[ WP ] After years of research , you uncover the horrifying truth behind why some people are left handed .

So I looked around. A normal place, if normal was still normal, with people of all shapes and sizes, all races and nationalities, surrounded me. I was sitting at a quaint round table, a cup of those fancy little espressos hooked loosely between my right middle and index fingers as it rested on the hard patterned wood below. The scent was... oaky, earthy with a mix of coffee and fresh bread. Very real. Very typical. 
 
 `` Do you see?'' a voiced asked from inside my head. 
 
 `` I see.'' 
 
 The people were laughing, talking, reading, writing, acting with complete disregard for importance. A barista bobbed her head rhythmically to some muted music. A child ogled patiently at homemade pastries while his mother studied menu items and asked for specials and options. Three mid-20s looking friends sat huddled around a laptop entranced at some interesting thing or another. Ten or so others meandered about doing everyday normal things. 
 
 `` Where are we?'' I asked. 
 
 `` Where are we? Where are we? Home. Yours and mine, in the middle of a normal day with innocent, unknowing people,'' the voice responded. 
 
 `` Okay, but where, with actual meaning, do I sit?'' 
 
 `` Brooklyn, in a fairly popular cafe at ten in the morning.'' 
 
 I noticed the bustling traffic and roofless apartments out the windows to my left. I'd never been, but from music videos and news interviews and movies, it felt like New York City. There was a certain aura. A certain, well, emotion unveiled itself, a connection to so many people in so small a place forming an unusual pride within my soul. 
 
 `` I'm not from Brooklyn.'' 
 
 `` Oh? Well, how about *here*?'' the voice asked, and the room, the people, disappeared before me. 
 
 The world whisked around my head, lights twirling every which way as my body lifted up from its seat into what felt like zero gravity. I yelled, not with pain, but with pressure. I felt a tearing within, a struggle to rip apart and pull back together. 
 
 Then I was standing still, calm, with my arms crossed and my hair blowing to and fro with a soft, fresh breeze. My fingers no longer touched a coffee cup, but a rolled up piece of paper grasped tightly between my fleshy hand. 
 
 The sky above was clear, sparse clouds interspersing a perfect ocean of mid-afternoon blue. As best as I could tell from twirling myself around to survey surroundings, I stood alone. With no people, no buildings or trees or anything of which to speak from horizon to horizon, I stood sole in the middle of a golden grassy field. 
 
 `` Do you see?'' 
 
 `` Yes.'' 
 
 Another emotion boiled up inside, a drastically different one. I felt isolated, different, special, independent from every other thing on the planet. I felt solitary, and I liked it. 
 
 `` Is this home?'' 
 
 `` Close enough.'' 
 
 It was n't, really. I grew up in a quaint suburban home in not really anywhere important, but I quite liked the spaciousness. 
 
 `` Good, then you will know.'' 
 
 In an instant, the sky turned red. The golden grass disappeared, unveiling miles and miles of dead, flat, rock. A soft yellow haze glowed from the edges of everything. Its source remained veiled, but it felt ominous, enclosing, unsafe. 
 
 `` Open.'' 
 
 `` What?'' 
 
 `` The paper, open it.'' 
 
 I unfolded the parchment, squinting to read its content in the dark of wherever I was. 
 
 *This is home*, it read, *Now you know. * 
 
 I looked back up for one final time before being taken away again, my body screaming as it pulled against itself and pushed back together. 
 
 Then, just like that, I was back where I started. Sitting on a fine bench in a fine park in a fine little town, I was again looking at a serene duck pond having a conversation with a total stranger. 
 
 `` Now you know,'' he said, my eyes not daring to look at him, `` Where I come from. And my people, they too.'' 
 
 From the corner of my eye I could see him gesture to the stack of papers between us. My research, the evidence of actual impostors taking the bodies of 10 percent of the world population, laid nothing more than an off-brown folder full of words and pictures and numbers. 
 
 `` We are from a very different place, a much harder place than your own. So please, accept this. Accept what we have left to come here.'' 
 
 He stood to leave me, content in his very inexplicable explanation. As he started walking away, I called after him. 
 
 `` But wait,'' I said, and he stopped still, `` Where? Who, what are you?'' 
 
 He turned back around to face me, looking, piercing sharply into the souls of my eyes. 
 
 `` We are the same. Humans, if you must. But from a different time.'' 
 
 A different time? My face widened at the thought. 
 
 `` A terrible time, years into the future, where we could just not stay. So we came back here, choosing to live in the obscurity of lefties rather than exist in meaningless terror.'' 
 
 `` What happened?'' I muttered, terrified at his response. 
 
 He nodded gravely. 
 
 `` I suppose you must. Centuries from now, after countless periods of human development, we remained. The few, the terrible, Cleveland Browns fans. So we had no choice, you see, but to come back to your home.'' 
 
 `` Oh.'' 
 
 And it all made sense. 
 
 *** 
 
 Visit my website, [ casualhuman.com ] ( http: //casualhuman.com ) for more of my short stories.
