Somewhere beneath a sleeping city, in a place very few knew existed, a man lay in darkness. He knew neither where he was, nor how long he had been there; it might have been three hours or three years, but he wasn't ready to leave just yet. An intuition honed over unnatural years was telling him that there was something to be done here, and so he waited patiently.
He thought of very little, and upon realising this, he was surprised. Surely sitting in nothing with nothing to do would have bored him – but no. The silence was oddly peaceful, and a chaotic soul welcomed the chance to simply sit (or perhaps stand, he didn't know) and listen to it.
He could not begin to guess at when she appeared. Time did not exist here. But out of the darkness, as though it had always been there, her face appeared, and thought the man felt he should recognise her, he had never seen this woman before. Her long black hair draped like a thick shawl around her shoulders, wide blue eyes stared at him in something resembling surprise, and her archaic, almost Victorian, style of dress lent her the air of a widow-woman. This woman was too young to be a widow, he thought, but he could be wrong. It felt as though anything were possible in a place like this.
She continued approaching until she stood close, looking up at him in quiet shock and recognition, and the growing feeling that he should know her began to annoy him. Suddenly, the woman's sad face broke into smiles and disbelieving laughter.
"I can walk!"
He did not know what to say in reply.
"Look at me, I can walk!"
Clearly, she was overjoyed to see him, and he hated to shatter the moment, but he had to ask:
"Who are you?"
The woman looked confused, a little hurt. "You don't remember me." The man shook his head in unspoken apology.
The woman did not reply. She looked over her shoulder, as if she could see something that he could not, and when she turned back there was fear on her face.
"Don't let me go back," she pleaded, her voice barely a whisper.
And before the man could reply, her arm was pulled backwards by an invisible hand, and she stumbled unwillingly in the direction she had come, vanishing into darkness, and the last he heard was a cry of, 'No!'
