Jack, Week 2

Jack was growing concerned.

He had been in the city for a week. It was a veritable haven of supplies; though he already had enough to last him well into the next month, he continued searching through, on the off chance he should find something particularly rare – some fascinating remnant of days past. He had a found a few curiosities thus far: a few MP3 players, a collection of actual compact discs, and several albums on SD cards awaited him in what appeared to be a former music store. They were all useless and little more than interesting curios at this point, but it still warmed Jack’s heart to be holding a relic of the old world to which he once belonged.

A few days into the week, however, he began to notice things. He had set up base camp on a high floor of a parking garage. He would venture out during the day, and return there at night. But after about three days he began to notice that things had been moved around just slightly when he would return. The first time it was just his sleeping bag had been moved outside the tent. As the week went on, it would get more drastic – the tent would have moved several parking spaces over, the sleeping bag would be rolled out in front of the tent – and it became clear that something was actively changing his campsite.

It was a strange curiosity at first, but nothing that caused him much concern – until he began to hear things. It started during one of his days of walking through the ruined streets. He wasn’t paying much mind to his surroundings, granted, but he had spent four days in the city without ever seeing movement – not even so much as wildlife. But then he heard something, like rocks sliding down the side of a mountain, from behind him. He stopped and turned around slowly, but there was no sign that anything had moved. He kept walking, stopping in a few shops to scavenge for more supplies and items of interest.

Then he began hearing the wind. Well, what he hoped was the wind. The alternative was not one he wanted to consider, but occasionally as he walked down the empty streets he would hear the low howling of the wind running through the urban landscape.

All of this was accompanied by an unshakeable feeling that he wasn’t alone. Even when he wasn’t thinking about his things being moved while he was gone, and even when he wasn’t hearing the wind and strange noises as he walked through the city, he had a terrible feeling in his stomach that he was being watched. One night he awoke from his sleep and was overcome with the sensation. He could sense a presence nearby, something watching him from close by. The wind howled and he could have sworn he heard shallow breathing.

Then it began to rain. The sound of the water falling on the garage floor above did little to assuage his growing paranoia. He heard a low rumble of thunder. Lightning flashed and illuminated the garage floor. He could have sworn he saw the outline of a figure through the thin folds of his tent. He opened his tent and turned on his lamp, shining it into the pitch darkness of the parking garage, searching for whatever could be watching him.

There was darkness there – but nothing more.

Jeff Jones, Week 2

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting…”

This was written on my monitor this morning, in the same red scrawl as the Eliot quote from last week. This one , Bing tells me, comes from Edgar Allen Poe’s classic poem “The Raven”. A bit creepier than last week admittedly, and the recurrence unnerves me slightly, but you know what? I’m not concerned, because it’s not the only strange and unnerving thing to have happened to me this week.

Before I get into that, though, let me share with you the mundane. The town continues to be busy and packed with annoying people. People continue to prove how awful they are at driving. The weather has taken a turn for the worse, with nearly constant rain and the occasional thunderstorm. Prices for produce are gradually rising, a symptom of both crop shortages due to the drought and rising gas prices. I’ve still barely moved forward in my work. I’ve still yet to make any valuable friends. In summation: shit sucks.

About three days ago, I was driving back home after having gone into town, and I witnessed a car crash. I knew it was going to happen, too, as I could see the car in the intersection turning and the car in the lane next to me not slowing to stop at the light. It’s strange, though – when you see a car crash on TV or in a movie, you always hear the screeching of brakes or the sudden turn of wheels on the pavement. But not in reality; no, in reality, all you hear is this sickening crunch. The sort of sound that makes you utter an involuntary “ooh,” cringing at the mere thoughts it inspires.

Nevertheless, the cars hit each other. But the strangest thing was that, as the car in the lane next to me passed by my car, I saw into it and saw quite clearly three passengers – a driver, a passenger, and a suited man in the backseat. When I pulled over to help the people involved get things out of the way and get everyone medical help, there were only two people in the car. We pulled everyone out, called highway patrol, and got the cars out of the intersection. I then turned to the driver of the car and asked him, “Wasn’t there a third passenger? A man in a suit?”

His eyes widened and he stared at me for a moment. “You could see him, too?” A strange look came over his face then – I don’t know why it would be, but it looked a lot like elation. His mouth widened and stretched into a grin, he tilted his head upward and clasped his hands together as he began to laugh rather maniacally. “Thank you,” he began repeating, “oh god thank you thank you thank you!” He continued laughing the entire time that I waited there for highway patrol to arrive.

I asked the passenger of his car if he was alright, and he told me, “No. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but he hasn’t been ‘alright’ for weeks. I can tell you one thing, though,” he said as he lowered his voice and leaned toward me. “There was no third passenger. I don’t know what you saw and I don’t know what he thinks he saw. But there was definitely not a third passenger.” He then walked away without another word.

So that understandably unnerved me. But I put it in the back of my mind for a while.

Until just a few moments ago, when I sat down to write this. I walked from the bathroom into the study to sit at my desk, and as I did so I passed by the large window looking out on the street in front of my house. There, in the rain, on the other side of the road, was a very tall figure in dark clothing. I looked closer and squinted, trying to make out features, but couldn’t. Then the lightning flashed.

Standing there is a figure resembling an unnaturally tall man wearing a black business suit, but it clearly wasn’t that. No, that figure is certainly not a man; it has no face.

Note my use of the present tense: as I sit here, typing this update, he is still standing there, unmoving, staring through nonexistent eyes at my window.

Jack, Week 1

Jack had grown to hate the wind. When the red sun would creep over the horizon in the morning, the howling of the wind would dispel any sense of security that the light of day brought, maintaining the tyranny of the night. Whereas darkness impaired one’s physical sense, the wind’s howling impaired one’s security, weakening one’s mental function. The sound of the wind across the plains of the Midwest brought nothing but fear.

Ever since the Incident, Jack had been walking. He had no real goal in mind, other than basic survival. He hadn’t met another living human in nearly a year. The last contact he had was a brief stay in a small town high school with three others. A few supply runs into the nearby town, a few traps around the perimeter, and a shifting guard outside the sleeping quarters ensured that they were able to hold out in relative comfort for several months. But nothing lasts forever. As Jack had come to know, all comfort is fleeting.

After that had fallen through, he had stumbled across the plains for months, scavenging the ruins of small towns for supplies. He usually found enough to make it to the next town, but it was far from an easy existence. Eventually he had decided to make his way to the interstate – while the masses of abandoned cars and torn down signs rarely provided anything of benefit, there were usually gas stations or other locations near the sides of the road that would have some supplies remaining.

He had been on the interstate for a week now. He wasn’t sure which interstate it was, though he guessed it was I-55. At any rate, it was littered with abandoned, malfunctioned cars and fallen road signs. Navigating it at times proved a bit difficult – there was an overturned semi-truck blocking the path at one point that took a while to navigate around. He rummaged through cars from time to time, and one day found a small trove of books – mostly novels – in the back of a large van. Though he suspected it was an amusingly antiquated book burning van, there were a lot of classics in there. He took a leather bound copy of Of Mice and Men for himself, and continued onward.

Several days later he saw a large city in the distance. He again couldn’t be certain (given that the road signs were mostly destroyed by weather in the time since the Incident), but he was fairly confident that the city was once Chicago. Though his instinct told him to stay away, he felt drawn to the city, and walked in its direction. If anything, it would have plenty of supplies for him to stock up on, and he held out hope that it might hold a working automobile – but it was a slim hope at best.

He was right about the supplies – nearly every shop in the downtown area of the city was filled with goods of all kinds. He found a stash of working batteries – a rare commodity – and grabbed as many as he could carry before moving on to the supermarket nearby, where he stocked up on staple foods as well as a few necessary tools so he could gather and cook some of his own food. Rather than leave immediately, however, he opted to stay in the city for a few days and see if he could find anything else of interest.

He certainly did.

Jeff Jones, Week 1

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

When I awoke this morning, this message was displayed on my computer monitor in an ominous red scrawl. It wasn’t drawn onto the glass, but it wasn’t the computer’s display, either. It was as if the quote were trapped somewhere between, imposed over the display but behind the glass. I turned the monitor off and the quote vanished. When I turned it back on, it had been erased. I typed it into a search engine (yes I use Bing, get over it) and was directed to a T.S. Eliot poem. There appears to be no meaning to derive from the quotation, nor from its mysterious appearance on my monitor.

Just another oddity to add to a week filled with them.

It’s been two weeks since I moved, and the second week was far worse than the first. I moved here from New York to escape the annoyingly crowded environs of the concrete jungle, but little did I know that even rural America has far too many people for my purposes. I cannot do my work in these situations. Whereas the city was all stoic, apathetic hustle and bustle, rural America is small town hospitality and friendliness everywhere. It’d be one thing if there were few people out and about during most hours of the day, but oh no – 24/7 the streets are filled. The only thing that changes is who is filling it. During the day you get the unemployed or retired, amicably waving and asking how your day is. During the afternoon you get the working adults, fresh off the job, taking care of their daily errands. They’ll stop you to chat about the most mundane of things – I was stopped once this week by a man seeking to talk about the latest crop forecasts. I gave him a confused look and kept walking. Then at night you get the teenagers. For small town America there sure as hell are a lot of them. Some of them drunk, some of them stoned, some of them drunk AND stoned – it’s a mess.

So certainly not the change of pace I was looking for, and it isn’t doing my work any favors. Thank god my work allows me to stay inside most of the day and ignore the ridiculous population of this town. I think the problem is that the city limits are fairly small – hell, I’m even outside them technically – and thus the population of the city itself appears smaller, but with all the smaller areas outside it, there are a far greater number of people in the city than the population number would imply.

Whatever – I wouldn’t mind as much if it didn’t potentially mean a shortage of food. After the guy stopped to ask me about the crop forecast, I was curious about why he would ask a random stranger about it, so I did some reading. Crops have been affected by a particularly nasty drought this summer and there will be fairly substantial shortages. In a place with as many people as this, that could be bad. I’ve started hoarding non-perishables; god knows the last thing I need is a food shortage right now.

I have regrets about moving here. I should have stayed in New York. At least there, I didn’t have to worry about dying on my way into the city every day – I tell you, the idiots here cannot drive. I’ve nearly been hit three times this week alone. It’s ridiculous.

I’m done raging for now. I’ll get used to it eventually. It’s just annoying that I’ve left the tedium and irritation of the city, only to exchange it for the same thing in rural America.