Gramatically correct Hiker.
THE HIKER INTRO:
Close-up of hands pressed together as if in prayer, lightly touching someone's face. Thumbs protrude through a shirt with thumbholes. Red light closed eyes.
Shakes himself out of his dizziness and remembers.
Leaving the house quickly, with not much to wear for clothes. The door closes and goes to the next shot:
in a pile of snow. Feet walking as fast as possible in deep snow, the sound of a loud breath as they touch ground on a bridge. He sits down on the ground cradling himself to keep warm until he spots a car go by before running off to catch the street.
Shot of thumb out. Walking away at a distance, head shaking.
End
=====
Desperate, blind, walking down a cold street as if the rest of the world didn't matter. It’s dusk. I think to myself over and over again that there's got to be something wrong. no one's picking up, no one's driving by. A completely empty highway not even birds flying around in circles above me. Every day I make this trek to nowhere. Groceries, life. Living outside so far of town with no vehicle and an empty house to beg wasn't the life imagined by my mother. Smart kid, hand up, and big teacher smile. Things changed. Grown up, out of school, my brain stopped its doings, and here we are out at the pit of despair. I’m ready to throw things in. I’m ready to give up but something keeps me fragile at the outs. something has me going. It’s a fear of ending at a low, or of never amounting to anything. a fear of never looking someone in the eye with care. Never hearing the sound of heartbreak, never having meaningful conversation.
Just a man alone, walking, waiting to refill my stomach with substance because half ripped books and old newspapers don't do it anymore. It all went wrong somewhere.
My thumb shunned my walk silent. Kicking the same rocks from the highway, and sitting in the tall grass swatting mosquitoes, watching the night come. I sat for an hour waiting for the sun to disappear in the mounds of trees, and then got up to go again. One ride came my way. A strange man, ghostly beard with chew stains from tobacco, creepy, lonely. Like every weird driver in every weird movie you ever thought you saw. The length of a football field, or two crop layouts was all I could stand him for. Jumping out on a slow turn. And now at the outskirts, the bright lights shining enough to hurt my eyes. Light's escaped me for three hours since the sunset. I'm scared of the idea of a busy night in this city. It's nights are evil rabid sores, and I'm the mud an ant builds off of. So I’ve to keep my head up and my ears open. Open eyed sleep. Paper bags with extra rum.
The last of the darkness shifts as I get my first glimpse of Rutger Ave, the first street in town. I point out in my head all the possible areas for docking, resting my head temporarily until I look forward to a day's worth of walking. A stop for a crop of cash was possible until I saw the layer of filth on the cement walls. This place has gone downhill since the last time I was here. All broken to pieces as if an earthquake riot hit it, vandals, and demolition derby. It's as if a strong powerful wind came by, left the lights on, and brought everyone out.
Not a sign of life, yet.
Turning corners blankly. An alley is just a bit scarier at times, no one around, dark. Places to rest are dim, low in count, except for an abandoned hall. Boarded windows, graffiti that reads "FUCK SENSATIONALISM", and "GIVE ME SHELTER". Seeing these signs of pure nonsense makes me realize that people forget what they're doing, when it sounds good in their heads. Smart isn't always pretty. So I tear off a piece. Enough to get in and have hard carpeted floor to sleep on. Good sun-block for the morning.. As soon as i lie down, in shards of glass and dirty carpet, it hits me, sleep. All of a sudden clatter. Like nothing I'd heard before. Resembles a flock of birds flying away from a prey already killed by a beast.
Footsteps, and fear.
The jolt of waking up by noises and a silhouette outside shook me. Flapping of wings loudly from birds threw me for a loop, but the loud womanly scream from nowhere and the shape of a shadow, moving slowly from board to board. I see it pacing outside, and pick up a piece of glass that cuts my hand when I touch it. Tooth grinding and blood drips. The carpet shades itself into a bit of darker red, with the strange shadow. Outside is a monster hiding in the face of a beautiful woman. Eyes like burning incense fueled by a hatred for something I just cannot see.
Somehow, I have to figure out where this comes from. I have to get her to talk to me.
And so I hid. In the depths and cracks underneath where the windowpane used to be. I found a hole to stare out into the dark and look about for a set of eyes that shone not unlike the streetlights. No matter where you are, you should always be able to see a set of eyes.
But then the rush of being watched hit me. No longer the sounds of birds, but only crunching of the glass when I try hard not to move. No disturbance, silence please, for the one sneaking outside. I grab a moment to regain myself and stare out again, not only seeing the person once before, but numerous townsfolk. These people look more like an amazement of ten dirty scum, prancing and dancing down the streets as if they were rulers in a 17th century play, and all the Kings and Knights had been scared off by the plague. But she was moving. She was the only one not dancing. Walking down the middle of the street the only one with purpose. I was full of dirt and piss, and in my head, I could get away with following her just to see what this all was about.
I feel lost. The only thing I really wanted was to find a place for sleep. I'd have slept through the night without a worry, and moved on through this piece of a town, to the next one and on and on until I ended up back where I started. Down the street I go though, through a crowd of slow moving people following an aura. Following someone who's not almost exactly there but has something left. A piece of brain draws me to her as if it's all an act for essentials, to be able to get outside from a hiding spot.
There’s a gate ahead. Like the size of a wall, barbed wire across the top, dried blood plastered around it, the top of it as if a war zone is long past. She's able to get in with ease I assume. But how to follow her in, find this out? I follow her through. She stops at the gate, mumbles incoherently but I can’t hear it, as it gets blown by the wind. With ease she's into something I just can't understand. As I sit on the curb and watch the doors close, I take a second to think. What the hell is really going on? I haven't even taken in the complete idea of what I'm doing. I glance around me, and realize how dark blue everything is. The darkness of the streets, and yet it seems like it's midday. I haven't seen the sun since it set last night and it's 9am. Perfect time for middle of the day heat. But it's as if the whole city has the same wall with barbed wire. Block the sun from getting in and the darkness that carries half of the woman and the rest of these meandering creatures can roam freely. It makes no sense, in my head.
Maybe the brown bag will help. Maybe if I could find someplace to lay my head or shower, wake up from this strange dream that is half dead.
And then, sudden black comes over me.
Dizzy head. Foggy eyes. There’s a horrible burst of flame inside of my brain telling me to touch the sides. It's the warmth of a bloodstream falling from the side of my head, crunchy bits in my hair. I sit up in the bed that I don't ever remember being in and look around, not recognizing a thing, nor being able to stand. Where am I? The walls are brown as if someone had sprinkled brown sugar on them. I stand up briefly and lose all power in my legs. On my way down vision gets blurred like cigarette smoke in the cold and I miss hitting my head on a desk by inches.
Food sits on this desk, half-eaten, rotting. How long have I been here?
And then she enters. For some reason as I sit on the floor and stare at my feet I don't even move. This horribly scabbed wooden floor has laid terror on my body when I sit at it but at least it tells me that I still feel alive. She's standing at the door, holding it open, and not entering anywhere close to me. That same terror/wonderment I saw her with before, the thing that attracted me to her in the first place but I don't understand something. She looks more frail, her arms solid bone when she reaches in as far as she can without moving close to me to catch on to the food that's lying on this desk. But she doesn't get far before I grab for her arm. The plate falls, a look of absolute terror glazes her eyes and I don't hear anything but the slam of the door, a splinter in my foot, my head on the desk and lines in the deep brown ceiling.
Days pass. And the only way I’m sure it's been days is that I’ve seen the sun rise and set. My stomach toils with some grumbling and I've got nothing comfortable to be on. It's as if you're sick with the flu and the bed keeps getting hot and cold again. It seems that there's really nothing for me to understand; no reason for me to continue. Twice already I’ve tried to take my own life but the idea of cutting parts of yourself with sheared glass or hanging yourself in a room you can touch your toes from the ceiling.. It's a strange state of affairs. I'm losing faith in her. I'm losing faith in me. And I'm even wondering about the idea of why I decided to follow her in the first place. Nothing should have come from it. Harmless wandering should have never turned into this. It seems like it's been years. I've found a sharp object to inform myself of the past days by counting the sunset. I believe I’ve been here for a total of seventeen days, and I am frail. My body is bone, my once distinctive jaw line full of goatee is now messy, dirty, gross. As if the hell I've always dreamt about has finally gotten a hold of me. I must break out; I need to break out, in order to survive.
I remember standing against a wall two days ago wanting to sink into it. Let my eyes fall to the floor, and disappear into an abyss for all eternity, but something keeps me going on. The fact that it's been more than a week since she has come is now nothing but a memory.
There is nothing else to do but believe in myself.
Cracking away at the floorboard is all I have. Over and over again with a spoon, I continue doing so. And then it happened. She let me out. One day as I was waking up, she was over the bed, staring. I jumped, hiding back against the wall. It was the first time she'd ever let me see her terrifying face. Partial cuts, burns, bruises, lost beauty in a sea of torment. She waved her hand at me, to get me to follow her. I look behind me as I shut the door to a brutal, horrific time. I don't know what's ahead.
A piece of paper lies on the floor, scratches in the wall counting the days
In my head I see her, like a fictional character I can see while reading a book. It's as if she's laid herself out for me in the pages of one complete chapter, and her words leap off the pages and into my imagination, but only late at night when I lie in bed alone. I'm never sure what sets it off. Sometimes it's the heat from the register, sometimes it's that feeling that someone's there with you, even though you're lying in bed by yourself hunched to one side. Maybe it was just the idea that there was someone I could be so in tune with, and not touch. I just feel so in tune with this person, even though it's been a very long time since then. I still don't know where I am and can't explain this dream I kept having. Visions of her were so real, it's as if time stopped all for one moment, just to allow me to be able to dream that someone out there could have completed me.
[Editor’s note: this is where the story switches. the dream like sequence above will counteract with the reality sequences below, that are not complete as of yet.]
It’s a regular day at work, hiding behind a wall of boredom, tapping my pencil against the desk as if I was busy. Typing brings no solace. Writing in places, words that don’t mean anything, just to see the scripture of the screen. I want this to change. Dreary dead life means nothing to me, if only there was an escape. Something that can tear away at my life and change anything that ever meant a single bit. Tear away at the scripture; turn it into anything but this. Maybe somewhere under a new name and a new life and no more dress clothes to convince my bosses that I’m worthy of their money, a new start could work.
It’s not like it’s always been like this, but for everyone, it never is. Everyone has a part of their lives they’d like to return to. In high school I had more fun being the loner child than I ever wanted to have. It set me up for being whom I am, a drone in a working area where no one really exists outside of the walls. You’re a statistic now, a number on a paper, nothing that really matters. You’ve been switched into sticking in a building with a large community of people who are at the same place: Old people who just don’t care, mid-lifers who’ve given up, young people on their way out. And there’s nothing you can do but switch into a new mode of thinking to keep you on your feet before you drive yourself mad.
[Enter Part One]
Home is where I’m at now. Ready to rest my weary head on pillows filled with last night’s discontents, left staring at the ceiling until the wee hours. I see flashes of light in an otherwise dark context. The idea of my continuous involvement specifically in being alone typifies me into something I’m not sure of. An angst ridden, overbearing lust for something I cannot ever attain. It’s the relationship that drives me mad, the one I see in my head so vividly that I fall to pieces. And what if it was real and all of this wasn’t? What if the idea of waking up and getting into a vehicle to get to a place that completely numbs your brain and slows your process was the part that was the bad dreams you want to forget, but are the only parts you remember?
There must be a truth somewhere that you can live in that space. Having two sets of lives in the prospect of really only concerning yourself with the one that hurts more and that you have less control over just does not seem like the right equation. Everyone has that balance that idea that whatever it is that you’re living is the true prospective of what your life really is. But what if you can change it? What if you could create something for yourself that makes you feel as if you were really living what you wanted?
[Enter Part Two]
Flash forward to a party. A big party in a big house, someone’s parent’s gone for the weekend. There is a pile of young friends from work conversing and dancing to drab music and conversation, respectively. Walking through them to the stairs, I want to find solace in the darkness of the basement. There’s a sound emanating from it. A noise like I’ve never heard, the mixture of someone screaming and grinding their teeth together loudly as if they were falling out. I turn on the light and look around, nothing there. Maybe my imagination, I think to myself. As I walk back to turn the light off and hide in a different room, I hear a muffled noise from the corner.
There’s a frail person lying there, food at the table beside her. I casually walk up to the table, staying at a far distance away from the stranger to catch the food that’s lying there. But I don’t get far before she grabs for my arm. The plate falls, a look of absolute terror glazes her eyes and I don't hear anything but the slam of the plate against the wall. Lightheaded, I stand up and turn around sensing hundreds of pairs of eyes on me. I sit down on the floor rocking with eyes closed, assuming that my sudden burst of seeing things is something I’ve dreamed up.
My eyes open to complete darkness.
[Enter Part Three]
Close-up of hands pressed together as if in prayer, lightly touching someone's face. Thumbs protrude through a shirt with thumbholes. Red light closed eyes.
Shakes himself out of his dizziness and remembers.
Leaving the house quickly, with not much to wear for clothes. The door closes and goes to the next shot:
in a pile of snow. Feet walking as fast as possible in deep snow, the sound of a loud breath as they touch ground on a bridge. He sits down on the ground cradling himself to keep warm until he spots a car go by before running off to catch the street.
Shot of thumb out. Walking away at a distance, head shaking.
End
=====
Desperate, blind, walking down a cold street as if the rest of the world didn't matter. It’s dusk. I think to myself over and over again that there's got to be something wrong. no one's picking up, no one's driving by. A completely empty highway not even birds flying around in circles above me. Every day I make this trek to nowhere. Groceries, life. Living outside so far of town with no vehicle and an empty house to beg wasn't the life imagined by my mother. Smart kid, hand up, and big teacher smile. Things changed. Grown up, out of school, my brain stopped its doings, and here we are out at the pit of despair. I’m ready to throw things in. I’m ready to give up but something keeps me fragile at the outs. something has me going. It’s a fear of ending at a low, or of never amounting to anything. a fear of never looking someone in the eye with care. Never hearing the sound of heartbreak, never having meaningful conversation.
Just a man alone, walking, waiting to refill my stomach with substance because half ripped books and old newspapers don't do it anymore. It all went wrong somewhere.
My thumb shunned my walk silent. Kicking the same rocks from the highway, and sitting in the tall grass swatting mosquitoes, watching the night come. I sat for an hour waiting for the sun to disappear in the mounds of trees, and then got up to go again. One ride came my way. A strange man, ghostly beard with chew stains from tobacco, creepy, lonely. Like every weird driver in every weird movie you ever thought you saw. The length of a football field, or two crop layouts was all I could stand him for. Jumping out on a slow turn. And now at the outskirts, the bright lights shining enough to hurt my eyes. Light's escaped me for three hours since the sunset. I'm scared of the idea of a busy night in this city. It's nights are evil rabid sores, and I'm the mud an ant builds off of. So I’ve to keep my head up and my ears open. Open eyed sleep. Paper bags with extra rum.
The last of the darkness shifts as I get my first glimpse of Rutger Ave, the first street in town. I point out in my head all the possible areas for docking, resting my head temporarily until I look forward to a day's worth of walking. A stop for a crop of cash was possible until I saw the layer of filth on the cement walls. This place has gone downhill since the last time I was here. All broken to pieces as if an earthquake riot hit it, vandals, and demolition derby. It's as if a strong powerful wind came by, left the lights on, and brought everyone out.
Not a sign of life, yet.
Turning corners blankly. An alley is just a bit scarier at times, no one around, dark. Places to rest are dim, low in count, except for an abandoned hall. Boarded windows, graffiti that reads "FUCK SENSATIONALISM", and "GIVE ME SHELTER". Seeing these signs of pure nonsense makes me realize that people forget what they're doing, when it sounds good in their heads. Smart isn't always pretty. So I tear off a piece. Enough to get in and have hard carpeted floor to sleep on. Good sun-block for the morning.. As soon as i lie down, in shards of glass and dirty carpet, it hits me, sleep. All of a sudden clatter. Like nothing I'd heard before. Resembles a flock of birds flying away from a prey already killed by a beast.
Footsteps, and fear.
The jolt of waking up by noises and a silhouette outside shook me. Flapping of wings loudly from birds threw me for a loop, but the loud womanly scream from nowhere and the shape of a shadow, moving slowly from board to board. I see it pacing outside, and pick up a piece of glass that cuts my hand when I touch it. Tooth grinding and blood drips. The carpet shades itself into a bit of darker red, with the strange shadow. Outside is a monster hiding in the face of a beautiful woman. Eyes like burning incense fueled by a hatred for something I just cannot see.
Somehow, I have to figure out where this comes from. I have to get her to talk to me.
And so I hid. In the depths and cracks underneath where the windowpane used to be. I found a hole to stare out into the dark and look about for a set of eyes that shone not unlike the streetlights. No matter where you are, you should always be able to see a set of eyes.
But then the rush of being watched hit me. No longer the sounds of birds, but only crunching of the glass when I try hard not to move. No disturbance, silence please, for the one sneaking outside. I grab a moment to regain myself and stare out again, not only seeing the person once before, but numerous townsfolk. These people look more like an amazement of ten dirty scum, prancing and dancing down the streets as if they were rulers in a 17th century play, and all the Kings and Knights had been scared off by the plague. But she was moving. She was the only one not dancing. Walking down the middle of the street the only one with purpose. I was full of dirt and piss, and in my head, I could get away with following her just to see what this all was about.
I feel lost. The only thing I really wanted was to find a place for sleep. I'd have slept through the night without a worry, and moved on through this piece of a town, to the next one and on and on until I ended up back where I started. Down the street I go though, through a crowd of slow moving people following an aura. Following someone who's not almost exactly there but has something left. A piece of brain draws me to her as if it's all an act for essentials, to be able to get outside from a hiding spot.
There’s a gate ahead. Like the size of a wall, barbed wire across the top, dried blood plastered around it, the top of it as if a war zone is long past. She's able to get in with ease I assume. But how to follow her in, find this out? I follow her through. She stops at the gate, mumbles incoherently but I can’t hear it, as it gets blown by the wind. With ease she's into something I just can't understand. As I sit on the curb and watch the doors close, I take a second to think. What the hell is really going on? I haven't even taken in the complete idea of what I'm doing. I glance around me, and realize how dark blue everything is. The darkness of the streets, and yet it seems like it's midday. I haven't seen the sun since it set last night and it's 9am. Perfect time for middle of the day heat. But it's as if the whole city has the same wall with barbed wire. Block the sun from getting in and the darkness that carries half of the woman and the rest of these meandering creatures can roam freely. It makes no sense, in my head.
Maybe the brown bag will help. Maybe if I could find someplace to lay my head or shower, wake up from this strange dream that is half dead.
And then, sudden black comes over me.
Dizzy head. Foggy eyes. There’s a horrible burst of flame inside of my brain telling me to touch the sides. It's the warmth of a bloodstream falling from the side of my head, crunchy bits in my hair. I sit up in the bed that I don't ever remember being in and look around, not recognizing a thing, nor being able to stand. Where am I? The walls are brown as if someone had sprinkled brown sugar on them. I stand up briefly and lose all power in my legs. On my way down vision gets blurred like cigarette smoke in the cold and I miss hitting my head on a desk by inches.
Food sits on this desk, half-eaten, rotting. How long have I been here?
And then she enters. For some reason as I sit on the floor and stare at my feet I don't even move. This horribly scabbed wooden floor has laid terror on my body when I sit at it but at least it tells me that I still feel alive. She's standing at the door, holding it open, and not entering anywhere close to me. That same terror/wonderment I saw her with before, the thing that attracted me to her in the first place but I don't understand something. She looks more frail, her arms solid bone when she reaches in as far as she can without moving close to me to catch on to the food that's lying on this desk. But she doesn't get far before I grab for her arm. The plate falls, a look of absolute terror glazes her eyes and I don't hear anything but the slam of the door, a splinter in my foot, my head on the desk and lines in the deep brown ceiling.
Days pass. And the only way I’m sure it's been days is that I’ve seen the sun rise and set. My stomach toils with some grumbling and I've got nothing comfortable to be on. It's as if you're sick with the flu and the bed keeps getting hot and cold again. It seems that there's really nothing for me to understand; no reason for me to continue. Twice already I’ve tried to take my own life but the idea of cutting parts of yourself with sheared glass or hanging yourself in a room you can touch your toes from the ceiling.. It's a strange state of affairs. I'm losing faith in her. I'm losing faith in me. And I'm even wondering about the idea of why I decided to follow her in the first place. Nothing should have come from it. Harmless wandering should have never turned into this. It seems like it's been years. I've found a sharp object to inform myself of the past days by counting the sunset. I believe I’ve been here for a total of seventeen days, and I am frail. My body is bone, my once distinctive jaw line full of goatee is now messy, dirty, gross. As if the hell I've always dreamt about has finally gotten a hold of me. I must break out; I need to break out, in order to survive.
I remember standing against a wall two days ago wanting to sink into it. Let my eyes fall to the floor, and disappear into an abyss for all eternity, but something keeps me going on. The fact that it's been more than a week since she has come is now nothing but a memory.
There is nothing else to do but believe in myself.
Cracking away at the floorboard is all I have. Over and over again with a spoon, I continue doing so. And then it happened. She let me out. One day as I was waking up, she was over the bed, staring. I jumped, hiding back against the wall. It was the first time she'd ever let me see her terrifying face. Partial cuts, burns, bruises, lost beauty in a sea of torment. She waved her hand at me, to get me to follow her. I look behind me as I shut the door to a brutal, horrific time. I don't know what's ahead.
A piece of paper lies on the floor, scratches in the wall counting the days
In my head I see her, like a fictional character I can see while reading a book. It's as if she's laid herself out for me in the pages of one complete chapter, and her words leap off the pages and into my imagination, but only late at night when I lie in bed alone. I'm never sure what sets it off. Sometimes it's the heat from the register, sometimes it's that feeling that someone's there with you, even though you're lying in bed by yourself hunched to one side. Maybe it was just the idea that there was someone I could be so in tune with, and not touch. I just feel so in tune with this person, even though it's been a very long time since then. I still don't know where I am and can't explain this dream I kept having. Visions of her were so real, it's as if time stopped all for one moment, just to allow me to be able to dream that someone out there could have completed me.
[Editor’s note: this is where the story switches. the dream like sequence above will counteract with the reality sequences below, that are not complete as of yet.]
It’s a regular day at work, hiding behind a wall of boredom, tapping my pencil against the desk as if I was busy. Typing brings no solace. Writing in places, words that don’t mean anything, just to see the scripture of the screen. I want this to change. Dreary dead life means nothing to me, if only there was an escape. Something that can tear away at my life and change anything that ever meant a single bit. Tear away at the scripture; turn it into anything but this. Maybe somewhere under a new name and a new life and no more dress clothes to convince my bosses that I’m worthy of their money, a new start could work.
It’s not like it’s always been like this, but for everyone, it never is. Everyone has a part of their lives they’d like to return to. In high school I had more fun being the loner child than I ever wanted to have. It set me up for being whom I am, a drone in a working area where no one really exists outside of the walls. You’re a statistic now, a number on a paper, nothing that really matters. You’ve been switched into sticking in a building with a large community of people who are at the same place: Old people who just don’t care, mid-lifers who’ve given up, young people on their way out. And there’s nothing you can do but switch into a new mode of thinking to keep you on your feet before you drive yourself mad.
[Enter Part One]
Home is where I’m at now. Ready to rest my weary head on pillows filled with last night’s discontents, left staring at the ceiling until the wee hours. I see flashes of light in an otherwise dark context. The idea of my continuous involvement specifically in being alone typifies me into something I’m not sure of. An angst ridden, overbearing lust for something I cannot ever attain. It’s the relationship that drives me mad, the one I see in my head so vividly that I fall to pieces. And what if it was real and all of this wasn’t? What if the idea of waking up and getting into a vehicle to get to a place that completely numbs your brain and slows your process was the part that was the bad dreams you want to forget, but are the only parts you remember?
There must be a truth somewhere that you can live in that space. Having two sets of lives in the prospect of really only concerning yourself with the one that hurts more and that you have less control over just does not seem like the right equation. Everyone has that balance that idea that whatever it is that you’re living is the true prospective of what your life really is. But what if you can change it? What if you could create something for yourself that makes you feel as if you were really living what you wanted?
[Enter Part Two]
Flash forward to a party. A big party in a big house, someone’s parent’s gone for the weekend. There is a pile of young friends from work conversing and dancing to drab music and conversation, respectively. Walking through them to the stairs, I want to find solace in the darkness of the basement. There’s a sound emanating from it. A noise like I’ve never heard, the mixture of someone screaming and grinding their teeth together loudly as if they were falling out. I turn on the light and look around, nothing there. Maybe my imagination, I think to myself. As I walk back to turn the light off and hide in a different room, I hear a muffled noise from the corner.
There’s a frail person lying there, food at the table beside her. I casually walk up to the table, staying at a far distance away from the stranger to catch the food that’s lying there. But I don’t get far before she grabs for my arm. The plate falls, a look of absolute terror glazes her eyes and I don't hear anything but the slam of the plate against the wall. Lightheaded, I stand up and turn around sensing hundreds of pairs of eyes on me. I sit down on the floor rocking with eyes closed, assuming that my sudden burst of seeing things is something I’ve dreamed up.
My eyes open to complete darkness.
[Enter Part Three]