2- A feeling of terror

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Fire falls from the sky. The city crumbles in the inferno, the clock tower melting away. The Titans above watch their brethren tear the land asunder as they call down the flames.

I stare pleadingly at the heavens, praying for some sort of deliverance… but there is no relief for the damned. All that descends is the darkest deity, the mother Titan. She hovers above the city, smiling down with approval at the destruction that her children have wrought, even as she weeps.

A sigh emanates from below me, and I begin to run as the ground starts to crumble beneath my feet. A staccato sound rang out, an urgent scream coming from nowhere.

--

The nightmare broke to the sound of the piano. I groaned and reluctantly stumbled out of bed. This routine was normally a source of irritation, but on this morning was a blessing. It had spared me from the rest of the dream, and it meant that my wife was not completely ignoring me.

The clock informed that I was already late for work, before I recalled that there was no job left to go to. Unwilling to try sleeping in a little later, I grabbed my robe and made my way to the dinning room, where cold eggs and lukewarm coffee awaited me.

My wife was at the other end of the table, sipping dutifully on a cup of tea. She didn't look at me, and I couldn't tell if she was surprised at my apparent tardiness. This frosty detached manner was the normal retaliation against my stupid mistakes. There was little use in pushing things.

I had finished the eggs and started on the coffee, when she finally put the tea down and deigned to look at me. "Did you call in again?"

"No."

There was a pause, as various small ticks of emotions played across her face in muted, yet intricate, motions. "Are you trying to get fired?"

I scowled and put down the coffee, but didn't respond.

"Becoming a reporter was your idea," she said quietly, as if reading my thoughts.

"I seem to recall you strongly encouraged idea."

"You needed it."

"For what? Finances have never been a problem."

"Not that. It was... a confusing time. You needed something to keep occupied with. Something to keep you focused, and rebuild your confidence. I'd thought the choice of journalism was a bit... odd. However--"

"Please don't bother attempting to spare my feelings. We both know that for all I carried on about 'disowning' Paradigm, I was never anything more then their lapdog. A fool, and a hypocrite."

"I didn't mean--"

"Well I do!" I said, standing and slamming my open palm on the table. "I'm done with Paradigm. No more double standards, no more meaningless rules."

She stared down at the teacup for a while, and I slowly sat back down, this conversation apparently done. "What will you do then?" she asked finally.

"I don't know."

We sat in silence. I finished my coffee, and then filched a cigarette from one of the stashes hidden in the room. Before I could light up, my wife made a face. "Please, not in the house."

So I went and smoked on the balcony, shivering in my robes during the frosty morning.

--

After I'd finished my cigarette, I cleaned up, got dressed, and left without telling my wife. I needed time to alone, time to calm down and to think... time to figure out what I was going to do, time to type without interruption.

At first I simply drove around, without purpose or heading, passing by familiar sights and wasting gasoline. After a while my madness eventually gained method, and I found myself on the shadier side of town.

It was hard to believe that there could be bad neighborhoods inside of the domes, but this place was just as dangerous as any slum in the illegal residentials. Here was a place where a person could really disappear, where questions were rarely asked and answers were costly to obtain. I eased on the brake, scanning the unmarked buildings that lined the street. There was a building that I recognized, a small, nondescript apartment complex with a few boarded-up windows. Not too long ago there'd been an expose, and I'd covered the story. Now the details eluded me... had it been location of a drug ring? A place where married men met their mistresses? Were there Memories within?

I parked and went in, looking conspicuous by trying a little too hard to look discreet. The landlord was in. A bored looking man who barely looked at me, with no regards to references or contracts, he accepted a deposit on a one-room apartment.

The room was a horrid affair, furnished with nothing more than a cot and a small desk. Bathrooms were communal, as were the showers. Linens on the cot looked as if they hadn't been changed in ages. They were coated with all sorts of dried fluids, everything from sweat, to what looked like patches of blood. The desk was ready to fall apart. It was hardly paradise.

Still, I stayed there for most of the day. I spent most of my time thinking, and occasionally dozing off while seated at the desk-- I wasn't quite willing to touch the cot.

I didn't dream.

--

I left in the afternoon, walking down the street to my car. I was wary and keenly aware of my age. I could probably hold my own against a lone ruffian, but years as a reporter had taught me the full scale of gang activity.

A motion in the periphery of my vision caught my eye, and I turned to see what was going on. It was a manhole; the cover trembling slightly as if someone had just gone down it... or perhaps something was trying to come up. In a brief moment it settled, complete and utterly still as if it had never moved at all.

I don't know what compelled me. Morbid curiosity, perhaps? Or maybe, it was the cold condescending affirmation Angel had given that fear ruled me. Either way, I found myself walking to the manhole. As I grew closer, I began to second-guess myself. Wondering if the rattling cover had been a figment of imagination, an illusion brought on by compiled stress and sleep deprivation, I carefully stepped through the debris that had collected around the drain.

Only a few steps away and there was a muffled crunch under foot. I hesitated to look, and after a moment of consideration, bent down to brush aside wet, half-decomposed newspapers and cigarette butts.

It was a memory, discarded and forgotten amidst the street garbage. The theater mask was broken in half, partially crushed by a careless pedestrian. It struck a familiar note within me, and I carefully reached out to pick it up. My fingers caressed the smooth, slightly worn material, drifting along the glass set into the remaining eye.

While I had no use for the thing, I couldn't bear to leave it there. Quickly stuffing the mask into my jacket, like a child pilfering candy, I straightened up and continued towards the manhole as if nothing happened.

The ground beneath me rumbled, a deep threatening sound.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, then once more crouched down to grab hold of the cover. There was little of the edge exposed to hold on to, and my fingers ached as I lifted the heavy object. I grunted and tossed it aside, only then did finally dare to open my eyes.

The dim light from the streets provided little illumination; all that I could see before me was the top of an inbuilt ladder and the sharp descent into darkness. I hadn't brought a flashlight.

Turning around, I put one foot on the top rung of the ladder, and began my trip down into the darkness below the false light of Paradigm.

---

The light from the manhole was visible the entire length of the tunnel, although the ground beneath me was cast in shadows. Climbing down the ladder was easy, not knowing what lay just beyond those shadows the difficult part.

I carefully looked around, my breath loud and ragged, whistling in my ears. It would be so simple to just climb back up at any time. Grimacing, I turned my attention back to the ladder and started down once more.

It was several feet down that my feet finally touched something other than the cold steal rungs of the ladder. I probed it briefly with a free foot. It didn't feel like the floor, more like a pile of rubble, old bricks and broken cement mixed together. It was most likely caused by something collapsing. Aware of the fact that it may not be stable, I edged myself onto the pile of wreckage, and held onto ladder until I was sure of my footing.

I stood there for several seconds, simply feeling relieved. There was comfort in the knowledge that I could return to the surface at any time, I had accomplished what I'd set out to do. Everything else was merely curiosity. I moved cautiously around the rubble, examining my surroundings.

The walls of the tunnel where mostly intact, except for one with a crack that widened out into a decent sized hole. Beyond that, the tunnel was nondescript, the entrance to the lower sewers sealed by debris. I moved towards the hole, and could vaguely make out the room beyond. Curiosity got the better of me, and I crouched and squeezed through to the other side.

I found myself staring at train tracks.

No, that was wrong. I remember... someone told me about this place. It was… the subway, a long forgotten labyrinth of trains that connected the city underground. I stepped between the tracks and stared up at the ramp. So long ago people stood there, waiting for their rides. Where were those people now? Dead, most likely, only the derelict trams leaving notice of their passing.

There was a motion to my right, and I quickly spun around to see what it was. The mask fell from my jacket and landed with a clatter on the ground. Distracted by the noise, I cursed silently and bent to pick it up, glancing upward to see what had moved.

Far down the tracks was a red smudge, the distant form of an approaching figure. Very little of the light from the manhole made it down in the adjoining room, and I suddenly longed for a flashlight, a lighter, or anything that would illuminate the dim tracks. I forgot the mask for the moment and stood erect, facing the figure with as much composure as I could muster.

"Who's there?" I called out to it.

The figure continued forward, heedless of my question, still indistinct in the darkness. Much farther beyond it, lights seemed to flicker, the effect of straining eyesight in low light. They seemed to form a pattern, a familiar arrangement that I had seen before…

The Titan, the Deity, the vilest creation of god and man, it cried and laughed and reached out, seeking its prey.

I shook my head, trying to shake away the vision. It was only an illusion, a figment of my imagination. There was nothing to fear. I took a step forward, although a retreat seemed the best course of action.

Then a deep sigh emanated from the walls, and it gradually rose in pitch and fervor into a verbose howl. Wind seemed to spring from nowhere and whirled in torrents around me, picking up pebbles and pelting me with them. The conflicting streams and whirlwinds grappled me like tiny claws, trying to drag me down into the jowls of its master. I raised my hands in an attempt to ward off the winds and pebbles, the vision of the titan, the approaching stranger. My youth had left me and my strength left with it, my body quaked under the onslaught, and I was afraid.

I tried to take another step forward, but my legs buckled beneath me and I toppled over. Unable to break the fall, I turned and landed on my side, shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. The mask I'd carelessly dropped was sitting only inches from my face, its blind eye staring in dumb curiosity.

Macabre visions of my eminent demise played across my minds eye, as the wind seemed to die down. The figure was not so far away anymore, her feminine form now obvious. Would she produce a gun and end it all here and now? Or, perhaps the lights would turn out to be a titan after all, and the creature would devour us both?

My body hadn't stopped trembling with the dissipation of the winds. How could I save myself-- call for help? There was no one down here but ghosts, and no one above would dare descend to help me. It left me with the choice of waiting silently for execution, or rising to meet my fate.

I was paralyzed, I couldn't choose, I wouldn't choose. I waited.

'Der Junge, der alles wissen möchte,' someone said. I recoiled at the noise. Was it the red-cloaked woman? The voice was hardly feminine. The words were familiar, yet foreign. A bizarre feeling of surrealism overtook me, and I stared into the single eye of the mask, which in turn stared back.

"The letter," I hissed, the words of the dead man coming back to me. They were the words in the letter. The words he'd written so long ago...

'Der Junge, der nichts weiß.' The unseen voice continued, its unexplained presence mocking me. The more I stared at the mask, the more it seemed that the mask itself was speaking, and not a man. Some part of my brain was still rational and told me this was impossible, that it was an illusion caused by the fear, part of that dreamlike feeling.

'Wenn du groß bist, verstehst du, sagt die Mutter,' the unseen commentator observed philosophically.

The woman hadn't stopped walking, and the Titan hadn't stopped in its silent observation. The fear told me to run, to flee, but in the depths of terror I did not want to admit to my fear. I was ashamed but I could tap into no courage, so I waited. Waited and pretended that I had been subdued by the winds.

'Der Junge, der alles sofort wissen möchte.' The mask-- no, the voice-- continued to recite the letter. Had there even been wind in the first place, or had I simply imagined it? Was it another excuse, another lie, another illusion to hide behind?

'Tief im Schwarzwald, der Großvater, der alles weiß!' I had fought fear so hard and so long, thinking that it had no effect on me... except I was only making excuses, blaming my terror on external things. Under the guise of courage, I'd made so many choices born of fear.

Even knowing this I could not retreat, could not give up and flee. There was nowhere to go. There was only waiting, waiting for death.

'Um den Großvater zu suchen, tief im Schwarzwald!' The voice roared, booming and echoing through the deep halls of the subway. It was either oblivious or uncaring of my plight.

Was I even his intended audience? I would assume, because of the letter...

But I didn't know for certain.

Maybe he thought it would give me courage, or allow me to capitulate. Here I was damned, caught between the descent into absolute terror and the dispelling of it. Paralyzed, waiting, it seemed that death would take me before I could find the right path. It wouldn't be a good way to die.

'Aber er Kann den Großvater nicht finden,' the dead man said, his voice subdued once more. 'Der Junge, Immer weiter, immer weiter sucht er, als...'

The clock ticks, the pendulum swings, and the hourglass turns. The woman advances with murderous intent, the Titan watches with eternal patience, and I lie on the abandoned tracks between terror and bravery. The sands run until they run out, then it is time for you to die.

The red-cloaked woman reached out, saying something incomprehensible. Then everything faded into darkness.

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