
©2011,AdamLight. Self-publishing. light.adam@yahoo.comALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.
Greg Everett sat up straight in bed, his head still foggy from a recurring nightmare. His body ached, his mouth felt stuffed with cotton and it took him several moments to open his eyes. Looking at the alarm clock that mocked him from the nightstand, he slowly realized that he had overslept.
His heart accelerated from the steady gait of peaceful slumber to a panic-induced gallop. The quickening of his pulse shocked him completely awake. Cursing as he stumbled his way out of bed in a jumbled mess of blankets, he nearly fell to the floor. Luckily, his hands flashed out instinctively to ward off harm to his face. The left wrist took the brunt of the fall, and pain spiked up his arm, but he felt fortunate to have not broken his neck. He freed himself, regained his balance and momentum, and sprinted down the hallway praying that his bedside clock was wrong, the whole time.
The microwave confirmed that it was twelve after seven. Greg took a moment to evaluate his situation. Rather than brew a pot of coffee, take a shower, and eat breakfast; he opted for deodorant, cologne, and Starbucks. He needed caffeine, and quick. Food was secondary.
Greg threw on a pair of wrinkled black slacks and a musty white dress shirt he found in what he assumed was a pile of clean laundry, and finished off the ensemble with a crusty pair of socks. It was seven seventeen already.
Where were his work shoes? One of them was lying next to the front door, but the other was nowhere in sight. He slipped his foot into the available shoe and felt a pang of déjà-vu so strong it buckled his knees and nearly made him collapse. To keep himself from falling down, he placed his hands flat against the front door. The room spun around him crazily for a minute. He felt as though he were on an out of control carousel, all he needed was some spooky pipe organ music to complete the scene.
After a moment, the instability subsided. Greg felt sure enough to pick up where he had left off. Still, he felt a little shaken. He was determined to make his morning a good one, and not let this setback ruin it for him. Still, he could not help but think, stroke!!!
In the living room, he dug to the bottom of a heap of laundry, searching for his missing shoe. He scattered the garments all over the room, then ran to his bedroom and did the same thing with another pile of clothes in there. Greg was the second or third least organized man on earth. Frustration mounted as his shoe continued to remain unfound.
The next stop was the bathroom. There was a mound of smelly towels on the floor in there. Greg poked around but revealed nothing but the tile floor.
A large palmetto bug crawled out of the disturbed blob of neglected towels. It scrambled behind the toilet in anticipation of a crushing blow that would smash it into oblivion; but Greg had no time to clean up guts this morning.
"It's your lucky day, punk," he drawled and aimed a finger gun at the little guy, firing an imaginary bullet into its sleek brown carapace "You've got 'til sundown to get outta my town."
Greg went back into the kitchen. Reluctantly he checked the refrigerator, knowing that it was ridiculous to expect his shoe to be in there. Still, he figured it was worth a shot. All he found was a half-eaten burrito from Taco Bell, an empty two-liter soda bottle, and a squeeze bottle of mustard.
Instead of shutting the refrigerator door, he grabbed the mustard bottle. He flipped the crusty cap open and squirted an enormous yellow glob into his mouth, and almost gagged.
After a moment of indecisiveness, Greg gave up. His shoe hunt had cost him precious time, and he knew he had to go if he was to get any coffee. There was simply no choice but to break dress code on top of being late. An old grass stained pair of sneakers would have to do.
On his way out the door, he stopped to look at his messy living room for a moment. It was cluttered, as was the norm, but there lingered a feeling of inexplicable emptiness here that he had not previously noticed. Before the strange feeling could set him off balance again, he dashed out the front door. Hurling himself behind the wheel of his car, Greg prayed he would catch a break at Starbucks. It was coffee or death at this point.
Blanding Boulevard was the main artery between the small town of Orange Park and the metropolis of Jacksonville. Greg was speeding down that street within two minutes. The heavily traveled road was usually a bumper-to-bumper mess during rush hour, but Greg had not run into a lot of traffic so far. Then he rounded a long bend and the main drag came into sight ahead. Dismayed at what he saw, he irrationally jammed his palms into the hard plastic of the steering wheel. The line for Starbucks was not just around the building; it had actually snaked its way out into the street. A twisted tangle of vehicles spilled out into the main flow of commuters.
Greg watched with bitter disappointment as trapped drivers attempted wild maneuvers to navigate around the congestion and get on with their mornings. A dark gray Hummer, the driver obviously unable to wait any longer, jumped out of the Starbucks line right into Greg's path. For a split second, the sun reflected off the gigantic vehicle, and Greg had to put a hand up to shield his eyes. He stepped on the brake pedal and the oversize SUV was able to speed away without incident. The Hummer had left a wide gap in the Starbucks line, and he was going to fill it. Immediately, Greg removed his foot from the brake and gunned the accelerator. He got the spot, and felt heroic in having done so, but something strange occurred.
Time slowed down. Greg had another more minor since of deja-vu. It was as if he were one-step ahead of time but unable to influence it. He knew that he had to do something, but no idea what that was. Then, he blacked out.
In the blink of an eye, he was back in the flow of traffic again, slick with sweat, and despairing for his sanity. Despite having, only a moment ago, lucked into a great spot in line, he had never gotten any coffee. Now here he was, driving along as if it had never happened. His reflection in the rearview mirror appeared haggard. There had been no time to make himself presentable to the public this morning. There was a modest growth of whiskers on his chin and upper lip, and a few spider legs of hair peeked out of his nostrils. The bags under his eyes were more like steamer crates. In a nutshell, he looked as if he had been ridden hard and put away wet.
Greg thought for sure he was going to have a full-blown panic attack. His heart was thumping like a thrash metal bass drum soundtrack to the madness he had been swept into. Nevertheless, the thought of being at work soon, surrounded by other people, was reassuring. The rest of the drive was not chaotic. Greg was thankful.
Apparently, mustard was not a substantial enough breakfast, for his stomach gurgled uncontrollably. Greg hoped all the morning's strangeness was merely a side effect from hunger and caffeine withdrawals.
With Starbucks no longer in the equation, he would have to settle for the off brand sludge they provided at work. Arnie, one of the higher paid accountants at the office, was a speed freak, and he methodically arrived fifteen minutes earlier than anyone else did so he could brew a double-bagged pot of the foul shit unchallenged. Arnie's was a desperate brew for a desperate caffeine junkie.
Right now, Greg epitomized that description.
Without any further strangeness, Greg finally pulled off Blanding. The large building that housed Princeton and Associates came into Greg's view at exactly eight o clock. It dawned on him that he had begun to wonder if the office would even be there. That was ridiculous, but today had proven unequivocal in its weirdness, and nothing was off limits. Moreover, it was still early.
A parking space was available about fifty yards from the front. Greg veered into it, barely able to wedge his little car into the tight area. He hit the ground running.
Despite the fact that he set the thermostat to sixty-eight degrees, Mr. Princeton propped the door open with a large gaily-painted rock during the summer. Greg used this quirk to his advantage, and was able to sneak into the office and get to his desk without alerting anyone to his late arrival.
The place usually bustled like a hive inside, and today was no exception. His coworkers were all present, and hard at work.
Greg logged into his workstation and glanced down at the clock. He had only been a few minutes late; perhaps he would be okay after all. A helping of unexciting work would be enough to calm him down a little.
Greg's job was data entry. It was perfectly monotonous. He rattled away at his keyboard, quickly filled in a dozen spreadsheets with their appropriate figures, hoping to distance himself from the weirdness that had settled over him like a blanket of dense fog.
The menial task his job provided did have a calming quality. At first, he expected Mr. Princeton to materialize over his shoulder, but Greg had not seen his boss among his coworkers at all this morning. Then he began to wonder where Princeton was. After awhile, Greg surmised his boss was, in fact, absent.
The man never missed a day.
Maybe he called in sick... maybe I should have!
Without the boss stalking around pitilessly under-appreciating the productivity of his staff, the day took on almost a pleasant mood. There was a sense of freedom in the office without Princeton micro managing the daily operations.
No one bothered to strike up any meaningless banter with Greg throughout his shift.
He was not persona non-gratis; it was just that none of his coworkers really had a whole lot to say to him. There was no love lost there. Most of them, rightly, considered themselves his intellectual superiors. This rolled right off him. It was Greg's estimation that water cooler talk was overrated. He did not impose on them, and they left him alone. It was a no lose situation. Greg was there for one reason only: to earn his paycheck. It was a waste of time for him to try to get to know his coworkers on a personal level. There was no future in it. He simply needed his paycheck.
Narrowing his vision to the work at hand enabled Greg to eliminate distractions. His fingers moved deftly over the keys. He peeked over the top of his cubicle to look at Kirsten, Princeton's secretary, leaning against her desk near the front door. Okay, she was certainly a distraction. She was extremely attractive; he would gladly engage in conversation with her anytime. Unfortunately, on the spare occasions that he had summoned up the nerve to speak with her, she always seemed to be preoccupied with something else, anything else - perhaps a strange bug on the acoustic tile ceiling, or a tiny chip in her fingernail polish.
On the occasions Greg needed to speak to Kirsten, she would nod her head courteously and respond with polite affirmatives, but her stunning violet eyes would invariably drift away to some imperceptible something up there. He had even followed her gaze a few times, hoping he would indeed see something more interesting than he was just over his shoulder.
If she would look at him and really talk to him he felt she would get lost forever in his gaze, and they would surely fall hopelessly in love. Greg resolved that he would gather up what little courage he possessed and pay her a visit today.
There was always a chance that he could redirect the course of this day. Noon seemed as far away as Neptune right then.
Startled, Greg saw that it was five minutes until noon already. He blinked and rubbed his weary eyes with his fists. He looked again. Now it was noon.
It felt like only a few minutes had passed since he had begun working. He had not even had a cup of coffee yet, and it was already lunchtime.
Like a man walking the plank, he made his way slowly toward the propped-open front door.
Shaken though he was by the way the day had flown by so quickly, he was still determined to talk to Kirsten. He struggled to regain his composure as he approached the reception desk. Kirsten was wearing a pink cashmere sweater and a knee length black skirt with slits up the sides that accentuated her sleek curves. It also revealed a demure but sexy amount of her thighs. She had her long auburn hair tied in a bun and pinned to the back of her head. A few little wisps of loose hair that fell out here and there framed her delicate face.
Greg's confidence began to falter as he neared her.
Screwing his face up into what he hoped was a genuine looking smile, forgetting that he looked like hell; he attempted to speak to her. To his dismay, when he opened his mouth all that came out were a series of clicking and cracking noises. A voice that sounded like a crow pecking away at a rodent's skull, eager to reach the delicious brain inside emitted from his mouth. She refused to acknowledge his presence. Not even his strangeness intrigued her.
His ineptitude embarrassed him, and he rushed outside to get away. He decided he would have two double cheeseburgers today. Hold the mustard.
McDonald's was busy, but the line moved fast. When it was his turn to order he felt for his wallet, but it was missing. He patted his other pockets, hopeful. This was not good. A shoe was one thing, but it was murder when a wallet went missing. The stomach pangs became daggers of hot pain.
Greg hung his head and shuffled away from the counter without speaking to the frazzled looking cashier. He nearly collided with a little girl that had been standing too close to him. Luckily, he did not knock her down.
"I'm so sorry," he blurted out.
She gave him a curious look and shrugged. "It's okay. I knew you would look out for me."
Greg thought that was an odd thing for a little girl to say to a stranger, and he stared at her for several long seconds, perplexed. His vision swam in and out of focus, and a new wave of pain stunned him. This time the piercing fiery pain blossomed in his chest and radiated out to his limbs, doubling him over.
The little girl smiled at him, obviously unimpressed with his show of agony. Maybe she thought he was faking it.
"Lilly!" A man's voice boomed from behind the girl.
Greg realized that since he had first laid eyes on the girl, he had forgotten everything else around him. His chest pain ebbed and then vanished almost as suddenly as it had set in. There was a man in his forties staring at the little girl with a mix of concern and impatience.
The man spoke again, more harshly. "Please, Lilly, the man is waiting."
He pointed at the bored looking cashier, and gently propelled her forward with his hand. Greg felt an unexplainable pang of resentment toward the man.
Oddly, the fellow showed no interest in Greg. Greg thought he would have said something to a strange man talking up his daughter if he had one, and felt more contempt for the fellow than before.
As the two approached the counter, the girl turned her head and looked at Greg with fondness. He was suddenly sure he recognized her from somewhere, but when he attempted to figure it out, he drew a blank.
The man that accompanied Lilly shoved her in the back again, and this time, Greg made his exit.
Back in the car, he scratched his head, perplexed. He fumbled under the driver's seat for his lost wallet, but found nothing but a couple of discarded French fries and a penny. He half expected to find his shoe under the seat.
There was still enough time to drive home and grab his wallet. He could hit a drive thru on his way back to work and eat lunch at his desk.
On his way back to his house, he encountered only light traffic, which was typical at this time of day on Blanding. However, there was still a nasty looking snarl of traffic around his favorite coffee shop.
There had been an accident, Greg could see. The two vehicles involved looked like metal hamburger meat. Blue and red lights pulsed everywhere. There were two ambulances, a fire truck and several police cruisers at the scene. Eastbound traffic had dead-ended here. Police officers cast somber glances at rubber-neckers in the westbound lanes, pleading for everyone to be respectful and just move along.
Nothing to see here folks, they implied.
Despite their earnest protestations to the contrary, there was definitely plenty for all the morbidly curious people to see.
Greg craned his neck to get a better look and check out the smashed vehicles. One was clearly a station wagon. He could not identify what type of vehicle the other twisted chaos of metal was. Police officers were taking statements from several people on that side of the street. Greg tried to avert his gaze from the scene, hoping that no one had been seriously hurt.
He also decided to take the back roads on his return trip to work.
Trying hard not to stare at the wreck, he drove along toward his house. Curiosity got the better of him, though, and he glanced over his shoulder once last time before continuing home. One of the responding officers was standing near the median with what looked like a long pole shoved out in front of him, a bloodstained shoe dangling precariously from the business end. The cop crinkled his face in disgust, and appeared to be on the verge of losing his lunch.
Greg pulled into his oil-stained driveway. Thirty minutes of his lunch break remained. Before he could attempt to unlock the front door, he realized that it stood open a few inches already. In his haste this morning, he must have forgotten to pull the door closed all the way. The thought comforted him, but he still eased the door open tentatively, hoping he was not walking into a robbery in progress. He peered warily into the sunlit interior of his living room.
The sensible part of him tried to assert control. Why would anyone want to rob him? There was nothing of considerable value in his humble home. His voice of reason was less than convincing, so he decided to announce his presence before entering.
In his best authoritative voice, Greg shouted, "Hey, you in there! What do you think you're doing?"
He waited for a moment, unsure if he should expect a home invader to acknowledge their presence.
Feeling apprehensive, he walked inside. He left the front door open behind him, telling himself he would only be there long enough to grab his wallet. Confident that he must have left it on the kitchen counter this morning, he headed there first.
Halfway into the kitchen, he stopped walking. Something here felt wrong, incongruous. Greg's television and stereo were still there in front of the window. No one had made off with his couch or threadbare recliner. A half-finished book rested on the arm of the couch with a chewing gum wrapper for a marker - just as he had left it. There was no evidence of a robbery.
Everything appeared fine, yet everything also seemed out of place. Again, Greg felt that sense of emptiness here. It almost felt as if he was in the wrong house.
The laundry stacked against the wall beside him made him feel uneasy again. He brushed it off and told himself it was nothing - he should just get what he came for and grab some lunch before it was too late.
His sense of purpose renewed, Greg continued into the kitchen.
Shockingly, the microwave clock read 4:35. Greg saw that digital readout, and then the numbers faded and disappeared completely.
This latest jump in time sent his mind reeling. He looked at his wrist, and noticed something strange there, too. He always had the same wrist. It just looked naked. There was a tan line where his watch should be. A nervous flutter of butterflies in his stomach overpowered even the worst pangs of hunger within him. He held his hands out and watched his fingers jitter and twitch.
One sneakered foot planted on the kitchen linoleum, the other resting hesitantly on the shag carpet of his living room, he fought back the urge to vomit up the remnants of his mustard breakfast.
After a few moments, he felt better. His hands stopped shaking and the wrongness he had felt since entering his home subsided to a tolerable level. He looked for his wallet in earnest again, and was not exactly surprised to find that it was nowhere in sight. The refrigerator was completely empty now. It was warm inside, and the light bulb was not working. Greg backed out of the kitchen into the living room again.
Perhaps his wallet was on the nightstand next to his bed. As he took his first steps in that direction, a cloud passed over the sun, painting the inside of his house with dark shadows. His own shadow grew large on the wall in front of him. It shrunk back as the cloud passed away, and premature afternoon sunshine attempted to brighten the room again. A squall of wind howled against the vinyl siding of the house as thunder rumbled in the distance.
He needed light but nothing happened when he flipped the hall light switch.
"What the hell?" he asked the emptiness.
Thunder cracked. It was closer this time. It sounded sinister, malevolent, even. He toggled the light switch and the light in the hall remained dead. He gave up on it after a few tries and turned to look out the window. A large column of ominous black clouds loomed above the pines and oaks that towered above the row of humble houses that lined his street. The storm had arrived out of nowhere, the darkness rolled in with it. He gaped as a skeletal lightning hand reached from roiling clouds and streaked its way across the sky, leaving a ghostly afterimage behind.
From behind him inside the house, Greg heard what sounded like the ceiling collapsing to the floor in his bedroom.
The unexpected noise made him jump, and he spun around, waving his arms wildly. He flipped on other light switches, but the power was out. He walked ninja-silent to the kitchen and gently opened the utensil drawer. He delicately extracted the largest knife he could find. It was only a butter knife, but it would have to do. Now armed - albeit poorly - Greg sneaked back onto the carpeted border of the living room and poked his head around the dividing wall.
Get out of here, Greg! Run! Reason ordered him.
To remain here was madness, but Greg was unable to retreat. He was pinned in his spot and no more able to run than the date palm that grew in the center of his front lawn. There was no running now. Today was a very important day, he was sure; a day of revelations playing in the shadows of his consciousness -- revelations he may not be able to cope with.
He looked down at his pathetic excuse for a weapon. Though it felt rather useless, he gripped it ferociously. He brandished it like a sword. If someone attacked him, he was going for his or her eyeball. The thought of sinking the little harmless-looking kitchen utensil deep inside the intruder's skull via his eye socket relaxed Greg considerably. He pried himself free from the clutches of panic that had fossilized him in the kitchen.
Again, he began the death-row march down the hall. A shrill resonance erupted from his bedroom and his fear swelled, threatening to burst inside of him. It sounded like someone was jumping up and down on his bed. Springs squeaked, groaned, and shrieked.
All the courage he had mustered went out of him, like a slowly deflating balloon. He backed into the living room and an odd thought occurred to him. He once more surveyed the laundry stacked against the wall. Had he torn that pile of clothes apart this morning?
Yes, he had thrown socks, underwear, pants and shirts all over the place, and had not cleaned up the mess. Yet the clothes he observed were stacked and folded just as neatly as before his crazed shoe hunt had begun.
Understanding was blooming like a nightshade within his delirious mind, and Greg momentarily teetered on the edge of epiphany. Thunder smacked again outside, and he almost dropped his knife and ran screaming out the door. It was a ridiculous thought, but the thunder actually sounded angry, as if nature's fury was assaulting him personally.
Dazzling flashes of lightning were growing faster and more brilliant as the storm suffocated the daylight out of Greg's house. Their bright bursts were creating a stroboscopic effect inside the house. His head pounded in rhythm with the pulsating lightning.
It was growing darker in the house, save for nature's light show, and Greg desperately began trying every wall switch in living room and hall again. None of them worked. He did not know what else to do.
Had he forgotten to pay the utility bill? He thought he must have. There was no time to be concerned with such trivial matters, though. At least, not when there was an intruder, or intruders, in his bedroom, threatening his survival.
The grinding and shrieking of bedsprings stopped. Greg wondered if he had even heard the sounds at all. He wondered if perhaps he had lost his mind. Bristling with fear, Greg began the long walk down the short corridor again, the dull blade of the butter knife shoved out in front of him. Behind him, lightning sparkled and rain hammered the roof and windows.
Halfway to his bedroom, he peeked over his shoulder and noticed the closed front door. He knew he had left it open. Instinct led his hand to his front pocket, in search of keys that were no longer there. They must be in the car.
Perhaps this was not happening at all. Greg thought there was a large possibility that he was asleep at his desk at work, dreaming all of it. This thought gave birth to new courage. This had to be a dream. How else could any of it make sense?
An eerie scraping noise came from the bedroom. It was like a knife being drawn across a pane of glass. Greg cringed at the sound of it and slunk several steps backwards. There came the sound of someone, or something rummaging through his dresser drawers.
The storm raged full force now outside and the house was subsequently alive with dancing shadows.
Greg felt afraid, but he still managed to put one foot in front of the other. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled into his eyes. Greg wiped it from his face with his forearm, and then wiped his forearm on his pants leg. When he did this, he noticed his feet were bare. He had no memory of removing his shoes and socks, but they were gone. His palms were so sweaty that he could no longer feel the cool reassurance of the butter knife clenched in his fist. He tried to switch it to his other hand, but then realized the knife, like so many other objects in the last few minutes, had also vanished.
Greg hesitated just outside his bedroom door, and listened carefully for any movement within. The door was open; he could see less than half of his room through the darkness, the rest of it concealed by the hallway wall.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something that caught him off guard. A large picture frame was hanging on the wall to his right. He was sure that it had not been there a minute ago. Upon further inspection, he realized it was not actually hanging on the wall; it was literally hovering in front of the wall.
Greg plucked it from where it floated in the air and held it in front of his face, examining it. It was a collage of pictures arranged behind stark white matting. He could barely make out the faces smiling through the grimy glass, but they began to sharpen into focus after a few moments. He gaped, fish eyed, at what he saw.
Every picture in the frame contained Greg, Kirsten and Lilly, the girl from McDonalds.
They were in various poses in different locales -- smiling, kissing, and waving at the photographer. As more details emerged from the pictures, he attempted to connect memories with them. He did not understand this at all. Despite his best efforts, Greg was unable to make any sense of what he was seeing.
Another cacophonous blast from the bedroom distracted him from the lovingly arranged photos, and he decided he would study them more closely after dealing with the intruder, although he was sure there was no one back there. He gently set the large frame against the wall and entered the foreboding bedroom.
It was uninhabited, just as he had come to expect. His bed occupied most of the floor space and he was surprised to find it neatly made, three big fluffy pillows lined up along the headboard. A bouquet of flowers lay across the middle pillow, stems bound together by a thick blue wrap of silk tied in a bow.
On the pillow closest to him rested an envelope, the solitary word "Daddy" written in a child's scrawl in crayon across the front. The rain had stopped its pounding on the windows, he realized, and glanced at the wall in his bedroom. It was now a smooth, flat, and solid wall. The window was gone.
Get out get out get out NOW!!!!! His ever-diminishing rationale screamed from within.
Even in the dark, he could see an old thumbprint near the corner on the wall's smooth surface, a small scar accidentally left behind when he had painted the room years ago. This minute detail had an enormous effect on Greg, unleashing a tidal wave of unrecognized memories, and his mind strained to the breaking point as he attempted to process everything that was happening here.
Without any warning, a vivid memory played out like a scene in a movie in front of his eyes:
Kirsten flinging gobs of paint off the end of her dripping paintbrush, laughing and twirling around in her bare feet atop the layers of plastic tarp they had spread to protect the carpet. Him, dipping his brush into a pan, painting a white stripe down the front of her shirt. The room half painted and filled with their laughter, a baby wailing from a crib in another room.
The scene ended as quickly as it had begun. Greg was alone in the dark. He touched his cheek, half-expecting to find a glob of wet paint clinging to his face. There was no paint, but his face was wet.
His room had grown darker than the other side of the grave. He felt like curling up into the fetal position and having a nice nervous breakdown on the floor.
Instead, he walked back into the hallway, and hoisted the big picture frame from where he had set it against the wall.
He studied the photographs of himself with family. How could this be real?
Despite the fact that his hands now were trembling severely, the picture frame remained dead still in his hands. Greg stared in disbelief at his face staring back at him from the photos. Numbness started to spread through his body in an urgent, almost conscious way. Before it completely took hold of him, he made his way back to the hall and hung the heavy frame on the wall by his bedroom door. There was no nail, but the picture stayed where it was. The shuffling noise in his bedroom started again.
Greg crept back into the bedroom to find Kirsten and Lilly sitting on the floor, surrounded by boxes. Sanity was draining away with the speed of stampeding stallions now. The boxes held numerous familiar items. Greg noticed his wallet in one of the boxes. His watch accompanied it. The girls were busy filling a box with dozens of loose pictures, ones that had never found a home in any of the dozens of picture albums they had filled over the years.
Lilly gripped a five by seven photograph, one she had apparently saved for herself. She clutched it to her chest and hugged it fiercely. As Kirsten watched her daughter's precious display of love, tears welled up in her eyes. She placed her fingertips delicately upon her child's forearm. Lilly kept hugging the picture, eyes tightly closed, grinning and swaying back and forth on her heels. Neither of them acted as if they knew that Greg shared the room with them.
As he opened his mouth to ask them what they were doing in his room, the girls and their keepsakes vanished as though they were ghosts. Only the photo Lilly had been hugging remained. Greg watched it float feather-like toward his outstretched hands. He snatched it out of the air and looked upon it, again experiencing a stab of déjà vu.
In the photo, Lilly sat hunched over Greg's shoulders, her little fists twisted up in his hair, her legs wrapped tightly around his throat for balance. The unmistakable stark white spire of Space Mountain in the background revealed that the location was Disney World. He saw that they were both laughing and sticking their tongues out at the photographer. The goofy tone of the picture tempered Greg's feelings of bewilderment, and for a moment, he was nearly himself again. His mouth attempted to birth a smile, but it was stillborn upon his lips.
A soft thud came from behind him. Greg spun around to find that the door to the hallway was now gone. There was only another smooth wall in need of a new coat of paint. He looked back at the picture in his hands but it was gone as well, apparently having followed everything else into the ether.
Confusion and fear ran like ice water through his veins. A splintered realization unfolded within, and the brutal certainty of his situation was rearing its ugly head before him.
This is insane, he thought.
In the shadows, the envelope still lay like a coiled asp upon his pillow. The flowers were now dried and flaking, the petals rotting away on a dusty old pillow. A folded piece of yellowed notebook paper lay next to the torn envelope. He felt himself begin to float across the floor toward it, or perhaps it was moving towards him. Nothing was certain.
Fearful of the ominous folded page, yet helplessly drawn to it, Greg exhaled sharply and willed the letter to him. It flew from the pillow into his hands. Shuddering, he rubbed his thumbs cautiously over the top of it.
A child had obviously written the letter. In the gloom, the letters on the paper were already fading away.
He read:
Dear Da dy,
I'm sorry had to take away
but are always my ve.
I'm sorry y ed.
mommy you will be
w hing over us
I m ss ou.
L ve, Lilly
He grasped at the meaning within the words as the letters on the page faded and blurred and erased themselves from existence. The answer still eluded him.
He worked his fingers into the palms of his hands, hoping to pierce the soft skin with his fingernails. All he wanted was to awaken from this nightmare, to see the morning sun slanting through the bedroom window. A loss so great that his heart could no longer handle it sank like an anchor in his chest.
The bedroom walls shrank inward, transforming his inner sanctum into a fish bowl. Greg again felt as if he was moving around with no effort at all. Legs no longer under his command carried him to the bed. There, he lay down and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the ceiling was no more than an inch from his face. His hands were like dead weight at the end of his arms. He tried to scream but his vocal cords no longer responded to his brain's commands; his mouth produced only silence.
Violent spasms of pain erupted throughout his body. An avalanche of suffering threatened to suck the consciousness out of him. The ceiling tightened against his chest, pinning him to the bed. This was no longer his bedroom. He was back in his car. Blood was flowing from him freely from where the steering column crushed horribly into his chest. In terror, Greg saw that the engine block was on his legs.
The weight of the agony was more than anyone could take.
There were flashing lights all around him. Voices were yelling for him to stay calm. How could he be calm? He was being smashed to death. Several pedestrians holding cups of coffee looked on in awe from the sidewalk in front of Starbucks.
"Please, God!" He pleaded voicelessly "Help me!"
If God was listening, he was not answering Greg's prayers.
Metal screeched on metal, and the pressure on him weakened considerably, and instantly. Ice water cascaded down his spine. The voices grew louder and a man's face hovered into his field of vision briefly. The stranger looked away at someone beside him, who it was, Greg could not see. The man shook his head slowly. There was pity and sorrow in the man's almond eyes.
"No, no, no! I'm not ready!" he tried to call out.
Everything faded away, and Greg was back in his room. Unsure if the scene that had played out before him was from a past that was real or a future imagined, Greg watched in horror as the room around him faded into a gray landscape of evaporating shapes and patterns. As he lay pinned to the bed that was now the only still-recognizable feature of his disintegrating room, there was only one thing of which he was now certain: he was gone.
\*\*\*

