I was sleeping and watching myself sleep, I was dreaming but not really, a man stood over me, that same man whom I kept on seeing. He still wore the same suit and glasses.
"Who are you?"
I asked tentatively and he smiled, took my hand and more images flashed before me, fortunately this time no pain accompanied them.
I saw a man screaming from behind a sheet of glass, the glass had some writing on; it passed so quickly I could not discern any of it, a huge ghoulish monster picked up this suited man and bent him across a corner, I heard a crack and I saw glasses falling, I saw a young woman crushed between two sheets of the same glass, I saw a man cut in half and sliding down the glass and I heard laughing, ghastly high and evil laughing that turned my insides cold.
These visions, or whatever they may have been, faded, replaced by the same man but at least unbroken and unbent. But he was wearing red overalls instead of the suit and held a name tag up to me, Dennis Rafkin, it said, next to a picture of him. He closed his eyes and said.
"You better get going"
And I awakened back in the van.
It was dark, a solid blackness in which I could not even see my own hand when I waved it frantically in front of my face. I could feel the panic rat climbing steadily up my throat, eager to escape but I pushed it back because panic was not any use to me here. I turned to where I was sure the doors were, braced myself against the front seats and kicked as hard as I could. I gained no mean to escape through kicking the door but it sure made me feel better.
I gave up after four or five tries and sat, holding my head in my heads.
"How could I have gotten myself into this mess, I should be at home, in bed with a good glass of wine and a decent book"
I began to punch the door in frustration, this was not fair, this (in the manner of moody teenagers these days) so sucked.
To my surprise I fell out of the open door and I pondered why as I lay on the ground in a pile of leaves. I was still in the clearing; the building was even further on, in such a small amount of time. I felt dread settle in the pit of my stomach at the sight of that unfinished project.
I pulled myself from the ground and looked around for whoever had opened the door, there was no one around so I put it down to rust, yes, some kind of benevolent rust…
The sun was going down and it was getting chilly, I looked down and smiled because I realised I was still wearing the pale blue scrubs from the hospital. It made me feel sort of connected to the real world, in contrast to this surreal unreality.
I was shaken out of the smile when I saw a huge truck turning into the clearing; it was silver with no memorable markings.
Some men congregated around it as it turned then grounded to a halt, they all stood quietly but some looked on in fear, others solemn and a there was even a few smiling, as if eager. I felt sick looking at it, some deepened instinct told me that that particular truck was not carrying the workers' lunches.
They pulled up the back door of the faceless silver truck with a crack as it hit the roof but I could not see the contents, it faced away from me, towards the house. I heard the electronic whirring of a lifter and then screaming, the workers seemed not to hear it but it ricocheted inside my mind and it shattered the relative crystal silence of the twilight into millions of shards of darkness and evil.
I crept around the side of the clearing, hoping to see whatever was making that noise and stop it…somehow.
As I got in sight of the truck I saw, trapped in a tall rectangular shaped glass cage was a woman, minus her clothes and she was crying and screaming, slapping against the glass with her hands, terrified, as any other women would be. I covered my mouth with my hand, to discourage any treacherous scream from giving me away. The more I watched the more the bile rose in my throat. The glass was of the same variety as the house, as the visions, I had no clue of what was going on here but to hell was it good.
They pulled out another of the same cage and inside were a small child, his face was creased and red with tears, he was wearing brown trousers and a tan jacket, a discarded bow was lying beside him, not that it meant anything but I saw every detail as something.
I watched until I could no longer stand the screaming, the workers still seemed not to hear it, they weren't wearing earmuffs so I did not understand it. It got right inside my skull and refused to let go.
I crawled towards the road, for all I knew, there could be a town within a couple of miles but then again I could a thousand miles to the west of nowhere. I stood at the edge of the clearing and looked on at the road and saw another truck, followed by two others. If each one contained two cages then it was six people, six innocent people stuck inside this weird mess of a web.
I could not shake the unbearable urge to do something…Anything.