[CITY 1]

Masaru regains his bearings while slumped over at his desk.

The office lights have gone out, and the steady cacophony of tapping fingers has been replaced by comfortable, stuffy silence.

He takes a moment to just lay there, taking a few slow, calming breaths as he once again goes from a state of utter, nightmarish agony, to the doldrums of day-to-day living.

That annoying blue squiggle is still there, hiding in the dark of his eyelids for a moment only to disappear like a sliding UI element from a video game.

Rejecting the sensations for a moment, he instead takes a moment to appreciate, as best he can, that he did in fact have a pretty interesting dream.

“Total bullshit, though,” he answers his own thoughts before leaning up and opening his eyes to see his lit computer monitor.

“Save your changes to this file?” a prompt window asks him.

He glances down to the task bar to see that it’s the paint tool program – a flippant, childish precursor to the more mature and professional presentation software expected of excellent officers of a respectable company. He certainly hasn’t used a paint tool for anything in nearly a decade, so he closes it without a thought. His hand must have slipped.

“What did I eat for lunch today?” he asks, also out loud. It’s not like any of his coworkers are still here.

He pulls back his sleeve to check his watch: 8:17 PM.

Masaru hums. It’s a little early for everyone to have clocked out. The Executive Officer, Mister Mori, makes it a point of pride to stay finishing up emails and supporting the team at least until 8:30.

“It’s not… a holiday today, is it?” Masaru asks, once again out loud as if the walls were waiting to give him some answers.

He leans back from his spot to check his Shattered Souls Fanart calendar, easily the most “niche” thing he owns, and notes the date today.

“Nope. A regular Monday,” he says to himself before leaning back into his chair, his arms supporting the back of his head.

“Weird dreams. Better watch what I…” he yawns, “…eat.”

Masaru gets up, giving a passing, distasteful look at his briefcase before picking it up and heading out.

In the elevator, the happy and alert *ping* noise sends him down floor by floor. They open, and then it all becomes unreal again.

The lobby is utterly destroyed. The windows and lights are all shattered through with their shards spread chaotically across the faded brown carpet.

As the sun descends over the far side of the bay, he steps through the double doors into a world of orange and pink tones.

“What… happened?” he says to himself again, his brown eyes widening with a sudden panic.

The city has been destroyed, with wreckage spanning for what seems to be kilometers from the edge of the buildings and out into the surrounding nature. It’s a non-descript ruination: It could have been a natural disaster of some kind, or an attack from some foreign nation, but undisputably the place is ruined beyond repair.

Looking behind himself to the company, he sees that his building is perhaps the only one in passable shape, and even it looks weathered and blackened by some form of mysterious explosion spanning along the sides.

“Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath to regain his wits. “Not a videogame. Not a fantasy world. Not a fun place to meet a cu-”

He stops himself on that last one. Where did that rifle-toting girl go? Is this world totally separate from the previous place he was in?

Masaru laughs as he does all he can to suppress the tremor down his spine, like leaning back into a cactus of pure ice. “This isn’t real. This isn’t real,” he repeats to himself, his gaze starting to waver.

“I’m… I’m not even here!” he shouts, laughing up at the heavens as the sun leaves him with a pitch-black sky.

Yes, Abe Masaru is somewhere else. He realizes that now… but where?

This time, he just drops his briefcase on smashed asphalt.

“Where am I?!” he shouts.

He sees a light come on in a neighboring office building. On the third floor, something that appears to be the silhouette of a woman seems to stand up and slowly step off to somewhere else in the building.

Already his mind has clung to the form of her shape.

That girl! He thinks, pulling in a hope-filled breath. She’d know!

But if the lady’s here… then perhaps something else is here, too.

The chill along Masaru’s spine feels like a thousand arctic spiders crawling from the top of his brain stem deep into his lowest nerves. It’s a hideous, inexplicable fear as he comes to terms with the Godless reality that he’s found himself in: his killer, always a few steps behind him in each fresh reality, only to murder him again, and again, and again.

I have to find her! He thinks as he rushes for the building and steps through the obliterated opening of the doors.

It’s the city travel office – used by tourists to get information and make reservations for sightseeing.

The peppy blue and white theming of the place has contorted into a blasted-over hellscape nightmare. A standee of the company’s mascot: Getouttahere-Kun, waits like a ruined fish left on the grill too long. The fattened cat’s gentle smile has been scorched into a wretched entity, staring at him with those ghost-white eyes peering out from a charcoal-black form. The smile is still there, like the patient teeth of a demon, waiting for him to believe it’s only cardboard.

Masaru ignores the weirdness of the setting as best he can, but he passes by the little camera set inside the picture of the camera that Getouttahere-Kun’s holding.

Come on over and visit Get Outta Here Travel!~

We’ve got the plans to make your worries unravel!~

Bright Sunny days and lively fishing!~

“Get Outta Here” is what you’re wishing!~

Come on over and visit Get Outta Here Travel!~

We’ve got the plans to make your worries unravel!~

Masaru stares at the standee with wide, horrified eyes until the song ends. He never realized their standees were motion activated.

He hears what sounds like the loud sound of a rifle action loading somewhere above him.

All at once, he’s broken from the trance of terror, and refocuses his efforts.

Masaru searches as quickly and as stealthily as possible to find a way up. The elevator doesn’t work, and the nearest stairwell is blocked over with shattered concrete and twisting rebar.

“Be safe… be safe…” he whispers under his breath as he finds a place at the end of the hallway. To his fortune, and a sort of luck that he feels he’s increasingly more entitled to, he sees it’s unblocked.

Heading up to the second floor, he finds that the stairs leading to the third are totally blocked.

“The hell?” he grunts as he dashes right into the second-floor hallway and across to the stairwell he found at the lobby. “Surely you’re open, right?” he says to himself as he runs through a hallway of eerie-looking standees… and they’re all on.

He runs through as he blanks out his mind from the demonic chorus of cardboard evil.

Come on over and visit Get Outta Here Travel!~

Come on over and visit make unravel!~ Get Outta Here Travel!~

He stumbles over an upturned box of travel magazines. It’s like they’re all watching him.

We’ve got the plans to Come on over make unravel!~

Bright lively fishing!~ “Get Outta Here” is what you’re wishing!~

We’ve got the plans to make your worries wishing!~

“Get Outta Here” is what you’re Travel!~

He redoubles his sprint as the voices behind him create something akin to a secret message behind him.

Come on over and “Get Outta Here” unravel!~

Bright Sunny days “Get Outta Here” lively fishing!~

He trips, slides, and pushes his hands into a pile of scattered thumb tacks. Getting up, he winces as he sweeps the tacks out of his hand.

Get Outta Here make your Get Outta Here unravel!~

Come on over and visit Get Outta Here Travel!~

At the end of the line he sprints up the staircase to head to the third and final floor, but even if he wasn’t in a rush he wouldn’t spend another second in that hallway with all those grinning things looking at him.

Finally to the third floor, he slides out on the tile and runs into the lit room.

“Ma’am!” he exclaims as he busts open the door.

But he’s too late.

The Westerner woman is gasping for air as the hole in her blood-soaked tank top delivers yet another spurt of vitality onto the emotionless floor.