No.1057
Not a typo
You float up, and reach the edge of the cliff overlooking the forest below.
The men and dogs are miles away.
You are tired from the journey and alight on the ground, which is at the edge of a board-walk. The ground is slick with a recent rain, and patches of melted ice and slush are everywhere.
The air is moist, and freezing cold, when you step onto the board-walk, and see that beyond the railing is a large body of water, with a boat slowly making it's way across.
The lights from the boat seem like a good party, but you know you will never go there.
Following the wet and icy board-walk, you encounter a man and two twin children, who seem to know something important, but who never say anything about it, only give you knowing looks as the man, one small hand clutched in each of his, proudly marches along with his darlings in tow.
They definitely know something.
You wind up and around on this board-walk, until the rising slope takes you to the glass double-doors of the building you saw from far off in the forest. The building which acted as your beacon of escape, as it were.
The lights from inside seem inviting, as you open one of the glass doors with a soft whoosh, and step in, instantly becoming one with the interior environment.
You breathe onto your chilly fingers, and look around your immediate surroundings.
It seems like an apartment building from the outside, but if it is, they are sure lucky to have a whole selection of department stores on the first floor of the building.
You roam amongst the emptying halls.
The halls are emptying because of the hour, and you think that perhaps the only sorts of people who would not be rushing to pay for their shopping would be the people who live here, who would casually be sauntering over to the elevators by the food court, to go up a floor, since they are new to that building, and aren't sure if using the stairs will set off the fire alarm or something.
You pass by a few citizens, and note the wary looks they give you, and the lack of eye contact they maintain.
They are wary of you, and you seem to offend them.
You aren't finding any stores open any longer, and so, moving straight through the building, you emerge through the front doors.
You are wandering down streets you've never heard of, and you see people often glare at you suspiciously.
They look like they are working with the group following you.
Winter has left this place, and the grass is dry, yet lush and green.
You know you won't get anywhere useful on foot, so you get onto a city bus.
No.1058
You take a seat at the back of the bus, looking straight down the aisle.
The bus door closes with a hiss, and the bus starts to pull away from the sidewalk.
You feel uneasy, knowing that you are actually still being pursued, and have only evaded them recently.
Some of the people on the bus look at you.
You look out the window, as foreign sights pass by with the roadside.
You get off after a while, still wholly lost, but perhaps farther from danger, and perhaps closer to salvation.
Winter has left this place.
You can't be sure, but people seem less suspicious of you here.
Most pass by without even noticing you, now, too wrapped in their personal joys to have concern for a passer-by.
You course down sidewalks, an urban area drifting along with you.
Houses, front lawns, courts, crescents; they all flow past.
Evening is coming soon, when you reach the end of the path leading to an open front door.
You wonder if there could be anyone of assistance in a house that is actively "open", and approach the front door cautiously, calling out salutations ahead of you.
People are rushing to and fro, inside, and seem oblivious to you being there. They have jobs to do, and it will be their hide if they don't come through.
A girl comes through the annex for other reasons, but in seeing you, stops, shocked, and asks how she can help you.
You explain that you have been shot, and are being hunted, but the look on her face tells you she can't help.
She wants to, but with all this going on, she just can't.
Sorrrry.
She does have a good idea of which direction you want to be going in, so she gives you some quick instructions, and apologizes again, as you leave via the front door, making your way down her garden path.
Reaching the sidewalk, you take a righ-, no, a left, and know intuitively that the front door is closed and nobody is watching you leave.
No.1059
The girl's directions prove adequate, and you soon find yourself leaning back a bit as you walk down a steep, sloping sidewalk, towards a large, ornate black metal gate.
The gate squeaks open, as you pass from the end of the urban street into a quiet cemetery.
The cemetery is incorporated into an area between two local forest zones, so either side of the cemetery is boxed in by high, broad-leafed trees, ultimately forming almost a canopy of sorts over it.
Sunlight streams in and dances amongst dirt and memories.
Stone blurs, and the air vibrates softly.
You see beloved pets, and childhoods in the back of your mind, as you make your way between the stones.
Where you want to be is through the gates at the other side of this place.
Soon you leave all of those graves behind, and the soft paved path of the memorial gardens gives way to a vague impression of extreme amounts of time elapsing.
You feel the weight of days of travel.
Here and there, to and fro.
Buses, taxis, walking.
You never really know where you are, but you always have a pretty good idea where you are headed.
Time's elapsing while you're waiting in anticipation.
The moments collected, and the numbers crunched, you finally come to, and see yourself getting off a bus, at the end of the street where you grew up as a child.
No.1060
At last, you can rest, on an old sofa that has long since been thrown away.
Your dogs come running up to greet you, as lovely as ever.
You scratch them behind the ears as they stare at you with those funny doggy eyes.
It seems that there is no way those who pursue you can have the idea to come this far, but it's just that…
Maybe it had to do with the dogs?
You know something is wrong with even this place, and the front door is closing behind you.
The hairs on your neck stand up as you feel the familiar grip of being pursued settle in.
Seeing a car pulling into the street, you rush down an alley, and sure enough, the car drives by.
It seemed like it was looking for you, so you skirt around the backs of the buildings, until you re-connect with the main road.
Leaving your street behind, you cross the road, and now move down a long, windy stretch of sidewalk.
Winter hasn't quite left this place, and small drifts of clean white snow linger at the base of the wooden fence to your right.
You stumble on!
The horizon seems hopelessly far away, as you feel the pain in your side fading, and everything becomes strangely detached.
You know that you aren't moving quickly physically, but everything still seems to be taking so long to play out.
Two twins walk by across the road, going the other way. They follow you with their gazes before going down a fenced-in side area.
The sky is gathering overhead, and you can feel the rotation of the earth. The grass beside you seems as good a place as any to lie down, and the clean white snow would make a nice pillow, even.
The snow collapses under your weight, and begins to melt with your body heat.
The cold soaking in feels good, because you're burning up, and tired, and falling asleep. It feels like you're lying on a glacier, and the endless white snows shimmer in every direction by the light of day.
Like taking a breath, you spiral out, and after a long moment in the emptiness, a female voice sounds from the silence:
No.1061
You come to, with a start.
"At last! At last!"
The impossibly small man throws his hands into the air in sheer enthusiasm.
You don't think you've seen him this worked up before, as he turns to you, speaking eagerly,
"The ritual is coming close to completion, sai, and I think, any moment now, we will start to see results!"
His pupils dilate as he points one long finger towards the campfire you are both situated around.
"Look! There, amidst the flames! A path to HADES!"
Shadows flicker wildly in your area before the darkness of the forest swallows up the light. The night air is chilled, and the fire welcome; the warm crackle and occasional pop of the fire brings you comfort, but you still feel uneasy.
The ritual has brought you so far, with little evidence of completion, but now…
You strain as you look into the flames, when you begin to perceive an IMPRESSION OF DREARY SKIES, an IMPRESSION OF DARKENING WOODS, an IMPRESSION OF OUTDISTANCING PURSUIT, an IMPRESSION OF BELOVED PATHWAYS, and an IMPRESSION OF BITING COLD.
No.1232
>>1061From the campfire, you head home because you couldn't stay. Its not like time had mattered to you in the first place but you know that its not good when you know not how much time youd spent before coming to, but you do know you were probably only here for the night and you dont have supplies.
You and your friend are driving down the road leading to your house, a recently-paved driveway that connects maybe 6 or 7 properties. All the laughter and joking and the feeling of having gone out for a while is a happiness you share with your friend which turns your reality bright. You approach the top of the hill, which will lead to the final stretch before your house, the last house on the road. However, near the top of the hill is a raccoon, standing there with his little masked face and darting eyes that to you mean only one thing. "Yeah, I remember you," they say. And you remember him too.
This was the spot where you found his body, just barely breathing, with a six inch trail of blood coming from his mouth and his neck turned awkwardly and unnaturally. Your friend was there too. You got out of the car and realized it was still breathing, then you screamed. "KILL IT! PUT IT OUT OF ITS FUCKING MISERY, MAN!" You knew it was that fucking neighbor of yours who always speeds down the pathway in her zippy little car. Your friend hits it, and it screams, terrified of death, and its body trashes around as if to turn itself inside out. Two more tries and the painful screams finally stopped.
How could you forget? Reality starts to kick in, and the road narrows down to the point where it just barely reaches the cusp of our tires on both sides. It walks up to the hood, and just kisses it, and rolls over. Relief and Joy follow the peaceful and loving death of the raccoon, who seems now to have forgiven you. But then your experience, your connection from memory to what is probably dream, turns your surroundings into something much different.
No.1304
>>1232OP here, checking in way after the fact…
You are freaking me out, dood!
No.1322
>>1304>>1304why thank you.
>>1232Surroundings? No. This is a world way outside the allegory of human emotion. And it is personal to you. I, personally, found myself confounded in pieces that floated in colorful ecstasy. My friend's was about him feeling that he was going to get killed. I had to calm him down, but he kept on saying this mantra… "Hiffwe".."Hiffwe"… over and over again. }
I gave him some sleeping pills on hand to calm him down. They were horse sized and called "chillaxes". The gel splashes over him, and he's fine.
We are still in our car, but our car is not where it was, on the street. Could it have turned, could we have been sleep driving, could it have been a mystery?
…continue plzz
