ONE

I

'The Awakening'

One foggy morning Rennick Xero awoke to discover that he was ten years olderthan what he had been upon falling asleep. Of course, this was not a usual occurrence for Rennick; yet here he was looking into the cobweb thick mirror which resided on his oak bedside cabinet.

In the looking glass Rennick saw a shattered version of himself. Over night (or so it seemed) he had acquired wrinkling around the eyes and his once well groomed hair and beard had betrayed and stabbed his usually tidy appearance in the back. To be perfectly honest Rennick thought he had the look of a man who had spent way too much time on an Island pretending to be a Mountain.

With great effort the man tumbled out of his bed and onto a dusty unkempt floor. It was a floor he was sure he had personally cleaned not twelve hours before.

Another strange thing that had taken upon itself to turn up at the door of his life was Rennick's surprising lack of memory towards the past events in his life that had lead up to his current predicament.

The only thing he knew for certain was that it had been the man in the suit that had done this to him. The man in the suit had visited the night before, sat in the chair opposite his blue stained couch and talked to him about his company's business philosophy, what it meant to Rennick and eventually investing in it. What precisely the philosophy had been, Rennick could no longer recall.

What he did remember was this: the man had been named Friedrick, he was unnaturally large and once he had acquired Rennick's signature in red lettering on the contract he had provided, everything had gone black and Rennick had woken up to this morning perplexing events.

(end)