by Chris Wright
Samir couldn't understand what was happening. He quickly pulled himself to his feet and noticed his elbows and knees were streaming with blood from where he had slammed against the concrete. Suddenly a shadow figure flashed into existence next to him, his dark eyes catching Samir's, pulling him in closer to the nothing-ness that lay behind them. He managed to pull his eyes away in terror and once again started to run. His run was laboured due to his intoxication, but his adrenalin was keeping him going, as he desperately tried to get away from the shadow figures. He kept looking behind him to see more figures joining in the chase. They seemed to float behind him effortlessly, all the while their deep penetrating eyes trying to pull him back towards them. Behind them he saw something bigger coming towards him, something morphing and pulsing, taking all forms yet no forms, as if the whole of the landscape was trying to fashion itself into a new existence.
He decided to concentrate on running, seemingly faster and faster, yet he appeared to be getting no further away from them. Streets and junctions on either side of him flew past at tremendous speed, as if he was running at light-speed, houses and buildings rippling and popping out of existence one by one as his legs pounded the concrete, his bloodied knees weeping fiercely and leaving a trail far behind him. He saw a public park to his left, there were people there, this would be the safest place to be he thought, so he quickly darted in. He had no idea how he had managed to get here so quick as he had been running for what seemed like less than a minute, and this park was easily more than ten minutes from his house. It must have been the adrenalin dilating his perception of time, like when you have an accident and you process everything much quicker. He looked behind to see the shadow figures and the landscape monster still coming for him as he dashed despairingly across the grass. Up ahead he saw Emma and called out to her before he screamed at the top of his voice.
Emma
Emma heard someone shout her name behind her, it sounded almost desperate and she couldn't make out who it was. She swiftly turned her head and saw Samir, seemingly running on the spot. His legs and arms were swinging wildly, but he was stuck fast, as if magnetized to the ground. What was happening? And how did he get here so fast? It took her ten minutes and she was a strong runner, Samir had never run in his life. She turned to run back to him, strangely fascinated by how he was moving without going anywhere, it seemed to defy the laws of physics.
She was about thirty metres away when everything suddenly got stranger. Samir screamed, louder than she had ever heard anyone scream before, and his eyes were wide with fear. She suddenly saw something behind him, figures blinking in and out of her view, like someone was switching them on and off quickly like a light switch. They were blinking in and out at a more rapid rate the longer she looked at them and then noticed that they all looked like the monochrome figure she thought she saw outside his house. She was now confused and scared, her mind racing, trying to make sense of what was happening. As the shadow figures quickly seemed to take full form, she saw something behind them, moving in a wave-like way, something flecked with flashing blue strands. She started to hear a low thumping sound that seemed to make not only the ground shake, but also the sky. It was also getting more rapid, quicker and quicker until it was a long deep absorbing vibration.
Emma looked on in horror, tears streaming from her eyes, as the shadow figures started blinking back out of reality, their arms embracing Samir, who gradually started to blink in unison. She saw blue pulses flickering from behind him, gradually enveloping him and then his body seemed to shatter into pieces. His limbs detached themselves, blood seemed to explode into shards of glass, and as quickly as it started, he seemed to collapse in on himself. Blue pulses grabbed each part of him and swirled around in a chaotic fashion before being swallowed by a rip in reality.
Nothing.
There was suddenly nothing, no sign Samir had been there, no sign of the apparitions she saw, no hint of anything amiss. Everything was back to normal, which she couldn't comprehend. She looked around her at all the other people in the park, all acting normally. Had no-one seen that? Someone must have seen what had happened.
But what did happen? Her friend appeared out of nowhere, when he couldn't have reached her in that amount of time. Then they ran fixed to the spot, defying the laws of physics, before being snatched away by shadowy figures and pulsing blue fibres. None of that made sense, that didn't just happen. No one else had batted an eyelid around her so she had hallucinated the whole thing.
She sat down quickly on the nearest bench, wiping the tears away from her eyes. She was now seeing things, this wasn't normal. Had she been exposed to whatever it was that Samir was exposed to? That's the only thing that could make sense, as she was fine this morning until she went to Samir's, and he was the one talking about seeing things. She'd had a glass of water and then left. Was there something in the water? That was the only explanation she could come to. She decided to get home as quick as she could. She couldn't believe how real everything she had just seen felt to her, she needed to lie down and try and explain everything to Alistair.
She took a few deep breaths and then started up a light jog, but something seemed off. She couldn't think what it was for a minute, but then it suddenly dawned on her that she was having a severe case of Deja vu. She stopped in her tracks, looking around at the other people. They all looked familiar, as if she had lived this moment before, every detail around her seemed to get checked off a list in her mind, like she was expecting everyone to be doing what they were doing in this exact manner. Whatever was happening was mixing her thoughts up inside her head, twisting her brain activity round into the wrong parts, confusing her normal way of thinking. She tried to shake it off and started up a jog once more. After another hundred metres or so she realised that she couldn't feel her legs, but looking down they were moving perfectly normally. This was getting really intense now, she felt like her mind was being whisked in a blender, thoughts bouncing around and landing where they shouldn't.
All of a sudden, she noticed that people were looking in her direction. At first, she thought they were looking behind her, but when she turned her head, she noticed the people she passed kept their eyes locked on her. She stopped in front of an elderly woman dressed in a flowery jumper and loose-fitting jeans, whose eyes were concentrating deeply on her. She must be imagining this, these people can't all have their eyes fixed on her she thought, she was being paranoid.
“Can I help you?” She asked the elderly lady in front of her.
The elderly woman seemed to stutter, not just her voice but her whole being seemed like it fluttered in and out her view momentarily.
“It's coming” The elderly lady replied.
“What?”
“The Blackness”
The elderly woman never took her eyes of Emma, which really creeped her out. She carried on past the lady, trying to ignore her strange ramblings, but everything seemed to be getting weirder and weirder. She looked back at the woman and then noticed she wasn't wearing a jumper and jeans any more, but a dress. She swore she'd had different clothes on. She shook her head and carried on, still aware that everyone was transfixed by her presence. This is another side effect, none of this is real she told herself, and the people weren't staring at her. She jogged past a man who pointed behind her without moving his eyes from her, his eyes locked fast on hers.
“Can't you see it?” He said.
She was getting increasingly tired of this paranoia and wanted it to stop. She still looked behind her though, not so much out of choice, just automatically. As she turned, she came to a stop and her jaw widened. In the distance, up in the sky, was something growing. It looked like some kind of tear in the atmosphere, what was this? The tear widened until it was gradually seeping down to the horizon. As she stared in fascination at this strange sight, she noticed that it was creeping ever closer to them, gradually eating away at the view before her. She heard the low thudding sounds again, the same as before, gaining momentum and
volume and increasing in duration and speed. Where the tear in reality started, she could see flashes of blue pulses streaming out, filling the dark void. This was similar to what she thought she saw behind Samir. She looked around at all the people, and they were all motionless, still staring at her as the gaping tear in the universe came ever closer. Her only instinct was to run away as fast as she could, whether this was real or not. The tear in reality was approaching ever faster, engulfing everything in its path. All the while the blue flashing pulses were getting steadily more intricate and contorting into some kind of living void creature, as the vibrations that accompanied it grew stronger and stronger.
She continued running, faster and faster, looking back to see the void consuming the ground below it and anything in its path, extinguishing anyone in its way. She couldn't feel her legs again and then found that she wasn't moving, she was pinned in one position. She tried with all her might to move her arms and legs. It felt like each limb weighed a tonne and the effort to move required incredible strength that she couldn't manage. The people close to her still had their eyes fixated on her, their faces starting to shudder from side to side. Monstrous distortions appeared across them, with blue pulses springing to their skins surface. What was happening?
The distorted people started closing in on her, their menacing stares giving way to a deep immersing blackness. They threatened to surround her from all sides, like a troop of slow magnetized zombies. She began to scream, but the sound seemed to echo back to her and slap her full on like someone had smacked her on the head with a tuning fork.
Behind her the blue veins began swirling into an ever-increasing complexity, the rip in space-time seemingly alive and grinning. The distorted zombies got closer and closer and then without any warning, they blinked out of existence in a split second. She was left there, alone in an empty park, with the endless void drawing closer and the blue pulsing tentacles pulling her stunned body towards it.
Except she wasn't alone. There in the distance was one other person, far off, just in front of the void. As quick as the void rushed towards her, so did this figure, and in what seemed to be mere seconds later she was face to face with it. Her confused mind cried out for mercy as she was confronted with an image of herself, a mirror image perfectly reflected back to her, their eyes meeting as they gradually started merging together. They swirled together, a dance stranger than she could put into words. This doppelgänger held the same fears as her, she could feel them. It had the same emotions and memories, she could feel them too. They were one with each other, and she could see both in front of her and behind her at the same time. She was stuck between the real world of sticks and stones, the park and the city glistening in the late morning sunshine, and the endless infinite void, where shadows moved eerily in a blackness that was only punctuated by the flow and pulse of countless blue strings, a web of limitless nothing-ness.
Could she choose to turn and stay in the physical or was she doomed only to surrender to the void? Her two selves were conflicted and were trying to pull apart, each one desperate to find a way out of wherever they were stuck. The limitless web of nothing pulsated quicker and quicker, as shadow figures erupted out of strands of blue trails, the two becoming inseparable before they wrapped themselves around both Emmas’ in a final unapologetic embrace. She felt the pulses as her own now, the void was around her, she became the void. The void creature and the shadow figures were clear to see now, as they coiled around her and melted her into an endless sea of blue. And then she was gone.
Chapter Four – The Reality Changers
The Sycamore Stop
Danny continued sipping his drink as a sudden commotion from the restroom area caused his head to spin in that direction violently. Monique had crashed out of the ladies toilet with a panicked look in her eyes, running towards him.
“We got to go” She screamed at Danny as she got to his table, pulling at his shirt hurriedly to try and drag him to his feet.
“Why? What's wrong?”
“It's following me, please trust me, we've got to go now!” She cried with a crazed look in her eyes.
He got to his feet just as there was a loud deafening crunch, and he turned to where Monique had ran from to see something exploding out of the door. It was hard to make out its shape as it seemed to be swallowing all the shapes around it and making new designs from them, as it blended itself into some kind of creature. Danny didn't have to think too hard about what to do, it was obvious that they needed to get away from whatever this thing was. He couldn't quite believe his eyes, it could be just another symptom of whatever substance they were under the spell of, but it seemed too real to him that panic set in instantly. Monique was already near the exit and Danny sprinted as fast as he could around the tables and chairs that were blocking his route out. Other people began to scream and also clambered to get out. Danny was one of the last ones to escape and he started running towards Monique who had already covered quite a lot of distance ahead of him.
Those unlucky enough to not see the all-shaped entity and were too close, got sucked into it, blue sparks grasping their fleshy bodies and dragging them into its vacuum. Many couldn't get out the bar, so just ran whichever way they could to escape the path of it, the shrieks and hysterical whimpers of unfortunate victims reverberating around the air, clattering and echoing from wall to wall. The lucky ones who managed to jump to one side and avoid it, watched in complete terror as the victims were dragged into the creature's grasp, seemingly absorbed within its multi-formed presence and whisked away with it, as it forged on towards the exit. It quickly disappeared through the door with a loud ear-piercing surreal static roar, the door never opening, the all-formed creature simply passing through it, as if it wasn't even there. Outside, the terrified people scattered in all directions, no one knew where this thing was going to go and by then it was every person for themselves. They darted in every direction, fanning out down every street around them.
Danny ran as fast he could to catch Monique and by the time he looked around, he could see the creature had emerged from the bar, and had advanced in their direction. He sprinted, each step an energetic leap forward, his legs bouncing him as far and quick as they could. He could see Monique ahead, but as he was getting closer, he saw she was trying to reach a cab that was parked at the side of the road, her arms wildly flailing in the air. He looked round to see that the creature had taken the contents of its surroundings and somehow managed to blend them into itself, what was this creature? He also noticed it was paying no attention to people it passed, unless they were directly in its path, in which case they would be thrown down in the formless stampede and swooped up into non-existence. The entity got faster and faster, Danny trying with all his will to move quicker, but he legs just wouldn't obey, he was going as fast as he could. The creature advanced further, more and more, closing the distance between them effortlessly as it started to intermittently glow with long blue glimmering strands. Danny mustered up all the energy he could to try and push himself further, but he just ended up stumbling and falling to the floor. He struck the side of a parked car with such force on his way down that it knocked him sideways and straight through a low-level fence, cutting his arm and head in the process. He coughed and spluttered as he tried to get back up to his feet, then noticed that the creature had swiftly passed him, and was continuing on down the street towards Monique.
“Monique, get out of here!” Danny shouted as loud as he could, to which she turned around to see the creature bearing down on her.
Monique was almost at the taxi, a few more metres and she would be there, she really had no time to wait. She banged on the taxi window and the sleeping driver awoke with a start. Monique opened the back-passenger door and jumped in feverishly, the creature made of reality swooping closer.
“Drive, drive, drive” she screamed.
The cab driver looked in his rear-view mirror unimpressed at being shouted at like that.
“Listen Lady” he said, abo
ut to tell her to show some manners, when he suddenly saw something approaching them from behind, “What the fuck is that? Jeez”
So, his foot hit the pedal, he had forgotten about what he was about to say, he was only concerned with getting away from whatever the hell this thing behind them was.
“What in fucks name is that?” he asked her, completely bemused.
“I don't know, just get us out of here, please”
He increased the speed, noticing the creature keeping up, so he increased it some more.
“Damn it, if the police see me, I'll be screwed” The driver said.
“Not as screwed as we'll be if that thing catches us” Monique retorted looking out the back window anxiously as the 'Thing' was almost upon them.
He hit the gas again, propelling the car forward, far faster than it was safe to do but the creature followed them with no effort at all.
“Where are all the cars?” Monique asked. She suddenly noticed that the roads should be full of cars, but there didn't seem to be any.
Danny began running towards Monique in the cab ahead of him, the creature was almost on top of it and the cab didn't seem to be moving, its wheels were spinning but it remained stationary. The creature began flashing, what looked like blue pulsing veins were starting to rhythmically appear and disappear over where it's morphing 'all-shaped' body floated slowly to the cab. In the corner of his eyes he saw what he thought were shadows dancing from side to side. Were these the shadow figures Monique described? They seemed to always be where he wasn't directly looking, always just out of sight. He ran towards the stationary cab, his head and arm bleeding profusely, throbbing with an immensity he hadn't felt before. No matter how hard he ran he couldn't get there quickly
