Later, Rondell reached up with his razor to his face, and he paused to reflect on the image he had seen earlier of the ATM's, and what it could mean. All of his hallucinations lately hadn't had messages. They made just been his film's name, or the word "yeah." But he knew he had to be patient.
He sighed deeply and dropped his arms and the razor to his side.
After washing the shaving cream off his face, Rondell walked outside to get some fresh air.
The strips of film tape were back, scrolling through the air, coming from and going to nowhere. He had yet to discover what this image meant.
Rondell looked up suddenly, as a chill went through him.
The Grim Reaper was there, glaring back at him. Under his black shadowy hood, Rondell could see that Death looked exactly like him.
But Death had no business with Rondell. His life was cold and lonely and tormented, but it was not nearing its end.
Rondell and the Grim Reaper regarded each other for a moment, both of them with nothing to say. Rondell shivered.
Another hallucination came to him.
It was a man glaring back at him. It was a strange face, his eyes bloodshot and cold, his face dirty and unshaven with a messy goatee around his mouth. The man was not there himself; it was a painting of the man. Under the painting, Rondell saw a caption reading "Our Gracious Host." Rondell examined the man again, and saw that his mouth was hanging open, and a wave of confusion washed over his eyes, as if he didn't understand why everyone was afraid of him. The man in the painting turned around, to hide his face from Rondell.
With a flash, Rondell saw a kitchen table. On the kitchen table was a single blueberry muffin and a plant in a pot, which was nothing more than a few branches poking out of the earth.
Rondell saw the entire day flash before his eyes, as the sun came from the left of the window beside the table and quickly fall to the right, as the sky changed from the bright green-blue of midday to the orange-brown of sunset to the red-orange of twilight. And he saw the branches of the plant grow and grown, until a flower bud opened up and bloomed into a beautiful daisy. And he saw the shadow of the blueberry muffin stretch across the table, get longer and longer as the day went by. The image stopped during twilight, right before the day ended.
And then Rondell found himself back outside. The Grim Reaper was gone.
He looked down at his hands. His palms were cracked, like they were made out of stone. He looked down and saw, to his horror, dozens and dozens of ants crawling out of his hands. He screamed in fear.
Luckily, this frightening image was replaced by another hallucination (even though he wasn't sure if the ants were a hallucination or real). He found himself staring at a wall covered in plaster tiles, each one of them a different colour. And hanging in the air in front of the wall was a globe, spinning around in the air by itself. But the land on the globe was not in the shape of any land on Earth. It was in the shape of a dinosaur. It was an allusion to an independant, or, as some would call it, "experimental" film, he had seen years ago. He got the message.
And then Rondell found himself back at the ATM, but both him and it were waist-deep in water, coming seemingly from nowhere. The lightbulb from his apartment was hanging in the air, swinging back and forth like a wrecking ball. He shut his eyes and waited for it to stop.