Memoria

As anyone who knows me can tell, my memory is horrible, not just short term, but long term too. I can't remember right now what I did today. If you ask me about a conversation I had with you a week ago, chances are I will have no recollection of it.

As a result, the state of my memories is a random assortment of visual flashes, with a few spoken words here and there. Certain smells and certain images fire memories every now and then, but for the most part, it's very hard for me to remember vivid events from my childhood and even today. From the ages of 9 to 13 or so, I have absolutely no idea what I was doing.

Everyone I know has experienced the strange sensation of driving to a destination and not having any recollection of ever having driven there. I spend four or five hours a day driving and so, more than five hours of my day, everyday, are completely lost to me. I spend a good part of my life in exactly that state of mind. Half the time, I can't even tell you what I was thinking about while I was mentally dead to the world. There are times that I drive across town, have a conversation with someone and drive back and suddenly 'come to' and realize I can't even remember where I just was. It's unsettling to not be able to remember where you were five minutes ago.


I keep thinking that this memory disorder, and I know that's what it is, is somehow connected to my frequently occurring night terrors, but I can't for the life of me figure out how.

Waves

I was staying at a hotel on the coast with my brother, his wife and my girlfriend. The hotel's entrance to the beach opened on a long corridor of sand with tall beach grass on either side. At the end of this corridor, right where the beach starts, a tall dark wall of rock stretched as far as the eye could see into the sky. This wall went along the edge of the beach for about 100 feet before turning at a right angle on both sides and running straight out into the ocean. The only entrance or exit to this enclosure was through a very small door which the hotel corridor led to.

We all went to the beach for the day and I started to dig a hole in the sand. We were all laughing and talking and the beach enclosure was filled with other people, all enjoying the day. After a while though, the sky grew dark and the waves increased in strength. Within just a few minutes, the tide had come up and the waves were pushing us back towards the enclosure wall. People began to panic and get as close to the wall as possible, but it seemed like most of them were not aware of the door. Maybe too panicked to think clearly.

We ran back to the wall with everyone, but we had been in the middle of the enclosure, so the door was directly in front of us. The waves were incredibly high, at least 100 feet, and they were smashing down not far from where we were. People were crying and clutching each other, scrambling at the wall in a desperate attempt to climb it.

I knew that not everyone would get out of there, so I stayed at the door and started yelling over the noise at the people to the left of the door. I screamed at them to come with me, waving them towards the door and shouting that they needed to get out as quickly as possible. A few people looked at me, horror plastered on their faces and started to head towards the door. Most of them were too panicked to think.

I shouted over to my brother to do the same with the people on the right side of the door. We started ushering people towards the door together. The more people who listened and stopped panicking, the easier it was until only a few people were left, most of them clustered at the far ends of the wall. The waves had increased in strength and proximity until now they were staying put, feet from us. We were all drenched and tired. My girlfriend and my brother's wife were no where to be seen; they'd been the first couple that we'd pushed through the doors.

All at once, the tide drew away from us and the sky began to lighten.



Everything faded away and now I was at my apartment with my girlfriend. Instead of the apartments opening onto the main hallway with closed doors, now there were glass storefronts. The apartment next to ours had been renovated into an open bar, with a counter facing right out into the hallway. As I walked by, the man who lived there was polishing a mug with a towel over his shoulder. He smiled as I passed.

Our apartment door was glass, with big store windows on either side. The rest of the apartment was the same as in reality, but the first room was now a store, with counters and tables piled high with containers of cookies, candies and cakes. We'd lived there for a few months already and had already looked around at everything. We had assumed the food was all fake, just there for show until we bought enough real food to open the shop.

As I walked in the door, I saw the shop room and decided to go in a have a look, seeing as I hadn't been inside it since we'd moved in. There was a lot of color, just as you'd imagine a candy store, and a pie counter was near the door. I moved over to it and picked up a fake cookie. As I picked it up, I noticed crumbs falling from it and took a bite. It was real, and very tasty.

Excited, I ate the whole thing and then called my girlfriend to come and look. She screamed out in joy and we both scanned the pie counter, my eyes searching for a chocolate cheesecake.

Looking over at the sour candies, I almost died, saying, "This is just like winning a million dollars!"


With cookie crumbs in the corners of my mouth, a chocolate cheesecake in my hand, I said to my girlfriend, "Remember though, everything in moderation."

I wake up, extremely disappointed and hungry.

Home Run

I was in a long classroom with large windows on the right side. On the left side of the classroom were long counters, presumably for science experiments and the like. The windows faced out onto the main lobby hallway of the school. I stood looking out the window nearest the classroom door and watched as a boy, probably around 17 years old, walked through the front door with a gun. I didn't see or hear anyone else, but I knew there were people around somehow. In the classroom I was in, there were other people, but I don't remember seeing any of them.

I crouched down against the wall, peering cautiously over the sill of the window to see where he was going. He started to shoot randomly into the walls and offices around the lobby area and I knew I had to do something. I locked the door to the room I was in to protect the other people there. We waited for a few minutes, hearing the gunshots and hoping he wouldn't see any of us and I had to keep motioning everyone to stay down. After about five minutes, the people in the room with me disappeared and I realized I was dreaming.

I knew I had to do something to stop the boy from hurting anyone, so I unlocked the door to the room and picked something up. I'm still not sure if it was a baseball bat or just a piece of broken chair.

I whistled to get his attention before dropping back down out of sight. I was nervous, but I tried to focus on just being quick and getting it over with. He walked slowly over to the door, finally not shooting at everything he saw. Bringing the gun up, he opened the door and started to step inside.

Just as his foot hit the floor, I whirled in front of him and brought the bat down on his head. The gun didn't leave his hand and he only looked at me with a shocked expression on his face. I hit him again, a little harder and he crumpled to the floor, passed out. As he fell, I grabbed his pistol by the barrel and held it away from him.

I looked up to see a police officer walking towards me, surprised by what had just happened. I handed the gun to him and he directed me towards one of the offices for my statement.

When I got there, a man was looking at a computer screen at some sort of defense grid for the entire world. He said that now that the danger was passed, he would have to send a message to certain defense networks so that they could lower their alertness. I thought this was strange, seeing as the 'danger' had only been a boy with a gun. On his map, I noticed most of the grids he was looking at were in the Middle East.

I told another man there what had happened, but when I told him, I was describing it to him as though I had just dreamed it, even laughing at the absurdity of it. He never laughed though, only took everything I said down as if filing it away for future use.

I wake up.

Flash

I was riding a bicycle through the streets of a nondescript neighborhood. Only the road was clearly visible, the houses and sky were blurred together, only vaguely in recognizable shapes. The bicycle I was riding had very short handlebars with only enough room for my hands to just barely cover the left and right sides. Because of this, I had to steer by leaning my entire body to one side or the other. This made high speeds terrifying.

I couldn't seem to go slower than terrifying though. The bicycle didn't have brakes, so each time downhill I would tense up, using all my energy to keep from falling. Uphill, the bicycle would slow down but I don't remember ever having to actually use the pedals. The bicycle always moved at a minimum speed.

I came to my old house, one we have not lived in for almost ten years. I dropped the bicycle in the front yard and immediately went for one of the front windows. A window that had long ago been to my sister's room. Now I'm in the hallway, past my sister's room. I walk slowly down the hallway and notice that the house is still filled with odds and ends that we left there when we moved away, ten years ago. I pass my mother's old room and see a little piano against the wall. I walk through to investigate it, thinking I'll take it back with me if I can, but when I get to it, the keys are all missing and the inside of it is completely empty, save for random bits of trash.

I poke through other piles of stuff, not looking for anything in particular when I suddenly hear footsteps coming from upstairs. I stop to listen, not wondering how there can be an upstairs on a house that is only one level. The footsteps become louder and I can now hear them coming down the stairs, quicker this time. I know the house is unlived in, so I think that it must be a homeless man or drifter that I woke up. I turn to run back down the hallway towards the open window that I climbed through. I dive through the window and into the grass outside, rolling into a ball and coming back up at my bike. I pull the bike up in one swift movement and am down the street without looking back.

I come around a curve too fast, almost falling, and start up the largest hill in the neighborhood. I still don't have to pedal, so it's easy going, but I'm tired so I get off the bike to walk it up the hill. There's a nice looking hispanic man standing on the other side of the street, walking down the way I came. My bike disappears and I'm walking emptyhanded. He says hello to me, but I'm out of breath so can only manage to wave back. I notice that he's carrying a very nice camera with him.

"$600 picture, my treat?" He says, smiling.
I look at him quizically, not understanding.
"I take a $600 photo of you, for free?" He says again, beckoning to me with his camera.

I nod yes and walk over to him, skeptical that he'll keep his word but intent on humoring him.
"I'll see what you've got," I say.

He snaps the first picture and then produces a thick black screen from behind him. He holds this in front of the lens and takes a few more, changing position with each one.

"Give me your hand," he says.
I stop, wondering why all the niceness has left his face.
"Give me your hand!" He says more forcefully, grabbing my hand in his and holding it directly in front of the black screen.

I feel a small pinch on my hand immediately when the flash of his camera goes off and he smiles again.


I start to feel tired, like my brain has been slowed to a crawl. The man and the neighborhood around him becomes one blur.

All I see before I wake up is his still smiling face.

Depersonalization

I get this feeling sometimes, a feeling of total detachment from the world around me. I've tried to explain it to people before. Usually they don't understand what I'm trying to say, sometimes someone will say they get the same feeling, but I'm never sure because my explanation never seems close enough to what it is.

Just going about my daily life, I'll suddenly have a strange out-of-body sensation where I can see myself doing whatever it is I'm doing. With this, I experience a deep sense of self and where I am physically. As in a dream, a question will present itself to me and make itself entirely important, unable to be swept aside.

"Am I really who I am?"

This is always followed by a strange flow of thoughts concerning the rest of the world and the people in it, usually in terms of why am I who I am and why I am not someone else. Am I really experiencing the things in my life?

The strangest part of it all is the final question before all goes back to normal.


If I wasn't experiencing everything in my life right now, what would I be experiencing?

Sorrow

I'm at our family property, only this property is different from the property my family owns in real life. The forest is all around, as in real life, but a larger house occupies a smaller open area. The house is two storied, with a steep roof and gabled windows. There is a wide porch coming across the back, which faces a thick forest.

Between the house and the edge of the forest is a small building made from unfinished tree limbs and rough hewn logs. The limbs seem to be tied to the main frame of the building, and there are wide open windows of air. From one side of the grass, I can see through the openings of the building and through to the other side. This building is obviously very old and I walk towards it in awe, as if I'd never seen it before.

As I leave the porch and walk across the grass, I notice that I'm surrounded by family members, though I recognize none of them. They are all holding cups and chatting amongst themselves, as any family would at a reunion or holiday. One of them, an older woman, comes to me and starts to relate to me the story behind this wooden building. The building had been built by women in our family many generations ago. I don't know why the fact that only women had built it was important, but the woman tells me this in deep reverance to her ancestors and I feel pride mixed with sorrow; the building takes on the feeling I would have towards a tombstone.

As this woman finishes the story, I notice my real life cousin Julie in among the other family members that I do not recognize. Someone then yells out from the side of the house and we all turn to look as one of the older men of the family leads a large brown Ox out towards us. He's bought the animal from overseas, and will use him to help around the property.

Fast forward, my dad comes out of the house carrying a load of old sheets of yellowed glass with another man. They're extremely heavy and thick, but the men carry them over to the little wooden building and place them down on the short set of steps leading into the building, explaining that they'll be used as windows. The Ox is tied beside them to one of the support posts of the building.

Suddenly, something happens. I can't see what it is because my vision blacks out for a moment, but everyone screams and it seems as though there is alot of movement. I can only guess there was an earthquake. We try to collect ourselves and see that everyone is okay when we hear deep moans from the Ox. With the movement of the earthquake, the sheets of glass were dislodged from the building and slid down onto the Ox, slicing a deep gash into the animal. We all rush to help stop the bleeding, but we know it's too late. As the Ox bleeds to death, many of us are crying and I'm filled with a sadness I've never felt outside of waking life.

I woke up more disturbed and depressed than seems reasonable.

I actually had this dream a week ago.

Mistake

I was in a forest, thickly wooded and dark. Two friends were with me, neither of which I recognized from real life. I was young, a teenager and I had the distinct feeling that I was in a time far before this one.

We were hiding in the bushes all around a wide oak tree, peeking out at a stone house. The building was old, the stones covered over with thick green moss. We were all scared of the house, but in that way that teenage boys are, where they want to get as close as possible to what scares them, so as to see who is the bravest of the group.

I leaned out from the tree one last time to look once more at the house. As I looked at the right side of the house, a black figure appeared suddenly, as if conjured from the air itself. Before I could react with anything but surprise, the figure disappeared and then, in the same instant, reappeared closer, then again, and again, covering the distance between us in less than a second, but without walking or even physically moving at all. As the figure appeared directly in front of our tree, my friends shrieked and I was filled with utter terror. All I could see before I tore off into the forest were black eyes and long black hair and a pitch black mouth, permanently fixed in a scream.

Fast forward. I'm walking through the same forest with a girl, dressed in the same old sort of clothes I and my friends were dressed in before. The terror of the dark figure has deserted me and I feel as though it's only a memory, nothing more than a hallucination. My friends are lost, having run in different directions as I and now I'm searching for them with this girl. I carry a gun with me, and walk in front of the girl, in a protective position. The dark figure is merely a myth from the town in which we live, and we're sure we will find my friends. The gun is there for assurance, nothing else.

Something is disturbed in the bushes to my side and the girl behind me screams, I turn, leveling the gun at the brush. A dark figure appears and I fire at it in the same instant that I turn, grabbing the girl by the hand and retreating back to town, terrified that my hallucination from before had returned to me.


One of my lost friends returns to town a day later, dirty and scared. He's in a state of shock, completely terrified. He'd found our other friend in the midst of bushes drenched in dried red blood, a fatal gunshot to the chest.

I wake up.

Beach Tower

I was in an elevator with my sister, Hilary, and my cousin, Chelsea. The elevator we were in was at the bottom of a tower, many stories in height. The tower was familiar to me, though I've never seen it in real life. We were all in a good mood, laughing and joking, as we'd done in childhood. We were hitting random floor buttons, though I only remember four and six. At six, we got off the elevator and stepped into a small circular room, with a hallway connecting entering and exiting at our right and left. The hallway curved around in front of us and connected into a larger room. The walls were shades of blue and made of a sort of opaque glass. In the center of this larger room was a glass desk with a writing lamp sitting on it. As we stepped into the room, a woman stepped out from the hallway in what looked like a nurse's uniform.

She turned towards us and we retreated quietly back to the elevator, like children wanting not to be seen. We were stifling our laughs and looking around at each other as the elevator door shut and I suddenly got the distinct feeling we were in my Uncle Billy's office, where we were not supposed to be.

The elevator descended, but when the doors opened, we found ourselves at the top floor of the tower. All around us the sky stretched forever and we could not see the ground. The wind was blowing fiercely, and seemed very loud. We walked to the edge of the building and suddenly stairs opened up before us, leading down to a beach.

The roof of the tower suddenly became the wraparound porch of a beach house. It was still made from the same opaque glass material, though now it was considerably darker, a steely gray. The beach was filled with celebrities, all very good looking, and all happy to see Chelsea and Hilary. I then noticed my girlfriend, Ashton walking and laughing with Jennifer Aniston, both wearing beach sarongs and flip flops. I didn't talk to anyone, just surveyed the beach, presumably looking for someone who wasn't there.

The sky turned very dark, and the howling wind from the tower roof returned. Trees all around were blowing hard and everyone scattered, gathering their things and piling into their cars to evacuate. The celebrities had all vanished and all the people were family members, some I recognized and some I didn't. I went from group to group, making sure everyone was accounted for and seeing that everyone left before whatever was threatening to happen happened.

I watched the last car leave and then ran to the porch of the beach house. My aunt, Laura, was there, forgotten in the panic to leave. I helped her to gather the things she was picking up, clay figurines and black and white pictures. The wind grew stronger, the dark more complete and from there everything clouded until I woke up.

hmm

Authority

I was in a car, driving up a steep mountain road. There was another man in the passenger seat and I apparently knew him well. We were security agents, of a sort, but somehow unknown to local law enforcement. I was driving fast, trying desperately to get to the top of the mountain before... something could happen. There was a flat patch of ground near the top of the mountain, with a small gravel road on the other side that led a little further around to a second patch of level ground, this one actually on the peak of the mountain. It was dark, and the sky was cloudy. There were trees surrounding both patches of clear ground. I saw two cars blocking the gravel road leading to the second clearing and quickly braked, throwing the car into a skid that made it stop parallel to the car barricade.

Instantly, gunfire raked our car from behind the barricade. I dropped below the car window and yelled at my 'partner' to take cover. We had guns with us and used them to fire back at our enemy. I immediately found that my gun would not fire if I tried to shoot through my car window. My partner was shot and taken down, though he was still alive. As I turned to look at him, I also caught a bullet in my thigh. People say you can't feel pain in dreams, but I felt the bullet sting as it entered.

I again tried to fire back and still could not make my gun fire through the glass, no matter how desperately I pulled the trigger. A third car came from behind the car barricade and accelerated towards us. The driver stopped parallel to our car, broke my window and put the gun through. He shot me four times through the chest.

He walked away, satisfied that he had killed both myself and my partner and the gunfire from the other men stopped. I raised myself up, silently, painfully. Now that my window was broken, my gun worked just fine.

I shot the man who had shot me in the back, dropping him and exited my car. The other two men were surprised. Not quickly enough, they raised their weapons. I shot them both and immediately heard the sirens of police cars crawling up the mountainside. The blue lights passed through the trees, reflecting off of the cars. I fumbled for my wallet and produced my 'badge' just as the squad cars pulled up into the clearing. The police leveled their weapons at me and I was bathed in bright spot lights as I tried to explain myself.


Before I went to sleep last night, I was complaining to Ashton that my thigh hurt.
Nifty, eh?

Grey

Warning: Depressing dream ahead.


A steam train barreled down a railway track. There were five or six cars, all filled with coal. Each car had two or three holes in the floor, with coal piled high all around them. Tired men dropped heavy shovelfuls of the coal down the holes and into the furnaces below. Grey clouds obscured the sun; the sky was dark. The train passed trees that were bare of any leaves or color.

There were dogs, covered in soot, that ran back and forth over the piles of coal. Their purpose was unknown. One of the dogs ran too close to one of the men and his shovel. When the coal was dropped from one pile to another, the dog was hit by a few of the coal rocks. His leg was broken and the foreman immediately stated that the dog was to be thrown over the side because he was in the way and 'we wouldn't want him to fall into the furnace.'




I think I should see a psychologist.


Almost forgot...
I told my mom about my dream and she said that the night before, she'd woken up in the middle of the night to let the dog, Caroline, outside. She heard a train passing by on the tracks a few miles away and worried that the dog would run over there one day and get herself killed.

Humanibrarian

I've paid about 150 dollars in library fines to the City of Greenville in the past year or so. Shouldn't that qualify me for some kind of tax refund? I've donated 150 dollars to the City of Greenville's campaign against illiteracy... what have you done?

They should build a monument for me in the city center or something.
Or maybe I should just stop misplacing city property.

Lent

I decided that I complain too much, so I'm going to try to stop.

Only for forty days though; I wouldn't do anything rash like stop altogether. In a world so full of stupid people, it wouldn't be right to throw away such an opportunity. I'm not starting today though. I need more preparation than that. I do a lot of complaining.


I realize I'm not Catholic, by the way, but they stole Halloween, Christmas and Valentines from the pagans, so I figure they can Lend me Lent.

Peaked

It being two o'clock in the morning and me getting the spontaneous night-owl urges that I do, I decided to travel up Paris Mountain earlier. I hadn't used my camera for anything like what it was made for in weeks and I'd been getting a twitchy feeling all night, as if it was my duty to go out at some point before daybreak. Usually when I get that feeling, I end up either helping someone with a flat tire or being questioned by the police. Go figure.

It was cold. Very cold. By the time I reached the summit, dodging leaves pretending to be squirrels all the way, the temperature had dropped by a degree with each chug of the engine. I didn't pass a single car the entire way, but my imagination concocted a fiery car crash at each curve, complete with bodies in the roadway and a knife-wielding dead-eye madman. I'd only ever been to the top a few times, all during the day. I knew it was a nice view on a clear day, but I had no idea of just how many lights there are in a single city. As I drove, I had to keep myself from running off the mountainside, so intrigued was I with the lights of my city. A few times, the darkness was so complete around me that I could almost put myself in the cockpit of a starship flying low over Coruscant. What, no one else does that?













I found company at the top. A sedan with no lights on, parked on the overlook. I didn't have to guess what was going on inside, what with the foggy nature of the windows, but I did have to let lose a little chuckle at the desperately frantic movement of arms and legs when my headlights poured through the back window.

I argued with myself for a moment about staying, wondering what exactly the etiquette was in such a situation. If I were polite and understanding, I would have turned around, leaving the overlook to teenaged shenanigans which such a place was made for. Oh well, I'd driven a long way to get a few pictures. I could almost feel the desperate eyes of Pressured Teen Girl on the back of my head as her eyes went from myself, setting up my camera tripod, to the rapidly deflating penis of Lucky Stud. My apologies, guy.

I took a few pictures, which didn't turn out very good, and then retreated down the mountainside, allowing NPR's piano concerto to drown out the renewed squeak of the sedan's suspension system.


















Lot of writing for not much of an adventure.
Forgive me, I haven't blogged in ages.

Pride

I love answerbag.

Someone told me today, "Nobody can make sense of your cryptic one-liners."
Such a sense of accomplishment.

Deflect

I was narrating a television episode, the first in a series that seemed to be some sort of kids show. The plot had something to do with a little girl who lived in a mansion, only the mansion wasn't like any other. From the outside, the house was very small, no bigger than a townhouse. On the inside, the mansion was constantly changing with new rooms, long hallways, hidden doors, etc. The mansion was a physical puzzle of sorts and the girl could only escape if she could outwit a series of increasingly dangerous villians who shared the mansion with her. Each villain would provide some sort of clue as to how the next could be beaten.

The first villain came in the form of Alan Tudyk... don't ask me why. I can't remember how he was finally beaten by our female protagonist, but I do remember that he was able to transform any door in the mansion into an impassable barrier, trapping the girl in certain rooms of the house. The barrier took the form of a shimmering mirror which moved as if made of liquid, but stayed upright. Alan was also a jokester, and didn't seem very dangerous.

The second vilain was somewhat more sinister. He wore a great overcoat that flew along behind him as he walked. He had black leather riding boots with spurs on his feet and a dark top hat on his head. He walked quickly, head bent forward, as if walking into a strong wind. He seemed to have a definite purpose and never faltered or hesitated. As he walked through the long hallways of the mansion, peering into each room he passed, his body flashed and shimmered, appearing to vanish and reappear ten times a second. In his hands, he carried a large metal lantern. His face was hidden in shadow.

The girl was visibly terrified of this man when she first saw him. When he would see her, he would raise his lantern to her. A bolt of light would fly from the lantern and hit the girl, causing her body to shimmer and flash just as his did. Each time she was hit, her energy would be sapped, making her flight through the mansion harder and harder. After many failed attempts at killing the man, the girl desperately grabbed one of the doors that Alan had transformed into a mirror barrier earlier. She pulled until it came loose from the wall and turned towards her pursuer just as he leveled his lantern at her. The bolt of light shot into the mirror and was reflected back at the man. He threw his hands up and his entire body lit up violently, as if struck by lightning. He disappeared in a puff of smoke, top hat and all.

Lets go fly a bike...

I was in a familiar place, very much like downtown Greenville, but with a feel of Broadway at the Beach too. There were lots of people, tourists mainly. It was a nice day; sunny and warm. The trees were all full of green and it was windy. Perfect for kite flying.

I was 'flying' a bicycle. My feet didn't touch the ground, I floated above it at about the height I would be if I were actually bicycling. Above me, a bike flew through the air, guided by some strange remote control in my hands. Not only was I floating a few feet of the ground, my feet were pedaling through the air as if I were bicycling. I watched the bicycle fly through the air and guided it carefully around trees, careful not to hit any of the buildings surrounding the streets. I was aware that the bicycle was very heavy, as a bicycle would be, and so was careful not to let it crash to the ground and hurt anyone. For this reason also, I had to keep it in sight at all times.

The people around me were all entranced, but not as they would be realistically. They had the sort of amazement on their faces as one of us would were we watching a unicyclist, not a man flying a bicycle. The crowds grew heavier and heavier, all of them very excited at my talent and I had to work harder and harder to keep the bicycle from killing someone. There were festival tents set up now.

Around a corner, I lost sight of my bike and panicked. I raced around the corner, trying to guess as to where it was, and finally saw it high above me, racing towards the clouds. I angled it back down and over-compensated. It nosedived and crashed violently into the ground. It suddenly dawned on everyone watching how dangerous this could be, and they looked at me as though I were insane. I picked the bike up, rode on it for a moment to get it up to speed and then jumped to the side, pulling the handlebar up into a wheelie and then letting it fly back into the air.

Help

The wet grass bent against our shins, wetting the front of our pants, as we sprinted across the field. One of them was standing in the far right side of the field, a machete grasped limply in her hand. Her long hair followed around her as she turned slowly in circles. Her head was down, staring at nothing at all.

I was in front, running towards the nearest building. It was a condo, made of brick, with a steep porch stair coming up to the glass screen door. I turned. The other two survivors I had been traveling with were behind me. The girl had changed direction and was now running directly towards the woman with the machete. "No!", I yelled. "No time!" She turned back.

I was at the front door. It was open, the screen door waving slightly in the wind. I motioned to my companions and stepped through the threshold. The room was dark, but the television was on. I could hear something from the back of the condo. My companions came through behind me, shutting the door, bolting it.

An old woman came into the room and we all jumped, leveling what weapons we had on her. "Stop! We're not here to hurt you ma'am, we just need a place to stay. It's not safe out there." I raised my hands to show my lack of ill intent and looked back, nodding for my group to lower their weapons and relax. "I understand, please, come in." She was wearing a nightgown and looked to be in her sixties. We all wondered how she'd made it this far.

She closed the two doors joining the front room to the rest of the condo, but I opened them immediately.
"Is there anyone else in this house with you?"
"No, no one."
"Are you sure?"
She nodded.

I checked the house and found no one. I ordered my companions and our new housemate to close all the window blinds, turn the lights off and make sure all windows and doors were locked and blocked. We found towels, blocked up the windows to keep what light we had from attracting them.

I sat with the old woman. She introduced herself as Jan.
"I'm glad you could make it. I was beginning to worry about myself."