Survival

by Chris Wright

  “Hey, hey, calm down” Emma said resting her hand on his shoulder, “What's going on?”

  She looked at the screen to see what reply made him so angry, whatever it was seemed to be incoherent. Samir took another drag from his cigarette, put it out in the nearby ashtray and rubbed his forehead.

  “It's not right, I'm not right, this damned thing isn't right” He said still rubbing his forehead in frustration.

  “Ok, settle down a minute and talk to me about it” Emma said.

  Samir took another gulp from his glass and then looked at Emma with an almost crazed look in his eyes.

  “This is going to sound crazy, it really is, but I keep seeing shadow figures” He said

  “Yeah, I saw you typing that, what are they?”

  “I'm not sure, that's why I was asking in a chat room about them. I found a paranormal message board and thought someone on there might be able to make sense of them” He said shaking his head, “It started yesterday when I was coming home from work. While I was driving, in the corner of my eye, I kept seeing what looked like shadows of people, but when I looked in their direction they were gone. I shrugged it off at first, but then when I got home, I kept seeing them. I saw them on and off all night and I had to have half of this bottle just to sleep”

  “So, can you still see them now?” Emma asked looking around.

  “Not this minute, but I have seen them today. They're always just one glance away, I'm seeing them more frequently. They're shadow-like, but they seem to have some kind of blue veins, I'm not sure what they are”

  “And the message board, any luck on there?”

  He shook his head.

  “I thought I was getting somewhere, but then the replies were getting sinister and weird” He replied.

  “Sinister how? Were people threatening you?” She asked.

  “No, not as such” He said taking another sip, “They started by telling me that they were always there and had been with us the whole time. Then I got replies saying they were coming for me. After that, any messages just turned into gibberish, a random mixture of numbers and letters”.

  “It sounds like someone is messing with you” Emma said concerned, “I would turn the laptop off if I were you, it's just people being dicks. They can tell you're in a bad frame of mind and taking advantage of it. You've just been working too hard”

  Maybe she was right thought Samir. He had been doing extra shifts earlier in the week so that might have finally caught up with him. The shadow figures weren't the only problem though, he'd had weird sensations while in bed. It felt as if his body was being dropped from a height at some times, and then at other times as if something was trying to pull him sideways. He put it down to the effects of the alcohol he had drank. This could all be related to that, a mix of that and his tiredness. He took another sip, finishing the remaining vodka from his glass. Emma took the glass away from him.

  “This stuff isn't going to help” She said, “You need to get some rest”

  Samir knew she was probably right. It was a good thing she had turned up when she did, otherwise he could have been stuck in his paranoid frame of mind all day, with the online trolls making his thoughts more and more desperately confused.

  “I think I'll have a lie down” he said as he stumbled to his feet. How many drinks had he had Emma wondered?

  Emma saw he was wobbling a little and helped him over to the sofa where he lay down slowly.

  “I'll make a move then” she said, “Are you going to be okay?”

  Samir muttered what she presumed to be a yes, so she turned to the front door. She heard a strange beeping sort of sound and looked round wondering what it was. It was coming from the laptop. She decided it was best to shut it down for him, it looked like it had caused enough damage to him this morning. She never understood people on these message boards, they could be so cruel, taking jokes too far, jokes that generally weren't even funny to begin with. She avoided them herself, she had no time for them and had better things to do. She got to the laptop and proceeded to turn it off. Just as she was searching for the shutdown option the screen flickered, what looked like strands of bright blue sparked on and off in quick succession, and the speakers emitted a strange static sound. He must have picked up some kind of virus from that message board she thought. She found the shutdown button and pressed it. As she did so she felt a sudden surge of electrical static hit her fingers and spread quickly up her arm and into her head, giving her a jolt.

  “Shit” she said, taken by surprise.

  It felt like her body convulsed for a moment and that she was being pulled towards the wall. She felt a strange tingling too that quickly faded. She left Samir a note to get his laptop checked as it gave her an electric shock and also that he might have picked up a virus, and left him snoring on the sofa. She closed the front door behind him and started up a light jog along his path, turning on to the road to head back to her house. Her attention was drawn to a figure standing across the road motionless. She looked a bit closer and they seemed to be almost see-through and in an odd monochrome colour. She turned back to face the direction she was running and shook it off. It seemed strange, but she'd just been having an odd conversation with Samir so his paranoia was rubbing off on her and making her imagine things. She decided to take a slightly different route back, passing across a large public park in the centre of the city for a change. Behind her the monochrome figure slowly drifted towards Samir's house, the odd quick flicker of blue lighting it up as it floated through his wall, as if the wall was made of air.

  The Sycamore Stop

  Danny looked at Monique in complete surprise, he wasn't expecting her to start talking about creatures.

  “They seem to be following me, everywhere I turn I see them” She said wide eyed.

  “Can you see them now?”

  She looked around the bar at all the people sitting and talking, and then into the corners of the room.

  “I can make out something in the shadows, and I'm not sure all these people are people. I have a feeling that some could be the creatures in disguise”

  This was getting really strange Danny thought, looking around at the same people she had. Was she losing her mind? With everything going on Danny was beginning to suspect that there must be something in the city's water supply that shouldn't be there, something that was causing all these symptoms. If it was only happening to him, he would have thought it was just his mind, but it appeared to be much more than that.

  “Okay” Danny said putting his hand on top of hers, “What you're saying sounds crazy, you know that, I know that, but it's only as crazy as what I have been experiencing. I mean, shit, I thought I was going insane alone”

  “I can't describe the creatures Danny, which makes no sense” She said interrupting, “There's one in that corner, but it has no actual shape. It's the corner itself, it's there I know it is, but hiding in what I am seeing as just the corner of the room”

  “Okay Monique, my best guess is that there is something that's causing all these, well I don't what to call them, delusions?” He replied, “Yeah we'll go for delusions. It's not happening just to me, I know that now”

  “You can see them too?” She asked.

  “No, my symptoms are different, mine was to do with the Olivia thing”

  “Olivia?” she asked confused.

  Of course, Danny thought, he should have been expecting that reply.

  “Yes, I distinctly remember growing up with Olivia, and I remember seeing her a few days ago yes?” He said

  “Erm, okay”

  “Well as you saw during Samir's party, no one else can remember her, and your yearbook seemed to suggest she never existed other than in my head”

  Monique looked at him a bit confused.

  “I must have missed that part of the evening. Did you go searching through my stuff to find the yearbook? I don't just have that lying around” she said a little taken aback.

  Danny paused. It seemed that Mo
nique couldn't remember all the events of that evening, this was obviously another side effects of whatever was causing this.

  “No” He replied quickly, “Look, this may sound as crazy to you as what you're saying to me. I can remember things and people that other people can't. Like Olivia and Dave, well at least Sam said he couldn't remember him, do you?”

  “Dave?”

  “Yes”

  “No, not that I can recall” she confirmed.

  Danny made a quick sigh and held one hand slightly in the air, hesitating to rack his brains as to the best way to describe what he wanted to say.

  “So, what I'm saying is, I am having things happen to me, and you're having things happen to you. Each of us is experiencing different things, but the fact is that we're experiencing them all of a sudden. I'm thinking that there has to be a common cause, and the first thing that springs to mind is something in the city water supply. It has to be something that we're all in contact with” He said doing his best to sound like it was a credible theory.

  “Ok, but wouldn't everyone be affected?” She asked looking around, “All these people here would be having unusual things happen to them”

  “They probably are, but we don't know them, so they're not going to talk to us about it are they?”

  She nodded that it made sense, but who would do such a thing, and why? Of course, it could have been some accident and not deliberate. What could be in their water to cause this though? Some kind of hallucinogenic drug or compound? It only opened up more questions. She had another sip of her whiskey and continued to look around her nervously.

  “You could be right, but we need to find out for sure” She said.

  “Well, trust me, I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you. I felt like I was losing my mind, I even went to see a psychiatrist” He replied.

  “It's good to know that you're experiencing things too. Well not good for you, but you know what I'm saying” she said with a nervous laughter.

  “Ha, yeah I know” he said smiling back at her, “I'm glad I was able to help a bit and it's good for me to know that I'm probably not going crazy, not yet anyway. I wonder if Mike is having some issues”

  “Mike?” she repeated with a slight frown.

  “Yeah, it's just you normally call him and confide in him about things, not me. So it was unusual for you to ring me, but I'm glad you did” He said still smiling.

  “Mike?” She repeated using the exact same frown that she had on the night he mentioned Olivia.

  Danny was silent for one moment and then scratched his chin, the sound of his nails against his stubble breaking the silence.

  “So, I'm guessing you've never known anyone called Mike?” He said laughing to himself despairingly, to which she shook her head to give clear sign that she didn't. Of course, back to his symptoms, he knew they wouldn't disappear, and it seemed that more and more people have been imaginary. He wasn't surprised by this anymore, his paranoia turning more into frustration than anything else.

  “I just have to ask though, are you real?” He said. He knew after he had said that, that the crazy see-saw they were playing on had swung back to him.

  “Of course I am” replied Monique as she slapped his arm, “Would you feel that if I wasn't?”

  He knew there was a logical reason for all this now, they just had to figure out what it was.

  “This is a bit of a relief, but I won't be happy until we're back to normal” Monique said as she rose from her seat, “Can you excuse me a moment, I need to use the restroom”.

  She walked off to the restroom leaving Danny looking around the room to make sure he wasn't having the same strange symptoms she was having as well. It seemed not, so that was one thing to be thankful for at least. Monique did what she needed to do in the restroom and strode towards the wash basins to wash her hands and freshen up. She looked at herself in the mirror and almost didn't recognise herself, the toll of everything, combined with the early morning whiskeys had made her look puffy and tired. What was she doing to herself she thought, she needed to stop this straight away. They had an idea what was going on and were going to get proper answers now, so there was no need for self-destructive behaviour.

  She washed her hands and dried them under the automatic dryer next to her. As she turned to leave, she glanced back at herself again and something caught her eye. She moved closer to the mirror, looking closer at her reflection. She had sworn that she saw a sudden flash of blue across her cheek that came and went, so leaned in closer.

  As she stared in concentration it looked like her face was morphing into someone or something else. Then she could see twinkles of blue, flashing for milliseconds, the intensity increasing rapidly, until she was staring at something grotesque with pulsing blue veins. She pulled her head back shocked and terrified and noticed that the blue veins trailed away from her distorted disturbing figure in the mirror and out all around and behind her. There was a sudden loud noise which made her break her gaze, and she looked round to see what it was. There was nothing there and she looked back in the mirror to see herself completely back to normal. It was another hallucination, she must learn to ignore them as they weren't real, anything at all that seemed strange or out of the ordinary isn't there, it's a symptom of whatever was in her blood stream. She let out a relieved sigh and took a few deep breaths.

  There was suddenly another loud noise, seemingly much louder than the last, almost as if it was emanating all around her, encompassing the space she was in. It was just another hallucination she thought, ignore it. There was another sound, and then another, harder, strangely metallic sounding but with an animalistic whine. Another one came from behind her and she spun round, it was a natural reaction and nothing she could control, despite her knowing that this was all in her head. She looked at the far cubicle where it sounded like the noise came from. Just as she did, the lights flickered on and off and flashes of blue pulsed out of the cubicle. She was telling herself that this was all just an illusion, convincing herself as best she could. She was still trying to convince herself as the cubicle appeared to implode into the space it filled, and blue rippling strands, or what looked like tentacles, began to grow from the middle. It began to swirl and convalesce into a pulsing form, making awful semi-synthetic grunts and growls, all the time changing shape. She could make out that it was some kind of creature, but its exact shape seemed to be undefined, it seemed to be formed from the fabric of reality itself. Despite her best efforts to deny its existence, it seemed to be shifting forward and that was her cue to finally surrender to her fear and run out of the restroom as quickly as she could with an involuntary scream.

  Samir’s House

  Samir had nodded off for no more than five minutes when a loud crash startled him back to consciousness. He was really feeling the mix of sleep deprivation and strong liquor pumping through his veins now. He looked round in surprise to see Emma had gone, so wondered what the noise was that he just heard. He slowly lifted himself off the couch and shuffled himself to his feet. Then there was another loud bang that seemed to be from a bedroom above him, so he figured Emma had gone upstairs, but had no idea why.

  “Emma?” He shouted as he continued shuffling towards the stairs, gradually ascending them.

  He heard no reply and so shouted her name again. This was met with a series of knocks and rapping's on the wall that seemed to be coming from the front bedroom. He walked towards the bedroom and swung the door open expecting to see her, but the room was empty. That was impossible he thought, he just heard noises from here. Suddenly a strange ethereal grunt rang out from behind him and he looked round confused. He was looking at the door to the back bedroom that appeared to be moving and pulsing. How was that possible? The door seemed to be giving off strange guttural shrieks and metallic growls that were both unnerving and captivating at the same time. He found himself transfixed by the sounds, almost hypnotized. In the corner of his eye he saw something, another shadow figure darting from one corner of th
e hall to the other. This was enough to bring him back to the reality of what seemed to be happening. If he was imagining this then his imagination was much more vivid than he ever realised. The shadow figure darted back to where he first saw it, drifting close to Samir, all the while the guttural calls rhythmically pulsating from the back-bedroom door. He noticed the door slowly melting into something, and it also seemed to be moving closer to Samir.

  Enough was enough, Samir thought, as he leapt down the stairs as quickly as he could. When he reached the bottom, he could still hear the metallic grunts oscillating around him and rapping's on all the walls around him continuing. The far wall started vibrating and blue string-like patterns begin to emerge, as several shadow people seemed to spring to life in his peripheral vision. He grabbed his car keys, he had to get out of there straight away, he couldn't stay in this house another moment. He turned and ran to the front door panicked and noticed that the blue veins from behind him were swirling into some kind of form. Shadow figures gradually came into full view, partly translucent, blue pulses flickering through them. He opened the door and ran, leaving it wide open. He had no time to think and just ran to his car, jumping in and starting the engine. The car roared to life and he screamed away as quick as he could.

  He had no idea where he was going to go, he just had to get away. Was all this really in his head? It seemed too real to him, he was convinced there had to be something going on. He put his foot on the pedal to go faster and nothing happened, with a sudden scream he realised that the car was starting to vibrate and flash with tiny speckles of blue, as if mini super-nova's were happening all around him. He hit the brake and still nothing happened. He screamed at the top of his voice as he grabbed the door handle and pushed it open, his sounds echoing back at him wildly like feedback. With that he jumped and hit the concrete road with a deafening thud. The car continued on its path, where it suddenly seemed to melt and fall apart into a throbbing pulsating mass, before it seemed to flick in and out of his vision, eventually vanishing completely.