Photo courtesy of Olivier Guillard
Read this story from the beginning HERE!
Destination Unknown
That pretty much summed up my life, living day to day, a nomad on the open road. I’d never had a bank account, didn’t understand the first thing about saving for the future, like I had one. Every dollar I took was wadded up and shoved into my pocket as I moved through life, staying among those I understood, and shunning what I couldn’t comprehend, like the schools of fish from that aquarium so long ago.
I thought I had it figured out, and for me I did, when my cash got low I’d check out a bank, measuring the distance from the street corner to the interior of the vault. That night I’d show up outside, slip in between, and walk into the vault. Most times I was right on target, emerging from the in-between inside the vault where I would fill my pockets with what I needed from the teller drawers stored inside, then be on my way before anything from the in-between got close.
I had to always be aware of that, those creatures on the other side, they were always on the prowl for me. Circling my last known location in a spiral that would bring them to the point where I crossed over. I never waited to see what they were, afraid if I did I might never escape.
I learned early on to ignore the blocks of new bills wrapped in plastic that were just sitting on the shelf in plain sight. Tried to bring one across but was unable to do so, and it fell to the floor of the vault where it lay until the following morning when the manager opened. He must have been the suspicious sort as I learned later when the police pulled me in for questioning. It appears they found my fingerprints on the block of cash and wanted to know how I found my way into the vault.
There was also the matter of the missing cash from the teller drawers. Some of the bills had been marked and of course the police found them wadded up in my pocket. They hammered at me for two days, wanting to know who the inside man was, how did I circumvent the alarm system, and so on. Had I told them the truth they wouldn’t have believed me, besides that was my ace in the hole, when they locked me up all I had to do was slip across into the in-between and be on my way.
Or at least that was my reasoning. The reality of course turned out to be quite the opposite.
After a couple of days they gave up and charged me with grand theft, I’d taken nearly five thousand dollars. A mere pittance really when compared to what many of these banks made in interest and fees. I was tried, found guilty of course, and sentenced to five to ten years at the state prison. The night before my transfer from the city lockup I decided it was time to go.
You know how they say some places give off a certain vibe? Like abandoned mental hospitals that years after their closure are still filled with the despair of their former patients. The terror and fear of these lost souls who appeared abnormal to the general public. In reality they were attuned to things beyond the understanding of the so called sane among us. Secret things and places that existed in a shadowy realm.
Jails are like that, the walls seem to absorb the energy of those incarcerated. Oozing with helpless terror, fear, and sometimes unimaginable evil. I didn’t know the history of the cell I was in, but there must have been some pretty bad shit that went down in there.
When I crossed over it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The landscape around me was one of shadows dancing in an endless night with the screaming cries of past victims echoing all around me. But that wasn’t the worst of it. I don’t know who had been in that cell before me but they had been one evil son of a bitch. Their presence was in that dark landscape, a predator stalking its prey, and I felt it on a purely emotional level that made me feel like someone had kicked me in the gut.
It moved through the darkness, zeroing in on me almost instantly, scrambling towards me in a shadowy form that resembled a massive spider. It was and it wasn’t, if you catch my drift, I was looking at something my mind could not comprehend, so it created what it was familiar with. It moved through the emptiness in a jerking motion, stopping and starting, then stopping again as it watched me with a multitude of eyes that all said the same thing.
We want you.
I felt its need like a thousand tiny hands clambering all over my body, pulling at my clothes, my flesh, my hair and face. It was the most frightening thing I’d ever felt before or since. I managed to get away, but I’ll never escape the memory of that nightmare landscape. It will follow me to my grave, and that is where the real problem lies.
When I take my final walk, and they strap me down to that gurney, and as the fluids designed to kill me flow into my body, where will I go?
To be continued!
No comments:
Post a Comment