hands guided by an old mind. A wash of shame crashes through me for my recklessness—my foolish, selfish act. I’m no more similar now to my previous self than Young Me had been. I close my eyes. College Me is gone, as readily as if I’d signed without complaint.