*Two people are sitting on a hill, staring at a sunset. There's a large tree growing to the right of them, with a small swing hanging from it. The Sun is massive and about halfway set.*
Man on left: I've always wondered what it would be like to set. To dissapear from causing lumination for a massive group of people and leaving them for a period of time to go and do the same thing for another group.
Man on Right: It's probably like switching off a flashlight at the exact moment that you fall asleep, and switching one on in your dream, then turning that one off as you're just about to wake up.
*There is a pause as the two watch the sun set furthur*
Man on left: Then what about the split second between waking and sleeping when you've turned off the flashlight in your dream, and havent turned it on in the waking world yet?
*silence*
One : Commencement
*Man on left is at home, lying in bed with a flashlight turned on and aimed at a tropical fishbowl in the corner. It illuminates all sorts of colorful fish swimming around. The tank is filled with several plants and a small castle. The room that he is lying in is messy, with a bed against one wall, and a desk at the end of it, supporting the fishtank. A small computer monitor displays matrix code as a screen saver on a second corner desk to the right of the fishtank desk.*
*The man begins to fall asleep, and at the exact second of slumber, his muscles relax and he releases the switch, plunging the room into complete darkness*
*Scene changes to the exact same bedroom except all in black and white. As soon as the man realizes that he is in the room, he stabs his finger down, turning on the flashlight. Immidiately the room is filled with color, dazzling bright colors, pushing the imagination to imagine impossibilities. The fishtank is full of the brightest fish that have ever existed in anyone's wildest imagination. Satisfied, that his experiment has been completed, the man attempts to force himself to wake up. As his dream wavers, his finger slips off the button, turning off the flashlight. The colors vanish leaving black and white again...
... except for a small pool of red at the base of the fishtank...*
Two : Eternity
<12 hours after>
*An empty city, windows are shattered in all the buildings and the only motion is a spinning light on a collapsed police car, slowly moving around in a circle with a recorded announcement being played over the loudspeaker*
<...evacuation in effect.. zzzt.. iolaters will be quarentined-d-d-d-dd .. izzzzzzzzzztttttzt ..>
A motion.
An arm reaches out, grasps at the cement with bloodied fingertips.
A grip, a chance.
The fingers pull the arm, pulling the man forward.
The man is brutaled, missing an arm, and gashed everywhere. Fingernails are chipped and slashed, and once perfect hair is messed and full of dirt and ash.
He pulls himself forward slowly, closing on his goal, still forever away and infinately close.
In the west, the sun is setting, forever setting... never to finish. A shadow against the surface of the sun, caused by a figure on a skyrise apartment building behind and to the left of the man. Eternally watching.
In the man's mouth is gripped a small flashlight.
Three : Morning
The sun rises.
The man wakes and quickly flicks on the flashlight, filling the room with light. He nods, looking around the room quickly, and flicks the flashlight off.
Hesitation.
The man blinks once, and slowly moves his glance back to the fishtank.
*All the fish are dead, floating at the top of the tank in , all devoid of color. A pool of blood is expanding outwards on the desk from the tank, and is dripping down from the sides. The water in the tank is now completely red, diluted by far to much blood for the fish to have bled.*
The man stands up... slowly walking towards the fishtank. He dips his finger in the fluid. He raises his hand slowly and examines it, looking closely at the red liquid.
Drip.
He turns and walks out of the room, dropping the flashlight carelessly on his bed. The liquid slowly begins expanding up his arm...
Four : Delay
< 11 hours after >
Running as fast as he can, the man sprints through the empty hallway.
CRASH
A left turn and he explodes through a hotel room door...
It knows where he's going.
It knows what he fears.
It knows how it's growing,
And causing him tears.
... into thin air. Half of the SweetDreams Hotel is completely missing. Not simply crumbled or demolished, but gone. The man plumits down three stories, landing horribly akwardly.
SNAP
An ankle broken, a knee dislocated, a shin bone shattered, yet the man doesn't notice. His inability to walk is not going to cause him any delay in his quest. He shifts the flashlight to his mouth and reaches forward, dragging his body along the ground towards the street that he has walked every day of his life for years.
He will not stop.
He will not look back.
He can not fail.
Five : Suspicion
He walks out of his bedroom and a quick right into the bathroom. Washing his hands prooves completely ineffective. The blood refuses to come off at all. It crawls, as if alive, slowly, yet steadily up his arm, barely visibly moving to the naked eye. He scratches at it. No effect. He scratches harder. Pain, but no other effect. He walks out of the bathroom, slighty faster now, the blood on his arm causing him stress. He continues to scratch at his arm, ignoring the pain, trying to get the blood off his arm.
The man arrives at his friend's house, having taken then 10 minute journey south with his old, teal Ford Escort.
Knock Knock.
His friend opens the door and jolts.
"Your arm..." He starts.
"I know," replies the man, "I don't know what to do about it. It happened this morning after I tried to set."
Scratch Scratch
"Don't scratch at it. Come in, lets try to get you cleaned up."
The two men enter the house.
Six : Solutions
As his friend is in the bathroom preparing the dressings for his arm, the man sits on his friend's couch and turns on the tv. There is nothing but static. He glances out the large windows on the left side. There isn't a flash. Or more specifically, there is a not flash.
He blinks.
Nothing is there. His friend is saying something.
"... in the election. Just a sec, almost ready here."
The man looks out the window for another moment and then stands, walking into the bathroom. The sink is full of a whitish liquid, and there are bandages out on the edge of the bathtub.
"Stick your arm in there."
He does. It burns. A dull pain.
"We'll get it wrapped up in a minute. Now tell me what you did."
"Well..."
Seven : Sunder
The world is a delicate place, stronger than any other possible material that has ever existed. It can shatter at the slightest touch, yet absorb the strongest impact.
The issue is where the contact takes place...
Eight : Exploration
"... and then I turned out the flashlight, and saw the blood flowing out of the fishtank."
There is a silence. His friend hesitates a moment.
"I need to see."
The two leave.
"... will be a minority government or not. What do you think?"
The Tv drones on.
They Walk. Neither want to drive.
He glances from side to side, scratching idly at his bandages. The blood has expanded past the length of the bandages by this point, but he says nothing. They pass a building that he had never seen before. He glances up and reads the flickering neon sign. SweetDreams Hotel.
"Strange, I don't remember that being there." he says quietly.
His friend looks at him, raising a questioning eyebrow.
Silence.
It's dropped. The two continue down the street in silence.
Nine : Sunset
< 10 hours 58 minutes after>
Sprinting down the street, he glances over his shoulder.
No one is following.
He looks foward.
A Tsunami of red liquid is raging down the street towards him, full speed, closing rapidly with him.
No choices.
He turns and explodes through the nearest door, ripping it off it's very hinges. He darts into a stairwell and starts taking the stairs three at a time.
The door of the SweetDreams Hotel lies in ruin as the blood blasts past.
Ten : Sliippinnng
The two arrive at his house. They enter the bedroom.
He sees the blood dripping out of the fish tank, all over the floor, nearly to the door of the bedroom. As he looks towards the bed his friend speaks.
"Where is..."
He sees the flashlight lying on the bed. He picks it up.
"... the blood?"
He blinks and gestures at the floor, looking away for a split second then back at his friend.
A thin line seems to draw itself across his friend's throat. There's a massive explosion of red as his friend's head slides off his lifeless body and the exposed arteries splatter the room with life giving fluid.
*An image appears behind the decapitated body, flickering as if it was a television image with poor reception.*
Eyes open...
Eleven : Phantasms
He jumps out the window, tucking his head and forcing his shoulder to shatter the glass.
Tinkle Tinkle
He rolls, cutting his body in various places.
Drip Drip
Tiny bloodspots cover his body. He runs. Away from the home, forgetting that he is still holding the small flashlight.
He glances over his shoulder.
Nothing.
He slows his mad run and comes to a stop. Blood dripping down his face mixes with tears. Shed for his friend.
Emotions. Chemical reactions in the body provoke an appropriate response to the death of a comrade. Inescapable part of the human condition.
Shadows, moving, around his vision. Current time is not for mourning. He starts running again.
Twelve : Lost
The people are all gone.
No one around.
Gone.
He runs through empty streets, fearing to look back, not knowing where he is going.
He runs the paths he knows without thinking.
He runs his habitual paths.
Thirteen : Habits
Habits are strange things.
They can direct a person to do things without thinking.
They can help you to find where you need to be, while thinking about other things.
They can make you go somewhere you don't want to be.
He arrived at his friend's house
Fourteen : Tools
The door was open. They hadn't locked it. He explodes through the door, around a corner and into the garage from the inside. The door crashes inwards and he grabs what he had come for, even though he hadn't known he had come for it.
An axe. A brilliantly sharp axe.
A Quick glance down at his arm. The blood was still tracking up, slowly. It was long past it's dressings and nearing his shoulder.
He also saw his flashlight.
He flicks it on.
Fifteen : Salvation
The blood is gone.
The bandages are gone.
He isn't bleeding.
He walks outside, looking around.
People. Everywhere. He walks forward, slowly.
They ignore him.
His friend is standing in the street.
His friend is yelling something.
He runs forward to his friend, stopping directly infront of him.
"You're alive!"
"Zyzzzt ttzttzzyyz"
The flashlight batteries die.
He's in the garage.
He rips off the back of the flashlight and throws the batteries out.
The battery box in the garage is empty.
Sixteen : Hope
He runs towards the nearby store. He must have batteries.
A figure leaps out at him, baring blood covered fangs. Completely black except for the white fangs and red blood.
Swish
The axe slashes through it.
He runs. He must get to the store. He must have his salvation.
Seventeen : Realization
< 10 hours 45 minutes after >
The kitchen exploded.
He was thrown clear of the house, barely rolling in time to avoid damaging the flashlight, but it had word. The bloodied stump that had been his arm had cauturized, and was no longer spewing blood everywhere.
He stood up and glanced behind.
It slid out of the house rubble.
It's eyes opened.
It moved.
He ran, aiming himself towards his home.
Perhaps... batteries...
Eighteen : Empty
Thirteen figures have all been slashed in half by his axe.
Thirteen figures have all vanished at the moment of the axe clearing them.
The store is ahead.
CRASH
The axe shatters the windows and he jumps in.
Empty.
The store is completely empty.
No people.
No products.
No registers.
Nothing.
Despair seeps into the mind.
No time for it.
He glances down.
The arm is almost completely covered to the shoulder.
He knows what he must do.
Nineteen : Measures
Back to the house.
Back to the memories.
Back to do what has to be done.
He arrives.
He rigs his pullies.
He tests it.
He resets it.
It is time.
The arm is down on the table, the bloodied part just slightly ahead of the axe mark in the table.
He releases the weight.
Twenty : Mistake
Immidiately he knows he has made a mistake.
The pain is catastrophic, yet he lets out no noise. The blood explodes outwards, filling his vision with red.
He knows that he must cautaurize the wound.
Now.
A gas stove.
Twenty one : Solution
The stove is on.
He stands at what he thinks is an appropriate distance.
He holds out the stump.
He throws the match.
Twenty Two : Eternity
<12 hours after>
*An empty city, windows are shattered in all the buildings and the only motion is a spinning light on a collapsed police car, slowly moving around in a circle with a recorded announcement being played over the loudspeaker*
<...evacuation in effect.. zzzt.. iolaters will be quarentined-d-d-d-dd .. izzzzzzzzzztttttzt ..>
A motion.
An arm reaches out, grasps at the cement with bloodied fingertips.
A grip, a chance.
The fingers pull the arm, pulling the man forward.
The man is brutaled, missing an arm, and gashed everywhere. Fingernails are chipped and slashed, and once perfect hair is messed and full of dirt and ash.
He pulls himself forward slowly, closing on his goal, still forever away and infinately close.
In the west, the sun is setting, forever setting... never to finish. A shadow against the surface of the sun, caused by a figure on a skyrise apartment building behind and to the left of the man. Eternally watching.
In the man's mouth is gripped a small flashlight.
Never again to hold batteries...
Prolog :
He shakes his friend's body.
"Wake up!"
After picking up the flashlight, he had collapsed. Unresponsive, but with eyes filled with a terror not of this world.
He slaps his friend, trying to rouse him, and failing. Then he tries a different approach.
He prys the flashlight from his friend's hand.
He has the sudden need to lie down himself.
He collapses on the bed, and aims the flashlight at the fishtank, flicking it on.
It illuminates all sorts of colorful fish swimming around.
He begins to drift off to sleep...
