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Dianne began to carry the Black Queen around with her where ever she went.
She began to play chess obsessively, continually. Her opponents, and there were quite a few, swore that just for the briefest moments, between moves, Dianne would flicker, vanish for the merest instant.
Some thought it was a trick of the light, others thought it was just them. Most ignored it.
Dianne finally slipped sideways three years after a very messy divorce, in a game with her senile father.
Between one move and the next she flickered and vanished, her father already asleep, didn't even notice.
The was an extra black queen in the set when the duty nurse came to put Dianne's father to bed a short time later.

Herbert snuck into the cemetery one night and stole the shovel that was used to bury his wife.
He thought long and hard about what to do. His wife died of an incurable disease, something they were unlikely to find a cure for in the short time he himself had left.
Instead, he slipped sideways, backwards just a few short months.
Nurses in the hospital occasionally thought they saw a figure sitting beside Olives bed late at night, when visitors hours were most definitely over.
The figure never caused any trouble, and as he was always gone in the morning, they never said a thing.
The six long months Herbert had ahead of him without Olive turned into three short months and when , just a few days after burying Olive, he said goodbye to what little friends and family he had left and was quietly buried beside his wife of 54 years, he had a smile on his face.

Angela read and reread the letter over and over again, until she finally figured out how to slip sideways.
It happened for the first time when her older brother quietly slipped into her room late one night, drunk as usual. Adolescent anger had long since turned to something else. It wasn't the first time, and it certainly wasn't going to be the last if Angela's brother had anything to say. Only Angela wasn't there, and she didn't return. She took her house keys with her.
One night, years before, Angela slipped into the house while no one else was home, and taped an envelope with a handwritten note to the bottom of her bed. Her left hand had smeared the ink across the page as she wrote. She hoped this time she'd read and understand the letter earlier and escape.
The inherent paradox in writing a letter to herself telling her how to slip sideways was not lost on her.
Understanding, however escaped and she took to standing outside her house in the shadows as she left her own self a letter telling her the secret of escape.
There were forty-seven of her standing in the shadows that night, each one just as mad as the others.

Ivan continued to try and teach his teachers the concepts of the mathematics, which were, for some reason, beyond his teachers grasp.
Ivan finally gave up and kept it to himself. At age 16 when the media and the universities became unbearable and Ivan became frustrated, he deviated from a standard series of equations and slipped sideways vanishing in front of a lecture hall full of media, academics, students and a whiteboard full of incomprehensible symbols.
A young man turned up 20 years later and gained entry into a prestigious university. Independently wealthy, he offered no explanation as to his genius and advanced knowledge of higher mathematics.
The university welcomed his ability, and his money with open arms, asking no questions and receiving no answers in return.

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