Part Two - Remembering.

Death was coming for me. I knew it, I could feel it with all of my five senses, in every part of my body. I felt it every time I was awake and it came to me in my dreams as well, never leaving me alone. It could be the quiet ticking of a clock I didn't have. It could be the soft laughter of a child in my room or the voice of my dead wife whispering to me at night. It was everywhere and I couldn't hide from it.

Death was out to get the old Jake.

Next morning I called in sick and spent the entire day lying in my bed, drinking and sleeping, hoping that by doing this I would somehow kill my insanity. I felt very weak and I was freezing to death, but that didn't matter. I barely got through the day and when the night fell upon the city, I decided to take a walk in the park which was nearby. I had to take my mind of things and obviously killing my brain cells didn't erase the dreams or visions, so I had to try another approach to this problem.

I fucking had to dry drugs.

I had never sunk this low in my entire life. I had never tried drugs, not even once. I had watched people fade away under their influence, I had seen how they lost their entire lives and didn't even give a fuck. Drugs were dangerous things. So I had promised myself to never, ever, under any circumstances, try them.

Well, promises are made to be broken, aren't they? All I could think about was getting those visions out of my head and to never dream about the wires or seeing my own eye pop out of my head again. This was pure nightmare material and I figured that whatever drug addiction may do to me later, it couldn't be any worse than this. It felt like there was a hole in my head I couldn't fill. I figured that maybe drugs could help me on my way of doing that.

Just maybe. But it was worth a shot.

Besides, I couldn't get anymore insane, so what the heck.

The park was the perfect place to find a nice and decent drug dealer or, well, as decent as they could get. I had been approached by several a couple of times while I was peacefully sitting on a park bench and minding my own business. Now I just prayed and clung onto all of the luck I could possibly have at this miserable point of my life and returned to the same place, hoping that one of them would still be there.

Has anyone ever told you what an unpleasant place a park can be at night?

I sat down on the same bench and grabbed the old newspaper someone had left. Then I threw it away because I couldn't read it anyway. The weak light of a nearby lamp shone down upon me, barely showing my silhouette, not even talking about casting enough light to read a copy of an old and slightly wet newspaper.

The laughter of a drunk couple reached me from far away. After five minutes I began to feel restless. An old man passed me by, casting me a weary glance.

I pulled my hat farther over my eyes.

After fifteen minutes I started to shift places in the bench.

Three tall black shadows caught my attention after a half an hour when I was ready to get up. I got up and ran up to them, my heart pounding in my chest, I was so close to the solution, to the oblivion.

I waited until I got home before I injected the drug in my body. When the rush came, I let out a sigh of relief and slid down to the floor, closing my eyes. The sensation filled my brain, my body, my everything and I slipped away from my nightmares, my worries, my problems, into a world where nothing mattered and no one cared about it anyway.

Well at least the goddamn drug got my mind off the wires and the ticking of the clock. For a little while.

I opened my eyes and stared dully into the hallway. Everything was kind of a blur, but I remember thinking... "Oh, so that's the way it goes..."

My eyes felt much better when they were closed. I felt sleepy, even. I wasn't even aware at what point the images of the nightmares were beginning to flash me by. But it wasn't just that, they were more... Memories.

It was strange. Every time I tried to concentrate on those memories, something seemed to stop me and it hurt. My head hurt. It hurt so bad... like someone was gripping my head with a steel claw and pressing it tighter and tighter together. Even the drugs couldn't make the pain go away.

I buried my head in my hands and let out a groan as I began to remember, despite the pain. It was the most painful process of my life. First there were just random flashes, each running through my body like an electric shock and I heard someone screaming.

It had all started that day at work. It had been a very bad day. I had gone out to do a favor for the admin and when I returned, I was facing -

A massacre. 163 people had died in a mysterious attack which had ultimately led to the destruction of the entire building. And I was the only one who had survived.

More screams in the background. The claw pressed harder. The smell of burnt flesh hit my nostrils.

No, please don't do this. Not anymore. No more. Please. Please. Please.

"Wake up Jacob. Wake up. You have to wake up."

My eyes sprung open and I stared into a pair of gray eyes. A soft hand touched my cheek and I leaned into it, drowning into depths of soft silver shadows.

"I'm... wide awake," I managed to say in a strange and distant voice. Then my lights were turned out.

Those damn drugs.