Chapter 3:

Among sleeping Titans

A Place between There and Now


A loud never-ending muffled noise jolted me out of sleep, it was raining. I got up and walked under a few boards of the ceiling that were still intact and waited. It was about 5 am, that was at least what my clock said. Raindrops were flowing down the windows or what was left of them. Like the fog, I saw the past two days the rain was black.

I decided to wait until the rain stopped as I couldn't see much in this weather anyway and didn't know if it would get any worse. What followed were agonizing 3 hours which consisted of mainly just sitting around and watching the rain as it slowly filled the streets, turning them into small rivers of their own and flooding the houses. During my wait, I noticed something, the wooden roof I was using as protection to not get wet was part of the wood I ripped out of the house for the fire yesterday. I looked and not only was the pile of wood gone but all of the wood was back where I found it. It was like the house took back what I stole from it, like the mushrooms, the blood, the footprints.

Whatever was happening here, I didn’t understand it in any way, but it did remind me of some stories I heard and some series I watched during my childhood, though this was in no way like the concepts I had seen or read about. After all, it was all fiction, how could something like this exist.

As the weather finally cleared, I pulled a stone out of the road, took out my lighter, and threw it on the ground. I then proceeded to hit my lighter again and again with the rock until it was completely broken. I put it in the hole in the road where I took the stone out early and put the stone back on top of it, effectively burying what was left of it under the road. When I was done, I started walking again, it was already around 9 am by then and the fog finally cleared once more.

A few broken cars were standing next to the road, strangely like the houses it seemed like they all had been abandoned and broke down over time, it wasn’t like they were destroyed by an earthquake or anything, they just were all old, rusty, and overgrown with moss.

From the corner of my eye, I saw how something was crawling behind one of the cars. I slowly stepped closer still trying to keep some distance, I could gladly do without another death because you know, pain hurts. I was about 3 feet away from the car but to my surprise there didn’t seem to be anything behind it. I walked around it twice unable to find what I thought I saw earlier and expected that it must have just been a mistake and there was nothing after all.

By now it was already early noon, and the houses around me grew taller and taller, I was in the heart of the city now, though walking aside these crumbling giants, made of half-broken concrete and a rusty skeleton made of steel covered in moss and vines, made me feel uneasy in a way I never felt before as if I could be crushed under the debris of said giants for eternity.

I found a subway station, luckily the option of going through the half-broken tunnels was taken away by them being either already buried under debris or flooded by what i could only spaculate to be the rain from earlier. I walked further until I found myself in the middle of a small park surrounded by the concrete giants looking down on me, one of them had already fallen, and its remains now covered over half of the park. I climbed on top of one of the larger pieces and looked around. I never felt as lonely as I did now but I didn't mind it.  I never minded being alone, it gave me time to think, and made things easier for me, and finding a friend that wasn't going to leave or backstab me later was near impossible, at least for me. It felt good, finally being on my own, a world, for me, and only me, though, even though I hate to admit it, not being able to talk to anyone did bother me.

I laid down, the rock was hard and still wet from the black rain, but it was better than sitting upright. Slowly my eyes shut, and my consciousness faded away.

- booting #004

- repeat

Lucianael
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