Past Day 5

Last night, still in an absolute state over my brush with evil, I went directly to bed, too scared to make the usual rounds. While sleeping I had an unusual dream.
I dreamt of a day like any other. Shining sun, hurrying people, hungry dragons driving up and down the street, and me in my tower, watching it all thankfully pass me by. It was a beautiful day, for a while.
Around noon, the first cloud came. It was a great, dark cloud, black and heavy with rain, standing out from the puffy cotton balls nearby. No one down below paid it any mind, but I regarded it with suspicion. I breathed a sigh of relief when it passed us by, vanishing over the mountain range to the east.
Not long after, however, three more dark clouds came over the western horizon. They soared slowly, lazily, their measured pace a notable contrast to the busy people in the city. When they swept by, four more dark clouds took their place. More still had entered the sky above us before this four had left.
The clouds kept coming, more and more, until more cloud than sky was visible. Eventually, no more sky was left, only a sea of black.
People down below were beginning to take notice, but the extent of their concern seemed to be merely things like 'I should have brought an umbrella' and 'Mike on channel 6 didn't say anything about rain today'. None of them thought or even guessed that perhaps something more sinister could be at work.
All expected the Great Overcast to end that night, but when we woke up the next morning, it was still cloudy out. Then the next day, and the day after that, it was the same story. People's crops began to wilt, and solar panels stopped producing electricity. People drove with their headlights on at all hours of the day, even though you could still pretty much see. The air had that special feel that it gets right before a rainfall, both humid and chilly, with a sense of forboding doom. But rain never came. Just a constant anticipation of rain that kept everyone on edge.
As the months past, people began to go mad. Riots started in the streets as society crumbled. All around the tower, the city burned, I tried valiantly to protect the tower from looters, criminals, and the insane, but I was one man, and they were many. Just as the front door broke in, I awoke, my sheets cold and clammy.

Past Day 4

Today, while out on a late night seed run, I spotted some children playing on the sidewalk. This struck me as being most unusual. Generally a child should be in bed by this hour, that is what I thought. I am unsure how late it was, I was still a bit giddy from the joy of feeding my pigeons, but it was surely past the devil's hour.
I approached the children and told them if they weren't in bed post haste the Dervish-o-Neterry would abduct them for its stew pot. Ignoring their accusations of sanity deficiency, I looked down at the sidewalk. They had drawn a strange symbol on the ground, a pattern of unusual, numbered, interlocking squares.
A fear entered me. I did not know the meaning of this ritual, but somehow I knew it was deeply satanic. They were clearly possessed. I began commanding the dark one to leave these children, shouting forcefully and angrily.
The children, now more scared than I was, explained that this was not a satanic ritual, but rather, a harmless game. What brazen children these are, thought I, to consider their eternal soul nothing but a mere plaything. They went on to tell me that the object of the 'game' was to hop on the numbered squares to retrieve a tossed stone. A strange method for summoning a demon, I reasoned, no sacrifice or incantation required. Modern conveniences have truly reached every corner of society.
Lord help me, I was curious, so I invited myself into one of their sessions. My old bones are not as accustomed to hopping as they once were, but my mind is just as sharp as it ever was, and I was able to hop on the appropriate numbers as well as any of them. The children claimed they were playing a 'variation' of the game where, if you committed an error, you had to take a shot of scotch whiskey. This gave me extra incentive to play properly, as I had no desire to partake of the devil's drink.
I lost track of time as we played. Eventually, during one of my matches, the children informed me that they were tired and were going to go home and rest, and that if I won this match, I'd win.
Knowing this was code for the summoning of the dark one, a great fear filled me. The reality of what I was doing hit me with an unmitigated ferocity. I ran away screaming, praying feverishly and crossing myself until I reached the safety of my tower.

Future Day 2

Halifax awoke. It was very dark and hard to breathe. In fact it was pitch black. Something was smothering his face. He tried to remain quiet but was gasping for air. He couldn’t move his hand with the knob arm. He felt along his face with the other hand. A rubbery bulbous texture was covering the upper half of his head and creeping down over part of his mouth. He couldn’t see a thing. He gripped the edge of the rubbery mask and pulled with all his strength, but its grip only seemed to tighten and clasp harder onto his head. The throbbing sensation that pulsed through his arm now flowed through the top of his head as well. He gave it another yank and slammed his elbow into the desk resounding in a heavy bang. He froze in a panic realizing just exactly where he was again and what he had heard before he had fallen asleep. He sat silent listening and breathing as calmly as possible through the obstructing thing clamping down on his head and arm and waited for a reaction from the sound he had caused. No reaction came and he tried pulling harder and harder against his mask. He wondered if he was now alone. He grew bolder and decided to test out this thought. He knocked against the wooden table. He knocked again even louder. He nervously waited, but there was no reaction. Carefully he crept out from underneath the desk. As he lay on the floor he heard a faint scratching sound. He stayed still and listened. The sound continued on intermittently scratching away. He pulled himself up using the side of the desk and then softly stepped backwards until he reached the wall. Slowly he walked towards the door guiding himself with one hand on the wall. The scratching stopped and the sound of a sheet of paper being roughly torn from out of a notebook was heard. He stopped moving and cowered in his place. A few footsteps followed. “Misssssss….toree……” the voice of the creature that had hovered above his bedside when he first awoke uttered. From another direction the clear fragment of a sentence entered his hearing saying “…eson I have you’re list of…” and exited his hearing going another direction. He slowly continued walking away as the voice of the creature continued grumbling on. It stopped and he heard that gurgled sound of a fly buzzing again coming from the same direction. Then a chair scooted backwards scraping against the floor. He quickened his pace and reached the corner of the room. A set of footsteps began coming his way from the direction of the voices. A second pair of steps could be heard not approaching him but remaining around the desk. He cowered once more and leaned into the corner of the room holding his free hand up over his misshapen head. The scratching began again in the distance and the footsteps grew louder. The door was opened and with a buzz from this being and a grumble from where the scratching was it closed and the footsteps went with it. The rubbery bulbous texture that encased his head seemed to loosen its grip under the touch of his hand. It too seemed to be trembling. He pressed against the wall and rose up from off the floor following along the door side wall. The sound of another sheet of paper being torn startled him as he felt along the broken door. A few of its boards were jutting out of the middle into slivers of wood. Whatever it was at the desk had stopped scratching and took a few steps, sat down, and scooted their chair around. His hand felt its way to the doorknob and he slowly turned it creaking the door open and gently closed it behind him. In an almost euphoric daze he glided against the wall until he met the rubble of the ceiling that had been falling inwards and began to climb the pile. He thought he had now arrived at the spot he had been at before he had heard the thudding sounds of those things coming from the rooftop. It was more caved in now and he felt a little nook up in the wall which he pushed himself up into. The space was very cramped but appeared to lead gradually upwards so he followed it on his knees.

Carefully he maneuvered his malformed arm and head combination around the debris. He had ended up going backwards up out of the rubble as it was easier to maneuver his deformation around all the cracks and crevices he had to struggle through. Finally he kicked a leg back into what felt like a very wide open space and then felt the slightest of breezes flowing down into the hole he was in. He scooted back a bit further and reached with his good arm behind himself grabbing onto the rooftop. He pushed both legs up out of the hole and with all his might he swung his body up and backwards throwing his entire weight up and out of the hole, but his odd head and arm couple remained lodged in the exit. Exasperated he lay flat on the rooftop with his one good arm stretched out to his side while his unfortunately shaped head and arm combination held him pinned down to the hole.

Having arrived at his destination the scientist hopped off his bike and walked it across the sidewalk easily dodging a few stray phantoms. Carefully he entered a building pushing his bike along with him at his side. At the front of the entrance room were a few large sign in desks for the building. A shape wandered around this room, but he knew its movements. At the desks were lined up a few clients always waiting patiently for the customer at the front of the line to fill out his never ending paper work. The two shapes behind the desk shuffled around occasionally and spoke to each other. Once when he had arrived over zealously early he had watched one of them conversing very animatedly on the telephone. He stayed near the walls and walked past the elevators to the stairwell. Just before the steps was a utility room that’s lock had been broken off. He rolled his bike inside and closed the door. He had never encountered one of them on the steps at this hour, but still every time he had to make the trek it felt as if he was approaching his death. He pulled out his flashlight but didn’t turn it on to conserve the battery life and began his walk up.

He exited the stairwell coming out onto the rooftop. He walked right up to the edge and flipped the switch of his flashlight. A few planks of wood led from this rooftop to a small terrace of another taller building with a large radio tower at the top. A radio tower much larger and state-of-the-art than the town had ever required. Shining the light onto these planks he held his breath and began walking across them. The light shined in between the cracks of the planks and down into the narrow alleyway. He went through a door and into the building. He went up yet another stairwell with his flashlight off but in hand.

Arriving at the final floor before the rooftop there was a metal door that lay contorted on the stairway. It was a mistake to have thought they could keep it out of here. He turned his flash light on and went in the room. Immediately pointing it into the open door at the left he shined it onto the cause of the broken door. A tubby shaped being sat in a chair with a computer and a high quality microphone placed before him. His upper half was in much worse shape than the bottom. The light shone right through him as its pieces swirled around. He was the nighttime disc jockey and there was no way of keeping him from busting the door down to do his duty. Although this entire level operated on a backup emergency generator all but the main control centers equipment had been shut off to conserve power. When he wasn’t getting a flashlight shone on him this left the DJ in the dark pushing functionless buttons and mumbling to no one throughout the night. He shut the door on the DJ who liked to keep it open as he worked. Although he knew it was useless to do so it was far more comforting to have it closed than open, but he always remembered to open it back up for him on his way out lest he bang the door down when his shift ended and deprive him of this small comfort.

Flicking his flashlight off he walked on towards the faint neon glow of lights illuminating around the corner. Here could be seen the main control room through a soundproof glass door. It was filled with computers, monitoring equipment, and a few large mixing boards. He placed his bag on a table and pulled out a notebook and the sandwich. He walked over to a window and pushed it open letting in the cold air, there stood the tower he had rode by and will later find his way home by. It wasn’t as tall as the radio tower, but it loomed just as impressively in the glow of the smog. He opened up a small refrigerator in the corner of the room. Inside was a dark gray rectangular substance in a plastic bag. He carefully picked it up with his rubber gloved hands and tossed it out of the window. He shut the window and picked up the sandwich from the table and placed it carefully into the fridge in the exact spot where the previous substance had been. He took a look at his watch and grabbed his notebook quickly walking over into the control room and looking at the computer monitoring equipment. He carefully observed a series of waveforms that had been recorded throughout the day and were being recorded at this exact moment. He marked down the time, the durations, the frequencies, but most importantly he marked down the intensity. The intensity was now at its very weakest point from throughout the day which was consistent with the previous days. He looked at his watch again and got up from the computer. He let himself into one of a few isolated sound booths and sat in the dark watching and waiting.

 

Day to be continued...

Past Day 3

Today my daughter stopped by the ol' tower of power, hur hur. She flew in last night from a distant village known as Cincinnati. She had to sleep on the great steel phoenix. Ah, my mistake, so sorry, what I meant to say was the... 'arrowplane'. I know the names of many modern objects but some of the magical names still elude me. Tonya has been a big help to me in that regard. She has explained to me how the postal service, which is her chosen trade, works, and has given me a 'lighter', which I have used to start fires without need of flint.
I was against it when she moved out. She wanted to see the world, see sights beyond these stony walls. I tried to explain to her what untold evils that lay in wait out there, hoping to ensnare the pure heart of one such as her, but she didn't listen. In the end, it was her decision. I pray every night that our lord will protect her and keep her safe.
We talked of casual matters over dinner. I asked her how her husband, Darren, is doing. It sounds like he is well; the 'computing firm' he works at has evolved into quite an establishment. His sire, who sounds like a nice fellow, has just increased his pay.
As usual, however, when the conversation turned away from Tonya and towards myself, the subject arose of selling the tower. Being located right in the middle of this city's downtown area, I have received many lucrative offers from developers wishing to tear it down and erect businesses or housing in its place. Tonya, somehow, always catches wind of these ever-increasing offers, and her insistence that I sell intensifies with each visit.
I have explained (many times, I might add) to my dear daughter, the tower's importance. I pray that one day she will understand. Did her great great great great grandfather give up the tower during the revolutionary war, when the British threatened to burn it down? No, he battled them back from his protected position. Did her great to the twelfth power grandfather give up the tower when the romans invaded? No. He stood firm. This tower has protected our family for untold generations, and we have protected it in turn.
One day, when I am gone, I have hopes that Tonya will take up my mantle. When I was young, when I took over for my own father, I did not even question this duty. But the human mind is different now, the question is its fuel, whereas in the past, its fuel was faith. In the end, this, too, will ultimately be her decision. I would never force her. But I will always hope to convince her, before it is too late.

Past Day 2

Day 2

I often enjoy looking down at the city below from my dovecote window. The rhythms of contemporary life are relaxing to me, and I can easily become lost in my thoughts, watching the proceedings of the day. People leave shops, and enter other ones. People pass by in their silly metal chariots. People wait, occasionally glancing at their wrists, for a metal dragon to devour them and whisk them away to our holy god knows where. Why do they not run from the dragon? Why do they stand there and allow themselves to be eaten? Well, let me tell you.
Once, I tried to protect the people from the dragon. I happened to be passing by on my way home from buying seeds, when I saw the line that had formed in front of its mouth. A man was about to climb inside, he already had his left foot on its bottom tooth. Dropping my seed pouch, I ran to his aid, shoving him to the ground just in time. I pushed away some of the other people in line, as well, and began screaming at them to get as far away from the beast as they could. They stared at me as though in a dumbfounded trance. It was then I realized they were under the dragon's hypnosis. It is an easy thing, I understand, to catch a prey that offers itself to you. A cunning but ignoble ploy.
I climbed up on top of the dragon and started hitting it with my cane. I wished, not for the first time that day, that I still had my sword. I bashed the dragon's eyes from atop its mighty square forehead, and to my surprise they shattered, almost like glass.
I could see directly into the monster's stomach. At least twenty people were in there, waiting to die. They began to scream, jumping out the side-eyes, doing anything they could to get away.
"Yes! Run! Be free!" I joyously told them.
The police came. They asked me a few questions and then took me to jail. I did not understand why. I explained to them that the dragon was not a wise, scholarly dragon, but actually one of the more warlike breeds. Many times in fact. But they didn't seem to believe me. I served one night in prison. When I got out, I was surprised to see a new dragon there on the corner, claiming more victims. I tried to slay it, too, but this time the person sitting at the front of the dragon tazed me. I noticed there was a picture of me hanging on the wall of the dragon's innards.
After serving three more days in jail I tried again with the same result. Now I no longer try. I feel sorry for those poor people, but I am just one man against a great force. Perhaps when I was younger, I could have won this battle.

Past Day 1

"Ha ha! I got his seeds!" laughed one of the children, grabbing the seed pouch that was hanging off my shoulder.

I looked around desperately. None of the other people on the street seemed interested in helping me.

Grip tightening around the handle of my cane, I shook a clenched fist at the boy. "Give that back, you little punk! Respect your elders!"

"Where's your pot hat, Johnny Appleseed?" mocked the child's friend, grabbing a palmful of seeds out of the sack and throwing them in my face.

"I have never owned a pot hat!" I desperately replied. "Please, give me back my seeds!"

A concerned looking woman pushed through a crowd that had formed to laugh at my misfortune. "There you boys are!" she exclaimed in a scolding tone. She grabbed the childrens' wrists, and they dropped my sack. "I told you to stay away from here..." She laid her cold, scrutinous eyes upon me, "...away from HIM!"

The first child looked down at the pavement. "Sorry ma. I really think he's harmless though-"

She struck him. "Boy, no one who lives in a tower is harmless! Now come, we're going home right now!"

As the two hooligans were dragged away, I stooped over and picked up the fallen sack. About half the seeds it once contained were spilled all over the street. I wrangled as many as I could, then stood, shouldered the pouch and finished the walk to my tower at the end of the block.

The horns of a traffic jam blared as I fumbled the large brass key into the keyhole. I swung open the large, heavy oak door and stepped inside onto the stone floor. A few of my wall-mounted torches had gone out, so I relit them before going upstairs.

Up three stories I walked, past the bailey, the oubliette, the garderobe, and the casemate, up to the dovecote, where the Great Bell hung. As soon as I entered, the pigeons there flocked around me.

"Hungry, are you, my lovelies?" I asked, dipping my hand into the sack. I extracted a fistful of seeds and tossed them into the air.

Future Day 1

In a small dark room a man lies motionless on a medical table. The main lights of the room are off, but a strip of emergency backup lights line the edges of the floor emitting a faint florescent glow. Slowly the man’s eyes open. He sees only a dark blur. He moves his arms, but feels them held back by something. He gets the fingers of one hand onto the arm of the other and feels the tubes wrapped around his arms piercing his veins and measuring his pulse. He tries to untangle them, pulling weakly at the tubes, but fails. He had awoken without an ounce of energy and slowly his eyes closed once again.

                He is awakened from sleep with a strange shape hovering before him. A low groan emanates from this horrific bulbous mass. “Haaaaaaaaaaa…liiiiiiii……” it rumbles. He rolls off the table away from the thing ripping some of the tubes out of his arms and pulling all sorts of other medical equipment down with him crashing to the floor. The bulbous mass turns toward him, it appears to have some sort of a face. “Haaaaaaaaa…liiiiiiii…..” it groans on into a chortle pronouncing “Halifax.” The man’s mouth was agape. “It knows my name!” he thought, as he screamed silently. The thing bent down towards him and extended a smudged out limb. Halifax scurried on his back away from it. It continued its reach grabbing onto a metal stand that had been pulled down to the floor and picked it up placing it back in an upright position. A tube led from Halifax’s arm up into an empty bag held on the stand. Then another limb worked its way out of the crumbly mass holding a vial of fluid up to the empty bag. It carefully opened the seal on the bag to Halifax’s astonishment as it didn’t appear to be so nimble. As if breaking through the static on a radio a disembodied voice pronounced “Time for another dose. You’re reacting quite well” at the same time as this mushy being before him groaned “Tiiiii….muh…… foooooooor…..” and held up its vial to the seal on the empty bag. Halifax’s eyes followed the bag to the tube and the tube leading down into his arm. He began to pull with all his force, but he felt extremely weak. The liquid was streaming out of the vial into the bag. He grabbed the tube and gnawed at it. Finally it broke apart. Gray liquid spattered out onto the floor. The thing continued pouring. He rolled across the fallen equipment and pushed himself away from the creature. It carefully placed the lid back on its now empty vial and casually headed out the door. Halifax remained in a puddle on the floor exasperatingly inching his way out of it.

After a long moments rest he began to focus on the room around him and things became less of a blur. There was a water cooler in the corner. His thoughts lingered on this as he lay sprawled out on the floor. It was as if he hadn’t had a drop to drink for days. Even the thought of getting up exhausted him and his eyes slowly closed for another time.

                It was as if the quiet of the room had awakened him. He didn’t know how long he had been sleeping. Carefully he rolled over onto his knees and elbows. He clung to a shelf against the wall, gently pulling himself up. Once on his feet he leaned against the shelf. Finally he took a step towards the water cooler, and another and another. Placing a little paper cup under the nozzle and flipping on the spout a tremendous sense of warmth enveloped him. The first cup was like a raindrop in the desert, but the fifth felt like a waterfall. His gaze wandered back to the medical table where he had first awoken. He wanted badly to lie down once again, but feared he wouldn’t be able to get back up from that bedside. He stood before the doorway peering slightly down each end of the hallway barely illuminated by the little emergency lights. Standing there cautiously the first in a series of awful pangs of hunger began wrenching in his stomach. He peered just a little more around the doorway. There was no sign of that monster that had been there before. He grabbed another cup of water and quickly drank it down then headed out into the hallway. The same lights on the floor illuminated the hallway, but so did a few small windows. Their light was just as dim as the light coming from the floor. Softly he walked towards one of the windows not taking his eye off of the corner that the end of the hallway led to.

                In the window he saw that he was on a floor several stories up from the street. It wasn’t much brighter outside than it was inside and there weren’t any lights out there. The sky was filled with a thick smog that moved in clouds. Occasionally a stray ray of light would dart between the clouds across the town. On the other side of the street he noticed four people resting against a wall. It was dark and hard to see. He couldn’t make out there faces. Smoke seemed to be billowing out all around one of them. A bus was further down the street, but wasn’t moving. One person moved away from the others and entered the building they were resting against and soon came out again. Rejoining the others against the wall smoke began to billow out from around him too. Halifax looked for a way to open up the window. They walked up to the curb and began looking to either side although there wasn’t any traffic, just that motionless bus. Quickly they paced across the street towards his building. The window couldn’t be opened. He had wanted to shout out for help, but as they came closer they stopped resembling people he would want to draw attention from. They were gray and mushy looking beings as if they were partly made of charcoal. There was no definition to their general shapes let alone their faces. It was as if they were shifting whirlwind of forms.
                He continued down the hallway and peaked around the corner. The ceiling had caved in at the end of the hall blocking the way and letting a few rays of light shine down into the hallway. There were no windows here, only doors, some open and some closed. Slowly approaching the first door which was open he stopped in his steps as a jolt of terror shook his body at the sound of a stomach growl. Food wasn’t on his mind, but it should be he thought, as his body was demanding it.

A little farm house on the edge of town stood by an old barn in the middle of a few acres of fields covered in some sort of growth. Unfortunately the crops must not have been very good this year as it was difficult to make out what they were in the first place. Unless it was meant to be a crop of dust bunnies things had turned out very badly. There were no leaves or vines, only a thick grey web like tangle of organic matter unevenly covering the fields, but there were variations. Here was a patch where the webbing covered some rather large watermelon sized growths that pulsated in the wind. Another patch had hard thick stalks leading up to cocoon like substances that oozed and dripped like maple syrup. One feature stood out oddly from the rest on this farm though and that was a quite average looking greenhouse brightly illuminated from within and lighting up the disfigured mess of organic waste surrounding it.
                A man with a medical mask emerged from the stalks with one of the cocoon shaped fruits dripping in his rubber gloved hands and walked the path to the greenhouse as the sound of a generator rumbled in the dark. Inside he stood still a moment letting his eyes adjust to the bright sunlamps. The greenhouse lived up to its name and was full of vibrant green life. Vegetables of all kinds and in various states of growth were packed together and each plant had a scientifically marked label taking measure of various parameters. The cocoon-like substance the man had brought in was a complete foreigner to this world. It was nearly black compared to the bright artificial sun lit vegetables surrounding it. He placed it on to a clean empty table where lab equipment was prepared and then walked over to the tomatoes. Although compared to what was outside everything in here seemed very natural, but that wasn’t quite the case as some of the tomatoes for example had small purplish protrusions randomly jutting out of their forms distorting their shapes. Carefully reading the labels and examining their states of growth he chose and plucked a perfectly normal looking one from the vine and brought it over to the table placing it side by side with the foreigner. He sliced each in half and it became apparent that these were strange ancestors. The insides of each were examined and the seeds were collected into different containers. He heated up tiny pieces of each in different liquids and carefully began marking down the results. Looking at his wristwatch he began to rush through his note taking and quickly finished. He picked up the tomato in one hand and the cocoon substance in another and paced out the door. On his way to the house he chucked the cocoon into the fields. Inside the house he met another man in the kitchen also wearing gloves and a mask who had carefully placed about all the makings of a sandwich not yet put together and was waiting there with a cleared cutting board and a knife on the table. “Your turn” the man with the tomato said as he placed it down on the cutting board. “Thanks for taking your time” the other man said looking at his own wristwatch and then slicing up the tomato. “Hey I’m only five minutes late…” he replied, yet knowing full well how important the timing was. He left as the sandwich was being put together and placed in a plastic bag. The other man took the sandwich bag outside with him and hopped onto a bicycle, switching on its bright headlight and quickly pedaled down the road past the fields towards town.

Halifax was in the fourth room down the hallway having closed the door behind him. They were all examining rooms like his. There wasn’t a trace of life. He had gotten another drink of water, but had found no clue of what was happening and no way out of the building. His sense of urgency to eat had been nulled as he thought of that strange being that had hovered over his bedside. There were only two more doorways to go through and it didn’t look like there was anywhere else it could have gone. He stood at the door with his ear pressed against it. There wasn’t a sound. He creaked the door open as quietly as possible and stepped out into the hallway. The next door was wide open. He peered an eye around the door frame. It was still and lifeless like the others. Tracing the cold interior of the room with his careful gaze he noticed this patient had been luckier than the rest. A few dark colored blankets lay rumpled up on the bedside. Closing the door behind him he entered the room. Perhaps there could be something more in this room besides warm blankets. A wallet lay on the bedside table. He began to thumb through it. A few dollars and coins he took and placed in his pocket. He slid a driver’s license out and held it up, but he could only see a blur as his vision seemed to be drifting in and out of focus. He pushed himself up onto the bed to sit and steady himself. Holding up the license close to his face slowly it came into focus. The name was Darren Kremser. He had short balding brown hair and a downtrodden look. Halifax recognized this man, but didn’t know where from. He could recall meeting him somehow, but knew that he had not known him well or perhaps for very long. The sound of a door creaking loudly open took hold of Halifax and froze his stare onto the door to his room. One footstep after another filled the rooms and halls with their reverberations coming from directly in front of his door and steadily walking past it. He remained frozen as the steps quieted in the distance. Now was his chance he thought to find a way out of here. He hopped off of the bed and as he took a few steps it seemed that the blankets he had been sitting on were stuck onto to the back of his pants and were trailing along with his movement. He stumbled and fell to the ground. He grabbed at the blankets to fling them off, but they seemed to grab back and now he was trying to pull his hand away as the rest of the blankets began crawling further up him and wrapping around his body. Rolling around and kicking he tore a hole in the blankets which felt like thick melting plastic being stretched apart. He rolled onto his side and pushed himself up onto his feet as the blankets crawled up onto the arm of the hand they had grabbed onto and began turning into a big lump of material melting together around his arm. He held it up and away from his body as it dripped settling into the misshaped form of a giant wax ball that had sat melting in the sun for several hot hours. It painfully tightened around his arm all the way up to his elbow only leaving a few of his fingertips protruding from the end. Every pulse of his heartbeat was heightened into an intense throb throughout his arm. He kneeled and began scrapping this giant charcoal-gray colored knob against the metal bed frame and bashing it against the floor, but to no result as it had become completely solidified. The knob began to screech in pain like an animal, but wouldn’t come off. He slammed the door open and lugged his giant screeching knob into the hallway bashing it against the doorframe and walls as he made his way towards the caved in ceiling. He looked into the room that the footsteps came from and saw it had a large desk and many seats inside, but no way out of the building. He climbed onto the rubble from the ceiling and saw many small holes leading up to the roof. Climbing the pieces of walls that had fallen down he pulled himself up to the largest hole. As he did so a series of increasingly loud thuds approached from above shaking small chunks of the ceiling down onto the floor. He jumped down and ran into the nearest room and threw the door behind him. He tried to pull the desk over to the door, but it was too heavy and hard to grip with his malformed limb. The building shook with the rumble of the ceiling being further caved in. Instead he grabbed a chair and jammed it up against the door knob. The knob on his arm kept screeching like a metal fork being scratched across a pan. He ran behind large wooden desk and crawled underneath it. The door to the room began to shake with something trying to force it open. The sounds of people running down the halls echoed throughout the building. He bashed the knob on his arm again and again trying to make it quiet, but it only shrieked more. “Shit! Come on…!” he shouted with terror in frustration as it screeched on. “Shhhhhhhhh…..!” At the sound of the shush the screech’s high pitch and velocity lowered a bit. The wood making up the door was being broken apart down the middle. He continued shushing it quietly, “shhhhh….. shhhh…….” Unthinkingly his free hand began to caress and pet this big dark lump. Its screech turned into a gentle cooing. “Shh…” The chair flung down and the door burst open. He couldn’t see the front of the room from under the desk, he just remained huddled into a ball as still and quiet as possible gently stroking his arm problem. Several people’s footsteps ran into the room and suddenly stopped dead quiet except for one pair that slowly continued its movement. All of the goings on coming from down the hallway and the other rooms was dying down too. He heard the chair that had been flung down being picked up and slid into a position on the floor and then that last pair of footsteps died down.

He didn’t dare move. He lay under the desk listening intently. It was completely silent except for the occasional sound of something almost like the buzzing of a fly, but with a deeper tone and more garbled. As he listened he had been looking at his arm. The knob seemed to quiver ever so slightly. He had stopped petting it now. It was almost as if he had put it to sleep. He too began to drift to sleep and as he did so the distant tap tapping sound of someone coming from a long way down the hall came nearer and nearer. As he strained to hear the slow distant and repetitious sound of the footsteps it lulled him to sleep in a ball under the desk using the knob on his arm as a pillow.

The man wearing the gloves and mask on the bicycle with the sandwich in his bag was coasting down a long hill shining the headlight of his bicycle into the smoggy gray world. The woods he rode past were now and endless tangle of one large tree with many trunks. The branches had coiled and twisted together in every possible configuration into such a density that it would be impossible to navigate through. There were no longer any leaves or needles, only layers of filthy dust piled inches high on every possible surface. Occasionally a sharp gust of wind would burst a small pocket of dust and send it flying across the road enveloping its lone bicycle rider in a cloud that wouldn’t settle for minutes.

                This bicycle riding man of science approached a curve in the road he had now grown to know well.  As he turned with it still coasting downhill the first beacon of what used to be human sat in a van endlessly waiting to pull onto the main road. The van faced towards him. It had no lights on and its engine was off. Its driver was a shape shifting mess of aggressively angular bits and pieces trying to hold together a form. As he coasted by it he gave himself a few strong pushes of the pedals to increase his speed downhill. The shape in the van remained in its place.

                Many vehicles approached him now. All of them were strewn about the roadside motionless. Each one had at least its own peculiar driver, but some even had their own peculiar passengers. He had almost memorized the path in between and through them. He pedaled quickly on this path curving around and through the trucks and cars, but slowed to halt quite a distance away from where the stop light used to shine. Beings in all sorts of different states were crossing the road. Some of them were extremely vague. Perhaps only a leg and an arm could be deciphered from among their forms loosely hanging together and struggling to take themselves one direction or another. Others were startlingly complete, with enough definition to make out the contortions of their faces as they spoke. Sounds too hovered around these beings in various states of decay. A cloud of groans and whispers would float by seemingly disconnected with anyone or anything at all, but other sounds emanated directly from the distorted mouths of one the more well put together beings. He watched them closely and slowly approached the throngs of beings. Spotting a clear way through he took it and pedaled hard. There were less people on the other side walking along the sidewalks, but still the safest place was on the road among the stationary cars. He pedaled on his way passing many more crosswalks that were thankfully less crowded. He came upon a scene he had seen a few times before that had always seemed just a bit more peculiar than the others. It was something he had to watch out for as he had seen this particular shape wander off onto the pavement for a moment. Several very small beings danced around a much larger and vague one. As they danced around it they would dash towards it until eventually after the dash of one of them a part of the large vague being would shatter and million black pieces would float up into the air a few feet and then rain down across the sidewalk and onto the road. The small beings dispersed, but the large shattered one would ragingly crash down onto the ground where the black specks had fallen gathering as many of them back up into itself as it could and then ragingly tumble down onto another spot where they had fallen. He stayed pedaling on the far side of the road as he carefully watched the shape roll and tumble across the pavement of the road where a large amount of black specks had been strewn. Just down the end of the block he came to a landmark where he would have to turn off this road and onto another. It was an anachronistic old tower right smack dab in the middle of everything. It was of historical significance to the town, but had been owned by only one man who had always refused to let it go or to have it be shown to anyone. He checked his watch. It was midnight.