[WP] You switch on your TV. To your surprise, a video of yourself appears.

Ever look at yourself in the mirror and ask is this really me? Ever walk down an empty street and just know that someone is watching you? Ever contemplate your place in the universe and marvel at the weirdness of existing?

At first I thought this kind of stuff was normal. I thought it was some sort of survival mechanism. Evolution's way of making sure we're dotting our i's and crossing our t's in this whole survival business. Or something. But I always had this dark intuition about it. I knew that it wasn't that simple. It couldn't be.

I'm watching an infomercial, resisting the urge to buy something for nineteen ninety-nine. Here I am, a soul fabricating a material universe that I'll never keep. I'm in a prison of infinite versions of myself. It's the cruelest prison. Each time it's only a matter of matterless time before I go mad. One lifetime usually doesn't do it. But at ten lifetimes - one hundred lifetimes, several million lifetimes - the numbers sort of obscure into fuzziness, and so do I. I lose track of myself.

Billy Mays here!

That's me. Well, I lived as Billy Mays once - a few million lifetimes ago – and there I am on the screen. And now I know it happened again. Every few million lifetimes it happens. I manage to convince myself that this lifetime is all I've ever known. That is, before those moments start to happen. I look at my face in the mirror, but I'm not connected to it. I'm walking down a street alone, yet I'm aware of something transcending myself, something eternal peering down on me with a cheeky grin.

Eventually these recurrences become less subtle. The present lifetime I'm experiencing is fading into obscurity. It was a boring day in my lifetime. It wasn't an ambitious life. After too many exciting lifetimes to count, boring becomes the new exciting. But there I am on the tele. Billy Mays here!

Now it's black and I’m left wondering how many lifetimes it will take before I feel that boring infomercial-watching self peering at me as I’m walking down a street. These words floating around in my head are all I have. Continuity is all I have. But I get lost. It's like playing that snake arcade game. The snake grows longer each time a ball is eaten. Each lifetime is a ball, and the snake is continuity. Of course, the longer the continuity gets, the harder it is to keep. Eventually I run into myself like that snake – I collapse in on myself - as I'm doing now.

I'm left with that same question I've asked in a million mirrors before: Is this really me?

/r/WritingPrompts Thread