another time

[lumberjim]

He woke in utter darkness. No alarm had gone off, no sound of traffic, no nothing. He realized dimly that his right arm was asleep, and that he had drooled a little. As he wiped the drool from his cheek, he was surprised to feel grit clinging to his face. The numbness in his arm erupted into painful needles of returning sensation. As he sat up, he noticed that he was on the ground, not in his bed where he had laid down the night before. Such complete darkness, such silence. Panic rose as the sleep drained away from his mind.

He stood. The floor was hard under his bare feet, and cold. He swayed, the darkness challenging his balance. The pain in his arm faded, and he realized that he was nude. The sweatpants he had worn to bed were gone, along with the tee shirt. His arms swept out, groping. Nothing. A tentative step forward, arm outstretched, and another brought his hand up short against a rough wall. Was that stone?

[glatt]

Stone, or maybe concrete. Yes, stone. The gaps between them were packed with crumbly mortar.

Feeling around, his hand discovered a cold wetness seeping out of a gap. Then the rough surface of an old rusty metal door. There was no handle, and pushing against the door did nothing. He explored the rest of this place. It was large. The dirt floor was uneven as he shuffled along the the perimeter walls feeling for anything. Before long, he was back at the metal door. Nothing.

Damn, it was cold.

[lumberjim]

"Hey!" he cried. "Hello!"

The echo was immediate and came from both sides and behind at once, giving him the impression that this room was empty. There came no reply, but a slight draft ran a cold finger down his back. Up.

He reached up as far as his fingers could stretch, tried jumping. He succeeded only in banging his knee against the door painfully. Frustrated, he flung his hands against the door causing a low booming sound. Had that been a glimmer of light? Had the door recoiled from his assault? Yes, he could still see the afterimage when he closed his eyes. Hitting the door again, he saw the faint light again.... The door was opening slightly inward in response to his blows, and then closing again.

One more shot with his left hand, with his right hand awaiting the door edge, and he had it open. It was still too dark to see, but there was light off to the left down what appeared to be a damp hallway about 6 feet wide.

[wolf]

(You are in a maze of twisting little passages, all alike.) ran briefly through his head. It was the most rational thought he could muster right now. There was nothing about yesterday that he didn't remember, and nothing from the day before yesterday, or the years before that seemed to lead to this particular conclusion. The richly damp smell of what he was alreading calling The Place briefly caused him to consider the possibility of the soft glow of luminous lichens ahead. He shook his head to clear his mind of the thought that was disturbingly linked with oversized cockroaches and millipedes in his mind.

[glatt]

Making his way down the hall, his ears strained for any sound other than his own shallow rapid breaths. As the distant light grew closer, he heard soft spraying water. No. Not water, static. The light was from a TV displaying the static between stations. Down the hall/tunnel and to the left there had to be a TV turned on!

Not sure what to do, he kept moving forward. Slowly. Silently. He didn't have a plan, but he wanted to have surprise on his side. The tunnel curved gradually to his left, and he hugged the left wall as he moved forward. A sharp pebble momentarily brought his focus back to his physical condition. He realized that he had been holding his breath, so he quietly let it out and breathed more of the damp air in.

He was there now. The tunnel curved to the right. On the left, another steel door was ajar, and flickering light from an unseen black and white television spilled out into the tunnel. He made no noise, but listened for anything from that room. Nothing but the quiet static of the TV. The volume was low. He carefully poked his head into the doorway. The room was empty, save for the old portable TV and an old mattress in the corner. He recognized his boxer shorts on the mattress, so he quickly put them on.

[Spexxvet]

Then he heard the moan. It came from beneath the mattress. He turned to run, then recognized the sound as snoring. It was his jailer - the oaf who had been tormenting him every day for so long. He lifted the mattress, and sure enough, the brute was asleep, so he move the mattress aside. He took a quick look out the door, then closed it. He unplugged the TV, lifted it high, and brought it down with a loud smash on his tormenter's head. The roar of rage was cut short as he wrapped the TV's cord around the sinewy neck and pulled tight. He held on through the worst of the struggling, and soon enough the writhing stopped, just like the breathing had.

[wolf]

If wishes were horses ...

He didn't understand what interrupted the reverie, but he became aware that he was still alone. The mattress and the television were in the place he remembered them being when he entered the small room, and there was no sign of anyone else. No jailer, no tormentor, but a memory of cheap aftershave unsuccesfully masking body odor lingered, just beyond the edge of consciousness.

The television's old Bakelite dial contained 12 channels of static. The channel 2 static was more comforing and he left it on, so that at least there was something familiar here.

[wolf]

(you know, it is damn hard to find this thread when there are no new posts to it.)

[glatt]

After a dose of the Channel 2 static and the sense of security his boxers gave him, he was feeling more in control of his situation for the first time since he awoke. He quietly went out into the tunnel and followed it off to the right. He wished he had his shoes. The occasional pebble stabbed at his bare feet. Years of working in that cubicle had made him soft. Not like before.

The tunnel came to a set of rough steps and at the top of the steps he could see a rectangular outline of light around a door. It was bright on the other side of that door. He quietly climbed the steps and placed his ear against the door. Nothing. He waited a few minutes. Still nothing.

He pushed against the door, and it easily swung outward. The blinding light was overwhelming, but still he heard nothing and sensed no movement. He stepped forward, and into a bar. It was deserted, and the lights were off, but the sun was shining just above the horizon through the large front windows. A thunk behind him jerked his head around. He was standing in front of a wine rack which concealed the door to the tunnel. It had just closed behind him.

[lumberjim]

He knew this place. The bar was his. It was the first he had bought after he'd won the lottery, years ago. He'd never seen the sun come through those windows before, though. There should have been a skyskraper across the street obscuring the sun. He rushed to the door and threw it open. Blinking at eh still brighter light of the direct sun, he looked out over an expanse of sand. And sand, and sand, and more sand. And a pyramid.

A pyramid? Yes, off in the distance, there was a pyramid. A fucking pyramid. But it looked all.....clean and fresh. And it must have been huge. He looked to the left. Then to the right. Sand. He found himself sitting in the doorway. He didn't remember falling, but there he was, looking up at the doorknob of the bar. The Hot Mess. There should be sidewalk under his shorts, not sand. This should be 42nd street, not a dessert. Who the hell moved his bar?! And if it was in the dessert, how did that TV have power? He would have to ask glatt.

[glatt]

COCK!

went the gun that he kept behind the counter as he prepared it to fire. He didn't know what he might need it for, but he wanted to be ready. He looked at the neon beer signs in the front windows. All of them were glowing, even though he had unplugged them the night before. Must be a strong electromagnetic field coming from that pyramid, he thought. It was lighting up all the neon signs and the TV tube in the Cellar.

He lumbered over to the gym in the back of the bar, and wondered what would happen next.

[lumberjim]

At the door to the gym, he noticed a Sundae sitting on one of the tables. He realized that he was famished, so he wolfed it down. Ow. Brain freeze.

[Sundae]

Electric on. Fridges working. Cold beer.
If he was going to have to sit on the edge of the biggest beach he’d ever seen, then at least he would do it with a beer in his hand.

A warning shot across his mind, but he battered it into submission with mental muscle honed by years of practice. Yes, he was on the wagon. Yes, in a hot climate the last thing he needed was to dehydrate. Yes, he would probably need all his wits about him if he was ever going to understand this situation. But his fucking bar was in the middle of the fucking desert and if a man ever deserved a drink then it was under these circumstances. Bash.

He was painfully aware of his own vulnerability as he moved back past the wine-rack door, to the bar that ran the length of the room. The place just didn’t feel empty. Perhaps it was because all his senses were tuned to screaming pitch by the unreal morning he was having so far. He glanced down the bar with its shining brass, glowing, comforting wood and felt reassured that at least here with his back to the fridges no one could creep up on him.

Unless they were hiding in the mirror.

The flood of adrenalin was instant and nauseating. He jerked, then froze, heart pounding, looking at his own wild face in the mirror. Where the hell had that idea come from?

[DanaC]

A polite cough startled him from his thoughts and set the hairs on the nape of his neck tingling. With an almost palpable dread he turned his head to look. There, sitting rather incongruously at the very end of the bar, sat a customer. At least, he assumed it was a customer. He swallowed back the lump in his throat and asked,

"What can I getcha bud?"

The man grinned, held up both hands as if in surrender and answered,

"Oh, just a cup of tea I think."

He sounded English. So okay, his bar had wandered off to a strange desert whilst he was sleeping. But what the fuck was an English man doing sitting in a bar in the middle of a fucking desert? And where did he think he was going to get a cup of tea from?

The man was still grinning at him, though he appeared to be waiting for an answer. Either that or he was just waiting for his cup of tea. There was something about him that seemed odd. Odder than the fact that he was sitting in a desert bar seeking tea. Something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Not for the first time that morning he wondered if he was losing it. Lost it already maybe?

"uh...we don't do tea bud...I can get y'a beer...a whiskey maybe?"

"That's it," he thought, as the stranger's grin faltered, disappointment clear on his pale features, "I've lost it. This is me now, totally mad." Another more profoundly disturbing thought crossed his mind then. What was his name? What was his fucking name? He cast his eyes about the bar, looking for something, anything with his name on. Anything to jog his memory, place him somehow in reality. Panic edged his thoughts, threatened to overwhelm him. There, off to the right, under the bar where the spare cloths and icebucket lived, he could see a small box. He reached for it: English Breakfast Tea, it said on the top. Forty bags. He looked back at his customer, his heart beating double time. The stranger's grin had subsided to a confident smile.

"Thanks," he said, his clipped English tones softened by a slight London accent, "But it really is a cup of tea I want."

[glatt]

He fumbled around for a few minutes, trying to figure out where he could get some hot water. The sink wasn't working, but he remembered the bottled water under the bar. Like riding a bike, it was coming back to him. This was his bar, and he was in charge here. The mugs were on the shelf behind the bar to the right. He was momentarily stumped when the microwave was acting weird and wouldn't heat the mug of water, but then he remember the Sterno™ he used to keep the happy hour food warm.

In a few minutes, he found himself pleasantly satisfied to have served the hot tea to his mysterious customer. His momentary comfort slipped away when he saw the stranger giving him the once over. "Oh yeah," he remembered, "I'm half naked."

"Tommy is going to be interested to hear we have another one here" said the stranger, a wry smile coming to his lips as he sipped the tea.

"Tommy?"

Another sip. "Yes. Tommy. He's sort of the man in charge around here. He likes to know when things happen, you see. Likes to keep things tidy, if you know what I mean."

Of course, he didn't know what the stranger meant, but he couldn't very well admit it.

"Yes. Tommy will be very interested to hear about you. Very interested."