The day is cold. Cold, dark and damp; the kind of day where, at the times you walk outside, you get goosebumps all over. Really, it's not day at all since all Jayne Hart can see is blackness. The blackness, he sees as he slowly looks up for some kind of sign that it's real, meets the edge of the sky to create an awkward horizon line on top of something. With a thick swallow, he moves his hand up slowly. He can see his hand clearly as if it were day, although the blackness is all-consuming. In front of him he puts his hand, reaching out slowly, feeling air and waiting to feel something solid. His fingers finally touch something. Brick.
He looks up and turns around, finding the blackness to edge off, creating shapes - flat walls that edge around, a floor with trashcans and small puddles of forgotten rainfall. He's in an alleyway. He steps forward tentatively at first, testing the ground that is completely black as well, making sure it's solid. His hands by instinct fly outwards, like he's walking on a tightrope in the circus so he can find his balance. And he keeps walking on, until the blackness begins to fade off and he walks slowly to the end of the alley. He feels like something is completely wrong; wrong in the sense of something that he can't remember. It sits on the tip of his tongue too, right at the front of his memories, that thing he can't remember.
He feels like he just went through a long day of work and he's suddenly wiped with exhaustion, staring down at his feet, one hand on his knee as the other reaches out and rests against the wall, like he just ran a mile in less than six minutes. He looks up, panting, and the world is suddenly cast a rather gruesome shade of red, the world smeared with nothing but red, like something out of a bad horror movie. He swallows thickly, then pushes himself off the wall, suddenly gaining some energy to continue after the mile he ran that he can't remember running.
He tries to focus on the end of the alley, trying to focus enough to make out the shadows there. Close to the end, there's a shadow, a shadow of a child it seems. He leans against the wall and a feeling wells up in his gut, making him hold it to keep himself steady and possibly the rising bile down. He tilts his head, really trying to focus, squinting his eyes nearly shut, but the shadow blurs and parts of it seem to fall off in wisps of dark air and drizzles of black liquid. And, like something even more out of a really bad horror movie, he calls out; he's that one typically dumb blonde girl that calls out when she sees the figure of the killer in the distance, just out of desperation in case it's really someone who can help her and her other near-death friends that went on a camping trip that someone else always thought was a bad idea.
At the sound of his voice the shadowed child seems to become alert and moves, cringing away from him and then turns away when he asks if they can help him, and darts off with a little giggle that trails behind. The child seems to glitch and hover, like he's watching part of a movie that hasn't fully loaded yet, and the shadows trail off behind him with those playful little giggles that echo through the alley. He grunts, tired and wondering why he ever thought a child could help him in the first place.
Slowly, he emerges from the end of the alley, gripping the brick corner tightly. He looks left and right, up and down the street and that feeling wells up in his gut again, that sick feeling of fear.
Empty.
Completely empty.
There are no cars. There are no trees. There are no people. There aren't even any pigeons flying about.
He swallows back the fear again so it settles more into his gut, and the feeling slowly wells off as his eyes make their way back up from his right side, working slowly up to the left.
It seems like the lights in all the buildings that line the street are out. The streetlamps don't even give any light off though they appear to be on; all they give are deep shadows of black molded with the rest of the reddened monochrome world. On the corner of the street to his left, he sees one streetlight that actually gives off some actual source of light instead of shadows. Albeit it was only one and it was flickering between real, white-yellow light and the blackness all the others gave off, but still. It was something.
As if on cue to his worst nightmares, under the flickering light is the child, who he can spot only under the real light, the shadows swirling off in curls and loops as the giggles reach his ears. In the second that he spotted the kid, the child runs off again, around the corner and the lamp falls into giving off shadows like the rest of them.
Looking back down to the other side of the street, he steps out of the alley, following after the kid slowly. He feels like he's playing a game of Follow the Leader, and the kid is playing Leader right now. Being that this city of nothing but shades of gray and red means nothing to him, he plays Follower.
He turns the corner of red and black brick, peering around it with curiosity, face pulled into the emotion as well. He can see the kid standing at the next corner, just waiting for him as shadows bleed off into the air, filling the black night heavy above them with more black. He can hear the giggling and the child runs off again, crossing the empty street and running past another corner. He follows after, crossing the street as an uncanny feeling passes over him. He can't help but wonder about the awkward sense of déjà vu he's getting, how he got here or why nothing in this town seems to exist except building tall and dark, himself and this child that's conjured out of shadows that's playing games with him. Or even why he's playing along.
He rounds the next corner and there's the kid again, waiting for him far, far down the long alley at the end, standing under a single light bulb that hangs off the red brick. Just waiting, just watching.
Tentative but entirely curious, Jayne steps out and steps into the center of the mouth of the alley, trying to focus as his breathing burns hot in his chest, focusing on the child. They seem to watch each other for what seems like forever and the streetlamp flickers constantly, sending off sparks and flares on occasion. Suddenly, the light flickers off for a few, long moments and then back on, bright white now instead of that dingy, dirty yellow light that it was before and it casts the whole alley in white as he steps forward, moving towards the child in the light, who gives off flickers of color. It's a boy - a boy in a long, white shirt, with fiery red hair and large, curious, happy blue eyes. The light behind him is like a spotlight sent from God himself, that light at the end of the tunnel that people seem to talk about in death. He squints against the bright light, covering his view of it directly with his arm.
He still steps forward in unsure movements, through the long alleyway, and as he gets closer and closer, the light only seems to get brighter, more blinding than before.
Finally, he's close enough to the boy that the boy shifts slightly, although, this time, the boy walks closer to him, until he's standing right before him and Jayne can look into those big blue eyes, see the smile on his face. Jayne slowly lowers his arm from his face, not looking into the light anymore and the boy reaches up with both of his hands, slowly. And, slowly, the boy takes his hands in his, like they've known each other for years, and he's surprised at how large his hands are compared to the boy's. He must be only ten or so, although he's not too big of a kid, and he can see something in his eyes that makes that feeling of déjà vu rise again from somewhere in the back of his mind, but he can't place where he's seen this boy before, the boy who's so familiar, with that big smile of his, that familiar look in his eyes that just looks a lot like…
"I'll see you soon, okay?"
He looks down at the boy, staring right into his eyes and he gives a little nod, saying, "Yeah." At his agreement, the boy's smile widens and he blinks, his lips moving up into a smile too, because, damn, he just can't help it and-
The light flickers out and he feels his hands drop back down to his sides in the darkness, all feeling of the boy completely gone, his support gone in the same moment, like it was never there at all. He grunts at the feeling of his eyes dilating too fast and shuts them tightly. He wipes a hand quickly over his face and sighs deeply, although no sound comes out this time. His hand drops to his side and, suddenly, just like before, his lungs burn, and the burning sensation spreads all around his body, leaving him breathless and gasping for air. He spins around quickly and there's actually someone there, someone else made of shadows and faceless black color, and the only thing he sees before his vision goes completely black like most of this world is the knife that glints a shining white in the air.