The evil Terrence Oblong

This is Terrence Oblong.

Terrence has his arm around a woman, a blonde. I don’t recognise her, she is someone that crossed his life‘s path but never diverted onto mine.

It is clear from watching them that they have been together a long time, they share gestures, when they speak they interrupt each other constantly, each knowing what the other is going to say, their conversation littered with references to shared jokes and experiences, even shared opinions. The are more alike in many ways than I am to Terrence, even though we are the same person.

The woman is tall and slim, dressed in fashionable clothes, carrying the latest phone, the sort of woman that would never even bother to look at me. Yet she is going out with me, well not me, but the other Terrence Oblong.

Two Terrence Oblongs?, you ask, how is that possible?

Well, this is the other Terrence Oblong. The one who always said yes, when I said no. The one who spoke to people I had no time for, the one who applied for jobs I had no chance of getting, the one who went to parties I was too busy to go to.

He is the same age as me, though looks slightly older, my boyish round face makes me look younger than my 42 years, this other Terrence has a face that reveals his age only too honestly. Too many tans have wrinkled his features and the cigarettes didn’t help. That’s one ‘yes’ that really didn’t work out for him.

Aside from that he looks well, slimmer than me, fitter (he clearly never said no to the gym). This particular version of myself dresses much more smartly than I do, puts me to shame in a designer suit when I’m wearing T-shirt and jeans. He can pull it off too, doesn’t look the ‘scruff in a suit’ like I do when I dress up, he is able to do fashion, style, chic, all the words that have never been applied to me.

This is all very well, you say, but how can you be looking at him? If he is an alternative version of yourself, then surely he inhabits a separate universe; he two of you can never meet. Don’t mess with the laws of physics you say.

All this is true, we can never meet and normally I treat the laws of physics with the utmost respect, sometimes pushing them to their limits but never breaking them.

But we have been asked to put aside the laws of physics, just this once.

We are being gathered together. All of us. Terrence Oblongs from every conceivable reality, Terrences that have gone on to great things, Terrences that have ended up on the streets, and the vast majority of Terrences who have chugged along in similar ways to myself.

We are being gathered together because one of the Terrences has gone rogue.

The exact nature of his crimes are unclear, though it is beyond doubt that he has done something terrible, something that requires the combined efforts of every other Terrence Oblong to bring him to order, or to justice, or to death, whichever it takes. He has committed some sin so sinister that only the devil could describe it.

Equally, whatever he has done, it is something we are all capable of doing, something we all would have done if the circumstances were right. He is a Terrence Oblong after all.

We have been brought together to hunt him down, track him to his lair and do justice upon him. For he is the evil side to Terrence Oblong, he is all that is wrong, sick and ill-judged, he is my every flaw, our every frailty taken to the extreme.

There are many thousands of us, and just the one of him, yet it will be a difficult battle, there is no clear winner. For he is unhindered by moral or scruple, winged by the unimpeded freedom that evil offers.

The final call has come. I watch Terrence kiss a final goodbye to his blonde love. Final, because there is no certain outcome, she may never see him again, any one of us could die. Every one of us could die.

For the first time he acknowledges me, with a simple nod. He mutters some words to his woman, turns, and joins me.

Oblong and Oblong, side by side, together, off to war.

For war is what it will take.