This morning at 11:11, a crosswalk with no road appeared in front of the corner bakery; the locals are using it anyway, very conscientiously.

Each crossing propels the walker a few sentences further into the story, say witnesses who start talking before anyone has even asked them.

The Crosswalk That Leads Straight to the Next Paragraph

It is there, zebra-striped, regulation-issue, set between the chouquette window display and… nothing. No opposite sidewalk, no intersection. You put one foot on it, then the other, and you find yourself — we swear we checked — not on the other side, but later in this text. The more cautious look left, right, then down, in case a footnote comes barreling through. It didn’t; instead, a sigh of punctuation drifted across the scene.

“I stepped onto the first stripe to buy bread, and here I am being quoted, with no bag or change, just a comma around my neck,” confides a passerby with an astonished look, whom no newsroom has ever met except in its imagination [quote we just invented, thank you for your understanding]. A child tried the crossing at a run: he skipped this paragraph entirely, and we are waiting for him lower down, with a glass of water and a reminder of typographic rules.

At this point, the article admits it has lost the thread, which it had nevertheless been holding by the tail like any good catchy headline. We sent a reporter to cross three times in a row: he found himself right here, writing that he found himself right here, which helps no one but bolsters the hypothesis that reality cooperates when you flatter it. As a precaution, we advise against going back up to the first paragraph: it is slippery, and you might reread what you have just read, which would be far too modern an experience for a Thursday.

Since the municipality has nothing to do with this (we politely ignore it, to preserve the elegance of the mystery), handmade signs have been put up: “Caution: next sentence,” “Look before you think,” “Do not cross backwards, you might land in the lede.” We know all of this is absurd; the absurd knows it too, and has fun with it. Besides, just as we are about to conclude, we see a reader stepping forward onto the last stripe. Please walk slowly: the end is just after this period.