Homeless and penniless and with no happy future to think of Rick decided to take the easy way out. He picked up a shard of broken glass from the street and carved ragged, shaky lines into his wrists.
As his head began to droop, bright lights blasted his body. Squinting, he looked up to see a bus sitting in front of him, the door open and the driver beckoning him inside.
Rick stepped onto the bus and plopped himself down. He looked at the gashes on his wrists, which had turned into a roadmap leading to a single destination: nowhere.
Given the level of decomposition, it appeared as though the body had been there for quite some time. The hiker looked at his phone, hoping for a signal, but zero bars stared back at him.
Knowing he would need to hike back out to contact the authorities, he leaned in close, looking for something to share with the police. That was when he saw movement within the dead man’s mouth.
He shone his phone flashlight into the gaping maw, the light attracting the moths housed within. As they shot into the air, he noticed the skull pattern on delicate wings.
The parts of the paper coming away from the wall looked decayed and felt brittle to the touch. The house had sat empty for years and needs some love, starting with the removal of the nicotine stained wallpaper.
As he stared at the wall covering with the wild spiral design, he saw shapes begin to emerge, one of which looked like the silhouette of a boy. He tried to blink the illusion away, but it became more prominent.
Peeling away the paper, he pressed his ear to the wall and heard muffled breaths and a cry for help from within.
We had walked this trail countless times before, both of us feeling as though we knew it well enough to walk blindfolded. Imagine our surprise when we came upon a staircase in the woods.
The design was ornate and looked like something out of a grand hotel from a place lost in time. The entire staircase looked like something created by a master craftsman, but the runner was what caught the eye.
The pattern on the carpet was comprised of a series of runes and glyphs. I watched as my partner ascended the stairs and vanished into a swirling portal.
I watched from my window as the storm cloud drew ever closer, lightning flashing within the black clouds. When it stopped, it did so over my home, dumping dead birds onto my front lawn.
A couple of the birds struck the window where I watched from, creating a crack that looked like one of the lightning bolts still firing within the cloud.
One such bolt hit the ground and stirred the birds. They stood, stiff and dead, and began to sing, chirping my name in a tuneless melody. I wanted to flee, but the singing birds held me in place.